by Sarah Dessen
This made me well up. And when I spoke, I actually started to cry.
“You hurt my feelings,” I said, my voice breaking.
“I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, then tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, lowering her voice. “Look, I know I’ve been stupid and crazy. I’m lucky that you’ve stuck with me. But you just don’t understand what it’s like to be really into someone so much that you make terrible choices. It’s like . . . beyond my control, or something.”
“He’s going to hurt you again,” I told her as my dad chucked the bailer into the cargo hold and hoisted himself onto the raft.
“Maybe,” she said. “But this time, I’ll only have myself to blame.”
This was not altogether encouraging. I mean, why go into anything if you think there’s a decent chance you’ll get your heart broken? You don’t risk what you don’t want to, I supposed. Not that I could get into it, as my dad and Tracy were now joining us. She had the picnic basket over her arm.
“Who’s hungry?” she asked.
“Me!” Gordon said. When Bailey shot her a look, she added, “I mean, only a little.”
“You can have whatever you want from here,” Tracy said, putting the basket down and opening it. “It’s the least we can do since you saved us.”
“We weren’t in danger,” my dad said. “It was just a little water.”
Instead of responding, Tracy pulled out a bottle of wine, glistening with ice, fetching an opener from a side pocket. Deftly and quickly, she got out the cork and poured them each a plastic glass full before handing out thick bottled sodas to the rest of us.
“Wow,” Gordon said, taking the bottle she handed her. “Is this a cola?”
“It’s not Pop Soda,” Bailey said, examining her own. She tipped it up, taking a taste. “Oh, my God. This is incredible. Where did you get it?”
“The Club made the basket for us,” Tracy replied, digging farther in. “We have a cheese plate, too, as well as some sandwiches. Why don’t I get everything out and we’ll have a picnic?”
“Here?” my dad said. “I was hoping to get us to a beach spot away from everything.”
“Well, we have the second part,” Tracy said. “And I think we’re better off not sailing the boat anymore today. I’ll call the Club and have them tow it in.”
“Oh, don’t do that,” Bailey said automatically, as I knew she would. “I can just pull you back.”
“We’re getting to go to the Club?” Gordon asked. “Can we see your hotel room?”
“No,” Bailey told her. “We’ll just get them safely to the dock. Then we need to get home to take Trinity to the doctor.”
I turned to look at her. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded. “They just want to see her every week now, to check if she’s dilated.”
“What’s dilated?” Gordon asked.
“Ready to have the baby,” I explained. Then I looked up to see Dad and Tracy staring at me. I said, “She’s due in like, a month.”
“Who is this, again?” my dad asked, taking a cracker from the tray Tracy had unwrapped.
“My sister,” Bailey told him. To me she said, “You can come back with us, come along to the appointment, and then we’ll go to the party.”
“Party?” my dad said.
“Our friend’s birthday is tonight,” Bailey explained. To me she said, “You can stay over with me, if you want. That way you don’t have to get all the way back.”
Already, she had a plan. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Sounds great, but Emma is supposed to eat with us and our friends this evening,” my dad said.
To me, this might as well have been a brick wall: my dad said no, end of topic. But I’d again forgotten about Bailey and the power of persuasion. Or cousinhood. Or something.
“Point taken,” she said. “But the thing is, Saylor didn’t really get to say goodbye, you know, when she moved over to be with you guys. It was just like, poof! And she was gone. Everyone’s asking where she is. So can she come to something, you know, just for closure?”
“She’s here for two weeks,” my dad pointed out.
“I know! But it’s already been a minute and we haven’t heard from her. I mean, until now. Which was not the best of circumstances.” Bailey smiled at Tracy, who immediately smiled back. “The longer she’s at the Tides, the less inclined she’ll be to make the trip all the way over to our side. I mean, the boys are really cute there.”
Now my dad looked at me. I kept my face impassive, not wanting to get my hopes up, although it was hard not to show my relief when he said, “Okay, I suppose that’s fine. But I want you to stay at the hotel, with us.”
“Great! The party is at April’s, which is just down from the Station,” Bailey told him. “It starts at around seven. And we’ll have Roo drive her back. He’s got to leave early too, for work.”
Okay. Now I really wanted to go.
“Roo?” my dad said. “Is that a person?”
“His real name is Christopher,” I explained. “He’s Chris Price’s son.”
“Price,” my dad repeated. “Wait. Chris Price?”
“Yes,” I said. Tracy raised her eyebrows, not following, and I added, “He was a friend of my mom’s.”
“Really.” She smiled at me. “Well, I’m sure Matthew will agree, if he’s a good driver and—”
“I don’t know,” my dad said. “Maybe it’s not the best night for you to go out.”
Roo was the deal breaker? That wasn’t fair. “You just said it was okay,” I protested.
He snapped his fingers. “Hey, I know. Why don’t we go back during the day, when I can take you. Or we can drive together! Get in some practice. I’d like to see Mimi anyway.”
“Mr. Payne,” Bailey said, still in her best-behavior voice, “Roo’s really reliable, if that’s what you’re worried about. He works for my mom doing night stocking at Conroy Market, and he has to be there at midnight. So he won’t be drinking or anything.”
I winced. Crap.
“Well, I would hope not,” my dad said. “You are all underage, last I checked. Are you saying there will be beer at this party?”
“No,” I said quickly. “But even if there was—”
“Saylor doesn’t drink,” Bailey finished for me. “Like, at all. You know that, right?”
Now, my dad looked at me. “She’s not supposed to. She’s seventeen.”
“Dad, I can’t control what other people do!” I said.
“If there’s beer there, you’re not going.” When I opened my mouth, he repeated, “That’s it. End of discussion.”
There was that wall again, but this time, I could see it, not just sense its presence. Bailey, however, was not giving up that easily.
“It’s your call, of course,” she told my dad as Tracy, choosing wisely to stay out of this, bent back over the cooler and began to unpack sandwiches. “And we’ll miss her. But for what it’s worth, Saylor’s a good girl, Mr. Payne. The kind of girl my mom wishes I was, if I’m honest.”
“Her name is Emma,” my dad told her.
I knew, in my rational mind, that he was just correcting her. I was Emma to him, I always had been. But as I heard him say this with such certainty, I could feel my temper rising. He could keep me from the other side of the lake. From Roo. But I would not let him take the weeks I’d already had, and the girl I’d been then, as well.
“It’s Emma Saylor,” I corrected him. “And I told you. They know me here as Saylor.”
My dad looked surprised, although whether by this statement or my tone was hard to tell. For a moment we just looked at each other, both of us silent. “Why don’t we have lunch,” he said finally. “I’m starving.”
I felt tears spring to my eyes as I turned, walking across to the other side of the raft so my dad wouldn’t see. A moment later, Bailey stepped up beside me.
“You can always say you’re going to the Pavilion and then come over,” she said in a l
ow voice. “We’ll get someone to pick you up.”
“Blake already offered me a ride,” I said.
“Really?” Realizing she’d almost yelped this, she lowered her voice, shooting my dad a glance. “He’s coming?”
“Taylor invited Rachel and Hannah, and they invited him,” I told her.
A pause. Her unasked question boomed between us, loud to the point of deafening. I sighed.
“Colin, too,” I added. Her face lit up. “But he’s showing up later. I said I wouldn’t ride with him, because I still hate him.”
“Well, sure,” she said easily, waving this off with one hand. “But seriously, now you really have to get there. I need you! It’ll be the first time we’ve seen each other since Club Prom, and you know Jack and Roo will be all shitty to him, and—”
“Bailey?”
She stopped, mid-sentence. “Yes?”
“Do you remember when I said it seemed you only cared about Colin and not about me and my problems at all?”
“Oh, right.” She exhaled. “Sorry. But look, if you want to go to the party, you can absolutely do it. Just tell them you’re doing something else, take up Blake on the ride, and make it back before they check. No one is the wiser.”
“This already sounds like a bad idea,” I said.
“Why?” Which is what the planners of bad ideas always say. “Look. There’s a movie outside on the beach at eight. Tell them you’re going to that. It’ll give you till at least ten. Oh, and make sure you mention the crappy reception on the Lake North side, so if he does demand you come home, you can say the message took a while to come through.”
“How do you even know all this?”
She shrugged. “I like the Club. I may absorb any and all facts about it for that reason.”
I looked back at my dad, who was now sitting with Tracy, eating as he sipped his wine. I turned back to the water. “What if he comes looking for me?”
“He’s still jet-lagged, right? He probably won’t even make it to ten.”
This was clever, I had to admit: the last two evenings my dad and Tracy had both been out cold long before I turned in. “I’ll try it,” I said as my stomach grumbled. Turned out I was hungry after all. “But if I am coming, it’s for me. Not for you and Colin.”
“I know, I know,” she said quickly. “Hey, do you think I can really have something to eat? I’m starving.”
I nodded, getting to my feet and walking over to the basket, which Tracy pushed toward me, saying, “Help yourself. There are six sandwiches in there—I thought we might want extra.”
I dug around a bit, finally finding two turkey and roasted red peppers as described by the custom, handwritten labels with the Club insignia. “Gordon,” I called out. “Want a sandwich?”
“She doesn’t like anything,” Bailey warned me, taking one.
“We have turkey with red pepper,” I told Gordon anyway. When she made a face, I turned to Tracy. “Are there chips or anything?”
“Um . . .” She dug around a bit. “No, just crackers and cheese, I’m afraid. But—”
Then I remembered something. “Hold on,” I told Gordon, walking over to the sailboat and my bag, which I’d left on the seat. I pulled out the doughnut I’d taken from Nana’s breakfast table, still wrapped in a napkin. “How about this?”
She looked over, expectations clearly low. Seeing the pastry, she brightened instantly. “You don’t want it?”
I handed it to her. “All yours.”
Grinning, she immediately took a bite, getting chocolate on her face. Chewing, she said, “Are you coming back to our side?”
With kids, you never wanted to make promises you couldn’t keep. I’d learned that early, when my dad was often the bad guy, reining my mom in from her pie-in-the-sky promises. He wanted to protect me, I knew, and Emma would have let him. But Saylor, with her Calvander blood, had other ideas.
“Yeah,” I told Gordon as we sat there. “I am.”
Eighteen
I met someone.
When my phone first beeped with this text, waking me from an afternoon nap, I just assumed it was from Bridget. Only she could declare a place hopelessly boring one day, only to find a dreamy summer romance the next. When I rubbed my eyes and looked at it again, I saw it wasn’t her, but Ryan. My eyes widened.
What? How? Who is he?
She didn’t respond for a bit, and it made me wonder if she’d already left that one spot where she had reception on the mountaintop. But then, finally, this.
Not he. A she.
I rubbed my eyes again, wanting to make sure I was reading this correctly. Even though these were only four words, and small ones at that, the message was big. I sat up, shaking my head to clear it. What I said now was important.
That’s awesome. Details?
This time, she answered right away.
Her name is Liz. She’s from Maine. Drama geek. But I think I might be too now?
This was almost as surprising as the fact she was crushing on a girl. You?
The tech stuff is actually really fun! Getting a crash course in a bunch of things, but I might want to do it at home, too? Anyway, she’s the lead.
Wow, I wrote. Picture?
A pause. Then, with a beep, a shot of Ryan and the same girl with the olive skin and long, curly dark hair who’d had the army cap on in the shot she’d sent earlier. This time, though, it was just the two of them making faces, goofing for the camera, but even so, I could see something in my longtime friend that was different. A happiness, almost a glow.
She’s pretty! You have a type, clearly, I wrote.
????
I laughed out loud. Ry, she looks like Jasmine!
A beep. Then another.
I am laughing so hard right now
Omg you’re right!
Beep.
I didn’t even make the connection!
Good thing you have me, I replied.
A pause. I tried to picture her on some steep hill, surrounded by scrub brush, away from camp to share this with someone. And she’d picked me, which felt like a gift.
I’m glad we’re cool, she said now.
I am very cool, I agreed.
Not really, she replied. But about this, yes.
Then: Don’t tell Bridget, okay? I want to.
Of course.
How about you? she wrote. Found a prince (or princess) yet?
I knew I should tell her about Blake, the prom, and everything else. But as she said this, I only thought of Roo.
Not yet, I typed back.
Beep. Okay, I need to get off the mountain. Dress is tonight. Talk soon?
Definitely.
A row of smiley faces appeared on the screen, followed by a bright red heart. I smiled, putting my phone back on the floor before stretching back out across the bed with a yawn. I couldn’t say I was totally surprised by Ryan’s news, as she’d always had a lack of interest when it came to Bridget’s incessant chatter about boys. As one of her two closest friends, though, maybe I should have asked a few more questions. Instead, I’d just assumed she was straight because I was. What kind of a friend did that? I picked up my phone again and started a new text to her.
Hey I’m sorry
No, that wasn’t right.
I didn’t realize, I should have
Even worse.
The cursor just sat there, blinking. I looked out at the water outside my window. There was still time to come up with the right words, and probably better to say them face-to-face anyway. So I just sent her a heart back, and left it at that.
“So you’ll be a senior this year,” Mrs. Delhomme said to me as the waiter refilled her wineglass. A woman about Nana’s age, she was deeply tan, with short white hair she wore so spiky it resembled plumage. “Do you have college plans?”
“We’ve taken a couple of tours while traveling,” my dad said from my other side. “But she hasn’t narrowed down a real list, have you, Emma?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I w
ant to keep my options open.”
At this, my dad smiled. I’d never been great with other kids, but I could hang at any adult dinner party. The gift and curse of the only child.
“Options are good,” Mrs. Delhomme said. “It’s how we ended up with the Tides. The land went up for sale when Wilton was in college, and his dad snapped it up for what he called ‘a rainy day.’ Which is so funny, because I swear it never rains here! One reason why it’s such a great place to get away.”
I’d realized, over three courses and now dessert, that Mrs. Delhomme, like my grandmother, had a story for everything.
“Well, it’s absolutely stunning,” Nana said now from her seat, next to Tracy. “We’re having just the best time. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Delhomme, who was on my dad’s other side. His wife was the talker of the two of them, while he spent most of the meal on the phone. “We’re thrilled you finally came down to see us.”
“And you’re here for two weeks?” Mrs. Delhomme asked me.
I nodded, scooping up the last of my vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. “I was over in North Lake before this, with my mom’s family.”
“Really?” She smiled. “I didn’t know she was from this area. Where do they live?”
“Her grandmother owns a motel called Calvander’s,” my dad replied before I could answer. “Just over the line.”
“Such a lovely community, North Lake,” she told him. “There’s just so much history there, those families that have been coming for generations.” She took a sip of her wine, leaving a lipstick mark on the glass. “It’s what we really aspired to when we developed Lake North. That sense of tradition.”
“That said, it’s not someplace I’d want to spend my vacation,” Mr. Delhomme added. “I’m a fan of modern comforts. The places there are a bit . . . antiquated.”
I was pretty sure this was a burn. I couldn’t help but say, “I think for some people it’s just what they want.”
My dad shot me a look. I pretended I didn’t see.
“Coffee?” asked a voice right behind me. I turned to see a girl with two long braids I sort of recognized from a Campus party, holding a pot.