The Rule of Thirds

by Chantel Guertin

  “Flower delivery,” I say, knocking on room 242, the way the woman at the florist instructed me. There’s a quiet “Come in” so I push open the door and walk in. A woman about my mom’s age lies on the bed. She gives a half-hearted smile when she sees me. “These are for you, I think,” I say, looking at the tag. “Shelby?”

  She nods. “Thanks. You can put them over there.” She points to the window, where there’s a mountain of bouquets and baskets piled on the sill and below. There has to be at least a dozen bouquets of flowers, two dozen balloons and an army of teddy bears of all different sizes and colors.

  I set the bouquet down. “Wow, you’re popular,” I say. But she doesn’t look very happy. Dark moons underline her eyes, and I realize, this woman hasn’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks.

  “My twins were born three months early.”

  “Oh, are they OK?”

  She says that they’re in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, because they only weigh two pounds each. “I hate that they have to be there. I’m there so much the nurses kicked me out, actually. They said I need to get my rest.” She sighs. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Congratulations?” I say. “Er—I’m sorry?”

  She almost laughs. “I know—I’m confused too. I don’t know whether to be happy I have two beautiful babies or scared for them because they were born prematurely. So it’s almost like I’m not letting myself feel anything.”

  “You have to let yourself feel your feelings,” I say. “That’s what I hear, anyway.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “Feel my feelings—I’m going to think about that.”

  Four floors, nine bouquets and an hour later, I’m going up on the elevator on the way to the fourth floor, having one of those think-sessions that tend to happen on otherwise empty elevators. There’s so much pain in this building, it’s hard not to let it all get you down. There was a little boy lying still in his bed, an old man with a broken hip, another mom with some weird leg infection and another couple of people who didn’t have any idea yet what was wrong with them. The only thing they knew is that they felt like crap. Those hurt the most. I’d seen the beginnings of that story before, and I knew how it ended.

  Then the doors open on 3, and Dylan walks onto my elevator.

  “Hey,” I say, mustering a smile.

  He looks up at me, somewhere else, and for a moment I have this weird feeling he’s totally forgotten who I am. “Oh hey,” he says. No smile. Nothing. Actually he looks miserable. He presses the button for the ground floor even though the elevator is going up. “Oh,” he says. He looks at me. To see whether I noticed? And the whites of his eyes are kind of gray and his skin looks ashen. Dark circles. He looks down at the book in his hand.

  “What are you reading?” I ask him.

  “Oh, uh . . . what?” he says, distracted.

  “Hey, are you OK?”

  “Yeah, yeah, just um . . . sorry, I’m just a bit preoccupied.”

  “Oh.”

  Don’t get distracted . . .

  “So actually,” I say, “it’s great that I ran into you. I wanted to invite you . . .”

  The doors open on the fourth floor.

  He manages a weak smile.

  “Your floor,” he says.

  “Of course,” I say. My floor. There’s some magnetic force keeping me on the elevator but I push against it and step out. The doors are closing just as I turn around. He’s looking down at his book again.

  What just happened?

  My phone buzzes and for a split second I think it’s him.

  Dace: U ask Funeral Boy to party?

  Ugh. It’s like she’s psychic. I start to type out what just happened, then delete it.

  Me: No.

  Dace: Well what r u waiting for? U don’t want ur new bikini to go to waste do u?

  Me: What new bikini?

  Dace: The one Abercrombie says he can’t wait to c u in. He’s coming. 1 down 1 to go!

  • • •

  “He totally brushed me off. I was there, I was about to ask him to the party and instead he told me, basically, to get off the elevator. There wasn’t anything friendly about it. It was like he didn’t want me to be there. Not like I was a friend, like I was someone he didn’t like. He despised. You should have seen it—it was his whole manner. ”

  I’m laying on my right side on the bed, looking at 17-year-old Dad on the wall.

  “Ugh, I thought things were good. Oh, and Ben’s coming to the party. Dace says because of me. Which is cool. But I just wish Dylan were coming. Even though he totally brushed me off. Ugh—why do I care so much?”

  I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. Maybe his brush-off had nothing to do with me? Maybe he had other things on his mind. Maybe he has a thing about personal conversations on elevators? What if I hadn’t seen him on the elevator—then what? Am I seriously going to throw away a chance at love with Dylan, all because Ben jumped my lips quicker and the elevator doors opened before I could ask Dylan to the party? I sit up and grab my phone off my nightstand and bring up Dylan on the text message screen.

  Me: Chip n dip Alert! Tmw @ Dace’s. Pool party included. Wanna come?

  • • •

  And then I watch the screen, waiting for his response to come. Which is how I must have fallen asleep, because a couple of hours later I wake up with the phone still in my hand. The clock says 3:19 a.m. “Yep,” I say to my dad. “It’s that pitiful.” I put the phone on my nightstand and turn off my light.

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 8 DAYS UNTIL VANTAGE POINT

  Why hasn’t Dylan replied to my text? Isn’t it common courtesy to reply? How hard is it to just type “Yes” or “No”? It’s not hard at all. It’s a few buttons plus the Enter button. It’s EASY.

  And then, while packing my stuff for Dace’s, I get a text.

  Dylan: Yes! What time?

  He said yes. He didn’t delete me from his phone. He likes me. Or doesn’t not like me. My fingers are shaking as I text back, giving him Dace’s address and telling him to come anytime after 4.

  • • •

  Dace was a bit concerned about her parents finding out about the party if I told Mom.

  THE RISKS IN TELLING MOM ABOUT THE PARTY

  She could tell Dace’s parents.

  She could forbid me to go.

  She could forbid me to go and tell Dace’s parents.

  THE RISKS IN NOT TELLING MOM ABOUT THE PARTY

  She could find out.

  I could be grounded for life for lying.

  That would be the end of Sleepover Saturdays.

  The deciding factor came down to the fact that this Saturday we were supposed to be sleeping at my house. If we changed it, my mom would be suspicious. So I told my mom. Which went over surprisingly well, though she did have a few rules, which she typed up at work (shouldn’t she be busier with sick animals?) and handed to me when she got home from the clinic:

  MOM’S PARTY RULES

  No drugs

  No drinking

  No sleepover

  “Are we clear?” Mom asks.

  “Yeah, I’ll put this through the laminator so it doesn’t get wet at the party. That way I can keep referring to it all night.”

  “Pippa . . .” Mom says warningly.

  “I’m kidding! I got it.” I’m not worried about the drugs part—at least, me doing them. Dace and I tried smoking pot last summer but it made me lethargic and boring, and I’m not about to start doing something more hardcore. Besides, I like drinking

  just fine. So #2 is definitely going to be a problem since the definition of a party when you’re in high school is “excuse to drink while someone’s parents are away.”

  But #3? “No sleepover?”

  “NO sleepover,” Mom says.

  “But we
can’t break tradition.”

  “No sleepover or no party.”

  “But if I don’t sleep over I won’t be able to help Dace clean up. Not that we plan on making a mess, but we can’t control what everyone does. Not that there will be a lot of people, but there will be boys. Not a lot of boys . . .”

  I was digging myself my own pool.

  “If everyone is still at the party when you leave, which I would suggest is not a good idea anyway, but if they are, then you can go back in the morning to help Dace clean up. Home by eleven.”

  “One.”

  “Midnight. And not a second later.”

  • • •

  My mom may have had some rules, but Dace and I have a few rules of our own.

  DACE & PIPPA’S PARTY RULES

  No one gets in the house.

  If you’re about to let someone in the house, remember Rule #1.

  “We’re still using the bathroom in the house, though, right?” I ask as we walk out to the backyard. Dace is carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses on a tray and I’ve got a stack of trashy magazines. Our towels are wrapped around our waists. “The last thing I want to do is pee in the poolhouse after 50 other drunk people have gone in there.”

  Dace nods and removes her towel, revealing her orange bikini bottom.

  “You mixed?” I say, eyeing her pink top as she removes the strap around her neck.

  “I couldn’t settle on just one. I guess I like my bikinis like I like my boys. Two at a time,” she says, laying her towel on her lounge chair. I do the same and sit down.

  “Only two? I thought you liked to have at least three on the go at once,” I joke, adjusting the top of the blue-and-white striped bikini that Dace lent me—she got a whole bunch of cute bikinis from one of her shoots. It’s a perk, for sure, but I still feel self-conscious. I don’t exactly fill it out in the right places the way Dace does.

  “Good point.” She rattles off the list of invited guys who are definitely potential makeout partners: “Kevin, Cole, Asher . . .”

  “Aren’t you worried each of them will think you’ve already got a boyfriend and back off?”

  Dace takes a sip of her lemonade. “Worried? No. Boys love a little healthy competition. They’re like soda. Some are like Pepsi, always trying to be better than Coke. The Cokes know they’re the best, but are always on their A-game because the Pepsis are hanging around.”

  “What about if they’re root beer?”

  “Root beers are the wild card. A little crazy.”

  I stand up and walk over to the edge of the pool. The pool is L-shaped—the main part is just like a normal swimming pool, except with a gradual beach entry on one side, so you wade in from the deck. Then in the deep end, the other part has this little diving area and there are not one, but two diving boards. And then there’s a hot tub and a sauna. Total resort.

  I hit the higher diving board. “Request?”

  “Double twist-triple-toe-loop-back-flip!” she yells from her lounger. Right.

  I swan dive into the water. It’s pretty much my only dive. In the summer I almost had a flip down pat, but I haven’t practiced in a while and if I land on my back it hurts like a mother. And makes my back totally red. Not attractive.

  After a few more dives I do some laps, then climb out and walk over to the lounge chair beside Dace’s. I shake my hair out over her, letting the beads of water spray her. She squeals.

  I lay down on the lounger. Dace tops up her glass with lemonade and pours me a glass. I take a sip.

  “Um. Not lemonade.”

  “Yes, but spiked. The best kind. I can’t believe Fred thought hiding the key to the liquor cabinet in his sock drawer was a good idea.” She takes a sip. “So good, right?”

  “Yum.” And so wrong. Oh so wrong. “I can’t get wasted, remember. I have to be home by midnight. Mom’s rules.” The rules I threw in Dace’s bedroom trash bin. “And I have to work on my Vantage Point entry tomorrow.”

  “Come on. It’s 3:30. You’ll be sober by the time you go home. Also, this is just a little something to loosen you up,” she says, taking her bikini top off.

  “Dace!” The backyard is big—but it isn’t that big. The neighbors can totally see over the fence—especially from the second story.

  “What? I don’t want tan lines,” she says.

  “Tan lines? How is that even possible? You’ve religiously worn sunscreen since, like, the fifth grade.”

  She shakes her head. “Not today. I’m breaking all my sunscreen rules. Guess it’s a rules-breaking kind of day.”

  “What will Elise say if you get a burn?”

  “With any luck, that I can’t do the Cheektowaga car show.”

  “Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to do it?”

  “I tried. But she said it’s that or back to mall fashion shows. This is all Viv’s fault. If she’d have let me go to Japan when I signed with Elise, then I wouldn’t even be talking about some dumb Cheektowaga car show.” She sighs. “I’m sorry. Are you freaking out?”

  I look at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Just—the pact. For our future. You must be a bit worried how we’re going to make it happen when I’m dicking around. I’m just in a rut. I’m sorry.”

  My stomach drops. The guilt almost makes me tell Dace about my Vantage Point theme. That I’ve moved on from fashion to memories. If it were anyone else, it might be worth it so that she felt like I’m not adding any additional pressure for her to make it big, but I know better. With Dace, she’ll just think I’m bailing on her. Even though it has nothing to do with her at all.

  “You’ll get to Japan,” I say. “And in the meantime, I like having you here. I’d miss you if you took off.” Going to Japan is important if you want to make it—apparently you go there for a year, do a billion shoots and after that you can pretty much get any editorial job. But I really can’t imagine being at Spalding without Dace. That’s the hard thing about friendship, you want what’s best for your best friend, but sometimes it’s not what’s best for yourself.

  “Thanks. Let’s just get drunk and forget all about

  this, K?”

  “OK. You should probably put your top back on before everyone gets here. You’re going to give your mantourage the wrong idea.”

  “Maybe that’s the right idea,” Dace says with a coy smile, but obliges.

  Dace is still a virgin, even though she totally doesn’t act like it. Some of our other friends are having sex, but we both want to wait. Dace, despite being a super-flirt, doesn’t want to have sex with a guy if she doesn’t want to be his girlfriend, and right now, she doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Dace has been talking more and more about doing it though, just to get it over with so it’s not such a big deal. I’m worried about that because it is a big deal, but also because, if she starts having sex and I’m not, I feel like we won’t be as close anymore. It’s silly, because we’re best friends and one little thing like that shouldn’t matter but I still worry it will.

  “Hey girls!” Emma and Gemma call as they come through the gate to the backyard. Carrying overnight bags. Overnight? They’re staying over? I stifle the surge of jealousy.

  “Any word on your iPod?” I ask Emma as I follow her inside so they can drop off their things. The story comes out on Friday, but so far there haven’t been any leads on the thief. She shakes her head and says her mom’s mad at her for being so irresponsible for losing it, but Gemma believes her that someone outright stole it.

  An hour later the backyard’s packed, and so’s the pool. Dace’s iPod is connected to the sound system—the playlist she made at the start of summer on repeat for one final hurrah. I’m contemplating another glass of spiked lemonade when I feel an arm slip around my waist. I turn to face Ben, who pulls me in for a soft kiss. When we break, I kind of want
to wipe off my lips—he’s a really wet kisser.

  “Hey babe,” he purrs.

  Babe?

  “Nice bikini,” he says, totally talking to my chest.

  “Do you want a drink?” I ask, noticing he’s empty handed aside from his leather satchel, slung across his body. It’s a known fact that parties are BYOB—but maybe they did things differently wherever Ben used to go to school.

  “Sure—a beer’d be great.”

  Dace is at the cooler with a guy, who, when he stands up, looks like he could be Ben’s Abercrombie twin: polo shirts, khakis and deck shoes.

  “Cole, this is Pippa!” Dace says happily, and I give a small wave. Ben puts his arm around me protectively and kisses me on the ear, then throws his hand up in a sort of hey-wave. “Ben,” he says to Cole.

  “Beer?” Cole asks Ben, holding out a can. Ben takes it.

  “So you go to Spalding with the girls?” Cole asks as I untangle myself from Ben. Dace pours another spiked lemonade from the jug on the table and hands it to me, takes a sip of her own, then links arms with me and leads me away from them. “Oh swoon,” she whispers. “Isn’t that cute? Our boys are getting along.”

  “He’s not my boy,” I say defensively. I don’t want to be with Ben by default. Where is Dylan?

  “Would you relax and have fun? Ben’s crazy about you. What’s the problem?”

  “Sorry,” I say, but I’m not feeling it. If Ben’s going to be my boyfriend, shouldn’t I be thinking about him?

  “Ooh, there’s Asher,” Dace says, clinking glasses with me and sauntering over to the gate. I pull on my cover-up, then find Emma and hang out with her and a bunch of other girls in our class for a while, until Ben is back at my side.

  “What do you say we get out of here for a bit? I need some Pippa time,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me close.

  “Well, I don’t want to be a bad party host,” I say. Where is Dylan?