“So something bad happened.” Wow. I guess higher-than-average verbal skills don’t leave time for beating around the bush.
“Like what?”
“Like I went to get your acceptance letter, and it’s gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?” From next to me, Paige looks up from her magazine and gives me a quizzical look. I roll my eyes and mouth “my crazy brother,” then get up and move away from her so she won’t be able to overhear my conversation. I really do not want Paige finding out I got a letter from Stanford. Or Celia for that matter, even if she is passed out on her towel.
“Tell Neal I said hi!” Paige calls after me. “Tell him I miss him!” Paige has a huge crush on my brother, for reasons that are not completely clear to any sane person. Supposedly a lot of girls think my brother is a hottie. Which is another pitfall of having an older brother—your friends think they should be able to date him, which is ridiculous. I don’t want my friends dating my brother. That’s disturbing.
“Is that Paige?” my brother asks. “Tell her I said hi back.” My brother’s not even remotely interested in Paige—he just likes the fact that she’s interested in him, so he flirts with her constantly. Typical jerky guy.
I walk a few more yards down the beach.
“He says hi back,” I say to the ocean.
“What did she say?” he asks.
“She said she wants to have five babies with you,” I say. “She said she’s going to stop taking her birth control pills right now, that she’s going to—”
“Paige is on the pill?” Neal asks.
“Neal!” I say. “Can you please focus here? What do you mean, my letter is gone?”
“Well, I got the mail, right? And I put it on the table in the foyer. Then after I talked to you, I went back to get it, but it was gone.”
“All the mail was gone?”
“Yes.”
“So someone moved it,” I say. “Go find it.”
“Yeah, Mom moved it into the kitchen,” he says. “But when I looked through the pile there, the letter wasn’t in it.”
I’m close to the ocean now, and water sloshes over my bare feet. It’s pretty cold, but I don’t even notice. A feeling of dread is taking over my body. “So just ask Mom where the letter is,” I say. “And then tell her you’re going to send it to me in Florida.”
“She went back to work,” he says. “And she’s not answering her cell.”
At that moment, someone taps me on the shoulder. I’m so on edge that I almost shriek out loud. I turn around, half expecting to see my mom standing there, holding the letter out to me with a disapproving look on her face, demanding answers and explanations.
But it’s not my mom.
It’s a guy I’ve never seen before. He looks a couple of years older than me, maybe nineteen or so, with dirty-blond hair. He’s wearing a pair of navy-blue board shorts and a soft-looking gray T-shirt.
“Hey there,” he says.
“Um, hi,” I say.
He gives me a smile, revealing a row of perfect white teeth. “How are ya?”
“I’m fine.”
“Who’s that?” Neal demands.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Just some random guy on the beach.”
“A random guy on the beach is hitting on you?” Neal asks. “I’ll kill him.”
“Are you here with the school trip?” the guy asks.
“Yes,” I say, not sure if I should be admitting that. He looks like he’s up to no good. He’s probably friends with that vagrant who came by our room earlier and sold Paige and Celia beer. In fact, he might be the vagrant who came up to our room earlier and sold Paige and Celia beer.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m not interested in any beer.”
“Beer?” the guy repeats, looking at me in shock. “At this time of day?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To ask me if I want to buy beer?”
“You think I look like the type of guy who comes up to random underage girls and asks them if they want to buy beer?”
I think about the question. He actually does kind of look like that guy. He has that beach slacker thing going on, like maybe he spends his days surfing and his nights trolling the island for women. Not that he probably has any trouble finding women—he’s very good-looking. Not my type, but still very good-looking. “Kind of,” I say honestly.
“Wow, I’m offended,” he says. But he doesn’t seem offended. He’s still smiling. He has a very nice smile. Very comforting. He probably uses it when he’s out trolling for women. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t talk to him!” Neal instructs. “He’s probably a murderer or a kidnapper. Like that guy who took Natalee Holloway.”
“Lulubell,” I say, because who gives their real name out to a random stranger? “What’s yours?”
“Don. Don Donson.”
“Don Donson?” I repeat. “Your name’s Don Donson?”
“Sounds like a fake name!” Neal yells. “Stay away from him, Quinn.”
“Yeah,” he says, and shrugs. “What’s wrong with that name?”
“It sounds made up.”
“So does yours,” he counters.
“That’s because mine is made up.”
“So is mine.”
“You gave me a fake name?”
“So? You did, too.”
I shake my head, wondering how the hell I got involved in a conversation with an obviously unstable person. “I’m sorry,” I say. “But what is it that you wanted?”
“I wanted to invite you to a party we’re having tonight at the club where I work.” Aha! I knew I had him pegged—he does spend his days surfing and his nights working at some club where he trolls for women. He holds a hot-pink flyer out to me, and against my better judgment, I take it.
“A party?” Neal’s asking. “Do not go to a party with him, Quinn. That’s how girls go on class trips and come home statistics!”
“Thanks,” I say to the guy standing in front of me. “I’ll try to make it.” Not.
His eyes meet mine, and a tiny little smile plays at the corner of his lips. He has nice lips, full but not so full they make him look feminine. In fact, he looks very manly—broad shoulders, chiseled jaw. The way he’s looking at me makes me shiver. He doesn’t say anything for a beat longer than necessary, then finally he says, “I hope you do.”
And then he turns around and starts down the beach. For some reason I turn and watch him go, admiring how relaxed he looks, how easily he stops to give out flyers, talking to complete strangers like it’s nothing. A girl in a red bikini takes a flyer from him, leaning in close to hear what he’s saying. He smiles at her the same way he smiled at me, and I’m surprised to realize I’m a little jealous.
“Hello?” my brother yells. “Are you there or not?”
“Yes, I’m here.” I shake my head and turn away from Fake Name Don. “Look,” I say. “Are you going to be able to find the letter or not?”
“I just told you no. It’s gone. Mom probably took it to work with her.”
“Can you go down there and get it?” I ask desperately.
“To her work? No, I can’t go down to her work. Why do you care if she has it anyway?”
Because if she reads it, she’s going to find out I didn’t get in! I can feel myself inching toward becoming hysterical, and so I do my best to make sure my voice stays calm. “Oh, I wouldn’t say I care exactly. I just kind of wanted to open it myself.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Neal asks suspiciously. “Because you’re acting very strange.”
For a second I think about telling him the truth. I mean, why not confide in my brother? He can be a good listener when he wants to be, and he knows all about bureaucracy and red tape—he’s always starting letter-writing campaigns, and he’s even interned in a bunch of state senators’ offices.
“Quinn?” Neal asks. His voice has changed now, from one of annoyance to one of concern. “Seriously,
is everything okay?”
I open my mouth to tell him. But then I stop. How can I? Neal wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand, because Neal has gotten everything he’s ever wanted. He got into Stanford. He made the varsity basketball team when he was in ninth grade. He was valedictorian of his class. In my family, if you work hard for something, you get it. And if you fail, it’s not because you couldn’t do it, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough.
But I have worked hard. And I’m going to work harder. I’m not giving up. I’m going to wait and see what Genevieve has to say about my email before breaking down and telling my brother.
“Everything’s fine,” I say. “I just really wanted to open that letter myself.”
“Okay,” Neal says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “Well, just send Mom a text and tell her that.”
“I will.”
“All right,” he says. “Talk to you soon.”
We hang up, and I send my mom a quick text, telling her that I heard my letter from Stanford arrived and I’m so excited, but can she please not open it because I want to do it myself, and can she maybe give it to Neal so that he can overnight it to me in Florida? I think about asking her to overnight it herself, but the less time she spends with that envelope, the better.
I’m on my way back to Celia and Paige when the text from my mom comes in.
I already opened it. Please call me.
FIVE
CELIA IS DRUNK. OR AT LEAST, THE BEERS SHE had earlier combined with her time in the sun is making her feel sick. When she wakes up on the beach two hours later, she’s nauseous and wants to go back to the room.
“I don’t feel good,” she moans to me as we walk her back toward our hotel.
“Yeah, me neither,” I say. It’s true. I haven’t had anything to drink, but my stomach has been churning ever since I got that text from my mom. I haven’t called her. I haven’t heard back from Genevieve, either. The whole thing is making me feel like I’m going to throw up. Every time I swallow I can taste acid in the back of my mouth.
“How are we going to get her inside?” Paige asks.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Why is she asking me what to do? It’s not my fault Celia got drunk. It’s not really anyone’s fault, I guess. Except Celia’s. I mean, Paige and I aren’t her keepers. Although Paige was with her when Celia bought the beer and then drank it.
“I don’t know, Paige,” I say. “We’ll just have to do our best.” I sniff the air around Celia. “She doesn’t smell like beer or anything. If anyone asks, we’ll just say she might have sun poisoning.”
Luckily, when we get into the lobby of the hotel, it’s empty. We start dragging Celia down the hall. “Ooh, I’m going to throw up,” she says. She leans against the side of the wall and then slides all the way down until she collapses in a heap on the floor. Her legs are all askew, and her left boob is coming dangerously close to popping out of her bikini top.
“Gross,” Paige says.
“Celia, honey, try to wait until we get to the room,” I beg.
The last thing I want is to clean puke up off the floor. How disgusting.
We manage to get Celia to the room and into the bathroom before she loses the contents of her stomach.
“Gross,” Paige says again as we stand outside the door, listening to Celia retch. I resist the urge to be annoyed with Paige because she’s so useless.
Instead, I knock on the bathroom door. “Celia, sweetie, are you okay?”
“Yes,” comes the faint reply.
“Do you want one of us to come in there?”
“No. I’m just going to rinse my mouth and then I’ll be out.” The sound of the toilet flushing comes through the door.
“She sounds better,” I say to Paige. “She probably just needs to sleep some more.”
Celia emerges from the bathroom, looking surprisingly put together, and drops onto the bed. “I need to sleep, just for a few,” she says. A second later, a loud snore fills the room.
I have to get out of this room. I have to get out of this room so I can go make a plan. Plus, it’s very claustrophobic in here—definitely not good for my stressed-out stomach. But what kind of excuse can I come up with to leave Paige here alone with Celia?
I give a big yawn. “Well, Celia seems fine now,” I say brightly. “Maybe we should all take a nap. You know, in our own rooms.”
Paige is sitting on her bed, sifting through this huge Ziploc bag of jewelry she brought. She pulls out a big tangle of necklaces and looks at them forlornly.
“Great,” she says. “My necklaces are all screwed up.” She sighs and starts trying to pick them apart with her fingers. I wonder why the hell she put them in a plastic bag if she didn’t want them to get all tangled. Then I realize this is a horribly mean thought to have. I shouldn’t take my bad mood out on Paige just because my life is a complete and total mess. It’s not right.
“Can you help me?” she asks.
Sigh.
I take the tangle of metal chains out of her hand and start to pull at them. Wow. She really has gotten these all tangled up. At least they don’t look that expensive. More like stuff she got at Express or Old Navy. Probably her parents made her leave her expensive jewelry at home.
“Thanks,” Paige says, sounding relieved. “That was making me feel stressed.”
“You know what you should do,” I say kindly. “You should take a nap.”
“But I’m not tired.”
“Well, you don’t have to sleep. You could just have some quiet time. You know, to relax and recharge. I can, too. You know, in my room.” She’s looking at me blankly, so I decide it’s time to make it more clear. “I think I’m going to go back to my room now for a nap.”
Paige glances over at Celia. “What about her?”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” I say. “She’s just going to be sleeping. You can handle it.”
A look of doubt crosses over Paige’s face, and then her eyes flick down to the necklaces in my hands. “I think you’re making it worse.”
I look down and see that she’s right. The chains are in an even bigger tangle than they were when I started. “Oh,” I say. “Um, well, this is one of those things that might have to get worse before it gets better. You know, like a staph infection.”
“Staph infections don’t get worse before they get better,” Paige says. “And I don’t think necklaces do, either.”
Before I can refute what she’s saying, my phone rings. My stomach drops into my shoes. My mom! It has to be! She’s calling to find out why I haven’t called her yet. I won’t answer it. There’s no way I can. I have to come up with a plan first, figure out what I’m going to do, what I’m going to say.
I really need to talk to Genevieve, so that by the time I talk to my mom, I’ll be able to give her the good news that the whole letter was a mistake. Or maybe I’ll tell her the truth—that the letter was actually true, but that I took matters into my own hands and made them reverse their decision. I can’t decide which one is better—that I got accepted in the first place or that I made them change their minds. Honestly, probably that I got accepted in the first place.
Of course, that means I’ll have to hope my mom won’t find out I convinced my way in. But how would she ever find out? I’m going to be eighteen in a couple of months, and college acceptances are supposed to be personal and confidential. When Paige turned eighteen last month, the pharmacy stopped letting her mom pick up Paige’s prescriptions until they got permission from Paige. Of course, Paige’s mom already knew she was on birth control, because she’s the one who took her to the gyno when she turned fifteen.
I reach over and pick up my phone, wincing as I look down at the caller ID.
Oh. It’s not my mom.
It’s a 941 area code, and the caller ID flashes UNKNOWN, SARASOTA, FL.
Is someone from the hotel calling me? Have they figured out we’ve smuggled in a drunk Celia and are now calling to let us know they’re going to
be notifying our parents and sending us home? Actually, now that I think about it, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. If I got in trouble and was sent home, I could use it as an excuse for why I didn’t get into Stanford.
I answer the phone and put on my most professional-sounding voice.
“Hello?”
“Hello, may I speak with Ms. Quinn Reynolds, please?” The voice on the other end is female and sounds young and very pleasant. If it was someone calling to bust us for drinking, I doubt she’d be so excited-sounding to talk to me. And I doubt she’d be so young. They’d probably leave it to some old person to yell at us.
“This is she,” I say.
“Hi, Quinn, this is Margot Duvall from Biogene,” she says.
I sit up straight on the bed. Margot Duvall is the woman who’s supposed to be interviewing me for my internship! Things are looking up!
“Hello, Margot,” I say smoothly. “It’s lovely to speak with you.”
“Who’s Margot?” Paige stage-whispers. She frowns down at her necklaces and then brings one up to her mouth and begins working on a knot with her teeth.
I make a gesture at her to be quiet, and she rolls her eyes in a sor-ry for living kind of way.
“It’s lovely to speak with you, too, Quinn,” Margot Duvall says. She has that polished way of speaking you only get from going to boarding school in Connecticut. This isn’t a guess—I know she went to boarding school in Connecticut because I know everything about her. Well, everything about her that’s available on the internet. Anytime you’re interviewing for a position, you should get to know everything you can, not only about the company, but about the person interviewing you.
“Anyway,” Margot goes on. “I’m calling because we received your email, the one you sent yesterday?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m very eager to set up a time to come and meet you.”
Margot Duvall sighs. “Yes, well, that’s why I’m calling. I’m so sorry, Quinn, but I have to let you know that the internship has been filled. We found the perfect candidate, and she’s accepted the position.”
For a second, I have no idea what she’s talking about. In fact, I feel like maybe I’ve misheard her. Did she just say they found the perfect candidate for the job? How is that possible? I’m the perfect candidate for the job!