Kelsi smiled and let out a slight snort. “Right, Ella. You’ve definitely grown by leaps and bounds.”
“Oh, stop being sarcastic. Seriously, the napoleons can be my treat,” Ella offered graciously. “I want to make up for last year.”
“Mmm, I don’t think I want napoleons anymore.”
“What? God, Kels, you…”
“I want to go to the diner,” Kelsi said as she carefully slowed down for a yield sign.
“What?”
Kelsi looked as if nothing would deter her or change her mind. “We can get veggie burgers.”
Ella said the first words of protest that came into her head, crossing her arms stubbornly. “I hate veggie burgers.”
Kelsi shrugged. “Fine, get a hamburger.”
Damn. “Kelsiiiii…”
“What?”
Ella searched her brain frantically for the most persuasive way to talk Kelsi out of driving to the diner. Seeing Peter with Kelsi would be unbearable. And what if Peter said something toher about the other night? There was no way Ella could do it.
But she couldn’t say that.
“You don’t want to see him, Kelsi,” Ella said sternly.
“Yes, I do.”Kelsi gripped the steering wheel, determined to go through with this, no matter what.
“Kelsi.” Ella slammed her palms against her thighs as Kelsi narrowed her eyes at the road. “Napoleons are tradition,” she finally blurted out. It was a lame attempt to make Kelsi feel bad, but it didn’t come close to working.
“We can have napoleons for dessert. I have to see him, El. I just have to.”
Ella didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t blame her sister.
In fact, she could identify completely with everything Kelsi was feeling.
The same snooty girl from last time was at the hostess podium. She wore the same cool look and gave them a heap of attitude, as usual.
“Two, please,” Kelsi said firmly, surprising Ella with the iciness in her tone. Kelsi was lots of things, but she was never rude or cold. The girl, whose name tag said “Brandi” (of course she would be a Brandi, Ella thought), led them to a nonsmoking table that was right on the dividing line with the smoking section. Ella thought about how Peter smelled of smoke. She began to crave a cigarette, but then pulled out a piece of gum from her purse and chomped away. She had to resist all kinds of urges for Kelsi’s sake.
Kelsi scoped the restaurant for any signs of Peter, while Ella pretended to study her menu. She was desperately hoping he wasn’t here. Then again, maybe if he were working, it would make Ella feel better. At least she’d know he’d had a good reason for not answering the phone.
A middle-aged waitress with an enormously poofy hairdo came by to take their orders. “Veggie burger deluxe,” Kelsi said, “and a cranberry juice.”
The waitress rested on a hip while Ella searched her menu. She always wanted at least four things and never could decide without scouring the specials a dozen times. “Greek salad,” she said finally.
When they were alone again, Kelsi leaned toward Ella and whispered, “Oh my God. I just realized it. That’s her.”
Ella straightened her shoulders and looked around the diner, wondering what Kelsi meant. “That’s her who?”
“The girl at the podium.Brandi.”She dragged out the vowels in “Brandi” disdainfully.
Ella looked beyond Kelsi’s delicate frame, past the guy who kept checking her out, toward the blonde ponytail of Brandi. “What about Brandi?” She mimicked Kelsi’s pronunciation to emphasize how annoying it was when her sister was cryptic. Also, if she acted annoyed, she wouldn’t seem as guilty.
Kelsi rolled her eyes. “The girl. The girl Peter was with last night. It’s gotta be her.”
Ella looked at Brandi’s back again, her cheeks hot. She looked down and grabbed a sugar packet from the container by the window. “Really? You think so?”
“I swear, I sensed something was up when I used to come in here, but I thought I was just being jealous.” Kelsi seemed oblivious to Ella’s tomato-colored face. “I should have trusted my instincts.”
Ella’s eyes darted to the right, to avoid looking at Kelsi or the wrongly accused Brandi, to where a long, rectangular window revealed a chest-high view of the kitchen. She could see one familiar, now white-aproned, torso moving about with a spatula. “Oh God,”slipped from her lips before she could stop it. She looked at Kelsi, whose gaze immediately darted where Ella had been looking. But then their view was blocked by their waitress’s full figure.
“Veggie burger, Greek salad,” she announced, laying down the meals and some condiments.
Ella immediately tackled her salad with the vinegar bottle, shaking and shaking its contents all over the fresh lettuce leaves and feta cheese. When the waitress backed away, there was another person lurking around in the kitchen. A girl. Whoever it was pressed close to Peter. Her arm snaked out and a hand went below Ella’s line of vision. However, the angle that the arm was at left little doubt that this girl was grabbing Peter’s butt. Ella’s legs turned to Jell-O, the kind they serve at diner salad bars. Peter and the mystery girl were rubbing against each other, only briefly, but intimately.
“It’s Brandi in there. She’s doing it on purpose,” Kelsi growled. Her eyes were glued to the spot and nearly popping out of their sockets. “Because I’m here.” She laid her fork down. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to do this anymore.”
Brandi apparently communicated something to Peter, who did a ducking motion and then his face was staring out at them. Ella and Kelsi. Kelsi and Ella. Naive vacationing sisters who had fallen prey to the same guy.
And then there was a whoosh of air at Ella’s side. Kelsi had stood up and she was walking out of the restaurant.Walking. Not storming, not slinking. And her head was held high.
Ella’s eyes had gone back to Peter, but the rest of her remained nailed to the seat. He disappeared from view, and then came toward her out of the kitchen’s swinging door. “Hey there,” he said, as he closed in on her.
“Hey.” Ella’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes moved beyond him to the swinging kitchen door. Brandi was just coming out again. She frowned their way and then walked back to her podium, glancing back over her shoulder twice.
“Where’d Kelsi rush off to?” Peter asked.
“Are you having sex with that girl?” Ella’s words completely overlaid his. It wasn’t calculated, but she still expected the question to shock him. It didn’t. He tucked his hands into his apron pockets casually.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” Ella was worried she might start to cry. She already knew the truth. He didn’t have to say. Her voice came out all high and pinched. “I snuck around for you. I went behind my sister’s back.…”
Peter gave the first sign of being uncomfortable. He shifted his weight and took his hands out of his pockets, placing them on the
table in front of Ella.
“It’s not a big deal, okay?”
“Right. Me betraying my sister for you is not a big deal at all,” she retorted angrily.
Peter’s big dark eyes widened. “Ella, we had a good time the other night. Let’s just leave it at that, all right?”
Ella put her palms to her forehead. A good time. She remembered the night in the haunted house, how dizzy she’d been, how she’d thought about him and agonized over him. A good time.
She stood up on her shaky Jell-O legs. She scanned the table and remembered she hadn’t ordered a drink. In the movies, if a guy insulted you, you dumped your drink on him. You didn’t dump your sister’s drink on him, especially when the sister was the one you had both insulted.
Ella opted for her Greek salad instead. She tipped the bowl toward him and slammed it against his chest.
She watched as Peter’s face, for once, actually took on human, emotional expressions—shock, surprise, and fury.
“Nowthat was a good time,” she said vengefully.
Then she trot
ted out of the restaurant.
Even as she walked away, Ella was keenly aware that she exuded about one-tenth of the dignity Kelsi had, and about half the class.
30
Beth pushed her money across the counter and plucked a pink ball from the basket of multicolored golf balls. The girl running the Circus, Circus! kiosk opened the cash register and gave her some change. She had bad hair and thick, outdated glasses and reminded Beth a little of herself in the fifth grade. Only this girl had to be at least sixteen. She talked to herself as she punched numbers into the cash register and separated the bills—they were low words that Beth couldn’t make out.Things could be worse, Beth thought to herself. At least she wasn’t working at Circus, Circus!, wearing huge specs, and talking to no one in particular.
She took her club from the counter and walked the few feet to Hole #1, The Giraffe’s Neck. Minigolf was open until 11 P.M. and it was only 7:45. Beth wondered how many games she could fit in between now and then. She placed her ball on the center dot on the green. She took a second to breathe and get to that peaceful place she went to during lacrosse games, surfing, and badminton. Then she took aim.
But before she could pat the ball forward with her putter, Beth saw George out of the corner of her eye. She jerked the club as she turned and hit her shin rather hard. She let out a small cry of pain.
“Hey,” Bad Hair Girl crooned, wrapping George in a hug as he leaned over the counter of the kiosk. Before Beth’s eyes, they kissed loudly, complete with slurping sound effects.
Beth was too stunned to gasp. But then, she didn’t have to because it wasn’t George. She could see now—it was some other skinny, tall kid. It was Bad Hair Girl’s boyfriend. God, even Bad Hair Girl had a boyfriend.
“Figures,” Beth muttered to herself, turning back to her ball and giving it a tap. It went nowhere near the hole. It struck a wall to the right and bounced back at her, then rolled past her onto the sidewalk. She had to chase it. It raced her to a patch of grass and won. Beth picked it up and started again.
She was through two holes before she figured out that the throbbing in her throat was not an impending cold. It was the sour sting of disappointment. Beth realized she was expecting George to show up. She might as well admit that to herself now, so she could skip the specific disappointment of the minutes passing by and move on to a more general disappointment later, when the night was over. From tomorrow morning on, she could wallow in disappointment on a more cosmic level—once he was gone.
This was the worst game of Beth’s otherwise stellar minigolf career. She took six shots to get the ball in the hole at the Dolphin’s Fin, which was way over par. She was bordering on short-shortswearing-bimbo-caliber skill. She looked over her shoulder several times to make sure no one was close enough behind her to notice how much she was sucking. She thought about marking a fake score on her card just to make herself feel better. As if that would work.
The final hole was an extra—Hole #19. It was the traditional Clown Face. There was no body, just a huge face and mouth, which opened and closed at irregular intervals. If you managed to get your ball across a little bridge and in between the lips before they snapped shut, you won a ticket for a free game.
Clown Face was Beth’s personal nemesis. Whether she walked away from Circus, Circus! happy or sad often depended on whether or not she made the hole, which she did about thirty-five percent of the time.
She took aim, took the shot, and watched it sail in, hitting the clown’s fluorescent pink epiglottis on the way down. She observed it without the least amount of satisfaction, but with a certain amount of surprise. It wasn’t supposed to be her night. Then she scanned the area of the course one more time, just in case George had shown up while she wasn’t looking.
She walked to the kiosk, where the girl and her boyfriend were talking in low voices by the cash register.
“I got a free game,” Beth said woefully. The girl didn’t bother leaving the kiosk to check Clown Face. She grabbed a ticket out of the cash register door and started writing something on the back.
“I’ll just play now,” Beth corrected her. The girl put the ticket away and smiled at her.
“Sure, just pick another ball.”
“I know.” Just because the girl had a boyfriend, she thought she knew everything. Beth grabbed a green one this time and headed back toward the soda machine. She fished three quarters out of her pocket and dropped them into the slot, hitting the big square button for the flavor she wanted. She then walked back to Hole #1 and began another game with her new best friends—green ball, golf club, and Mountain Dew.
When Beth got home, the windows of the house were casting squares of light on the grass. She’d played five games, two of which were free, thanks to Hole #19. George never showed up. There had been a group of drunk twenty-somethings killing time, and a lady with a pink hat and yellow glasses who’d played three holes and left. But her best friend didn’t come by to apologize for deserting her.
Opening the screen door, Beth prepared herself to confront George. She’d act casual. She’d pretend she hadn’t noticed that he’d been avoiding her. They could even spend their last couple of hours together pretending everything was normal. And who knew? Maybe to George, thingswere normal. Whether she’d kick his skinny ass if that were the case, she didn’t know.
Her parents were in the living room watching TV. “Hey, guys.” She gave them a little wave as they both looked up from the couch, then continued down the hall. George’s door was open, but his light was off.
“Where’s George?” her dad called to her back.
He wasn’t here.
“I dunno, Dad,” she said, trying to sound as if she couldn’t care less where he was. She couldn’t believe it. It was unbelievable. Her temples throbbed. He was still out! On his last night! Without her! She spun around and headed back out the front door.
“I’m gonna go out and look for him. See you later,” she called out her to her dad in her most normal-sounding voice. But she wasn’t going to go find him. Instead, she walked around the side of the house and then toward the ocean. When she got to the edge of the beach, Beth sat hard on the grass, her legs stretched out in front of her.
He was leaving tomorrow.
She was so anxious, she couldn’t sit still. Beth stood up and paced along the sand. She had to do something with her nervous energy. She walked toward the next house over, to the hammock where Ella liked to lie. She pushed it a few times like a swing, hard, so that it almost flipped. Then she slung one leg over the side and climbed on. She pulled her arms around her chest, and rested her hands on her own shoulders, hugging herself. Then Beth felt all her emotions rush out of her like an avalanche.
The crying came out in little wheezes. Beth scrunched up her lips tight so she wouldn’t sob, but she couldn’t help it. She was doubled over and sobbing like a huge loser. She rubbed the tears off as fast as they came, to hide the evidence from herself that she was actually this upset over George. Her sniffling and the throbbing in her head helped to drown out the sound of footsteps in the grass.
“Beth.”
“Oh my God,” Beth shot straight up, sending the hammock swinging forward so that it almost dumped her onto the grass. Her reflexes were good enough to keep her on, but not by much. She stared up at George as he got closer and farther away and closer again, until he reached out a hand and stopped the swinging.
“Are you okay?” he asked, rather softly.
She rubbed at her face, wondering if there were still any more tears left on her cheeks. “Yeah,” she answered while trying not to sniffle. “You just scared me.”
“Scoot over,” George said. Beth stayed where she was but he sank down next to her and pushed her with his body so that they were hip to hip, half sitting, half lying crosswise on the hammock. He didn’t say anything and Beth just stared ahead, dazed.
“Why are you crying?” George finally asked, point-blank.
Beth took a deep breath. “I’ve go
t a raging case of PMS.”
George offered her a pained smile. “Right.” He got only slightly less phobic than most guys when it came to periods.
“What, you don’t think I’m girly enough to get PMS?” Immediately, Beth was back to being angry. Her feelings could be turned on and off like a light switch.
George dropped his head into his hands. “I’m sure you are.”
Beth snapped her lips shut. What wasthat supposed to mean? George continued, “I don’t think that’s why you’re crying, though. I think you’re crying because I’ve been such an asshole.”
Beth kept her mouth shut and listened to her friend explain.
George rubbed his fingers along the crisscrossing rope between his knees. “Maybe that sounds cocky. That you’d be crying because of me.”
Beth didn’t say another word.
“Look, I don’t blame you if you hate me. I came home tonight after I thought you’d be asleep. But your dad said you’d gone out to look for me, and that made me feel like a bigger asshole than I already did.” He cleared his throat. “Which is hard.”
Beth wrapped her arms around herself again. “You waited until you thought I was asleep.” She was so incredibly angry.
“I was just freaked out.” He clasped his fingers together and cleared his throat again. “I’ve been really scared.”
Beth watched George’s eyebrows lift in his worried way. They moved down and up with the beat of his thoughts. It made it easy to feel for him. Beth wanted to know what he was scared of, but she didn’t feel like even asking him any questions. Finally, he spoke again.
“I’m really sorry about what…I…did…last night.”
A sigh made its way out of Beth’s trembling body. She could feel the tears creeping back out again from where they’d been hiding. “You’re sorry?”
“Yeah. I really am, Beth.”
He didn’t seem to realize how hurtful his “sorry” was. “Sorry” he’d kissed her? George was looking at her with his big, apologetic eyes, as if being forgiven was the most important thing in the world. Beth wanted him to not be sorry. And at the same time, she wanted him to be sorrier. She felt all screwed up.
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