Conrad laughed too, and I glared at them both. “That’s not fair,” I said. “I want to drink what you guys are drinking.”
“Sorry, but we don’t serve minors here,” Jeremiah said, falling next to me on the floor.
I punched him on the shoulder. “You’re a minor too, dummy. We all are.”
“Yeah, but you’re really a minor,” he said. “My mom would kill me.”
It was the first time any of us had mentioned Susannah. My eyes darted over to Conrad, but his face was blank. I let out a breath. And then I had an idea, the best idea ever. I jumped up and opened the doors of the TV console. I ran my fingers along the drawers of DVDs and home videos, all neatly labeled in Susannah’s slanted cursive handwriting. I found what I was looking for.
“What are you doing?” Jeremiah asked me.
“Just wait,” I said, my back to them. I turned on the TV and popped in the video.
On the screen, there was Conrad, age twelve. With braces and bad skin. He was lying on a beach blanket, scowling. He wouldn’t let anybody take a picture of him that summer.
Mr. Fisher was behind the camera, as always, saying, “Come on. Say ‘Happy Fourth of July,’ Connie.”
Jeremiah and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Conrad glared at us. He made a move for the remote, but Jeremiah got to it first. He held it above his head, laughing breathlessly. The two of them started wrestling around, and then they stopped.
The camera had focused in on Susannah, wearing her big beach hat and a long white shirt over her bathing suit.
“Suze, honey, how do you feel today, on our nation’s birthday?”
She rolled her eyes. “Give it a rest, Adam. Go videotape the kids.” And then from under her hat, she smiled—that slow, deep-down smile. It was the smile of a woman who really and truly loved the person holding the video camera.
Conrad stopped fighting for the remote and he watched for a moment, then he said, “Turn it off.”
Jeremiah said, “Come on, man. Let’s just watch.”
Conrad didn’t say anything but he didn’t stop watching either.
And then the camera was on me, and Jeremiah was laughing again. Conrad too. This was what I was waiting for. I knew it would get a laugh.
Me, wearing huge glasses and a rainbow striped tankini, my round stomach popping over the bottoms like a four-year-old’s. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, running away from Steven and Jeremiah. They were chasing me with what they claimed was a jellyfish, but what I later found out was a clump of seaweed.
Jeremiah’s hair was white-blond in the sunlight, and he looked exactly the way I remembered.
“Bells, you look like a beach ball,” he said, gasping with laughter.
I laughed too, a little. “Watch it,” I said. “That summer was really great. All our summers here were really . . . great.”
Great didn’t even begin to describe them.
Silently, Conrad got up and then he came back with the tequila. He poured us each some, and this time mine wasn’t watered down.
We all took a shot together, and when I gulped mine down it burned so bad tears streamed down my face. Conrad and Jeremiah started cracking up again. “Suck on the lime,” Conrad told me, so I did.
Soon I felt warm and lazy and great. I lay down on the floor with my hair fanned out and I stared up at the ceiling and watched the fan turn round and round.
When Conrad got up and went to the bathroom, Jeremiah rolled over to his side. “Hey, Belly,” he said. “Truth or dare.”
“Don’t be dumb,” I said.
“Oh, come on. Play with me, Bells. Please?”
I rolled my eyes and sat up. “Dare.”
His eyes had that trickster’s glint. I hadn’t seen that look in his eyes since before Susannah got sick again. “I dare you to kiss me, old-school style. I’ve learned a lot since the last time.”
I laughed. Whatever I had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.
Jeremiah tilted his face up at me and I laughed again. I leaned forward, pulled his chin toward me, and kissed him on the cheek with a loud smack.
“Aw, man!” he protested. “That’s not a real kiss.”
“You didn’t specify,” I said, and my face felt hot.
“Come on, Bells,” he said. “That’s not how we kissed that other time.”
Conrad came back into the room then, wiping his hands on his jeans. He said, “What are you talking about, Jere? Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
I looked at Jeremiah, whose cheeks were flaming. “You have a girlfriend?” I heard the accusation in my voice and I hated it. It wasn’t like Jeremiah owed me anything. It wasn’t like he belonged to me. But he always let me feel like he did.
All this time together, and he never once mentioned that he had a girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it. I guessed I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, and the thought made me sad.
“We broke up. She’s going to school at Tulane, and I’m staying around here. We decided there’s no point in staying together.” He glared at Conrad and then glanced back at me. “And we’ve always been off and on. She’s crazy.”
I hated the idea of him with some crazy girl, some girl who he liked enough to go back to over and over. “Well, what’s her name?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Mara,” he said at last.
The alcohol in me gave me the courage to say, “Do you love her?”
This time he didn’t hesitate. “No,” he said.
I picked at a pizza crust and said, “Okay, my turn. Conrad, truth or dare?”
He was lying on the couch facedown. “Never said I was playing.”
“Chicken,” Jeremiah and I said together.
“Jinx,” we said at the same time.
“You guys are two-year-olds,” Conrad muttered.
Jeremiah got up and started doing his chicken dance. “Bock bock bock bock.”
“Truth or dare,” I repeated.
Conrad groaned. “Truth.”
I was so pleased Conrad was playing with us, I couldn’t think of anything good to ask. I mean, there were a million and one things I wanted to ask him. I wanted to ask him what had happened to us, if he’d ever liked me, if any of it had been real. But I couldn’t ask those things. Even through my tequila haze, I knew that much.
Instead, I asked, “Remember that summer you liked that girl who worked at the boardwalk? Angie?”
“No,” he said, but I knew he was lying. “What about her?”
“Did you ever hook up with her?”
Conrad finally lifted his head up from the couch. “No,” he said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I tried, once. But she socked me in the head and said she wasn’t that kind of girl. I think she was a Jehovah’s Witness or something.”
Jeremiah and I busted up laughing. Jeremiah was laughing so hard, he doubled over and fell to his knees. “Oh, man,” he gasped. “That’s awesome.”
And it was. I knew it was only because he’d had about a case of beer, but Conrad loosening up, telling us things—it felt awesome. Like a miracle.
Conrad propped himself up on his elbow. “Okay. My turn.”
He was looking at me like we were the only two people in the room, and suddenly I was terrified. And elated. But then I looked over at Jeremiah, watching the two of us, and just as suddenly, I was neither.
Solemnly I said, “Nuh-uh. You can’t ask me, ’cause I just asked you. It’s the law.”
“The law?” he repeated.
“Yeah,” I said, leaning my head against the couch.
“Aren’t you at least curious about what I was going to ask?”
“Nope. Not even one iota.” Which was a lie. Of course I was curious. I was dying to know.
I reached over and poured some more tequila into my cup and then I stood up, my knees shaking. I felt lightheaded. “To our last night!”
“We already toasted to that, remember?” Jeremiah said.
&n
bsp; I stuck my tongue out at him. “Okay, then.” The tequila made me feel brave again. This time, it let me say what I really wanted to say. What I’d been thinking all night. “Here’s to . . . here’s to everybody that isn’t here tonight. To my mom, and to Steven, and to Susannah most of all. Okay?”
Conrad looked up at me. For a minute, I was afraid of what he would say. And then he lifted his cup too, and so did Jeremiah. We all swigged from our cups together, and it burned like liquid fire. I coughed a little.
When I sat back down I asked Jeremiah, “So, who’s coming to this party?”
He shrugged. “Some kids from the country club pool from last summer. They’re telling people too. Oh, and Mikey and Pete and those guys.”
I wondered who “Mikey and Pete and those guys” were. I also wondered if I should clean up before people came.
“What time are people coming over?” I asked Jeremiah.
He shrugged. “Ten? Eleven?”
I jumped up. “It’s already almost nine! I have to get dressed.”
Conrad said, “Aren’t you already dressed?”
I didn’t even bother to answer him. I just shot upstairs.
chapter thirty
I had the contents of my duffel bag dumped out on the floor when Taylor called. Which was when I remembered that it was Saturday. It felt like I’d been gone much longer. Then I remembered that it was the Fourth of July. And I was supposed to be on a boat with Taylor and Davis and everyone. Gulp.
“Hey, Taylor,” I said.
“Hey, where are you?” Taylor didn’t sound mad, which was kind of freaky.
“Um, still in Cousins. Sorry I didn’t make it back in time for the boat party.” From the pile of clothes, I picked out a chiffony one-shoulder blouse and tried it on. Whenever Taylor wore it, she wore her hair pulled to the side.
“It’s been raining all day, so we cancelled the boat party. Cory’s having a party tonight at his brother’s condo instead. What about you?”
“I think we’re having a party too. Jeremiah just bought a ton of beer and tequila and stuff,” I said, adjusting the blouse. I wasn’t sure how much shoulder I was supposed to be showing.
“A party?” she squealed. “I wanna come!”
I tried to wiggle my foot into one of Taylor’s platform sandals. I wished I hadn’t mentioned the party—or the tequila. Lately, Taylor was crazy for tequila body shots. “What about Cory’s party?” I said. “I heard his brother’s condo has a Jacuzzi. You love Jacuzzis.”
“Oh, yeah. Darn. But I want to party with you guys too! Beach parties are the funnest,” she said. “Anyway, I heard from Rachel Spiro that a bunch of freshman sluts are coming now. It might not even be worth it to go. OMG, maybe I should just get in my car and drive to Cousins!”
“By the time you got here, everybody would be gone. You should probably just go to Cory’s.”
I heard a car pull into the driveway. People were already here. So it wasn’t like I was lying to her.
I was about to tell Taylor I had to go when she said in a little voice, “Do you, like, not want me to come?”
“I didn’t say that,” I said.
“You basically did.”
“Taylor,” I began. But I didn’t know what to say next. Because she was right. I didn’t want her to come. If she came, it would be all about her, the way it always was. This was my last night in Cousins, in this house. I was never going to be inside this house again, ever. I wanted tonight to be about me and Conrad and Jeremiah.
Taylor waited for me to say something, to deny it at least, and when I didn’t, she spat out, “I can’t even believe how selfish you are, Belly.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You keep your summer house and your summer boys all to yourself and you don’t want to share anything with me. We finally get to spend a whole summer together and you don’t even care! All you care about is being in Cousins, with them .” She sounded so spiteful. But instead of feeling guilty the way I normally would, I just felt annoyed.
“Taylor,” I said.
“Quit saying my name like that.”
“Like how?”
“Like I’m a child.”
“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t act like one just because you aren’t invited somewhere.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it.
“Screw you, Belly! I put up with a lot. You are a really crappy best friend, you know that?”
I let out a breath. “Taylor . . . shut up.”
She gasped. “Don’t you dare tell me to shut up! I have been nothing but supportive of you, Belly. I listen to all your Conrad BS and I don’t even complain. When you guys broke up, who was the one who spoon-fed you Chunky Monkey and got you out of bed? Me! And you don’t even appreciate that. You’re, like, hardly even fun anymore.”
Sarcastically, I said, “Gee, Taylor, I’m so sorry I’m not fun anymore. Having someone you love die can do that.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t just blame it on that. You’ve been chasing after Conrad for as long as I’ve known you. It’s getting pathetic. Get over it! He doesn’t like you. Maybe he never did.”
That was maybe the meanest thing she’d ever said to me. I think she might have apologized if I hadn’t come back at her with, “At least I didn’t give away my virginity to a guy who shaves his legs!”
She gasped. In confidence, Taylor had once told me that Davis shaved his legs for swim team. She was silent for a moment. And then she said, “You better not wear my platforms tonight.”
“Too late. I already am!” And then I hung up.
I couldn’t believe her. Taylor was the crappy friend, not me. She was the selfish one. I was so angry, my hand shook when I put on my eyeliner and I had to rub it off and start over again. I wore Taylor’s blouse and her shoes and I pulled my hair all to one side too. I did it because I knew it would piss her off.
And then, last of all, I put on Conrad’s necklace. I tucked it underneath my shirt, and then I went downstairs.
chapter thirty-one
“Welcome,” I said to a boy in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.
“Nice boots,” I said to a girl with cowboy boots on.
I made my way around the room, passing out drinks and throwing away empty cans. Conrad watched me with his arms crossed. “What are you doing?” he asked me.
“I’m trying to make everyone feel at home,” I explained, adjusting Taylor’s top. Susannah was an excellent hostess. She had a talent for making people feel welcome, wanted. Taylor’s words were still hanging around in the back of my head. I wasn’t selfish. I was a good friend, a good hostess. I’d show her.
When Travis from Video World put his feet up on the coffee table and almost knocked over a hurricane vase, I barked, “Careful. And take your feet off the furniture.” As an afterthought, I added, “Please.”
I was about to go back into the kitchen for more drinks when I saw her. The girl from last summer. Nicole, the one Conrad liked, was standing in the kitchen talking to Jeremiah. She didn’t have her Red Sox hat on, but I’d recognize her perfume anywhere. It smelled like vanilla extract and decomposing roses.
Conrad must have seen her at the same time I did because he sucked in his breath and muttered, “Shit .”
“Did you break her heart?” I asked him. I tried to sound teasing and carefree.
I must have succeeded, because he took me by the hand and grabbed the bottle of tequila and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
I followed him like I was in a trance, sleepwalking. Because it was like a dream, his hand in mine. We were almost home free when Jeremiah saw us. My heart just sank. He motioned us over and called out, “Guys! Come say hi.”
Conrad let go of my hand but not the tequila. “Hey, Nicole,” he said, starting toward her. I grabbed a couple of beers and followed him over.
“Oh, hey, Conrad,” Nicole said, all surprised, like she hadn’t been watching the whole time we’d been in the kitchen. She got on her tip-toes and hugged him.
; Jeremiah caught my eye and raised his eyebrows comically. He grinned at me. “Belly, you remember Nicole, right?”
I said, “Of course.” I smiled at her. Perfect hostess , I reminded myself. Unselfish.
Warily, she smiled back at me. I handed her one of the beers I was holding. “Cheers,” I said, opening mine.
“Cheers,” she echoed. We clinked cans and drank. I drank mine fast. When I was done, I got another and I drank that, too.
Suddenly the house felt too quiet, so I turned on the stereo. I turned the music up loud and kicked off my shoes. Susannah always said it wasn’t a party without dancing. I grabbed Jeremiah, threw one arm around his neck, and danced.
“Belly—,” he protested.
“Just dance, Jere!” I yelled.
So he did. He was a good dancer, that Jeremiah. Other people started dancing too, even Nicole. Not Conrad though, but I didn’t care. I barely even noticed.
I danced like it was 1999. I danced like my heart was breaking, which it kind of was. Mostly I just swung my hair around a lot.
I was pretty sweaty when I said, “Can we swim in the pool? One last time?”
Jeremiah said, “Screw that. Let’s swim in the ocean.”
“Yeah!” It sounded like a great idea to me. A perfect idea.
“No,” Conrad said, coming out of nowhere. He was suddenly standing right beside me. “Belly’s drunk. She shouldn’t swim.”
I looked at him and frowned. “But I want to,” I said.
He laughed. “So what?”
“Look, I’m a really good swimmer. And I’m not even drunk.” I walked in a semistraight line to prove my point.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you really are.”
Dumb, boring Conrad. He got so serious at the worst moments.
“You’re no fun.” I looked over at Jeremiah, who was sitting on the floor now. “He’s no fun. And he’s not the boss of us. Right, everybody?”
Before Jeremiah or anybody else could answer me, I made a run for the sliding doors, and then I stumbled down the steps and sprinted onto the beach. I felt like a flying comet, a streak in the sky, like I hadn’t used my muscles in so long and it felt great to stretch my legs and run.