“You lead a charmed life,” Jackie would say, as she bemoaned the fact that her thighs rub together, that she always has a roll of fat over the top of the waistband of her jeans, that her naturally frizzy hair always looks terrible unless she manages to tame it into straight submission with a very powerful hair dryer. All of this adds up to her lamenting the fact that the boys she likes only ever like her as a friend. “It’s not fair.”
“Your life is charmed too,” says Lizzy, who does not point out that even though Lizzy’s life seems wonderful, she secretly covets what Jackie has: parents who love each other, a mom who is available and present, two cute little brothers, an even cuter golden retriever, and a bunny rabbit called Stanley who lives on the porch.
Lizzy has none of that. She has divorced parents who hate each other. She has a mother whose fame has waned on a national scale but who is still considered a local celebrity here in Westport, where she hardly ever is these days, thanks to touring with a regional production of A Chorus Line. Her sister Meredith lives in London, and Nell, who discovered she was pregnant after she had split up with her boyfriend, decided to be a teen mom and have the baby. Nell and her son, River, both now live on a farm in Easton. It’s only about twenty minutes away, and River is exceptionally cute, but Nell is busy with her life as caretaker of the farm. Lizzy is busy with being a sophomore with a social life. And Ronni? Well, Ronni just isn’t around very much.
Most of the time, Lizzy feels like an only child. Most of the time, Lizzy loves being an only child. She was always the baby of the family, always knew she was special. Being left on her own so much these days means she can do whatever she wants, which is perfectly fine with her.
Most of the time.
She and Jackie have breakfast at one of the little picnic tables outside Grubb’s (the little café by the beach isn’t actually called Grubb’s, but that’s what some of her friends say their parents used to call it, and she likes the name so much she refuses to call it anything else), and by the time they are finished there is a pack of kids sitting with them.
“We should do something tonight at your house,” says a boy named Ryan, who Lizzy is starting to think might be quite cute. She’s known him forever, but they haven’t been friendly until just this year when he started making her laugh on the school bus. Now they’re in the same crowd, and Lizzy is pretty sure he might like her too.
“Like what? I can’t have a party. My mom would kill me.”
“Not a party,” says Ryan. “Something small. Like, a little party. For just us. And maybe a few more.”
“Your mom’s not home?” says another kid, Craig. Lizzy doesn’t really know Craig. He was at Greens Farms Academy through middle school, apparently with some issues. But he’s back at Staples now and seems fine, if a little hyperactive.
“She’s touring. We have a housekeeper during the week, but it’s just me and Jackie for the weekend.”
Craig’s eyes light up. “Oh, it is so party time, it’s not even funny.”
“Don’t be a douche.” Ryan shakes his head. “We can’t do anything big. But we should do something. You cook, right?”
Lizzy nods. “Yeah. I can cook. I love cooking.”
He shrugs. “Why don’t we come to your house to hang out. We can throw something on the grill, chill out. Swim. Hot tub. It will be awesome.”
“I’ll bring the beers,” says Craig, as they all grin.
“Okay.” Lizzy nods approvingly. “Done. I’ll get food. Come over at seven. And bring your bathing suits.”
“What?” Craig leers. “No skinny-dipping?”
“Seeing your teeny wiener will send everyone home,” Ryan says, and the rest of the gang all laugh.
• • •
Lizzy happens to love cooking. Her mom rarely goes near a stove, so it was always up to the girls, and the housekeeper, to cook if they wanted to eat something other than takeout every night.
Nell is vegetarian, and not, unfortunately as far as Lizzy can tell, the kind of vegetarian who lives off cheese, bread, and yummy pasta, but the kind of vegetarian who eats vegetables. When Nell lived at home and used to cook, it meant vegetable soups, and lots of salads, nuts, and seeds. Which was okay once in a while, but not every night.
Meredith only ever cooked from a cookbook, and it wasn’t dinners to which she gravitated, but baking. She loved baking, would read baking cookbooks as if they were novels, trying out different recipes for hours. And eating them, which drove their mother, who wants all her daughters to be slim and beautiful, insane.
Lizzy is a terrible baker. It is much too precise. She likes being creative in the kitchen, which means throwing in a little of this, a little of that, trying out different things. Often the food is inedible, but that is okay. It just means she’ll try something else next time.
She looks at recipes to use as a jumping-off point. Once she has read them, she doesn’t tend to look at them again. Her mother describes Lizzy’s cooking, frequently and to anyone who will listen, as being a bit like Russian roulette: you never know what the outcome will be. She will also say that when it’s good, it’s very, very good, but when it’s bad, it’s horrid.
The one thing she is very good at is pesto. She started with a basic traditional basil pesto, adding lemon on a whim, which transformed it into something her family asks for all the time. Even Nell. Lizzy also makes a spinach and nutmeg pesto and a great mushroom and walnut pesto, livened up occasionally with truffle oil.
Jackie says she’s addicted to the mushroom and walnut; she thinks Lizzy should be selling all of them at the farmers’ market, as well as at Nell’s farm in Easton. Sometimes she will make a big batch for Nell to sell, and they sell out immediately. Nell asks Lizzy for them all the time, but she can’t be bothered to do it regularly. She’s sixteen! This is the time when she should be going out and having fun and living the life of a sixteen-year-old, not a mini mogul in the making.
Today she’s going to make pesto to go with the burgers they’ll throw on the grill. Almost all her friends subsist exclusively on a diet of burgers, pizza, hot dogs, and cheese, but she’s going to make the pesto anyway.
Lizzy has her driver’s permit but not her license, so Jackie’s mom is enlisted to take them to Hay Day for groceries. Once there, Lizzy blows through most of the money her mom left her for emergencies to buy mushrooms, walnuts, basil, garlic, Parmesan, pine nuts, lemons, truffle oil, ground beef, chicken, buns, chips, dips. And candy, because why would you not have candy if there were no adults around to cast a disapproving eye?
Jackie’s mom doesn’t know that Lizzy’s mom is away. There is no way in hell she would let Jackie stay if she knew they were unsupervised. Not that she doesn’t trust Jackie, but she recently told them about a friend’s daughter in another town who had a crazy party that almost burned down the house, and what kind of a parent would leave her sixteen-year-old daughter unattended?
On the way back from the grocery story, Lizzy and Jackie both keep very quiet in the back of the car. When Jackie’s mom turns around and says, “I should come in and say hi to your mom,” Lizzy says, smoothly and without a trace of guile, “Oh, she’s in New York for the day for rehearsal. I’ll tell her you said hi.”
Jackie’s mom winks. “No surprise you bought all that candy, then! Don’t worry, I won’t tell!”
As soon as the girls close the front door behind them, they collapse in giggles.
“Oh, my God!” heaves Jackie. “I can’t believe you’re such a good actress.”
“But of course,” says Lizzy with an immaculate English accent, gliding down the corridor holding an imaginary cigarette, “you know I’m the daughter of the mahvellous Ronni Sunshine. It runs in the genes, don’t you know.”
The girls have everything prepared by early evening. They have brought up all the candles from the basement and placed them on all the tables outside. The beautiful day is
coming to an end, but it will give way to a warm, apricot glow from the candles and the string of Christmas lights also brought up from the basement. They’ve twisted the lights through the lower branches of the old cherry tree that sits on the lawn over the rattan sofas on the other side of the yard from the swimming pool.
Jackie, who doesn’t really cook but wants to keep up with her friend, has sort of followed a recipe in The Silver Palate Cookbook for Chicken Marbella. But she’s calling it Chicken Bella because it’s missing the prunes, the capers, the oregano, and the parsley. In any case, it’s cooking slowly in the oven.
They put a CD of En Vogue in, then run upstairs to get dressed. Jackie squeezes into a short, tight black dress. Lizzy grabs a gold sequined minidress from her mother’s closet and steps into her mother’s high, gold, strappy Manolo Blahniks.
“Won’t your mom kill you?”
“Nah. She doesn’t care if I wear her stuff. She loves that we look so similar. The way to get my mom to really love you is to tell her we look like sisters. It gets her every time.”
“O-kaaaay. Except your mom is old and you’re young . . . and you don’t really look that much alike.”
“I know. But she likes to think we do. Of course she thinks she looks like me, as in, sixteen.” Lizzy rolls her eyes.
“You look amazing.” Jackie stares at her friend, and Lizzy can see the hint of envy in her friend’s eyes. But that’s why she loves Jackie—it’s just a hint.
“So do you,” says Lizzy, smiling at her friend. “Let’s go downstairs. They’ll be here any minute.”
• • •
This is what it feels like to be an adult, thinks Lizzy, proud of herself for being such a good host. She made everyone have some pesto with their burgers, and they all declared it awesome.
They sit around on the outdoor lounge furniture, drinking the beers Craig brought, watching the sun set over the water, reflecting a golden glow over everyone there. Each time she looks at Ryan, he is looking at her, and each time their eyes meet, it takes them longer to look away. He’s usually the one who breaks the gaze first, as Lizzy’s heart does the tiniest of flips. He really is cute, she thinks to herself, and he likes me! The knowledge is potent, makes her more aware of her beauty, her power, more aware of the fact that she is on the brink of womanhood. She swigs the last of her bottle of beer, not drunk, but happily tipsy, enough to give her the confidence to stand up and announce she is going swimming.
“Do you have any more beer?” Johnny, an old friend of Ryan’s, slides his empty bottle to the center of the table.
“We’re all out,” says Craig. “I lost my fake ID last week, so this is stuff I took from my parents’ garage. Lizzy? Isn’t there alcohol here?”
“Yes, but no way are we touching it. My mom notices nothing, except for missing alcohol. Sorry, dude, but you’re shit out of luck.”
“I can get someone to replace it tomorrow,” says Craig. “Go on. It will be there before she comes back.”
Lizzy shakes her head. “Nope. Can’t do it.”
“How about we ask someone who has a fake ID to bring some over?” Johnny nods enthusiastically at Craig’s suggestion.
“Kevin always gets it for his friends. Why don’t we ask him?”
“Great idea! Is that okay, Lizzy? We’ll call Kevin and see if we can get him to do it.”
“Just Kevin?” says Lizzy. “You can’t tell him we’re in the house by ourselves, okay? Just tell him, I don’t know, tell him it’s a small party, okay? I don’t want word getting out.”
Craig shakes his head forcefully. “Word’s not going to get out. I’ll go inside and call him. What do we want? More beer?”
“And vodka!” shouts Johnny, as Lizzy rolls her eyes.
“I’m going for a swim.” Lizzy kicks off her heels and stands up, peeling her dress down unself-consciously as if every boy’s eyes aren’t glued to her body, as if she is in a room by herself. She reveals a red bikini, a flat, golden stomach, and strong, slim thighs. “Who’s coming with?”
“I’m in,” says Ryan, unbuttoning his jeans and hopping on one foot to pull them off. Lizzy watches, swaying by the edge of the pool, knowing how good she looks in a bikini, hoping he won’t be able to take his eyes off her. She stands for a second, shaking out her hair, before executing a perfect dive. She swims to the bottom of the pool, getting used to the brisk chill of the water, kicking her way back up as she emerges, pushing the water off her face with her hands, to see Ryan diving in after her.
Everything suddenly seems far away. She is vaguely aware of Craig disappearing into the house to call Kevin; she can see Jackie, Johnny, Chuck, and Isabel still sitting under the cherry tree, a burst of laughter coming from them all as the boys pick up each beer bottle on the table and tip it back, just in case there’s anything left.
She can see the lights twinkling in the cherry tree, can hear Puff Daddy from the boom box they have outside, but it all seems far away from the velvet blackness of the swimming pool. The pool lights are off, and everything is dark, but for the reflected glow from the lights over on the other side of the yard.
She yelps as she feels Ryan grab her legs and pull her under the water. She comes back up, sputtering, leaping on top of him to try to push his head underwater. Both of them are grinning. He is standing and she can’t do it, no matter how much she wrestles, her skin slip-sliding against his as she clasps her legs around his body to try to wrest him off balance.
“You won’t be able to.” He grins.
Lizzy slides off him and pauses behind him, slipping underwater like a fish, grabbing his ankles and yanking them behind him as he finally goes under.
They both emerge, breathing heavily, looking at each other and grinning.
Ryan shakes his head. “Oh man,” he says softly. “You’ve got superpowers.”
“I do?” She moves ever so slightly closer to him in the blackness.
“You do,” he answers, moving ever so slightly closer to her.
“You know I’m completely unlike any other girl you’ve ever met.”
“I do know that,” he says softly, and this time he is not smiling.
“You do?”
“You’re more beautiful than any other girl I’ve ever met,” he says, moving closer still.
Lizzy’s heart skips. She can see the light glinting in his eyes. They are both submerged in the water but for their heads. As he slips his hands around her waist she reaches her arms around his neck and raises her legs around his waist. She grins.
“Because I have magic powers,” she whispers, “I can make boys do whatever I want them to.”
“What do you want me to do?” he whispers back, his head now inches from hers.
“I want you to kiss me,” she whispers.
And he does.
The mood is broken by a slamming screen door as Craig shouts out from the house, “Success! Kevin’s on his way. He’s bringing a few people with him. That’s okay, right?”
“Whatever.” Lizzy shrugs, not paying attention, twining her arms around Ryan’s neck again. She has far more important things to focus on.
• • •
It had started out for most people as a quiet Saturday night in Westport. Nothing much was going on. A few groups of kids were hanging out at the beach, others were at home, talking on the phone with their friends.
A rumor started that there was something going on at Lizzy Sunshine’s house, and the game of telephone began. “Something going on” became no parents, became a crazy party, a buzz of excitement fizzing across the phone lines and through the houses on Compo Beach, stretching over to Greens Farms, down to Saugatuck, to Coleytown, the Hunt Club, and Old Hill.
Before long, kids all over town were jumping into cars, grabbing liquor from their parents’ cupboards, basements, and garages. They all made their way to Minuteman Hill, none of th
em knowing exactly which house it was, but driving up the hill, winding around the road until they saw the cars. The giveaway was always the cars.
Some were dropped off at the bottom of the hill by unsuspecting parents. “Lizzy Sunshine is having a small party,” they told their parents, wide-eyed and innocent. “There are only about fifteen of us. Can you drop me off?” They converged with friends as they walked up the hill.
First there were five, including Kevin with the beers, vodka, and tequila. Next came three more. Then fifteen. Then twenty-five. Then they lost track.
Everyone had alcohol with them. Bottles of wine swiped from the rack in the kitchen and hidden in their backpacks, flasks of Jack Daniel’s tucked into jacket pockets, water bottles that innocently hid the fact that they had been swiftly emptied and filled with vodka.
They followed the cars, sniffed out the party, let themselves into the back garden via the gate on the side. They turned the music up and shouted across to people they knew from school. Someone brought weed—joints started to be passed around from hand to hand as they talked and smoked, and drank and laughed, high on weed, high on life, high on having a spectacular house with no adults in sight.
Lizzy was loving it. This was what high school was all about! This, surely, would be her crowning glory through her high school years! She was now, officially, Queen of the Sophomores. Everyone kept telling her how cool this was, how great, how this was the best party they had ever been to.
She and Ryan couldn’t keep their hands off each other. They were now official, given that practically the whole high school was there and watching them. Even seniors were there; even they were declaring it the coolest night of the year.
Ryan pulled her into the house and up the stairs. The house was smoky and loud and filled with people lounging around on furniture, smoking in the kitchen, dancing in the family room. She was vaguely aware of something being spilled, but what the hell, she had had far too much to drink herself, too much to worry about anything tonight, and she could clean up in the morning.