I was surprised when Conrad held out his hand for a high five. He wasn't a high five kind of person.
When Taylor resurfaced this time, she wasn't laughing. Her blond hair was matted to her head, and she said, "This game sucks. I don't want to play anymore."
"Sore loser," I said, and Conrad lowered me into the water.
"Nice job," he said, giving me one of his rare smiles. I felt like I had won the lottery from that one smile. "I play to win," I told him. I knew he did too.
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chapter seventeen
A few days after we shared Twizzlers at the movies Jeremiah announced, "I'm gonna teach Belly how to drive stick shift today."
"Do you mean it?" I said eagerly. It was a clear day; the first all week. A perfect day for driving. It was Jeremiah's day off, and I couldn't believe he was willing to spend it teaching me how to drive stick. I'd been begging him since last year to teach me--Steven had tried and had given up after our third lesson.
Steven shook his head and took a swig of orange juice from the carton on the table. "Do you want to die, man? Because Belly will kill you both, not to mention your clutch. Don't do it. I'm telling you this as your friend."
"Shut up, Steven!" I yelled, kicking him under the
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table. "Just 'cause you're a terrible teacher ..." Steven had refused to get into a car with me again after I'd accidentally gotten a teeny-tiny dent in his fender when he was teaching me how to parallel park.
"I'm confident in my teaching skills," Jeremiah said. "By the time I'm finished with her, she'll be better than you.
Steven snorted. "Good luck. "Then he frowned. "How long are you gonna be gone? I thought we were going to the driving range."
"You could come with us," I offered.
Steven ignored me and said to Jeremiah, "You need to practice your swing, dude."
I glanced at Jeremiah, who looked at me and hesitated. "I'll be back by lunch. We can go after," he said.
Steven rolled his eyes. "Fine." I could tell he was annoyed and a little hurt, which made me feel both smug and sorry for him. He wasn't used to being left out of things the way I was.
We went out to practice on the road that led down to the other side of the beach. It was quiet. There was no one else out on the road, just us. We listened to Jeremiah's old Nevermind CD from a million years ago.
"It's hot when a girl can drive stick," Jeremiah explained above Kurt Cobain. "It shows she's confident, she knows what she's doing."
I put the car into first gear and eased my foot off the
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clutch. "I thought boys liked it when girls were helpless."
"They like that too. But I just happen to prefer smart, confident girls."
"Bull. You liked Taylor, and she's not like that."
He groaned and stuck his arm out the window. "Do you have to bring that up again?"
"I'm just saying. She wasn't that smart and confident."
"Maybe not, but she definitely knew what she was doing," he said, before exploding into laughter.
I hit him on the arm, hard. "You're so gross," I said. "And you're also a liar. I know for a fact that you guys didn't even get to second."
He stopped laughing. "Okay, fine. We didn't. But she was a good kisser. She tasted like Skittles."
Taylor loved Skittles. She was always popping them into her mouth, like vitamins, like they were good for her. I wondered how I'd stacked up against Taylor, if he thought I'd been a good kisser too.
I sneaked a peek at him, and he must have seen it on my face, because he laughed and said, "But you, you were the best, Bells."
I punched him on the arm, and even then he didn't stop laughing. He just laughed harder. "Don't take your foot off the clutch," he said, gasping with laughter.
I was kind of surprised he even remembered. I mean,
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it had been memorable for me, but it had been my first kiss and it had been Jeremiah. But the fact that he remembered, that sort of made his laughing okay.
"You were my first kiss," I said. I felt like I could say anything to him at that moment. It felt like how it used to be with us before we grew up and things got complicated. It felt easy and friendly and normal.
He looked away, embarrassed. "Yeah, I know."
"How did you know?" I demanded. Had I been that awful at kissing that he'd suspected? How humiliating.
"Um, Taylor told me. Afterward."
"What! I can't believe she did that. That Judas!" I almost stopped the car. Actually, I could believe it. But it still felt like a betrayal.
"It's no big deal." But his cheeks were patchy and pink. "I mean, the first time I kissed a girl was a joke. She kept telling me I was doing it wrong."
"Who? Who was your first kiss?"
"You don't know her. It doesn't matter."
"Come on," I wheedled. "Tell me."
We stalled out then, and Jeremiah said, "Just put your foot on the clutch and put it in neutral."
"Not until you tell me."
"Fine. It was Christi Turnduck," he said, ducking his head.
"You kissed Turducken?" Now I was laughing. I did so know Christi Turnduck. She used to be a Cousins Beach
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regular just like us, only she lived there year round.
"She had a big crush on me," Jeremiah said, shrugging his shoulders. .
"Did you tell Con and Steven?"
"Hell, no, I didn't tell them I kissed Turducken!" he said. "And you better not either! Pinky promise."
I offered him my pinky, and we shook on it.
"Christi Turnduck. She did kiss nice. She taught me everything I know. I wonder what ever happened to her."
I wondered if Turducken had been a better kisser than me too. She must have been, if she had taught Jeremiah.
We stalled out again. "This sucks. I quit."
"There's no quitting in driving," Jeremiah ordered. Come on.
I sighed and started the car up again. Two hours later, I had it. Sort of. I still stalled out, but I was getting somewhere. I was driving. Jeremiah said I was a natural.
By the time we got back to the house, it was after four and Steven had left. I guessed he'd gotten tired of waiting and had gone to the driving range by himself. My mother and Susannah were watching old movies in Susannah's room. It was dark, and they had the curtains drawn.
I stood outside their door a minute, listening to them laugh. I felt left out. I envied their relationship. They were exactly like copilots, in perfect balance. I didn't have that
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kind of friendship, the forever kind of friendship that will last your whole life through, no matter what.
I walked into the room, and Susannah said, "Belly! Come watch movies with us."
I crawled into bed in between the two of them. Lying on the bed in the semi-dark, it felt cozy, like we were in a cave. "Jeremiah's been teaching me how to drive," I told them.
"Darling boy," Susannah said, smiling faintly.
"Brave, too," my mother said. She tweaked my nose.
I snuggled under the comforter. He was pretty great. It had been nice of him to take me out driving when no one else would. Just because I'd banged up the car a few times, it didn't mean that I wasn't going to end up being an excellent driver like everyone else. Thanks to him, I could drive stick now. I was going to be one of those confident girls, the kind who knows what she's doing. When I got my license, I would drive up to Susannah's house and take Jeremiah for a drive, to thank him.
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chapter eighteen
AGE 14
After Taylor got out of the shower, she started rummaging through her duffel bag and I lay on my bed and watched her. She pulled out three different sundresses--one white eyelet, one Hawaiian print, and one black linen. "Which one should I wear tonight?" she asked me. She asked the question like it was a test.
I was tired of her tests and having to prove myself all the time. I said, "We're just eating dinner, Taylor.
We're not going anywhere special."
She shook her head at me, and the towel on her head bounced back and forth. "We're going to the boardwalk tonight, though, remember? We have to look cute for that. There'll be boys there. Let me pick out your outfit, okay?"
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It used to be that when Taylor picked out my clothes, I felt like the nerdy girl transformed at the prom, in a good way. Now it felt like I was her clueless mom who didn't know how to dress right.
I hadn't brought any dresses with me. In fact, I never had. I never even thought to. I only had two dresses at home--one my grandmother bought me for Easter and one I had to buy for eighth-grade graduation. Nothing seemed to fit me right lately. Things were either too long in the crotch or too tight in the waist. I had never thought much about dresses, but looking at hers all laid out on the bed like that, I was jealous.
"I'm not getting dressed up for the boardwalk," I told her.
"Let me just see what you have," she said, walking over to my closet.
"Taylor, I said no! This is what I'm wearing." I gestured at my cutoff shorts and Cousins Beach T-shirt.
Taylor made a face, but she backed away from my closet and went back to her three sundresses. "Fine. Have it your way, grumpy. Now, which one should I wear?"
I sighed. "The black one," I said, closing my eyes. "Now hurry up and put some clothes on."
Dinner that night was scallops and asparagus. When my mother cooked, it was always some sort of seafood with lemon and olive oil and a vegetable. Every time. Susannah
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only cooked every once in a while, so besides the first night, which was always bouillabaisse, you never knew what you were going to get. She might spend the whole afternoon puttering around the kitchen, making something I'd never had before, like Moroccan chicken with figs. She'd pull out her spiral bound Junior League cookbook that had buttery pages and notes in the margins, the one my mother made fun of. Or she might make American cheese omelets with ketchup and toast. Us kids were supposedly in charge of one night a week too, and that usually meant hamburgers or frozen pizza. But most nights, we ate whatever we wanted, whenever we felt like eating. I loved that about the summer house. At home, we had dinner every night at six thirty, like clockwork. Here, it was like everything just kind of relaxed, even my mother.
Taylor leaned forward and said, "Laurel, what's the craziest thing you and Susannah did when you were our age?" Taylor talked to people like she was at a slumber party, always. Adults, boys, the cafeteria lady, everyone.
My mother and Susannah looked at each other and smiled. They knew, but they weren't telling. My mother wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, "We snuck onto the golf course one night and planted daisies."
I knew that wasn't the truth, but Steven and Jeremiah laughed. Steven said in his annoying know-it-all kind of way, "You guys were boring even when you were teenagers."
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"I think it's really sweet," Taylor said, squirting a glob of ketchup onto her plate. Taylor ate everything with ketchup--eggs, pizza, pasta, everything.
Conrad, who I thought hadn't even been listening, said, "You guys are lying. That wasn't the craziest thing you ever did."
Susannah put her hands up, like, I surrender. "Mothers get to have secrets too," she said. "I don't ask you boys about your secrets, now, do I?"
"Yes, you do," said Jeremiah. He pointed his fork at her. "You ask all the time. If I had a journal, you would read it."
"No, I wouldn't," she protested.
My mother said, "Yes, you would."
Susannah glared at my mother. "I would never." Then she looked at Conrad and Jeremiah sitting next to each other. "Fine, I might, but only Conrad's. He's so good at keeping everything locked inside, I never know what he's thinking. But not you, Jeremiah. You, my baby boy, wear your heart right here." She reached over and touched his sweatshirt sleeve.
"No, I don't," he protested, stabbing a scallop on his plate. "I have secrets."
That's when Taylor said, "Sure you do, Jeremy," in this really sickeningly flirtatious way.
He grinned at her, which made me want to choke on my asparagus.
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That's when I said, "Taylor and I are going to go to the boardwalk tonight. Will one of you guys drop us off?"
Before my mother or Susannah could answer, Jeremiah said, "Ooh, the boardwalk. I think we should go to the boardwalk too." Turning to Conrad and Steven, he added, "Right, guys?" Normally I would have been thrilled that any of them wanted to go somewhere I was going, but not this time. I knew it wasn't for me.
I looked at Taylor, who was suddenly busy cutting up her scallops into tiny bite-size pieces. She knew it was for her too.
"The boardwalk sucks," said Steven.
Conrad said, "Not interested."
"Who invited you guys anyway?" I said.
Steven rolled his eyes. "No one invites anyone to the boardwalk. You just go. It's a free country."
"Is it a free country?" my mother mused. "I want you to really think about that statement, Steven. What about our civil liberties? Are we really free if--"
"Laurel, please," Susannah said, shaking her head. "Let's not talk politics at the dinner table."
"I don't know of a better time for political discourse," my mother said calmly. Then she looked at me. I mouthed, Please stop, and she sighed. It was better to stop her right away before she really got going. "Okay, fine. Fine. No more politics. I'm going to the bookstore downtown. I'll drop you guys off on the way."
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"Thanks, Mom," I said. "It'll be just Taylor and me."
Jeremiah ignored me and turned to Steven and Conrad. "Come on, guys," he said. "It'll be amazing." Taylor had been calling everything amazing all day.
"Fine, but I'm going to the arcade," said Steven.
"Con?" Jeremiah looked at Conrad, who shook his head.
"Come on, Con," Taylor said, poking at him with her fork. "Come with us."
He shook his head, and Taylor made a face. "Fine. We'll be sure to have lots of fun without you."
Jeremiah said, "Don't worry about him. He's gonna have lots of fun here, reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica." Conrad ignored this, but Taylor giggled and tucked her hair behind her ears, which is when I knew that she liked Jeremiah now.
Then Susannah said, "Don't leave without some money for ice cream." I could tell she was happy we were all hanging out, except for Conrad, who seemed to prefer hanging out by himself this summer. Nothing made Susannah happier than thinking up activities for us kids to do. I think that she would have made a really good camp director.
In the car we waited for my mother and the boys to come out, and I whispered, "I thought you liked Conrad."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "Blah. He's boring. I think I'll like Jeremy instead."
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"His name is Jeremiah," I said sourly. "I know that." Then she looked at me, and her eyes widened. "Why, do you like him now?"
"No!"
She let out an impatient breath of air. "Belly, you've got to pick one. You can't have them both."
"I know that," I snapped. "And for your information, I don't want either of them. It's not like they look at me like that anyway. They look at me like Steven does. Like a little sister."
Taylor tugged at my T-shirt collar. "Well, maybe if you showed a little cleave . . ."
I shrugged her hand away. "I'm not showing any 'cleave.' And I told you I don't like either of them. Not anymore."
"So you don't care that I'm going after Jeremy?" she asked. I could tell the only reason she was asking was so she could absolve herself of any future guilt. Not that she would even feel guilty.
So I said, "If I told you I cared, would you stop?"
She thought for, like, a second. "Probably. If you really, really cared. But then I would just go after Conrad. I'm here to have fun, Belly."
I sighed. At least she was honest. I wanted to say, I thought you were here to have fun with me. But I didn't.
&
nbsp; "Go after him," I told her. "I don't care."
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Taylor wiggled her eyebrows at me, her old trademark move. "Yay! It is so on."
"Wait." I grabbed her wrist. "Promise me you'll be nice to him."
"Of course I'll be nice. I'm always nice." She patted me on the shoulder. "You're such a worrier, Belly. I told you, I just want to have fun."
That's when my mother and the boys came out, and for the first time there was no fight over shotgun. Jeremiah gave it over to Steven easily.
When we got to the boardwalk, Steven headed straight for the arcade and spent the whole night there. Jeremiah walked around with us, and he even rode the carousel, even though I knew he thought it was lame. He got all stretched out on the sleigh and pretended to take a nap while Taylor and I bounced up and down on horses, mine a blond palomino and hers a black stallion . (Black Beauty was still her favorite book, although she'd never admit it.) Then Taylor made him win her a stuffed Tweety Bird with the quarter toss. Jeremiah was a pro at the quarter toss. The Tweety Bird was huge, almost as tall as she was. He carried it for her.
I should never have gone along. I could have predicted the whole night, right down to how invisible I'd feel. All the time I wished I was at home, listening to Conrad play the guitar through my bedroom wall, or watching Woody Allen movies with Susannah and my
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mother. And I didn't even like Woody Allen. I wondered if this was how the rest of the week was going to be. I'd forgotten that about Taylor, the way she got when she wanted something--driven, single-minded, and determined as all get-out. She'd just arrived, and already she'd forgotten about me.
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chapter nineteen
We'd only just gotten there, and it was already time for Steven to go. He and our dad were going on their college road trip, and instead of coming back to Cousins after, he was going home. Supposedly to start studying for the SATs, but more likely, to hang out with his new girlfriend.