“No,” I said slowly. “You go.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I know you’re having a little bit of a tough time here right now. I don’t want you to have to stay if it’s going to make you unhappy.”
You don’t know the half of it, I thought.
“I’m sure,” I said. “You should go and I should stay.” I was afraid if I told my mom what had just happened with David she’d feel bad and tell me to come home with her.
And I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to say no again.
My mom went back to packing, and I went out to the deck. Standing there looking at the bay, I tried to convince myself that I’d be okay on Cape Cod without her. It was beautiful. Sarah and Jenna were my friends. Okay, I could never face Adam or his brother again, but how hard could it be to avoid them just because the only people I knew within a thousand miles were people we had in common.
Luckily my phone rang before I could get too hysterical about what the rest of my summer was going to be like. It was a Cape Cod number; I recognized the area code.
“Hello?” I said.
“Kate?” said a female voice.
“Yes.”
“It’s Natasha.”
My heart started hammering. “Natasha,” I said. “Hi.” She spoke quickly. “I got your number from my mom. I’m really sorry.”
“What?” I said, confused. “You don’t need to be sorry about calling.”
“No,” she said. “I mean I’m sorry about what I said.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. I sat down and covered my face with my hand, even though she couldn’t see me. “I handled everything so badly. I was just really angry about … something else.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I think I was too.”
There was a pause, and then I said, “So do you want to have another lesson?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. And even though I didn’t exactly blame her, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
“Sure,” I said. “I understand.”
“But I do want to form a writers’ group,” she said.
“What?” I said, even though I’d heard her.
“I said, ‘I do want to form a writers’ group.’ So are you in or out?”
“Um …” Natasha was younger than I was, but she seemed pretty smart. And she was definitely serious about reading and writing.
“Come on,” said Natasha. “What do you have to lose?”
It was true. What did I have to lose?
“Okay,” I said, and just saying it made me feel happy. Maybe I could never face Adam again, but at least I hadn’t totally destroyed my relationship with Natasha.
I pushed Adam out of my mind. “Okay,” I said again. “Let’s meet the day after tomorrow. That will give us time to write something.” The thought of having a deadline got me excited.
“First assignment?” asked Natasha.
“Hang on a second,” I said. I went inside and dug the book Ms. Baker had given me out of the bottom of my underwear drawer, where it had lain, untouched, ever since I’d unpacked it. I flipped through the pages, each of which had a number and a writing exercise on it. A few were cool, like the one that said “Write a story entirely in dialogue,” but they didn’t seem as if they would work for both poetry and prose. When I hit page twenty-five, I almost laughed out loud. Then I went outside and picked up the phone.
“Ready?” I said.
“Ready,” said Natasha.
“‘Write about a trip from the perspective of somebody who doesn’t want to take it,’” I read.
“Oh, that’s good,” said Natasha. She thought for a second. “I’m going to write a poem about how when it’s cold I hate getting out of bed to pee in the middle of the night.”
I laughed. “Excellent.” I was impressed by how fast she’d come up with the idea.
“So I’ll see you Sunday,” she said. “What time?”
In case I wanted to have the morning to write, I said, “Four o’clock.”
“Library?” she asked.
“Actually,” I said, “let’s meet at the gazebo outside the library. I need to reclaim it.”
“From what?” she asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“Cool,” said Natasha. “Maybe you’ll write it someday.”
“You know, maybe I will.”
MY MOM AND TINA AND I went for lunch at this little burger place on Route 6, and then my mom hugged us both and turned the car west, toward Boston, while we headed east, to the house. It was really weird to drive back without her. I couldn’t help feeling like, What am I doing here? I mean, I didn’t know Tina and Henry all that well, and Sarah and I were friendly and everything, but it wasn’t like we were friends the way Laura and I were (or had been) friends, like it’s totally normal that I’d be staying at her house for days (or even weeks) on end. Thinking about Laura made me feel kind of bad for how I hadn’t wanted to hear about her and Brad very much. I mean, if there’s one thing I’d learned from my … thing with Adam, it was that liking people makes you lose your mind a little.
“Would you like to come stay in the main house now that your mom’s gone?” asked Tina as we pulled into the driveway.
“You mean so I won’t fall victim to the local serial killer?”
She turned off the engine. “You know, I just thought it would be nice to have you closer. But when you put it like that, I guess it’s imperative that you relocate immediately.”
I was really glad she’d asked me to move. Despite my having freaked out at the idea of sharing a room with my mom when we first arrived, the idea of not sharing the guesthouse with her (or with anyone, for that matter) was even freakier. I threw my stuff into my suitcase and dragged it up the path and over to Tina and Henry’s.
The guest room was on the third floor of the house, all by itself with its own little bathroom. It was tiny. There were sloping walls, a ceiling that wouldn’t have allowed a grown man to stand up straight, and barely enough square footage for a single bed and a narrow chest of drawers. But the second I saw it I fell in love. It totally made me think of a writer’s garret, and from the bed you could see out the window over the tops of the trees to the bay. On the dresser was a glossy coffee table book called The Beaches of Cape Cod and a stack of beautiful cream-colored note cards, each with a line drawing of the Dryer’s Cove town hall. Tina gave me fresh sheets and towels, and after I’d made the bed, I just sat on it, wrapped up in the brightly colored patchwork quilt, looking out at the view.
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Sarah, simultaneously knocking on and pushing open my door.
“Hi,” I said. I hadn’t even heard her car pull into the driveway.
“Hi,” she said, and even though she already had, she asked, “can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Your mom called me at work and said good-bye,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “She left so fast.”
“Yeah. I think it’s some kind of make-or-break time.”
“Intense. Are you okay?”
I crossed my legs so she would have more room to sit. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Do you want to watch a movie at Jenna’s later?”
I remembered the amazing dinner we’d all eaten there. Had it only been a few nights ago? “Who’s going?”
I was relieved that Sarah knew exactly what I meant. “Well, not Adam because, according to Lawrence, he’s skipped town.” I didn’t feel like admitting to Sarah how and why I’d actually already acquired that particular tidbit of information, so I just nodded. “And not David Carpenter, because I totally cannot face him. That’s why Jenna and I didn’t go to The Shack last night.” For the first time since I’d known her, Sarah looked acutely embarrassed. Her face blushed pink and she lifted her shoulders and shuddered. “Ugh,” she added.
I didn’t exactly want to talk about David Carpenter, but at least Sarah had said she didn’t want to see him. Which seemed a little strange given ho
w crushed out she was on him. “Why can’t you face David?” I asked. Thinking about it, I really couldn’t picture Sarah with the guy I’d seen on the porch that morning. When she’d described him as outdoorsy and manly, I’d pictured someone a little less … Grizzly Adams.
She shook her head. “It’s too embarrassing.” “Tell me.” She turned to me, opened her mouth, and then shut it immediately. “Can’t.”
Maybe she knew something really awful about him, something I could use to blackmail him. Breathe one word to your brother about what I said to you and I’ll tell everyone about … . I leaned toward Sarah and took her shoulders in my hands. “Sarah, I’m not kidding. You have got to tell me why you can’t face David Carpenter.”
“Aaaah,” yelped Sarah, thrusting me off her and curling up at the other end of the bed with her head as far away from me as she could get it. Suddenly she started speaking really fast. “Because last time I saw him was at our friend’s graduation party in New York, and I’d had all this champagne and I told him I was totally in love with him.” As soon as she finished her sentence, she whimpered and buried her head under a throw pillow.
“It’s too awful.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Oh my God,” I said.
“What?” she asked, lifting her face. “You can’t believe what a loser I am, right?”
“Hardly,” I said. I couldn’t look at her so I dropped my eyes to the quilt and started pulling at a loose string. “This is going to sound totally impossible, but—”
“Yes …” she prompted.
“The exact same thing happened to me.”
Her face was the picture of confusion. “You told David Carpenter you loved him?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not what you think.”
By the time I finished relating the story of my morning run, Sarah and I were both under the quilt.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” asked Sarah.
“Neither of us can leave the house until Labor Day?”
“Exactly,” she said. “I’m calling Jenna. I’ll tell her it’s safer if she comes here tonight.”
“Good plan,” I said. Sarah stood up and grabbed her shoes off the floor. “Tell her to bring provisions,” I added as she went out the door.
“Most definitely,” said Sarah. “At least a month’s worth.”
Now that I’d told Sarah what had happened with David that morning, it didn’t seem nearly so bad as it had before. It was as if telling David Carpenter you were in love with him, purposely or mistakenly, was a rite of passage, something akin to failing your driver’s test or getting caught cheating on a Spanish test. Sure it’s embarrassing and awful, but it happens to everyone.
And even though I knew Sarah had been joking about our spending the entire summer locked in her house, it was pretty cool how she hadn’t minded the plan—like being forced to hang out with me for the next few weeks didn’t bother her at all.
In fact, she’d kind of seemed to like the idea.
THE FIRST THING I DID when I woke up the next morning was start working on my story. I only had a day to finish it, or at least get it to the point where I wouldn’t mind showing it to someone. I wrote for over two hours, and when I stopped it wasn’t because I’d run out of ideas but because my phone rang. When I saw it was Meg, my heart stopped. What if our parents had made some kind of decision and called her first?
“Hey,” I said.
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “Do you?”
“Nothing,” I said. I realized it was stupid to think something had already been decided. My mom hadn’t even landed in Salt Lake yet.
“Ugh,” she said. “This is driving me crazy.”
“Totally,” I said.
“I’m thinking about coming up to Cape Cod next week.”
“You are?”
“Well, my class is over on Thursday and then I’m just … hanging around here. And New York sucks in summer. Nobody’s here.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’s because they’re all here.”
Meg laughed. “Anyway, Tina invited me, so if it’s okay with you, I think I’ll come.”
It was cool how my mom and my sister had both asked what I wanted for the rest of my summer. I mean, I’m not sure that Meg would have said okay if I’d said Don’t come, but still—at least she pretended it was up to me.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “It would be great if you came.” I wasn’t totally lying either. If something was going to go down with our parents, I wanted Meg to be in the room with me when I heard about it.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll check train schedules and let you guys know in the next couple of days.” “Great,” I said. “I’ll talk to you soon.” Talking to Meg made me feel antsy. What was going to happen to my family?
I walked to the window and back to the bed, but the room wasn’t exactly big enough for serious pacing. The second time I crossed it, my eyes landed on the pile of note cards in the basket, and I remembered that before leaving Salt Lake City I’d promised to write Laura a postcard every day. It was as if I’d made that promise in a different lifetime. Should I call her? If I waited any longer to fill her in on what was happening in my life, we’d run through all my minutes for the rest of the year. Where would I start? Adam? My parents? Brad?
I grabbed a card off the top of the pile and opened it. This town has witnessed the most bizarre/awful experiences of my life, I wrote. Call me when you have at least ten hours to talk. And then I added, I miss you. Writing her name and address on the envelope felt good. Familiar. And it was true. I did miss Laura.
I showered and dressed and went downstairs, carrying the card with me. I’d bring it to the post office later. Nobody was home and I stood on the porch and ate a banana, looking out at the view. It was a gorgeous sunny day, the sky a crisp bright blue, with a just a few clouds floating high above me. It was so perfect that if someone had shown me a painting of the scene, I would have said it was clichéd.
I headed down to the beach and sat on the warm sand, remembering how at one time the view had creeped me out. Now it made me feel calm.
Looking out at the water, I tried not to think about what was going to happen with my parents. There was nothing I could do about it either way. I stretched out my back, reaching my arms up to the sky. And there was nothing I could do about Adam either. As I made my way up the path to the house I accepted reality: David would tell Adam what I’d said, Adam would think I was a loser, we’d avoid each other until I left, end of story.
Only Lady Brett Ashley gets to be Lady Brett Ashley.
There was one problem, though. If Adam and I were going to avoid each other for the rest of the summer, what was he doing standing on the deck of the Cooper-Melnick house?
I’d gotten almost to the stairs before I saw him. “Hi,” he said. “Hi,” I said. He was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans and hiking boots that appeared to actually have been hiked in, and he looked so cute it made my throat ache. I realized David hadn’t lost any time telling Adam what I’d told him. Clearly Adam had decided it was only fair to come by and explain that I should probably get over him since he’d been in New Hampshire reconciling with his girlfriend.
“So, can I tell you the weirdest thing?” he said, and he sat down on the top step. “Um, sure,” I said, even though I’d had more than my fair share of weird lately. “Okay, I went up to New Hampshire to—” Did he think nobody had told me Molly was in New Hampshire for the summer? “I know why you went to New Hampshire,” I said. “You do?” he said, genuinely surprised. “More or less,” I said. Was there any way I could pretend I’d never said those things to David? When you came down to it, it was David’s word against mine. Then again, why would David make up a story like that? Dude, I don’t know. Clearly your brother has something seriously wrong with him. The silence stretched out between us.
“Um, when did you get home?” I asked. He really hadn’t been gone very long. Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to me: could
he have gone to New Hampshire to pick Molly up and bring her to Cape Cod? I remembered Jenna and Sarah talking the day of the whale watch. I think she’s probably coming up in August like usual. My stomach lurched.
“I haven’t even been home yet,” said Adam. “I just came straight here.”
Wait … was it possible David hadn’t said anything about our “conversation” yesterday? I gave Adam a long look, trying to figure out what exactly he knew. But he was looking past me at the water over my shoulder.
“Oh,” I said. If he didn’t know yet, I could play it cool, pretend everything between us was just fine, that I’d ended things because I just wasn’t into him anymore. “Well, it’s … it’s great to see you.”
“Why am I not believing you?” he asked.
Okay, this was completely hopeless. Even if he hadn’t heard about what I’d said to David yet, he would soon. “What do you want, Adam? Why are you here? I know you went to New Hampshire to get back together with Molly.”
Adam suddenly burst out laughing, but I didn’t exactly see what was so funny, and I didn’t feel like talking to him anymore. I turned to go the long way around so I could get into the house by the side door.
“Wait,” he said. “Please. Wait.” In spite of myself, I stopped. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you think you know, but … I did go to New Hampshire to see Molly.” I turned to face him. “And you’re telling me this because …”
“Because I thought you might like to know that the reason I drove to New Hampshire to see Molly was that I thought it wasn’t nice to break up with her on the phone.”
“You—”
“And then last night, when I was on the first night of what turned out to be the world’s shortest solo fishing trip, my brother called and told me some girl had told him she was really into him, only he had this idea that maybe she was really saying she was into me.”
We looked at each other. “You broke up with Molly?” “I broke up with Molly.” I squinted at him suspiciously. “Why did you break up with Molly?” “Because I knew I really liked you. And I figured even if you didn’t like me back, I couldn’t get back together with Molly when I’d met another girl I liked as much as I liked you.”
Girlfriend Material Page 17