I liked Dr Pepper too. I was glad I hadn’t been drinking. I didn’t want him to think badly of me. I wanted him to think I was cool, like the kind of girl who didn’t care what people thought, the kind of person he obviously was. I wanted to be his friend. I also wanted to kiss him.
Cam left when we left. He got up as soon as he saw Jeremiah coming over to get me. “So long, Flavia,” he said.
I started to unzip his hoodie, and he said, “That’s all right. You can give it to me later.”
“Here, I’ll give you my number,” I said, holding my hand out for his phone. I’d never given a boy my phone number before. As I punched in my number, I felt really proud of myself for offering it to him.
Backing away, he put the phone into his pocket and said, “I would have found a way to get it back without your number. I’m smart, remember? First prize in oration.”
I tried not to smile as he walked away. “You’re not that smart,” I called out. It felt like fate that we’d met. It felt like the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me, and it was.
I watched Conrad say good-bye to Red Sox girl. She gave him a hug, and he hugged her back, but not really. I was glad I had ruined his night, if only a little bit.
On the way to the car a girl stopped me. She wore her blondish-brown hair in two pigtails, and she had on a pink low-cut shirt. “Do you like Cam?” the girl asked me casually. I wondered how she knew him—I thought he’d been a nobody just like me.
“I barely even know him,” I told her, and her face relaxed. She was relieved. I recognized that look in her eyes—dreamy and hopeful. It must have been the way I looked when I used to talk about Conrad, used to try to think of ways to insert his name into conversation. It made me sad for her, for me.
“I saw the way Nicole talked to you,” she said abruptly. “Don’t worry about her. She sucks as a person.”
“Red Sox girl? Yeah, she kind of does suck at being a person,” I agreed. Then I waved good-bye to her as Jeremiah and Conrad and I made our way to the car.
Conrad drove. He was completely sober, and I knew he had been all along. He checked out Cam’s hoodie, but he didn’t say anything. We didn’t speak to each other once. Jeremiah and I both sat in the backseat, and he tried to joke around, but nobody laughed. I was too busy thinking, remembering everything that had happened that night. I thought to myself, That might have been the best night of my life.
In my yearbook the year before, Sean Kirkpatrick wrote that I had “eyes so clear” he could “see right into my soul.” Sean was a drama geek, but so what. It still made me feel good. Taylor snickered when I showed it to her. She said only Sean Kirkpatrick would notice the color of my eyes when the rest of the guys were too busy looking at my chest. But this wasn’t Sean Kirkpatrick. This was Cam, a real guy who had noticed me even before I was pretty.
I was brushing my teeth in the upstairs bathroom when Jeremiah came in, shutting the door behind him. Reaching for his toothbrush, he said, “What’s going on with you and Con? Why are you guys so mad at each other?” He hopped up onto the sink.
Jeremiah hated it when people fought. It was part of why he always played the clown. He took it upon himself to bring levity to any situation. It was sweet but also kind of annoying.
Through a mouthful of toothpaste I said, “Um, because he’s a self-righteous neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie?”
We both laughed at that. It was one of our little inside jokes, a line from The Breakfast Club that we spent repeating to each other the summer I was eight and he was nine.
He cleared his throat. “Seriously, though, don’t be so hard on him. He’s going through some stuff.”
This was news to me. “What? What stuff?” I demanded.
Jeremiah hesitated. “It’s not up to me to tell you.”
“Come on. We tell each other everything, Jere. No secrets, remember?”
He smiled. “I remember. But I still can’t tell you. It’s not my secret.”
Frowning, I turned the faucet on and said, “You always take his side.”
“I’m not taking his side. I’m just telling his side.”
“Same thing.”
He reached out and turned the corners of my mouth up. It was one of his oldest tricks; no matter what, it made me smile. “No pouting, Bells, remember?”
No Pouting was a rule Conrad and Steven had made up one summer. I think I was eight or nine. The thing was, it only applied to me. They even put a sign up on my bedroom door. I tore it down, of course, and I ran and told Susannah and my mother. That night I got seconds on dessert, I remember. Anytime I acted the slightest bit sad or unhappy, one of the boys would start yelling, “No pouting. No pouting.” And, okay, maybe I did pout a lot, but it was the only way I could ever get my way. In some ways it was even harder being the only girl back then. In some ways not.
chapter twenty-two
That night I slept in Cam’s hoodie. It was stupid and kind of sappy, but I didn’t care. And the next day I wore it outside, even though it was blazing hot out. I loved how the sleeves were frayed, the way it felt lived in. It felt like a boy’s.
Cam was the first boy to pay attention to me like that, to be up front about the fact that he actually wanted to hang out with me. And not be, like, embarrassed about it.
When I woke up, I realized that I had given him the house number. I didn’t know why. I could have given him my cell phone number just as easily.
I kept waiting for the phone to ring. The phone never rang at the summer house. The only people who called the house phone were Susannah, trying to figure out what kind of fish we wanted for dinner, or my mother, calling to tell Steven to put the towels in the dryer, or to get the grill going.
I stayed on the deck, sunning and reading magazines with Cam’s hoodie balled up in my lap like a stuffed animal. Since we kept the windows open, I knew I’d hear if the phone rang.
I slathered myself with sunscreen first, and then two layers of tanning oil. I didn’t know if it was an oxymoron or what, but better safe than sorry was how I figured it. I set myself up with a little station of cherry Kool-Aid in an old water bottle, plus a radio, plus sunglasses, and magazines. The sunglasses were a pair that Susannah had bought me years ago. Susannah loved to buy presents. When she went off for errands, she’d come home with presents. Little things, like this pair of red heart sunglasses she said I just had to have. She knew just what I’d love, things I hadn’t even thought of, had certainly never thought of buying. Things like lavender foot lotion, or a silk quilted pouch for tissues.
My mother and Susannah had left early that morning for one of their art gallery trips to Dyerstown, and Conrad, thank God, had left for work already. Jeremiah was still asleep. The house was mine.
The idea of tanning sounds so fun in theory. Laying out, soaking up sun and sipping on soda, falling asleep like a fat cat. But then the actual act of it is kind of tedious and boring. And hot. I would always rather be floating in an ocean, catching sun that way, than lying down sweating in the sun. They say you get tanner faster when you’re wet, anyhow.
But that morning I had no choice. In case Cam called, I mean. So I lay there, sweating and sizzling like a piece of chicken on a grill. It was boring, but it was a necessity.
Just after ten, the phone rang. I sprang up and ran into the kitchen. “Hello?” I said breathlessly.
“Hi, Belly. It’s Mr. Fisher.”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Fisher,” I said. I tried not to sound too disappointed.
He cleared his throat. “So, how’s it going down there?”
“Pretty good. Susannah’s not home, though. She and my mom went to Dyerstown to visit some galleries.”
“I see
. … How are the boys?”
“Good …” I never knew what to say to Mr. Fisher. “Conrad’s at work and Jeremiah’s still asleep. Do you want me to wake him up?”
“No, no, that’s all right.”
There was this long pause, and I scrambled to think of something to say.
“Are you, um, coming down this weekend?” I asked.
“No, not this weekend,” he said. His voice sounded really far away. “I’ll just call back later. You have fun, Belly.”
I hung up the phone. Mr. Fisher hadn’t been down to Cousins once yet. He used to come the weekend after the Fourth, because it was easier getting away from work after the holiday. When he came, he’d fire up the barbecue all weekend long, and he’d wear his apron that said CHEF KNOWS BEST. I wondered if Susannah would be sad he wasn’t coming, if the boys would care.
I trudged back to my lounge chair, back to the sun. I fell asleep on my lounge chair, and I woke up to Jeremiah sprinkling Kool-Aid onto my stomach. “Quit it,” I said grouchily, sitting up. I was thirsty from my extra sweet Kool-Aid (I always made it with double sugar), and I felt dehydrated and sweaty.
He laughed and sat down on my lounge chair. “Is this what you’re doing all day?”
“Yes,” I said, wiping off my stomach and then wiping my hand on his shorts.
“Don’t be boring. Come do something with me,” he ordered. “I don’t have to work until tonight.”
“I’m working on my tan,” I told him.
“You’re tan enough.”
“Will you let me drive?”
He hesitated. “Fine,” he said. “But you have to rinse off first. I don’t want you getting my seat all oily.”
I stood up, throwing my limp greasy hair into a high ponytail. “I’ll go right now. Just wait,” I said.
Jeremiah waited for me in the car, with the AC on full blast. He sat in the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” I asked, getting into the driver’s seat. I felt like an old pro. “Tennessee? New Mexico? We have to go far so I can get good practice.”
He closed his eyes and laid his head back. “Just take a left out of the driveway,” he told me.
“Yessir,” I said, turning off the AC and opening all four windows. It was so much better driving with the windows down. It felt like you were actually going somewhere.
He continued giving me directions, and then we pulled up to Go Kart City. “Are you serious?”
“We’re gonna get you some driving practice,” he said, grinning like crazy.
We waited in line for the cars, and when it was our turn, the guy told me to get in the blue one. I said, “Can I drive the red one instead?”
He winked at me and said, “You’re so pretty, I’d let you drive my car.”
I could feel myself blush, but I liked it. The guy was older than me, and he was actually paying me attention. It was kind of amazing. I’d seen him there the summer before, and he hadn’t looked at me once.
Getting into the car next to me, Jeremiah muttered, “What a freaking cheeseball. He needs to get a real job.”
“Like lifeguarding is a real job?” I countered.
Jeremiah scowled. “Just drive.”
Every time my car came back around the track, the guy waved at me. The third time he did it, I waved back.
We rode around the track a bunch of times, until it was time for Jeremiah to go to work.
“I think you’ve had enough driving for today,” Jeremiah said, rubbing his neck. “I’ll drive us home.”
I didn’t argue with him. He drove home fast, and dropped me off at the curb and headed to work. I stepped back into the house feeling very tired and tan. And also satisfied.
“Someone named Cam called for you,” my mother said. She was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper with her horn-rimmed reading glasses on. She didn’t look up.
“He did?” I asked, covering my smile with the back of my hand. “Well, did he leave a number?”
“No,” she said. “He said he’d call back.”
“Why didn’t you ask for it?” I said, and I hated the whininess in my voice, but when it came to my mother, it was like I couldn’t help it.
That’s when she looked at me, perplexed. “I don’t know. He wasn’t offering it. Who is he anyway?”
“Forget it,” I told her, walking over to the refrigerator for some lemonade.
“Suit yourself,” my mother said, going back to her paper.
She didn’t press the issue. She never did. She at least could have gotten his number. If Susannah had been down here instead of her, she would have been singsongy and she would have teased and snooped until I told her everything. Which I would have, gladly.
“Mr. Fisher called this morning,” I said.
My mother looked up again. “What did he say?”
“Nothing much. Just that he can’t come this weekend.”
She pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything.
“Where’s Susannah?” I asked. “Is she in her room?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t feel well. She’s taking a nap,” my mother said. In other words, Don’t go up and bother her.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She has a summer cold,” my mother said automatically.
My mother was a terrible liar. Susannah had been spending a lot of time in her room, and there was a sadness to her that hadn’t been there before. I knew something was up. I just wasn’t completely sure what.
chapter twenty-three
Cam called again the next night, and the night after that. We talked on the phone twice before we met up again, for, like, four or five hours at a time. When we talked, I lay on one of the lounge chairs on the porch and stared up at the moon with my toes pointed toward the sky. I laughed so hard that Jeremiah yelled out his window for me to keep it down. We talked about everything, and I loved it, but the whole time I wondered when he was going to ask to see me again. He didn’t.
So I had to take matters into my own hands. I invited Cam to come over and play video games and maybe swim. I felt like some kind of liberated woman calling him up and inviting him over, like it was the kind of thing I did all the time. When really, I was only doing it because I knew no one was going to be at home. I didn’t want Jeremiah or Conrad or my mother or even Susannah to see him just yet. For now, he was just mine.
“I’m a really good swimmer, so don’t be mad when we race and I beat you,” I said over the phone.
He laughed and said, “At freestyle?”
“At any style.”
“Why do you like to win so much?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, except to say that winning was fun, and anyway, who didn’t like to win? Growing up with Steven and spending my summers with Jeremiah and Conrad, winning was always important, and doubly so because I was a girl and was never expected to win anything. Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you’re the underdog.
Cam came over, and I watched from my bedroom window as he drove up. His car was navy blue and old and beat-up looking, like his hoodie that I was already planning on keeping. It looked like exactly the kind of car he’d drive.
He rang the doorbell, and I flew down the stairs to open the door. “Hi,” I said. I was wearing his hoodie.
“You’re wearing my hoodie,” he said, smiling down at me. He was even taller than I’d remembered.
“You know, I was thinking that I want to keep it,” I told him, letting him in and closing the door behind me. “But I don’t expect to get it for free. I’ll race you for it.”
“But if we race, you can’t be mad if I beat you,” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. “It’s my favorite hoodie, and if I win, I’m taki
ng it.”
“No problem,” I told him.
We went out to the pool through the back screen door, down the porch steps. I threw off my shorts and T-shirt and his hoodie quickly, without even thinking—Jeremiah and I raced all the time in the pool. It didn’t occur to me to be self-conscious to be in a bikini in front of Cam. After all, we spent the whole summer in bathing suits in that house.
But he looked away quickly and took off his T-shirt. “Ready?” he said, standing by the edge.
I walked over next to him. “One full lap?” I asked, dipping my toe into the water.
“Sure,” he said. “You want a head start?”
I snorted. “Do you want a head start?”
“Touché,” he said, grinning.
I’d never heard a boy say “touché” before. Or anyone else, for that matter. Maybe my mother. But on him it looked good. It was different.
I won the first race easily. “You let me win,” I accused.
“No, I didn’t,” he said, but I knew it wasn’t true. In all the summers and all of the races, no boy, not Conrad or Jeremiah or certainly not Steven, had ever let me win.
“You better give it your all this time,” I warned. “Or I’m keeping the hoodie.”
“Best two out of three,” Cam said, wiping the hair out of his eyes.
He won the next heat, and I won the last one. I wasn’t fully convinced that he didn’t just let me win—after all, he was so tall and long, his one stroke was worth two of mine. But I wanted to keep the hoodie, so I didn’t challenge the win. After all, a win was a win.
When he had to leave, I walked him to his car. He didn’t get in right away. There was this long pause, the first we’d had, if you can believe it. Cam cleared his throat and said, “So this guy I know, Kinsey, is having a party tomorrow night. Do you maybe want to come?”
“Yeah,” I said right away. “I do.”
I made the mistake of mentioning it at breakfast the next morning. My mother and Susannah were grocery shopping. It was just me and the boys, the way it had been for the most part this summer. “I’m going to a party tonight,” I said, partly just to say it out loud and partly to brag.