“What?” He shook me off. “Get your head out of your ass, Belly. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”
My cheeks flamed bright red; I could feel the heat beneath my skin. It was like a sunburn times a million. “Yes, exactly, because the world revolves around you, right?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was a warning in his voice, but I didn’t stop to listen. I was too mad. I was finally saying what I really thought, and there was no turning back now.
I kept getting in his face. I wasn’t going to let him walk away from me, not this time. “You just want to keep me on this hook, right? So I’ll keep chasing after you and you can feel good about yourself. As soon as I start to get over you, you just reel me back in. You’re so screwed up in the head. But I’m telling you, Conrad, this is it.”
He snapped, “What are you talking about?”
My hair whipped around my face as I spun around to walk backward, facing him. “This is it. You don’t get to have me anymore. Not as your friend or your admirer or anything. I’m through.”
His mouth twisted. “What do you want from me? You have your little boyfriend to play with now, remember?”
I shook my head and backed away from him. “It’s not like that,” I said. He’d gotten it all wrong. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. He’d been the one stringing me along, like, my whole life. He knew how I felt, and he let me love him. He wanted me to.
He stepped closer to me. “One minute you like me. Then Cam …” Conrad paused. “And then Jeremiah. Isn’t that right? You want to have your cake and eat it too, but you also want your cookies, and your ice cream …”
“Shut up!” I yelled.
“You’re the one who’s been playing games, Belly.” He was trying to sound casual, offhand, but his body was tense, like every muscle was as tight as his stupid guitar strings.
“You’ve been an ass all summer. All you think about is yourself. So your parents are getting divorced! So what? People’s parents get divorced. It’s not an excuse to treat people like crap!”
He snapped his head away from me. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and his jaw twitched. I had finally done it. I was getting to him.
“Susannah was crying the other day because of you—she could barely get out of bed! Do you even care? Do you even know how selfish you are?”
Conrad stepped up close to me, so close our faces were nearly touching, like he might either hit me or kiss me. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I was so mad I almost wished he’d hit me. I knew he’d never do it, not in a million years. He grabbed my arms and shook me, and then he let go just as suddenly. I could feel tears building up, because for a second there, I thought he might.
Kiss me.
I was crying when Jeremiah walked up. He’d been at work lifeguarding; his hair was still wet. I didn’t even hear his car pull up. He took one look at the two of us, and he knew something bad was happening. He almost looked scared. And then he just looked furious. He said, “What the hell is going on? Conrad, what’s your problem?”
Conrad glared at him. “Just keep her away from me. I’m not in the mood to deal with any of this.”
I flinched. It was like he really had hit me. It was worse than that.
He started to walk away, and Jeremiah grabbed his arm. “You need to start dealing with this, man. You’re acting like a jerk. Quit taking your anger out on everybody else. Leave Belly alone.”
I shivered. Was this because of me? All summer, Conrad’s moodiness, locking himself up in his room—had it really been because of me? Was it more than just his parents divorcing? Had he been that upset over seeing me with someone else?
Conrad tried to shrug him off. “Why don’t you leave me alone? How about we try that instead?”
But Jeremiah wouldn’t let go. He said, “We’ve been leaving you alone. We’ve left you alone this whole summer, getting drunk and sulking like a little kid. You’re supposed to be the older one, right? The big brother? Act like it, dumbass. Freaking man up and handle your business.”
“Get out of my face,” Conrad growled.
“No.” Jeremiah stepped closer, until their faces were inches apart, just like ours had been not fifteen minutes before.
In a dangerous voice Conrad said, “I’m warning you, Jeremiah.”
The two of them were like two angry dogs, growling and spitting and circling each other. They’d forgotten I was there. I felt like I was watching something I shouldn’t, like I was spying. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. They’d never been like this with each other in all the time I’d known them. They might have argued, but it had never been like this, not once. I knew I should leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just stood there on the periphery, holding my arms close to my chest.
“You’re just like Dad, you know that?” Jeremiah shouted.
That’s when I knew it had nothing to do with me. This was bigger than anything I could be a part of. This was something I knew nothing about.
Conrad pushed Jeremiah away roughly, and Jeremiah pushed him back. Conrad stumbled and nearly fell, and when he rose up, he punched Jeremiah right in the face. I think I screamed. Then they were wrestling around, grabbing at each other, hitting and cursing and breathing heavy. They knocked over Susannah’s big glass jar of sun tea, and it cracked open. Tea spilled out all over the porch. There was blood on the sand. I didn’t know whose it was.
They kept fighting, fighting over the broken glass, even though Jeremiah was about to lose his flip-flops. A few times I said, “Stop!” but they couldn’t hear me. They looked alike. I’d never noticed how alike they looked. But right then they looked like brothers. They kept struggling until suddenly, in the midst of it all, my mother was there. I guessed she’d come through the other screen door. I don’t know—she was just there. She broke the two of them apart with this incredible kind of brute strength, the kind only mothers have.
She held them apart with a hand on each of their chests. “You two need to stop,” she said, and instead of sounding mad, she sounded so sad. She sounded like she might cry, and my mother never cried.
They were breathing hard, not looking at each other, but they were connected, the three of them. They understood something I didn’t. I was just standing there on the periphery, bearing witness to it all. It was like the time I went to church with Taylor, and everyone else knew all the words to the songs, but I didn’t. They lifted their arms in the air and swayed and knew every word by heart, and I felt like an intruder.
“You know, don’t you?” my mother said, her hands crumpling away from them.
Jeremiah sucked in his breath, and I knew he was holding it in, trying not to cry. His face was already starting to bruise. Conrad, though, his face was indifferent, detached. Like he wasn’t there.
Until his face sort of opened up, and suddenly he looked about eight years old. I looked behind me, and there was Susannah standing in the doorway. She was wearing her white cotton housedress, and she looked so frail standing there. “I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her hands up helplessly.
She stepped toward the boys, hesitant, and my mother backed away. Susannah held out her arms and Jeremiah fell right in, and even though he was so much bigger than she was, he looked small. Blood from his face smeared over the front of her dress, but they didn’t pull away. He cried like I hadn’t heard him cry since Conrad had accidentally closed the car door on his hand years and years ago. Conrad had cried just as hard as Jeremiah had that day, but this day he didn’t. He let Susannah touch his hair, but he didn’t cry.
“Belly, let’s go,” my mother said, taking my hand. She hadn’t done that in a very long time. Like a little kid, I follo
wed her inside. We went upstairs, to her room. She closed the door and sat down on the bed. I sat down next to her.
“What’s happening?” I asked her, faltering, searching her face for some kind of answer.
She took my hands and put them in hers. She held them tight, like she was the one holding on to me and not the other way around. She said, “Belly, Susannah’s sick again.”
I closed my eyes. I could hear the ocean roaring all around me; it was like holding a conch shell up to my ear really close. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. I was anywhere but there, in that moment. I was swimming under a canopy of stars; I was at school, sitting in math class; on my bike, on the trail behind our house. I wasn’t there. This wasn’t happening.
“Oh, bean,” my mother sighed. “I need you to open your eyes. I need you to hear me.”
I wouldn’t open them; I wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t even there.
“She’s sick. She has been for a long time. The cancer came back. And it’s—it’s aggressive. It’s spread to her liver.”
I opened my eyes and snatched my hands away from her. “Stop talking. She’s not sick. She’s fine. She’s still Susannah.” My face was wet and I didn’t even know when I had started to cry.
My mother nodded, wet her lips. “You’re right. She’s still Susannah. She does things her way. She didn’t want you kids to know. She wanted this summer to be—perfect.” Her voice caught on the word “perfect.” Like a run in a stocking, it caught, and she had tears in her eyes too.
She pulled me to her, held me against her chest and rocked me. And I let her.
“But they did know,” I whimpered. “Everybody knew but me. I’m the only one who didn’t know, and I love Susannah more than anybody.”
Which wasn’t true, I knew that. Jeremiah and Conrad, they loved her best of all. But it felt true. I wanted to tell my mother that it didn’t matter anyway, Susannah had had cancer last time and she’d been fine. She’d be fine again. But if I said it out loud, it would be like admitting that she really did have cancer, that this really was happening. And I couldn’t.
That night I lay in bed and cried. My whole body ached. I opened all the windows in my room and lay in the dark, just listening to the ocean. I wished the tide would carry me out and never bring me back. I wondered if that was how Conrad felt, how Jeremiah felt. How my mother felt.
It felt like the world was ending and nothing would ever be the same again. It was, and it wouldn’t.
chapter forty-three
When we were little and the house was full, full of people like my father and Mr. Fisher and other friends, Jeremiah and I would share a bed and so would Conrad and Steven. My mother would come and tuck us in. The boys would pretend they were too old for it, but I knew they liked it just as much as I did. It was that feeling of being snug as a bug in a rug, cuddly as a burrito. I’d lie in bed and listen to the music drifting up the steps from downstairs, and Jeremiah and I would whisper scary stories to each other till we fell asleep. He always fell asleep first. I’d try to pinch him awake, but it never worked. The last time that happened might have been the last time I ever felt really, really safe in the world. Like all was right and sound.
The night of the boys’ fight, I knocked on Jeremiah’s door. “Come in,” he said.
He was lying in bed staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. His cheeks were wet and his eyes looked wet and red. His right eye was purpley gray, and it was already swelling up. As soon as he saw me, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I come in?”
He sat up. “Yeah, okay.”
I walked over to him and sat on the edge of the bed with my back pushed up against the wall. “I’m sorry,” I began. I’d been practicing what I would say, how I would say it, so he would know how sorry I was. For everything. But then I started to cry and ruined it.
He reached over and kneaded my shoulder awkwardly. He could not look at me, which in a way was easier. “It’s not fair,” I said, and then I began to weep.
Jeremiah said, “I’ve been thinking about it all summer, how this is probably the last one. This is her favorite place, you know. I wanted it to be perfect for her, but Conrad went and ruined everything. He took off. My mom’s so worried, and that’s the last thing she needs, to be worrying about Conrad. He’s the most selfish person I know, besides my dad.”
He’s hurting too, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud because it wouldn’t help anything. So I just said, “I wish I had known. If I had been paying attention, it would have been different.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “She didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want any of us to know. She wanted it to be like this, so we pretended. For her. But I wish I could have told you. It might have been easier or something.” He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt collar, and I could see him trying so hard to keep it together, to be the strong one.
I reached for him, to hug him, and he shuddered, and something seemed to break inside of him. He began to cry, really cry, but quietly. We cried together, our shoulders shaking and shuddering with the weight of all of it. We cried like that for a long time. When we stopped, he let go of me and wiped his nose.
“Scoot over,” I said.
He scooted closer to the wall, and I stretched my legs out next to him. “I’m sleeping in here, okay,” I said, but it wasn’t a question.
Jeremiah nodded and we slept like that, in our clothes on top of the comforter. Even though we were older, it felt just the same. We slept face-to-face, the way we used to.
I woke up early the next morning clinging to the side of the bed. Jeremiah was sprawled out and snoring. I covered him with my side of the comforter, so he was tucked in like with a sleeping bag. Then I left.
I headed back to my room, and I had my hand on the doorknob when I heard Conrad’s voice. “Goood morning,” he said. I knew right away he’d seen me leave Jeremiah’s room.
Slowly I turned around. And there he was. He was standing there in last night’s clothes, just like me. He looked rumpled, and he swayed just slightly. He looked like he was going to throw up.
“Are you drunk?”
He shrugged like he couldn’t care less, but his shoulders were tense and rigid. Snidely he said, “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me now? Like the way you were for Jere last night?”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, to say that nothing had happened, that all we’d done was cry ourselves to sleep. But I didn’t want to. Conrad didn’t deserve to know anything. “You’re the most selfish person I ever met,” I said slowly and deliberately. I let each word puncture the air. I had never wanted to hurt somebody so bad in my whole life. “I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you.”
His face turned white. He opened and then closed his mouth. And then he did it again. I’d never seen him at a loss for words before.
I walked back to my room. It was the first time I’d ever gotten the last word with Conrad. I had done it. I had finally let him go. It felt like freedom, but freedom bought at some bloody, terrible price. It didn’t feel good. Did I even have a right to say those things to him, with him hurting the way he was? Did I have any rights to him at all? He was in pain, and so was I.
When I got back into bed, I got under the covers and cried some more, and here I was thinking I didn’t have any more tears left. Everything was wrong.
How could it be that I had spent this whole summer worrying about boys, swimming, and getting tan, while Susannah was sick? How could that be? The thought of life without Susannah felt impossible. It was inconceivable; I couldn’t even picture it. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Jeremiah and Conrad. She was
their mother.
Later that morning I didn’t get out of bed. I slept until eleven, and then I just stayed there. I was afraid to go downstairs and face Susannah and have her see that I knew.
Around noon my mother bustled into my room without even knocking. “Rise and shine,” she said, surveying my mess. She picked up a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and folded them against her chest.
“I’m not ready to get out of bed yet,” I told her, turning over. I felt mad at her, like I had been tricked. She should have told me. She should have warned me. My whole life, I had never known my mother to lie. But she had. All those times when they’d supposedly been shopping, or at the museum, on day trips—they hadn’t been any of those places. They’d been at hospitals, with doctors. I saw that now. I just wished I had seen it before.
My mother walked over to me and sat on the edge of my bed. She scratched my back, and her fingernails felt good against my skin. “You have to get out of bed, Belly,” she said softly. “You’re still alive and so is Susannah. You have to be strong for her. She needs you.”
Her words made sense. If Susannah needed me, then that was something I could do. “I can do that,” I said, turning around to look at her. “I just don’t get how Mr. Fisher can leave her all alone like this when she needs him most.”
She looked away, out the window, and then back down at me. “This is the way Beck wants things to be. And Adam is who he is.” She cradled my cheek in her hand. “It’s not up to us to decide.”
Susannah was in the kitchen making blueberry muffins. She was leaning up against the counter, stirring batter in a big metal mixing bowl. She was wearing another one of her cotton housedresses, and I realized she’d been wearing them all summer, because they were loose. They hid how thin her arms were, the way her collarbone jutted up against her skin.
She hadn’t seen me yet, and I was tempted to run away before she did. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“Good morning, Susannah,” I said, and my voice sounded high and false, not like my own.