“Everything she does has a purpose. She only takes piano lessons to be ‘well-rounded.’ And so she doesn’t disappoint my dad like I have.”
Up until this moment, I’d only really seen Lake as smart, driven, and curious. Maybe because I’d only really seen Lake. I hadn’t stopped to wonder how many dinners Tiffany must’ve sat through hearing about Lake’s accomplishments. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is.” She shuffled her feet on the floor of the car. “Whatever.”
The wheel jerked into motion, sending us higher. “I think Lake looks up to you,” I said.
“Why would she?”
“You’re her older sister.” If I’d been better at expressing myself, I would’ve told her how much it bothered me to see siblings not getting along. But that wasn’t something you thought about until you’d lost one, and then it was too late for that kind of lesson. “Cut her some slack. She probably just wants you to be nice to her.”
Tiffany scowled. “Nice?”
“Yeah. Like inviting her to come here. That was nice.”
“Oh.” Her expression eased as she twisted her lips. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe.”
A girl in the car above us laughed loudly at something the man with her said. She launched forward to kiss him. Tiffany noticed and smiled.
I preferred Tiffany this way, without all the drama. It made me uncomfortable when she was forward, the way she’d been in the car on the way over. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her. With long blonde hair and even longer legs, and blue eyes a shade icier than her sister’s, she was attractive as hell. I just wasn’t all that attracted to her. Her attitude’d put me off that first day.
I should’ve probably walked away. I would’ve by now if I hadn’t felt so confused the past few days, and since I’d really only existed since Maddy’s death, nothing more, feeling anything was a welcome change. Losing my little sister had brought on the kind of darkness you don’t ever really come back from. Even day to day, there wasn’t much to my life. I went to work. Construction was good for me, it kept my hands busy, but it was hard. The men I worked with had seen shit, too. Some of them were ex-convicts, and others probably should’ve been behind bars—I’d almost gotten into it with some of them on Friday when I’d warned them not to catcall the girls. Then, I either spent my nights at the community college with other overworked, tired classmates, at a bar drinking by myself, or at home. I preferred it that way, I guess. I wanted to focus on graduating so I could be in a position to help others the way they’d helped me when I’d needed it, even though I hadn’t deserved it.
Lake was the only person I’d come across since Maddy who still hadn’t seen anything bad out of life. She was good. You could sense it just being around her. Not yet jaded. She had dreams, and she believed they’d come true. She was easy to talk to, ambitious, thoughtful. None of that meant she was uncomplicated. That day we met, when she’d sat on a curb with The Grapes of Wrath, I could tell she was having a hard time concentrating. I remembered Maddy reading a lot, but I’d forgotten that expression she made when she was trying to figure out a new word or when something went over her head. Lake made it, too. There were layers to her you might miss if you weren’t paying attention.
My sister’s death had turned my world dark, but Lake was light. By her age, I’d done all sorts of shit—drugs, alcohol, sex. Lake seemed so far away from that. Pure, naïve, like Maddy would’ve been. I’d have seen to it. Maybe wanting that in my life, someone to look over, to shield from the bad stuff, was wrong considering she was sixteen. Then again, if I’d done a better job of that with Madison, she might still be around to do things like this, to take in the night sky from the top of a Ferris wheel. To taste dyed-pink sugar melting on her tongue. To ask her big brother for advice.
“What do you want to do after this?” Tiffany asked.
I looked over at her, wondering how long I’d been in my trance. We were moving now, going in circles, the breeze warm on my face. “Take you home,” I said.
“I don’t have a curfew.”
“Lake does.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
People became pins stuck in a 3D map as the buildings below us got smaller, more like a model of a fair than an actual one. The ocean stretched on one side of us. Carnival lights reflected orange, purple, green, and red on the water by the dock. But there wasn’t anything but black beyond that.
“We could just drop Lake off.” Tiffany put her hand on my thigh and left it there, as if deciding her next move. “Drive around for a while.”
If this’d been a date, I would’ve put my arm around her, pulled her close, kissed her. If I gave her what she wanted now, she’d give me what I wanted later. I wasn’t in the business of turning down sex from pretty girls. And Tiffany was pretty. A California beach girl, the kind men dreamed about. No doubt she was also experienced. I wouldn’t have to go slow with her. Not that I minded going slow sometimes. I might’ve liked being with a woman for more than sex if I’d ever found it. Had Tiffany had that before? Did she want it?
I put my hand over Tiffany’s to see how it’d feel. It didn’t answer anything, but it didn’t give me more questions, either. Maybe that was good. I was pretty sure if I tried to hold Lake’s hand, I’d feel something about it. We’d both be worse off for it.
With the reservations I had, hand-holding was as much as I was ready for tonight. “I’ll take you home after this,” I said. “Wouldn’t want your dad to worry.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said softly, looking up at the sky. “Not about me.”
I got the feeling this was the real Tiffany. That her bravado was a front for some insecurities that probably came from her dad. She needed someone in her corner. “You really think that?”
“We don’t get along so well,” she said. “In case you didn’t pick that up.”
I was beginning to. “That’s a shame.”
“Look how pretty the stars are,” she said.
Even though the shift in topic was sudden, it didn’t stop a lump from forming in my throat. I kept my eyes forward. The fucking stars. That was a place reserved for Maddy. I wasn’t willing to go there. “What’s pretty about them?”
She looked at me funny. “What kind of a question is that? They twinkle. They’re . . .” She couldn’t come up with anything else. “They’re just pretty. Did you look?”
“I’ve seen them.”
“So if you’re going to drop me off early . . . when will I see you again?”
I didn’t have an answer. I stretched my arm along the back of the seat. She took it as an invitation to move into my side. “I’ll be back on the lot Monday.”
“I don’t mean like that. I was hoping we could, you know, go out.”
I knew what she’d meant. I could just say no. I didn’t want to lead her on. But there was no reason, not one, that I should ever see Lake again if her sister wasn’t around.
As the Ferris wheel spun, silence stretched between us.
I didn’t tell Tiffany I’d see her again.
I didn’t tell her I wouldn’t, either.
6
Lake
Standing under the Ferris wheel, watching it go round and round, made me ill. I did it until I lost track of Manning and Tiffany, then crossed the pathway and sat on a step eating tufts of cotton candy while I waited.
A pair of ripped blue jeans stepped in front of me. “Hey.”
I looked up into sharp, crystal blue eyes that were a trademark of the very good-looking, very popular Swenson brothers, Cane, Corey, and the one blocking my view, Corbin. Blond hair curled out from under a Billabong hat that sat low on his head, its rigid bill almost shadowing his face.
Corbin was closest to my age. He stood with a skateboard behind his head, propped lengthwise on his shoulders, wheels out. He’d covered the underbelly in stickers. “Don’t you go to my high school?” he asked.
Even though I was fairly sure he thought I was someone else, I nodded.
He tapped
his chin. “You have, uh, stuff . . .”
Quickly, I wiped my face with my sleeve. “Thanks.”
“And your tongue is blue.” He grinned. “Why aren’t you at that party on Marigold?”
I sat up a little. “Why aren’t you? I’m sure all your friends are there.”
“I was. It’s no big deal.” Absentmindedly, he spun one of the skateboard’s wheels with a long finger. A cartoon sticker of a naked woman peeled at one corner. “So you know who I am?”
I blinked back to his face. “Corbin.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lake.”
“Cool. You skate?”
I ate more of my cotton candy. “No.”
“Surf?”
Tiffany and I had gone to a few surf camps over the years. I could barely stand. Tiffany was better, but she preferred dry land for sunbathing with her Walkman and magazines.
I figured I’d surfed more than the average teenager, so I shrugged. “Kind of.”
“You should come out with me and my brothers sometime. We could use some chicks in the lineup.”
“Maybe.”
“You here by yourself?”
I still wasn’t sure if he thought he was talking to someone else. I hadn’t seen Corbin with any specific girl I could remember, but guys like him always had a girlfriend. “With my sister.”
“Who’s your sister?”
“Tiffany.”
“Kaplan?” He swung his skateboard in front of his legs and laughed. “Yeah. Makes sense. I see the resemblance now.”
I had no idea why that was funny. It happened a lot, people finding out we were sisters and mentioning “the resemblance.” Whether or not it was just something people said, I usually took it as a compliment. With Corbin, I wasn’t so sure. “How do you know Tiffany?”
“From school. And she’s friends with my older brother.”
“I’m a year below you.”
“I know.”
Only then did my heart skip a beat, once I realized the most popular guy in school really was talking to me. Corbin had noticed me. Our high school wasn’t that big, but there were hundreds of students.
“I’ve seen you around,” he added with a smile. It was a nice smile, too—since he was so tan, his teeth looked unnaturally white. Everyone knew who the Swensons were. Their dad worked with mine, so the name even came up a time or two at the dinner table. I could see why girls liked the brothers with their perpetual surfer tans, their tall and lean muscular bodies. If I’d thought much about talking to Corbin, I would’ve guessed it’d be a bumbling, muttering, stomach-butterflies kind of thing, but it wasn’t. I liked him, and I liked that he didn’t make nervous.
The Ferris wheel stopped. I tried to see around Corbin, then through his legs, past his skinned knees, but he blocked my view with the skateboard.
“We went to camp together when we were kids.”
“What?”
“Young Cubs,” he said. “You know? Camp?”
I looked up at him again. I remembered, but it seemed so long ago. We were different people then. Kids. “I’m going back this year as a junior counselor,” I said.
“Cool. I’ll be there for a day to coach a baseball game, show them how it’s done.” He winked. “I’d stay longer, but I have baseball camp that week.”
“Sounds fun,” I said, leaning so far to the side I almost toppled over.
“Looking for Tiffany?” he asked.
“She’s on the Ferris wheel.”
“Alone?”
Manning’s height gave them away. He was at least a head taller than any adult, and in a crowd of kids, he verged on giant status. “She’s with a friend.”
“Who? Sarah?”
Manning’s eyes locked on Corbin’s back, and he came over, Tiffany on his heels.
The cotton candy made my mouth tacky. I ran my tongue over my teeth, worried they might be blue. I was suddenly aware of my breathing, of the fact that my shorts had ridden up when I sat.
“Hello?” Corbin asked.
“Huh?” I asked without looking away from Manning.
Corbin checked over his shoulder just as Tiffany spotted us.
“Hey, Corbin,” Tiffany said, looking a bit off balance in her platforms. “Looking for me?”
“Nope.” Corbin turned back to me. “Just saying what’s up to your sister.”
Tiffany grabbed Corbin’s forearm, pulling him away. “Have you met Manning?” she asked. “He’s in college.”
“Cool.” Corbin dropped the skateboard on the ground and planted a big, fat Airwalk sneaker on it to stop it from rolling away. “I should get back to my friends. We’ll be surfing Huntington Pier all next week, Lake. South side, in the mornings. If you want to come watch.”
I waved. “See ya.”
Manning watched Corbin skate off, his eyes narrowed. “Who was that?”
“Corbin Swenson,” Tiffany and I answered at the same time.
“What’d he want?” Manning asked.
I shrugged. “Just saying hi.”
Tiffany tightened her ponytail. “Are you friends?”
Both Tiffany and Manning towered over me. For just getting off a carnival ride, neither of them looked very happy. Had they fought? I could almost convince myself I’d heard something like jealousy in Manning’s questions just now.
I pulled my knees against my chest. “I wouldn’t say friends. More like acquaintances.”
“Oh.” Tiffany sat next to me on the stairs. “I went out with his brother once. I always thought Corbin had a crush on me.”
That was a typical thing for Tiffany to assume. “So?”
“So just keep in mind that some guys might look at you and see me.”
“Meaning?”
She brushed some of my hair off my neck, glancing up at Manning as if checking to see if she should proceed. “You and I are different. I cut class. Went to bonfires on the beach, drank, smoked weed.”
I wanted to relax into the feeling of Tiffany’s fingers in my hair, but I worried an insult was coming. “And?”
“And you do homework for fun.”
I made a face. “I do not.”
“Just don’t be naïve. Corbin’s a nice guy, but he can have any girl he wants, which means he probably does. He’s a heartbreaker.”
Maybe I did focus too much on school, and maybe I had no clue about boys like Tiffany thought. But I didn’t want Manning to know that. “I’m not as innocent as you think,” I said.
Tiffany laughed and hugged me from the side. “Yes, you are.”
Okay, so she was right. I’d experienced embarrassingly little—less, even, than my friends, and they were mild compared to most girls at my school.
“Innocence is good,” Manning said, sounding funny, as if his teeth were clenched. “She has the rest of her life for parties. For punks like that guy.”
Tiffany ruffled my hair as if I were her child, not her high school-aged sister. “What should we ride next, Manning?”
“You want that stuffed animal?” he asked.
Her eyes lit up. “Do you really think you can win it?”
I tasted metal. It was as if I wasn’t even there. They acted like they were my babysitters. I should’ve paid more attention to the guys Tiffany had dated in the past. How long did it take for her to lose interest and move on to the next? To me, Manning seemed as untouchable as the glossy celebrities taped to Tiffany’s wall, so why did she get to touch him?
Manning and Tiffany turned to the booth with the stuffed animals, ignoring me. As long as I sat there being my quiet, innocent self, they could carry on with their lives.
I stood, brushing dirt off the seat of my shorts. “I’m going to see if Corbin wants to ride the Ferris wheel with me.”
Manning turned around first. “What?”
“I said—”
“I heard you.” He glanced at the ride and back at me. “I thought you were scared.”
“I was, but you said I could do it, so
I think I’m ready.” I wasn’t ready. Not to go it alone, and if I wasn’t riding with Manning, I might as well be by myself.
Manning’s expression didn’t change, but he cracked a knuckle. “Maybe it’s better to wait.”
I crossed my arms over myself. When Manning ignored me, everything hurt, but when he looked right at me, like now, the contents of my stomach turned upside down, as if my insides were doing acrobatics. “I’m going to do it now. With Corbin.”
“You like him,” Tiffany teased. “I don’t blame you. All the Swensons are totally gorgeous.”
Manning put a firm hand on my shoulder, physically keeping me where I stood. “I’ll go with you.”
I cocked my head. I had no intention of hunting down Corbin—maybe he wasn’t as intimidating as I thought, but I wasn’t about to approach one of the most popular guys in school for a kiddie ride. Manning didn’t want me to do it, though, and fighting with him was better than being ignored by him. “You already went. With Tiffany. Remember?”
His hand warmed the entire left side of my body. By the look on his face, the sarcasm in my comment didn’t amuse him. “Do you want to ride it or not?”
“Yes. With Corbin.”
Manning shook his head. “You’re too young to be alone with someone his age—”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Tiffany beat me to it. “It’s a Ferris wheel, not Seven Minutes in Heaven. Don’t you remember being sixteen?”
“Too well. That’s why I’m saying no.”
“You can’t tell me no.” I scoffed. “I’m not a kid, and even if I were, you still couldn’t tell me no.”
He looked at me a moment, then pulled me to his side with one strong, heavy arm around my shoulders. It wasn’t an intimate gesture. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took a page out of Tiffany’s book and rumpled my hair. Still, I was pressed against him, surrounded in his soapy scent, his hip against my side, his enormous hand squeezing my shoulder.
“I’m going to win you a prize,” he said. “Anything you want. Pick it, and I’ll get it for you. No matter how big it is.”
He no longer sounded angry or jealous or even cautious, and that was a first. Was this how Tiffany always got what she wanted from men—by doing what they told her not to? “Really?” I asked.
[Something in the Way 01.0] Something in the Way Page 6