by Kieran Scott
“Not really,” I snapped sarcastically.
Jake glanced at my parents and tucked his chin. “Did I do something? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that I can’t take people talking about me behind my back anymore,” I blurted. I was surprised, and pleased, by how in control I sounded. Because the voice in my head was growing panicky. I was so sick of feeling stupid. Feeling like the only one who had no idea what was going on.
He blinked and touched my arm, nudging me slightly away from the car. My dad was still talking to my mom, but she was staring over his shoulder with her jaw clenched, like she was concentrating very hard on not punching him in the face. “You mean, me and your dad? We weren’t talking about you.”
I laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“We weren’t!” he protested. “I was just applying for a job.”
Pfffttt. That was the incredulous sound my lips made at that announcement.
“I was!” he said, his eyes wide at my unbelievable unfairness.
“Sure. You’re getting a job,” I said dubiously. “Why would you be getting a job?”
“I know, I know. But I have to,” he said. “My mom grounded me for the summer and she’s making me jump through all these hoops. I gotta get a tutor and take a class and—” He started ticking things off on his fingers and I sort of couldn’t believe it. How could he think it was okay to launch into a casual conversation? He was just like my father, trying to act like everything could be how it was before, without so much as an apology—without so much as an acknowledgement that he’d done anything wrong. Did he think all was forgiven? Because it definitely was not.
“You know what?” I interrupted. “You’re mistaking me for somebody who cares.”
His jaw dropped. Okay. That was maybe a little bit harsh. But what did he expect me to do? Play along and act all flirty and interested, as if he’d done nothing wrong? As if he hadn’t broken my heart? I had just spent an entire year taking crap from everyone around me and I wasn’t going to do it anymore.
I turned around and dragged my bag back toward the car.
“Did Ally tell you I’m going to retake my Series Seven this summer?” my father was saying. “I should be trading again by the end of August.”
“No, she didn’t tell me that, Chris. How nice for you,” my mother said facetiously. “I really hope you’re not going to become one of those fathers who uses their daughter as a go-between instead of dealing with things himself.”
“Well, when you refuse to answer my calls . . . ,” my dad said with a chuckle.
Much to Quinn’s surprise, I opened the side door again, threw my bag inside, and got in.
“Come on, Mom. Let’s go,” I said out the window.
“What? Ally . . . I thought you were staying with me,” my father said.
“I changed my mind,” I told him.
My mom barely bit back a grin. “She changed her mind,” she said with a shrug. Then she got in the car as well and slammed her door. “Gray,” she said as she buckled her seat belt. “Let’s go.”
“But I . . . shouldn’t we talk about this?” my father said.
I felt bad for bailing on him like this, but I couldn’t stay there a moment longer with the two of them—the two guys who’d broken my heart. Just seeing them standing there together made me want to cry or shout or throw things.
“I’ll call you later,” I told my dad.
Then Gray pulled out into traffic and we were gone.
“Are you okay?” my mother asked. “What did Jake say?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I put my sunglasses on and hunkered down for the long drive.
“Oh, but look at him. He looks so sad,” Quinn lamented, gazing out the back window at Jake. I shot her a look that, in a perfect world, would have killed her dead. She popped the bubble that hung from her mouth, wisely averted her eyes, and put her earbuds back in.
Suddenly, I couldn’t get away from Orchard Hill fast enough. I needed something. Something to help me stop feeling this way. Like there was some kind of roiling, hot poison in my chest, just waiting for the perfect moment to spew forth. Maybe what I needed was a change of scenery. Something new.
My phone beeped and I leaned forward to slip it from my pocket. It was a text. From Faith.
R U coming down??? We can go 4 manicures!!!
I turned the phone off and curled my knees toward the door. Unfortunately, all that was waiting for me at LBI was more of the same old same old.
The grating scream of buzz saws greeted me as I turned onto my street. As if I wasn’t already tense enough. There were four separate trucks and a Jaguar parked outside Chloe’s house. A plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, and an air-conditioning specialist. I didn’t know who the Jaguar belonged to, but I’d bet money it was an interior decorator.
Looked like Mrs. Appleby was bored again.
I pulled into my driveway, and Shannen stood up off the front step. Fuck. I put the car in park and leaned my head against the wheel for a second. Took a breath for patience. This was so not what I wanted to deal with after the Ally disaster.
“Hey.” She shoved her hands into the back pockets of her shorts as she arrived at my window.
“Hey.” A sudden clatter of wood made me flinch. “What’s going on over there?” I stalled.
“Chloe talked her mom into having an addition put onto her room,” Shannen said, sweeping her long bangs out of her eyes. They fell right back again. “She’s gonna have her own media room and a walk-out deck. I got all this from Faith, of course, since Chloe’s still not talking to me.”
I looked down at my keys in my lap. She sounded all bitter. Like she didn’t remember that there was a reason Chloe wasn’t talking to her. So weird.
“Are you?” she asked.
“What?” I said.
“Talking to me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, sure. I’m talking to you right now, right?”
She rolled her eyes slightly and placed her hands on top of the Jeep’s door, clutching it. “You know what I mean.”
Actually, I didn’t.
“I just feel so stupid,” she said, shaking her head.
There was a long moment of silence. If you didn’t count all the construction noise.
“So . . . what do we do now?” I asked.
She laughed, but it was more like one part exhalation, one part laugh. “I guess you could tell me what you think.”
“What I think about what?” I asked.
Another laugh. I’d never heard Shannen laugh this much in a conversation. Her face was all red and she tipped her head forward so her hair hid most of it. “About . . . what I told you at my party,” she said. “About, you know . . . how I feel.”
Right. Suddenly I wanted to be anywhere else. I would’ve even gone back to the street with Ally yelling at me rather than have this conversation.
I mean, on the one hand, Shannen had been my best friend for two years. But on the other hand, she completely destroyed Ally, taking me, Chloe, and Hammond out in the process, and then decided to tell me that she did it all because she liked me. Because she wanted Ally out of my life. Because, basically, she was jealous.
So, not only had she been psycho evil on my behalf, but basically, it was all my fault. If Shannen didn’t like me and if I didn’t like Ally, none of it would’ve happened.
Also, Shannen was like a guy to me. A friend. Not that I couldn’t see she was hot. I’m not blind. But I wasn’t going to hook up with her just because she was hot. Because what would happen after that? Nothing good.
She was staring at me. Waiting for a response. She was going to make me say it.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t . . . I thought we were friends,” I said.
Her hands slid down the door, then tucked under her arms. She took a step back. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry, Shan,” I said, shrugging. “I just don’t think of you that way. And you know, I mean . . . you know I
like . . . someone else.”
“Ally.” She said the word like it was laced with jagged glass.
“Yeah.” I exhaled and flipped the visor down, then back up again. Down and up. Down and up. “Not that it matters. She did the weirdest thing before. I was over at Jump talking to her dad and she—”
“Are you kidding me?” Shannen blurted, just as the high-pitched sound of the saw pierced my eardrums again.
“What?” I asked.
“Do you really think I want to hear about your romantic problems with Ally Ryan?” Shannen shouted, bending at the waist. There were angry tears in her eyes. Suddenly I felt like the rat bastard both she and Ally clearly thought I was. “God! You are such an asshole, Jake.”
Then she turned around and stormed off. I almost made a move to follow her, but what was I supposed to say? I wasn’t going to tell her I was in love with her, because I wasn’t. So I just let her go.
I leaned my head back against the headrest and blew out a sigh. This day was just getting better and better. Any second my mom was gonna come out the front door and tell me I had to take cooking classes, too, or learn how to knit. I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before last weekend. I wanted Shannen to be my friend and Ally to like me still. Was that so hard?
My phone beeped. My stomach did that weird, hopeful swooping thing it did whenever it heard a beep these days. Was the text from Ally? I fished the phone out of my pocket. The text was from Chloe.
R U O K?
Huh? I looked over at her house. All I saw was bushes.
I can see u!
I texted back.
How?
Stand up.
All righty then. I hoisted myself up and stood on the seat of my car. My head and torso sticking up through the roll bars. There was Chloe, standing on what was basically half of a deck. It had been built outside her room. There was a big hole in the wall behind her, and I could just see her pink wallpaper inside. She waved. I waved back. Then she started texting again. A second later my phone beeped.
I’m bored. Wanna go 2 movies 2morrow?
I blinked. Chloe had never asked me to make plans alone before. But I guess with Faith, Hammond, and the Idiot Twins down the shore, and her not talking to Shannen or Hammond anyway, I was all that was left.
I’m in but gotta ? mom 1st.
Cool. Txt l8r.
I put the phone back in my pocket, feeling slightly better. My mom couldn’t say no to one night of vegging in front of an action movie. My SAT tutor wasn’t coming until Friday and the class didn’t start for a couple of weeks, so there was nothing to study yet anyway. And I’d gotten a job. So I was ahead of the game. In her book anyway.
As I jumped down from the Jeep, I saw a familiar guy get into the electrician’s truck and drive off. He looked over as he got to the end of my driveway and gave me a nod, so I nodded back. When I saw the name Halloran on the back of the truck, I realized why I knew him. Will Halloran: running back on the football team. Guess his dad was an electrician or something.
I wished my dad had some job I could apprentice at. I bet stringing wires at Chloe’s house would be a lot more fun than schlepping coffee at Jump. And at least then, no one would expect me to go to college. I could just take over the electrician business when my dad retired. No muss, no fuss.
Everyone thought that living on the crest was easy, but being a Norm definitely had its perks. Number one being, that if I were a Norm, Ally Ryan never would have had a reason to hate me.
By the time we got down to LBI, I was tired, cranky, and guilt-ridden. As I watched the familiar scenery fly by—the chowder stands and fudge shops, the random businesses selling boogie boards and sunscreen and plastic shovels—all I kept seeing was Jake’s forlorn expression as we pulled away from Orchard Hill. Why did I have to be so mean? Now he was never going to try to apologize, which meant I’d never get the chance to forgive him. But did I even want to forgive him? Maybe I should just move on. That’s what healthy people supposedly do—put the people who hurt them behind them. Besides, being with him meant being with his friends, and that was not a place I wanted to be. Especially not after everything they’d put me through over the past year. But still . . . every time I thought about him, my heart caught. Didn’t it realize what he’d done?
Stupid heart.
I banged my head lightly against the car window as the view outside shifted. We were headed north on the island, away from the hustle and bustle near the causeway and onto the tree-lined stretch of the Boulevard. A woman rode along on a cruising bike, her wide-brimmed straw hat tugged back by the breeze, a tiny black dog sitting in the wicker basket on her handlebars. A far-too-tan guy in a BMW convertible pulled out of a driveway with a huge private beach—no trespassing sign tacked to a pole. Up here, where the biggest of the beach houses lived, there were more of those signs than there were people. A few seagulls cawed overhead, and I found myself hoping one would poop on the guy’s fresh wax job. Finally, Gray pulled into the winding, white pebble driveway that led to his house.
I was so tired of not knowing how I felt. Whether I was mad at my father or relieved he was back. Where I wanted to live for the summer. Whether or not I should be with Jake. I pulled out my cell phone and considered a text, but what would I say? Sorry? Call me? Miss you? It all seemed way too pathetic and not quite right. Then the SUV emerged from the evergreen trees and I forgot all about my phone.
“This is your house?”
“This is it,” Gray said.
I couldn’t believe it. This was the house. My single favorite house on LBI. It was shaped like a long, shallow triangle and set up on stilts, like many of the houses on the island, to protect it from flooding and storm water. From the beach, this house looked like a huge, hovering alien craft—all windows from top to bottom, with three levels of decking and several sets of stairs to the beach. When I was little and we’d go for strolls in the sand, I had always wanted to walk by the spaceship house.
My mother and Gray got out of the car. Quinn flipped open a mirror and reapplied her lip gloss. Outside, my mom and Gray held hands and walked right past the wide wooden steps to the front door.
“Wait. Where’re you going?” I asked, getting out and slamming the door. The cool wind off the ocean immediately whipped my hair across my face.
“Hello? Delicate process over here! You just shook the whole car,” Quinn said through the open window.
Mom and Gray turned in toward each other to look over their shoulders. “To the Rosses’ for the party.”
“Oh. Well. Can you just let me inside first?” I asked. My feet crunched the pebbles as I walked over to them. My mom and Gray exchanged a look, then released each other.
“I’d really rather you come with us,” my mother said, tucking her hair up under a straw visor.
I glowered. “What happened to ‘I don’t have to see anyone I don’t want to see’?”
Quinn got out of the car. “Ready!” she trilled, jogging over to us.
“Just for a little while?” my mother implored. “I’m sure the party will be big enough for you to go unnoticed.” She linked her arm around mine and held it fast. “Besides, they’re going to have a ton of food. Aren’t you hungry?”
My grumbling stomach betrayed me. Gray had refused to stop at any one of the many Burger Kings on the parkway, and Mrs. Ross did always have the best barbecued ribs. I looked down at my outfit—wrinkled camo cargo shorts and a white T-shirt. I was so not dressed for a party, but that was hardly my fault. I’d thought I was going to spend the day on my dad’s new couch watching reruns and waiting for his shift to be over so we could order takeout before he headed off to class. But then, what the heck did I care what the Cresties thought of my clothes? My stomach grumbled again and I sighed.
“Fine,” I said, slipping my sunglasses on. “But I’m only staying long enough to eat.”
“There ya go!” Gray said, reaching out to ruffle my hair.
I flinched, surprised.
Gray and I had always kept a respectful distance from each other. When had we crossed that line into invasion of personal space being okay? He didn’t seem to notice my discomfort, and my mom just smiled, so I let it go. As long as it didn’t happen again.
We walked up the beach to the Rosses’ house. The sun was high in the sky and blazing down on the crashing waves. It was my first glimpse of the LBI ocean in years, and a thousand memories hit me like a tsunami. Burying my dad up to his neck in the sand with my mom’s expert assistance, the summer between third and fourth grade when they’d both helped me and my friends make a four-story sand castle that had stood for almost a week, all the kite flying, ball throwing, and volleyball playing. Every memory contained my mom and dad.
“Ladies first,” Gray announced, standing aside so the three of us could tromp past him onto the steps leading up to Hammond’s house.
I glanced sideways at him. Suddenly, in that Ralph Lauren shirt unbuttoned one button too low, with the string attached to his sunglasses around his neck, carrying an eco-friendly cloth bag full of clanking wine bottles, he looked like a complete tool. A poor-man’s Chris Ryan.
A few people on the deck greeted us with raised glasses. Smoke poured off the barbecue, which was being manned by some hired dude in a Hawaiian shirt. As I looked out at the view from the deck, I remembered that night five years ago when my parents had renewed their vows right outside Faith’s house, which was a few houses down from Hammond’s. The Rosses had insisted on hosting the pre-party, and Mrs. Ross, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Appleby, and Mrs. Kirkpatrick had acted as bridesmaids. All the women had gotten ready here, at the Rosses’, then walked over to the ceremony, the five of us holding my mom’s delicate lace train. Hundreds of white candles had been placed in the sand to form an aisle, and my dad had been standing at the end of it, on a huge heart made out of seashells that my friends and I had spent all day painting red. At the time, I’d thought it was the most romantic thing in the world—all my dad’s idea, all for the woman he claimed he’d always love and always do anything for. So how was it possible that less than three years later, he could have ditched her?
