“Look, here’s a big one!” she says, pointing at a wave rolling toward us.
“Let’s do it.” Seb grabs each of us by the hand, and we face off against the incoming wave.
“Go!” Avery shouts.
The three of us dive in, the water rushing into my ears, my legs kicking and splashing against the current. When I come up for air, I’m choking on salt water, but I feel . . . okay. I forgot how light the ocean makes me feel. How gigantic it is compared to everything else in my life. How it connects everyone and everything. Even me, Seb, and Avery. For now, at least, until they start to annoy me again.
We stay in the water for an hour, lunging into waves and floating on our backs. Avery has limitless energy. Seb and I hang back while she continues chasing waves.
“We have to take some pictures,” Seb reminds me. My head is tipped back, eyes closed. I’m counting the sunspots I see through my eyelids.
“Oh yeah,” I say. I can’t believe I forgot our primary purpose for being here.
“Come on.” He takes my hand and leads me to the shore. I stand up, forgetting I’m nearly naked, until Seb pauses to stare at me. His eyes run up and down the length of my body, with some definite lingering going on in the chest area. He doesn’t look away, like I would.
I suddenly don’t know where to put my hands. I try to cross them in front of me, but it leaves my belly exposed. Then I move them down, but the position is awkward and unnatural.
“I like your bathing suit,” he says.
“Um. Thanks.”
We continue walking. He must not have noticed the way my thighs bulge out of it. Or he did notice but he’s trying to cover it up by focusing on the suit. Suddenly I hate this stupid bathing suit. It’s not something Marilyn Monroe would wear. It’s total grandma fashion, minus the floral print and the bathing cap. I think back to the insanely gorgeous picture of Chloe wearing a string bikini like a pageant model. What the hell am I doing? Seriously. There’s no way I can allow Seb’s eight hundred seventy-six followers to see me in a frumpy grandma suit.
Seb and I make it back to our spot, and he immediately takes out his phone.
“I look like crap,” I mutter, putting a hand in front of my face.
“Analee?”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
I laugh. “I do! I look like my abuela.”
He throws an arm around me and sticks his other arm, the one with the phone, in front of us to snap the picture.
“Hey!” I yank the phone from his hand. “Delete it, Seb. Seriously.”
“Nope.” He takes it back. He has those stupidly fast athlete reflexes.
“Please.” I’m getting panicky now. I start to shiver from the water cooling my skin, and I rub my hands up and down my arms to keep warm.
Seb holds the phone directly in my eyesight. “Look. This is a great picture of you. Stop being ridiculous.”
The picture is slightly tilted, but Seb was able to get both of us in it. He’s smiling broadly and I’m midlaugh, looking up at him. I can barely recognize myself, the way my nose crinkles up and my eyes get all squinty when I’m laughing.
This is what happy looks like on me. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
“I guess it’s an okay picture,” I concede. “But what if someone posts a bitchy comment?”
“They won’t.”
“But what if they do?”
“I’ll delete it.”
“But other people will see it.”
“And?”
How am I supposed to answer that? Seb has no insecurities when it comes to his looks, so if someone were to target him, nothing they wrote would affect him. People can hurt you only if you’re scared that what they say is the truth. Seb believes the best of himself. The problem is, I can only believe the worst is true when it comes to me.
He notices me shivering, and he grabs an extra towel to wrap around me. Through the towel, he gives my arm a squeeze. I begin to warm up.
“People can be mean,” I say. Harris would agree with me. The mean ones are everywhere, even when we quest. People who insult you, people who ooze hate and anger into the world until it blocks all the good stuff.
“Not all of them,” Seb says. I can’t figure out if he’s overly optimistic or privileged.
“A lot of them.”
“I disagree,” he says. “The mean ones are just the loudest.”
I look at the picture again. I want to be this version of me—laughing and happy and not the sad girl Avery sees sitting alone in her bedroom. Maybe it’s a choice sometimes. I have to consciously let this happy Analee out for air. Maybe sad and scared go hand in hand, and the more I hide in the shadows, the less of a chance I have to be this smiling girl in the picture.
“So?” Seb asks, his finger hovering over the phone. “To post or not to post?”
But I can’t do it. Because posting the photo has the potential for disaster, and I’ve made a conscious attempt to live my life disaster-free.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I’ve disappointed him. Worse, I actually care. And if I care this much about what Seb thinks of me, how will I feel when I’m exposed, body and all, to most of East Bay?
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “But, for the record, you look hot in that bathing suit.”
“I do not,” I reply.
“Swear to God.”
I’m sure he’s only saying it so that I’ll let him post the picture. Still, something like electricity buzzes under my skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Analee’s Rules for Using the Bathroom at School
1. Go during first period, when it’s most likely to be empty.
2. Use the bathroom on the second floor.
3. Corner stall, always.
4. Hold your business until there’s no one around.
5. Three layers of toilet paper on the seat.
I FOLLOW EACH AND EVERY one of my bathroom rules the Monday after beach weekend. I flush my layers of toilet paper, unlatch the door, and exit the stall. I stare at my mirrored reflection. The girl staring back at me has sun-kissed cheeks and glowing skin, free of breakouts. I don’t know if East Bay’s local beaches have magical skin-healing properties, but I look . . . not awful. My reflection smiles at me.
Just as I turn on the sink to wash my hands, Lily walks in.
My smile vanishes. It makes no sense, her being here right now. She has English Lit first period, on the other side of the building. And she never uses the bathroom in the morning. Lily is strictly an afternoon bathroom user.
The two of us haven’t stood within six feet of each other since the Incident.
She doesn’t say a word when she sees me. She walks right up to the adjacent sink and leans forward, pulling a tube of lip gloss from her pocket. I try not to stare as she puckers her lips and slathers them in pink goo.
It’s just that, in spite of what happened between us, I can’t help missing her. It kills me that I have no idea what’s going on in her life. Not just the massive, Colton-type stuff but the little things. What TV shows is she watching these days? Did she notice that Mrs. Ludinsky’s new haircut resembles a mullet?
I turn off the faucet and grab a paper towel to dry my hands. I’m about to slip out of the bathroom, when Lily speaks.
“Are you really dating Seb?” she asks. She slips the lip gloss back into her pocket and looks at me, waiting.
I freeze, holding the wad of paper towel in my hand. This situation is too much for my brain to compute right now. Lily. Next to me. Talking to me.
God, how can I lie to Lily? She knows me better than anyone else. But I have to lie. I’m doing it for Seb, and I’m doing it to show Lily that I’m not the person she thought I was.
“Yes,” I say. I don’t look directly at her. I look at the Lily in the mirror.
She makes a humming sound that I can’t interpret.
I should just leave, but I can’t move. I’m hoping that, magi
cally, everything will return to normal between us. That we’ll be able to talk without it feeling like a test.
Lily brushes past me while I stand there like a moronic statue, wishing for something that will never happen. Dammit. I wanted to be the one who leaves first. She pauses at the door, then turns back to me, fingers still on the handle.
“Be careful, okay?” she says.
“Hmm?” Throw the goddamn paper towel away, Analee. Move. Leave. What is wrong with you?
“With Seb, I mean.”
“Okay,” I answer, half-dazed, but she’s already out the door. I don’t even think to ask her why.
I used to believe that the trouble with Lily began with Colton. Now, when I look back, I see that the crack in our friendship formed much earlier. It deepened when Mom got sick, after every missed chemo session, when Lily accepted Harlow as part of our lives, when she chose finding happiness with everyone who wasn’t me. Yes, by the time Colton appeared, our friendship had a deep chasm running straight through its center. It was only after Colton that I bothered to notice.
I couldn’t tell Lily after I had seen her and Colton making out in the parking lot. I tried to, nearly a thousand times. But then I would chicken out. I’m not sure what was stopping me. Lily and I had always been fans of the TMI, no-holds-barred conversations: everything from the color of period discharge to the mechanics of sex. Now, though . . . everything felt different.
Time passed, and every day I would promise myself that I’d ask her tomorrow. Then tomorrow became the day after that, and the day after that, until I had a wake of missed opportunities under my belt.
After a week people at school started talking, noting the starry-eyed glances that Lily and Colton gave each other and the not-at-all subtle hand grazing between the two of them in the hallways. I decided to wait. Why should I be the one to bring it up?
The problem is that the longer I waited, the more furious I became. Best friends didn’t do this. They didn’t make out with tattooed boys in public places and just fail to mention it.
Exactly nine days after the face sucking, on an ordinary Friday at lunch, all the anger contained inside me finally boiled over.
I was watching Lily, the way she took tiny bird bites out of her sandwich, the way she hummed as she chewed, like our lives were as normal as they’d ever been, and I snapped.
“I saw you, you know,” I spat out.
“What?”
“Last week. I saw you. In the parking lot.”
Based on my tone, anyone eavesdropping might have assumed that Lily had done something truly awful. I sounded like a player in a real-life game of Clue. Lily Nadarajah, in the parking lot, with her lips.
Lily put down her sandwich. She was acting calm, but by the way she kept blinking, I could tell she was the slightest bit freaked. Well, good. I wanted her freaked, like I’d been freaked when I’d seen her.
I won’t lie. Part of me took pleasure in the fact that I could finally unleash all the anger and resentment that I’d been feeling. Not just at Lily but at everyone. I was so tired of Lily being happy when I could never be. If I had to sink, I wanted to grab her by the ankles and pull her down with me.
“Saw me doing what?” she asked.
“Really?” I asked. “You’re really going to play dumb right now?”
Her blinking intensified. “I was going to tell you.”
“When? Before it spread around the entire school? Because if that’s the case, you’re too late.”
“It hasn’t—”
“It has. Sarah was talking about it in homeroom today.”
I wanted her to come up with some mind-blowing defense. Some reason that she had to keep it a secret, like blackmail or extortion. Something. But she just sat there, blinking, and I let my anger spew out of me. I was so tired of keeping things inside, letting them rot and fester, and I just wanted to empty myself out.
“I mean, God, Lily. I thought we were friends.”
“Hey.” Her eyebrows bunched together. “We are friends.”
“Friends talk to each other.”
“We talk every day! All the time!”
“What good is that when you keep this giant secret from me?”
“I wanted to tell you.”
I shook my head. “If you wanted to, you would have. It’s pretty simple.”
“Okay, you know what?” Lily sat up straighter, and the blinking stopped. She was starting to get angry too. I could always tell with her. “This, right here, is why I didn’t tell you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If I told you, I knew you’d be all weird and angry about it!”
“I’m only ‘weird and angry’ because you hid it from me!” That was a lie. I was angry that she kept things from me, of course, but I was also pissed off that it had happened. It felt like a betrayal of sorts. Lily and I always kept to the wings, commenting on all the assholes in the spotlight. Now Lily was inching into the light, while I would be stuck in the dark. Alone.
“Can’t you just be happy for me? Please?” she asked.
“Happy that you swapped spit with Colton? Like that’s some major life accomplishment?”
“Stop it. That’s not what it was.”
“He used to do it with Mia all the time. Remember? You said Mia was pathetic and that she should get a hobby.”
What Lily said: “Because I was jealous of her. I like Colton, Analee. I like him and his friends. I like being around other people once in a while and laughing and not feeling shitty all the time.”
What I heard: I don’t like you anymore.
Naturally, I didn’t take this well.
“I’m so sorry that I’ve been such a burden on you,” I said. “I didn’t realize my mom’s death would put a damper on your social life.”
Lily’s head snapped up at the mention of Mom. “That’s not what I meant.”
Her voice was low, raw. I realized that it was the first time I’d mentioned Mom to her since the day of the funeral.
“I just . . .” She gave a shaky sigh, cleared her throat. When she spoke again, her voice sounded like her voice. Whatever emotion it had contained had melted away. “I just wish you would try to give things a chance. That’s all. And I’d really like it if my friend and my boyfriend could get along.”
That day, I hated the sound of the word. “Boyfriend.” The harsh consonants, the whiny oy sound. I wanted to put Lily on mute.
“You guys are . . . official?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lily said. She dipped her head and gave a bashful smile, looking full-on like a rosy-cheeked princess.
I should have wanted to see my best friend happy, but it only made me feel more pain. Maybe I was a selfish person at heart. If I couldn’t be happy, I didn’t want anyone else to be.
“I’ll give him a chance,” I said. Not because I meant it but because I was scared that things with Lily would truly be over if I told her what I really thought.
“That’s all I ask.”
“But I still think his tattoo is stupid.”
I thought she would agree with me, or laugh, but she didn’t respond at all.
Harlow bought me condoms. They’re in a cardboard box on my nightstand with a note attached that says,
Just in case. Be safe.
-H
It’s mortifying.
What if Dad had come into my room and found them? Not that he ever really comes in here anyway. Lately he’s wanted nothing to do with me or my living space. But still, it was a risky move.
Each condom is wrapped in blue tinfoil. I open one, out of curiosity. The condom is more slippery than I expected. I roll it down over my middle and index fingers, then display it like a sock puppet. I think about whether Lily and Colton use one if they have sex. Is she on birth control? Is she being safe? They must be having sex at this point. They’re practically dry humping in public, so one can only assume that all bets are off in the privacy of a bedroom.
I wonder how often Chloe a
nd Seb used to do it. I don’t like to think about it for some reason, but my brain has masochistic tendencies. It flips through images of Chloe in a matching lace bra and panties set and Seb’s shirtless body, which I can now picture in torturously perfect detail, thanks to our beach outing. I picture them in a sweaty synchronized dance, and it makes my stomach turn.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay enough to be naked in front of someone. Why does everyone act like sex is no big deal? You have to (a) find someone willing to sleep with you, (b) have the confidence to disrobe in front of them, and (c) know how to move and when. It feels like at some point everyone got a manual to life, and I lost my copy.
Also, who is going to want to have sex with me? Maybe in the future, when I’m around thirty . . . if, by some miracle, I have managed to cure myself of all my physical and emotional flaws.
“Analee?”
Oh God, no. Dad’s heavy footsteps thud up the stairs, and I realize that I still have my fingers in a condom. I slap it off and fling it across the room, then stuff the box of them under my pillow.
When Dad walks in, I’m flopped belly-down on the bed, feeling my heart pound against the comforter.
“Yo,” I say. To my father. For no apparent reason.
“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately.
“Nothing. What do you mean? Why do you ask?”
“You’re all red.”
“That’s just . . . I’m warm,” I say. “It’s warm in here.”
In moments like these it’s super-clear that I could never be a CIA operative or a spy or any job that requires a modicum of cool. Plus, Dad and Harlow like to keep the thermostat at a crisp sixty-seven degrees.
“Harlow’s speaking at a wellness panel tonight,” he says. “And Avery’s at Leia’s house. So we’re on our own for dinner.”
“Could we order something really unhealthy?” I ask. “Like, fried and slathered in grease? And eat on the couch in front of the TV?”
My dad glances behind him as if Harlow will sneak attack us for the mere thought. Then he looks down at his stomach, at his missing pouch. I can almost see the tug-of-war happening in his brain.
Analee, in Real Life Page 14
