by Dahlia Adler
Gia will spend the entire night trying to decide if Jasmine’s prettier than her. She is, but Gia will pretend not to come to this conclusion, while coming to this exact conclusion. I love that she always tries to wish her truths into existence. It isn’t that she’s lying; it’s that she truly believes that if you will it, it is no dream. Her ex-boyfriend taught her that one, though I’m sure she thinks he made it up and doesn’t realize it’s a famous quote he must’ve stolen from an old yearbook. Anyway, it’s become her strategy for life. Granted, she made cheer captain, has a cute boyfriend who’s hopelessly devoted to her, and obviously has the most fabulous friends at Stratford, so maybe she’s on to something.
I’d never tell her this, but I was inspired enough by her success to try it with Chase, spending nights willing him to offer me a ride home or ask me to dance at a party. As I think about him flirting with me this morning, I wonder if it’s finally paying off, but on delay. (Oh, the timing.)
He’ll be at the party; the football players always go, regardless of their opener results. Whether I’m there or not, he and Jasmine will be in the same room, like worlds colliding. I wonder if he’ll think she’s pretty. (How can he not?) I wonder if she’ll think he’s hot. (How can she not?) Did I mention him to her? I can’t seem to recall any conversations about him, but there’s no way I went the entire summer without any. Then again, he was oddly unimportant when I was around her. But he’s definitely not unimportant now.
The problem is, neither is she.
Ugh, what a mess.
There’s a loud coughing sound at the front of the room and I see Mr. Howard trying to get my attention. Frankly, it’s perfect timing, so I slide my phone back in my bag without complaint and focus on the word “calculus” glaring at me in red from the whiteboard.
Within minutes my focus is gone. Jasmine isn’t in this class, and she wasn’t in my first period history class either. What’s she taking? Is she in AP Calc, like Kiki? Is she in the other calculus section with Shan and Gia? She wasn’t in lab with me and she’s not with me now and she won’t be in my Spanish class because she’s fluent in French.
Who. The fuck. Cares. I am not Jasmine Killary’s keeper. I’m not even Jasmine Killary’s friend. If I were, I’d have known she was coming here. I’d know why custody changed hands and when she arrived, and we’d have driven to school together the same way we went everywhere together this summer.
Instead, all I know is we haven’t spoken since I left the Outer Banks, and maybe it’s best we keep it that way.
I fix my gaze on the back of Chase’s head, remembering how flirty he was this morning. That is where my mind should be.
A note falls on my desk a couple of minutes later, crumpled and ink-smudged. “You should reconsider Friday night,” it says. “I could use a personal cheerleader.”
I stare at the handwriting I wish I didn’t know so well, considering it’s the first note Chase has ever sent me that wasn’t asking for homework. What does it even mean? Does he remember that I used to be a cheerleader, standing on the sidelines in a tiny top and even tinier skirt? Or does he think I’m so into him I’ll cheer him on no matter what? Or is it just him flirting?
Ugh, I might’ve liked it better when he treated me like his little sister. Romantic intrigue isn’t my forte; why would it be when my heart’s been in the same unrequited place forever? Not that I haven’t dated or made out with guys or anything—and this summer was something else entirely—but it was all fun and games, flirting and having company alongside Gia and Tommy and Shannon and “Pick of the Month.” Chase was always real, too real, but also not real at all.
I debate not writing back, but who am I kidding? “I’ll think about it.”
Even with my eyes on the board, I can see his smug smile in perfect detail after he unfolds my note.
I don’t hate it.
As predicted, I don’t have a single class with Jasmine that morning, and there’s no spotting her at lunch, since Shannon promptly sweeps me, Gia, and Kiki into her car to take advantage of our first day of senior privileges by eating off campus. I do get to hear plenty about her, though, since everyone else has seen her, and they have lots and lots of opinions.
“She moved here from Asheville, North Carolina,” says Kiki, her hands flailing like they do when she’s excited about info she’s uncovered, sleek black-painted fingernails catching the light at Lily’s Café. “Her mom’s still there, but Jasmine’s living with her dad now. Apparently he’s some big CEO and his house is incredible.”
“Who knew they had Balenciaga out in the sticks?” Shannon stabs methodically at a lettuce leaf. She always eats as if she’s dissecting a lab rat.
“What’s with her hosting the party?” Gia asks.
“Rumor has it, Hunter tried working his charm on her with a party invite and she looked right at him and said she was busy that night with her housewarming and he was welcome to come. By next period, he was telling everyone the party had moved.” Kiki is a fount of information, barely stopping to inhale her pizza. Except none of it is the information I care most about, like why she’s living with her dad now and why she didn’t tell me she was moving here, but I’m thirsty for any and all of it and I’ll take what I can get.
I listen silently as my three best friends break down everything from Jasmine’s wardrobe (expensive) to her hair (too long, Gia thinks, and I shove three fries in my mouth at once so I don’t say a word about how she wouldn’t think that if she’d ever wrapped it around her fingers) to her flawless French (which I can attest is panty-droppingly good).
Jasmine was supposed to be my secret, and in one morning, she’s become the world’s top news story.
I really need to change the subject.
“I can’t believe we’re still talking about this girl when Chase Harding has been hitting on me all morning,” I say with an aggrieved sigh, and though I meant it as a subject-changer, I’m also a little disappointed. I’ve made these three girls sit through hours upon hours of Chase obsession, and the morning he returns the slightest bit of interest, there’s no parade in my honor? What the hell, ladies? How am I supposed to process this on my own?
“I thought we were playing it cool,” says Shannon, smirking like she’s trapped me in something. “So much for that, I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
“He told Alex you’re playing hard to get,” says Kiki, helping herself to my fries. “Said you gave him a big ol’ ‘maybe’ about the game Friday night.”
“But you are going, right?” Gia asks, starting to follow Kiki’s lead with my fries before yanking her hand back as she presumably remembers it’s cheer season. “You guys promised you’d come watch me.”
We did? Shit. So much for playing hard to get. “Of course we’re going,” Shannon says before I can get in a word. “Riss is just making Chase sweat.”
“We’ll be there,” I promise Gia, and Kiki nods in agreement.
“And after, we’ll all go to New Girl’s party,” Kiki adds. Like that, the conversation returns to Jasmine, and I contemplate whether one can literally drown herself in ketchup.
* * *
It isn’t until last period—English, because of course it would be our shared favorite subject—that I finally have a Jasmine sighting. She slips in right as the bell rings, giving me no chance to make eye contact. I don’t even know if she sees me. But it’s unmistakably her and her jangling bracelets and her smoky voice saying “Here” and God, I can’t even remember what class this is anymore.
She doesn’t say another word for the rest of it, and neither do I, but I pack up slowly, sure she’ll saunter over on her way out—maybe with a “Hey, Tinkerbell.” Heat rises in my cheeks as I imagine it, and I take my sweet time getting my stuff into my bag, waiting for the scent of her favorite peach body lotion to reach me. When I finally can’t take it anymore, I look up … and the room is empty.
Okay, what the fuck? Even if she didn’t see me when she came in, she has t
o have heard me respond to “Bogdan, Larissa” during roll call. I’m not letting her ignore me. A few weeks ago, we were staying up all night watching movies with our legs intertwined in the dark, tasting the salty-sweet of popcorn mixed with M&Ms on each other’s lips, and now … this? What even is this?
I have to storm all the way outside before I catch up to her, but there she is, getting into the Jeep I know better than my mom’s old Toyota. “Jasmine!”
She pauses. Steps out of the car. Slowly. Like she knew this was coming and has been dreading it all day. She doesn’t say a word, just waits. It’s her thing—she’s chased, never chases. I’d thought I was exempt. “Jasmine,” I repeat when I’m standing a few feet away, like I still need to confirm.
“Larissa.”
Not Tinkerbell, not a sing-song accented “Larotchka” to affectionately mimic my mom. Just … Larissa.
“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were moving?” I feel silly asking the most basic questions, but I don’t know what else to say.
She shrugs. “We weren’t really talking anymore when my parents decided, so.”
“Okay, but we weren’t talking because—” The words burst from my lips and stop. We weren’t talking because it was too damn hard after the intensity of that summer. I tried so many times, but my hands would always shake as I typed and erased, typed and erased. It was too impossible to reduce our communication to texts or even phone calls, and I didn’t know what to say, how to start. So, I didn’t, and neither did she.
“But you’re here” is all I manage. Don’t you want to be friends? hangs in the air in front of my lips. But I can’t seem to give it voice, because “friends” doesn’t feel like the right word for what we were. Being something else here, in Stratford, away from the magic of the Carolina coast, around Shannon and Chase and real life … none of it makes sense.
“Right, I am, and I’m the one who has to meet new people and shit, so.” She tugs on the familiar gold necklace hanging at her throat, the hamsah and six-pointed star charms clinking against each other quietly. “Role reversal.”
“You already know one person,” I point out. “That’s one more than I knew.”
“Well, when I walked in, the one person I know was otherwise occupied,” she says casually, and I realize she’s talking about watching me flirt with Chase in the hallway. It feels like a little punch to the gut, knowing that was her “welcome” to Stratford, and I feel like I should apologize, but … for what?
“You could’ve interrupted.”
“You and the legendary Chase Harding? I would never.”
The words suggest she’s hurt or mad or maybe both, but her tone doesn’t suggest either one. If anything, it sounds like she’s in on a joke.
How do I respond to that?
“Anyway, turns out I don’t even need to know you to get a party invite, so.”
“I heard. And apparently you’re the person to go to for an invite now.”
Her full lips, uncharacteristically bare and lightly chapped, curve into a smile. “I suppose I am.”
“So,” I ask, genuinely unsure, “do I make the cut for your inaugural Stratford party?”
She slips into her car then, taking a seat behind the wheel and closing the door, although the window is wide open. “I’ll think about it.”
Chapter Three
“You didn’t tell me Jasmine was moving here,” I say accusingly to my mother the second she walks into the kitchen after a day spent taking messages for my former friend’s father. “A little heads-up would’ve been nice.”
“I hope you had a lovely day too, milaya.” Her keys jangle as she puts them next to her bag on the laminate counter, eyeing the bowl of salted edamame sitting in front of me. Normally I’d have popcorn mixed with a healthy dose of M&Ms like I’ve been having every day since I got back, but after seeing Jasmine, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Unfortunately, soybeans were the next most appealing snack in the house. “And I didn’t realize you needed to be told, given you were inseparable this summer. She didn’t call you?”
I refuse to dignify that with a response and dig my teeth into another pod to scrape its insides.
“Ah. If it helps, it was a pretty last-minute decision, from what I gather. Declan didn’t even enlist my help. I only found out today, when he told me to order flowers to his house to welcome her home from her first day.”
I am slightly mollified by this, but still irritated overall. “Can I go to Shannon’s for dinner?”
She sighs. “It’s your first day of senior year, Larotchka. Possibly your last first day of school ever while living at home. Can you please humor your mother and tell her about it over frozen pizza?”
Now I feel like an asshole. It’s not my mother’s fault Jasmine is a jerk. “What kind of toppings do we have?”
“Only half a jar of olives, but they’ll be delicious because they were added with love.” She kisses the top of my head. “Go do your homework and I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
* * *
I go to my room, but I don’t start my homework. Instead, I head into my closet and stand on the lowest shelf to reach the scrapbook hiding on the highest one. Shannon would laugh her ass off if she knew I’d made something so sentimental. For that matter, so would Jasmine. But I’m relieved to have it, to have evidence this summer was real and not some wild delusion.
And there they are: ticket stubs from the movie theater in Kill Devil Hills, the Elizabethan Gardens, the Lost Colony show, and the ferry to Knotts Island. Photographs taken hugging lighthouses and pretending to fly in front of the Wright Brothers memorial. Papers from ice-cream cone wrappings, smooth shells from the beach, a joker from a well-used deck of cards, and even a cherry stem Jasmine tied into a knot with her tongue at a house party. There’s no shortage of memories in these pages.
Truth is, I don’t need snapshots or wrappers or stubs to remember this summer, despite some of it being hazy even while it was happening. Hell, even though I came back from that first party drunk as balls, I still remember every minute through at least the first three shots.
That was when I knew the summer might not suck.
THEN
I don’t know what to wear to Jasmine’s friend’s party, not because I don’t know how to dress, but because my summer nights were gonna consist of being a slug on the couch and binge-watching Netflix with my mom. I’d packed tons of bathing suits, shorts, and tanks, but for nighttime, all I have are a couple pairs of jeans and some cozy sleep pants in case I wanted to sit out near the water during chillier hours. Party clothes hadn’t entered the equation.
Boring jeans and a polka dot tank top will have to do. Shannon would cringe if she saw me wearing flip-flops to a party, but Shannon is in Paris wearing heels and little scarves around her neck, so.
With nothing else to do, I’m ready embarrassingly on time, and, afraid to look overeager, I trap myself in my room, texting with Kiki and watching stupid YouTube videos. Finally, I hear movement outside, followed by “Tinkerbell, where are you?” hollered like a banshee.
I grab my bag and jolt off my bed to meet Jasmine, who looks a hundred times more stylish in a white tank top and pink capris, a row of bangles jangling on her arm. White is a color I avoid until we’re at least two weeks into summer, but it pops enviably against Jasmine’s naturally tan skin and dark, glossy hair.
I wait for a once-over, part of the pre-party ritual with Shannon, Gia, and Kiki, but all Jasmine says is, “Ready?”
I nod. It isn’t until we’re getting into her car that I ask, “Tinkerbell?”
“Tiny, blond, and could probably fit in my pocket. Plus, I still haven’t perfected your mom’s ‘Larotchka.’”
I burst out laughing at her attempt at the wide-open A and the Russian roll of the R. For the most part, my mom’s accent is only lightly traceable; she’s been in the US since college. But when she says my nickname, it comes out in full force, and it’s one of my favorite sounds in the
world. It’s weird to have someone so comfortably pick it up in a single day. Clearly, Jasmine has some powers of observation.
She grins and we hop in her Jeep, roll the windows all the way down, and turn the music all the way up. It’s a band I’ve never heard before, all angry vocals and girlish whispers curling into screams, and it feels like writing my name in the sky with a stub of red lipstick. The salt air and the stilted houses are so wholly un–New York, not at all what I’d expected to experience this summer, and though none of it was my choice and all of it made me angry, tonight it’s a kind of freedom.
I don’t check Shannon’s Instagram once. Or even Chase’s.
The party house isn’t as impressive as the Killarys’, but it’s decked out by someone who seriously knows how to host. We go right around to the beach, where flames from a fire pit lick the sky, dance music fills the air, and coolers of ice, soda, and beer dot the grass. There’s a table full of little dishes of shrimp cocktail and crackers with speckled, cheesy spreads, and though every single chaise and beach chair in the entire Outer Banks seem to be in this one yard, every single one has a butt in it—in some cases, two butts attached to intertwined couples.
“Whose house is this?” I ask as we pick our way over to the drinks and I dutifully take a can of Diet Dr Pepper in adherence to my designated driver promise.
“Carter Thomas,” she says, plucking the can from my hand and pressing a bottle of Corona into it instead. “I’ve thought about it and have come to the conclusion that making you DD on the night of your very first OBX party is too cruel, so just this once, I got it.” She cracks open the can and takes a long, defiant drink, as if that ends the matter. And I suppose it does, because next thing I know I’m sipping from my beer and Jasmine is introducing me around.
