I wonder where she is now. I wonder if I’m still important to her.
I sleep late, awakened by an undercurrent I can feel more than hear. I slide out of bed, throw on shorts and a shirt, then slip into the hall. Voices rise from the patio: Annie’s, sharp with anger, and her mother’s, mollifying.
Since I can’t hide up in my room all day and I don’t have a plane ticket out of here, I figure I might as well go downstairs and face whatever’s up.
I make a lot of noise as I walk into the kitchen. If they’re talking about me, I don’t want to hear it. The chatting I overheard under the gazebo last night was enough overheard conversation for a lifetime.
I say a loud good morning to Carmen. The chatter outside abruptly stops. I feel the tug in my stomach. It’s not always great to be right. Obviously, they were talking about me. And I can guess: Annie’s probably telling her mother it isn’t fair that she’s stuck with me; her mom is probably telling her that it’s not for that much longer and she should be nice to people who are less fortunate than she is.
Great. Now it’s all out in the open. I’m officially Annie’s social charity case.
Aunt Sarah comes into the kitchen and gives me a fake smile so big you could drive a truck through it. “Good morning, Stephanie. I’m driving up to the club for my lesson today, if you girls want a ride.”
“We have our bikes,” Annie glowers.
“Well, okay,” Aunt Happy continues. “But, if you change your mind . . . I’m leaving in half an hour.”
Annie takes a blueberry yogurt out of the fridge and heads for the stairs. “I’ll meet you in the garage in ten minutes,” she barks at me. “If you’re coming.”
I give a small, little shrug that she doesn’t even see because she’s already turned her back to me. I’d like to just stay up in my room, but I know that Aunt Sarah is having lunch guests on the patio after her tennis lesson, and what if they wanted a tour of the house or something, and she opened my bedroom door to show them her beautiful taste in decorating, and there I was, huddled in the bed, like a hunchback in the attic?
I eat half a bagel really fast and run upstairs to get my bathing suit. Right before I leave my room, I turn around toward the bookshelf. I need the comfort of words, but Nancy Drew is dead to me now. I skim the titles, then grab a biography on Harriet Tubman. We covered her in school. She was a brave woman who risked her life to free slaves. I’m only going to read about real people now. Real people who did real things. No more fairy tales. I meet Annie in the garage for a long and silent ride to the club.
When we get to the deck at the club it’s sunny and really hot. Emily, Leslie and Eva are in lounge chairs today instead of in a close nest of towels just on the deck. The chair between Leslie and Eva is open, reserved for the queen. Annie walks right to it and drops down her towel. There’s a chair open on the end next to Emily. I put down my stuff there.
There’s a pounding on the stairs and JKIII, Matt, Brian, Ben and Carl run up, soaking from the pool, and shake water all over Leslie and Annie, who fake-scream. I see Andrew behind them and my mouth dries. I turn to Emily and say, “Do you need some lotion?” to try to be engaged in conversation and not expected to look at him. She’s bent in toward the other girls and doesn’t even respond.
None of the girls have said anything to me about throwing up all over Andrew last night, including Annie, but apparently the guy world is something different. It appears that it’s all they’ve been talking about all morning, judging from the reenactment that Matt and Brian are engaged in where Matt is saying, “Oh, Andrew, you’re so hot, you’re so hot, you’re so agggghhhhh.” And he does a mock hurl on Brian.
Everyone laughs long and hard. All the girls included, except, of course, me.
I feel even sicker than I did last night. I know other kids must throw up when they drink and it’s probably something that would go away if I just could be like Annie and make some sort of flirtatious joke out of it. But I have no idea how to do that and I can see that Andrew doesn’t either. I’ve embarrassed him in the eyes of his friends and I’m sure he’ll never forgive me. He can’t even look at me.
I lie against the back of my seat and just close my eyes. I never even realized how good I had it at my old school when I was just invisible. I had always thought that being ignored was the bottom of the social pyramid because you didn’t really exist to anyone. Now I know there’s something even worse. Being visible and then disgraced. Once you’re disgraced, you can never just be invisible. The second people see you, they remember The Story. You feel the hot flames of shame, over and over, with every knowing glance and every whisper.
I open my eyes for a minute and grab my backpack. I root around for the Tubman bio. The tension in my body starts to ease as I devour the story about a strong-minded runaway slave who led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
Amal, the bombshell, and her red-haired friend walk up the deck. The guys are playing Nerf football but I can tell they’ve spotted them. I sneak a glance at Annie. She puts a huge smile over her blinding teeth and walks right toward them.
“Hey,” she calls out when she’s halfway there. “Are you guys new here? Do you want to come over and join us?”
I can’t see Amal’s face, but she and the redhead sort of shrug, then walk toward us. I think Annie must have gone insane until I catch Eva’s expression. Her eyebrows are slightly raised in a half-mocking yet congratulatory arch. I suddenly get it. Annie is a general making friends with the enemy before the enemy knows she’s the enemy. Very, very smart.
Amal stands over us with her towel. Annie has us all move our chairs back so we can make room for Amal and her friend’s chairs. Annie watches over the movement like she’s invited over an empress from another land, and then she makes the introductions. Leslie, as usual, says “Hi” in a funny voice. Emily looks sleepy, and Eva sharp and brittle, waiting to see if the new person will make her social position with Annie more or less stable. Will Annie need her old lieutenant to strategize with, or will the newcomer totally replace any need for Eva at all?
When Annie gets to me, she says, “This is Stephanie. She’s from Boston and visiting my family for a little while. Her uncle was really good friends with my dad when they were growing up, so when she first got here, we pretended we were cousins, just for fun.”
Her words hit me like knives. She’s done it now, she’s severed my lifeline. I’m not part of her family so no one in her group has to include me anymore. Emily and Leslie delicately turn their heads from me as if it’d be in poor taste to see raw humiliation so up close and personal.
Eva glows. She turns to me with a smile of the deepest satisfaction. “I knew it,” she says, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I mean, look at them. Hel-lo. I mean, could any two people be more different?”
They all pause to run their eyes worshipfully over Annie, then cruelly over me. Our contrast is brutal. The bright and the dark. The treasure and the trash. Now that Annie has deftly woven in this bit of information that frees her from any blood connection with me, it’s just a matter of time before she lets it all come out. What she’s had to deal with for these long days. The burden of being stuck with the pathetic offspring of a total alkie.
I get smaller and smaller on the sundeck as Annie bustles further in her role as social director, getting more and more information out of the newcomers. The redhead’s name is Kathy. She’s actually a member of the club, but she never comes and she goes to a different school than Annie and her friends so they’ve never met. She was friends with the bombshell in Georgia before she moved here three years ago. Their dads worked together. Both the bombshell and her friend talk totally southern. Their accents are the last nail in my coffin. The one chip I had to maybe get back in this group was my accent. Now my uniqueness is gone.
Someone throws the Nerf football off the deck and the guys amble over like sweaty warriors. Annie’s eyes are extra bright when she introduces JKIII to Amal as if she’s
just waiting for JKIII’s face to show interest. He only acts polite and Annie tosses her hair wildly up into the sun as if she’s a horse on the open range, head of the herd, with no competitors.
Annie does more introductions. While everyone’s saying “hi-nice-to-meet-you,” I have a chance to study the southern goddess. Her black hair is heavy and wavy like my mother’s and like mine. Her eyes are black and enormous, but not like a woman’s, more like a little girl who has a secret Raggedy Ann at home in her closet she still hugs when nobody is l ooking.
Her face doesn’t match her body, which is so grown up, all the boys seem almost afraid of her.
When she speaks she seems even younger than fourteen, as if she’s unsure of herself and shy. Annie’s asking her questions about where she came from and why she moved here. She says her dad used to teach chemistry at some university in Georgia but came here for business.
The more questions Annie asks, the more Amal seems to shrink and Annie to grow. Annie acts interested in hearing her story, but her questions are really needles that prick the bombshell’s face to show her quiet, stumbling nature and her unease with the spotlight.
Annie closes by saying, “You’re going to have a great time here,” and doesn’t even lose one ounce of her aggressively shimmering light when the bombshell takes off her sundress to reveal anew her amazing landscape of curves and valleys.
It’s after six. Clouds streak the deepening blue sky and a hint of cool bites the air. An adult looking at us on the sundeck would just think the scene was of some kids lying out in the sun, but really, so much has happened in the last couple of hours. Annie has waged a formidable covert battle and won. She has taken a girl who is prettier than she is and made her beholden to her. Annie has demonstrated that she is keeper of the keys, and that all things included in this ready-made group of fabulous friends come only through her largesse.
Amal now automatically looks to Annie when any decisions need to be made. The queen has added her latest subject.
We’re packing up our stuff and everyone’s going to Annie’s to get something to eat and play pool. Her parents are going to the Hollywood Bowl tonight and Annie’s already texted their housekeeper, who, of course, also has a BlackBerry, to tell her that people are coming over for a party and to make sure Megan’s out of the way. Her brothers left yesterday for school so Annie will have full reign of her house.
We glide down the hill from the club. Matt and Brian race each other. JKIII rides by Annie, grabbing her butt. The goddess is on Annie’s left. Kathy, her attendant, rides next to her as if to protect her full figure from any grasping wind. Kathy is starting school tomorrow. Annie and her friends still have a couple more days.
My dad better get me out of here before then.
We pour into Annie’s house. Carmen, as instructed, is upstairs playing some baby game with Megan. Annie throws chips into bowls and tells me to get sodas. We go into the billiard room and Annie says, “Hey, Amal, you want to break?” like she’s known people named “Amal” her whole life.
Amal giggles and says she’s never played before and that she’ll just watch. Annie says, “No watching allowed, you can be with me.” She gives Amal a pool cue, tosses one to JKIII and says to him, with a last kicking of dust on my grave, “Tell Andrew he’s your partner.”
The game goes on for forever. Amal has a baby voice on top of her southern accent, which everyone just seems to find so charming.
In normal times, I’d consider eating chips to help promote my boob growth, but I’m never going to have any friends or boyfriends again anyway, so what’s the point?
Amal is terrible at pool but no one playing seems to care. Annie’s become her big sister. Andrew has become the Big Demonstrator. Twice, he’s stood behind her and put the cue in her hands to line up her shot.
I float through the party, a stranger from a strange planet, passing little knots of conversations that are impossible to join.
Their pool game ends just as the doorbell rings for the pizza guy. Annie screams she’s coming. The guys follow her to the door to carry the boxes of pizza into the kitchen. Annie tells me to get the paper plates.
I don’t really like being ordered around, but there’s not much else you can do but try to help once you’ve been disgraced.
All the guys fold their pizza in half and shove it in their mouths. All the girls bite off tiny pieces and act like they’re not that hungry even though I know they are. Everyone keeps asking Amal questions about Georgia and having her say words with her accent. It’s too painful to watch.
I slip outside, planning to say I’m too hot if anyone asks, but nobody notices. I’ve been out there alone, sitting in the gazebo at the far end of the yard, for more than an hour when the rest of them tumble out to play night volleyball.
I can hear their shouts glide on the wind. Laughter rolls up in short duets, high for the girls, low for the guys. No one is wondering where I am. No concerned faces come and ask what’s up with me.
Shadows of two of the girls leave the volleyball net and I make my way up behind them. Leslie and Emily sit on one of the stone benches taking a cigarette break. I’m silent as I approach. Leslie picks her hair up off her neck like she’s a little sweaty from the game.
I’m just about to open up, take the risk and say, “What’s up” or something, like maybe, even if I’m not Annie’s cousin and even if I did barf all over Andrew last night, they’ll at least think they can talk to me because I’m Annie’s houseguest. I clear my throat and start to open my mouth when I hear Amal scream, “So this is what y’all do in California,” and Andrew tackles her, making sure he lands beneath her, protecting her from the ground.
I swallow the words in a sawdust throat, then scuttle back into the shadows.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Amal’s crush on Andrew scurries around our nest of towels like dry leaves before a tornado. It rises in the air to zing through the quick glances between Annie, Leslie and Emily, then finally rests in my neck muscles and forehead that feel as if they’ve been hit by a baseball bat.
Eva’s not at the club yet and neither are any of the guys. I lie on my towel and close my eyes. Even though I slipped upstairs to bed a little while after Andrew’s big tackle last night, I didn’t sleep for hours. At first, it was just too noisy. Music blared and people shouted. Then later, when the music wasn’t so loud, it was the quiet laughter that kept my eyes stuck open, high, golden notes of merriment that leapt into my room and fell over my body like a cage.
I slit my lids to see what’s happening. Am I so far out of the group that there will be no official mourning for me? Will absolutely none of the flurry of feminine support that surrounded Annie when JKIII made his comment about Amal being hot come to my aid? Will there be no conversation at all about how I liked a boy, who seemed to like me, who now likes someone else?
Annie says the worst possible thing. “Where did you go off to last night? Carl was looking for you.”
Ah, now my role is clear. None of them would ever like Carl, but if I’m stuck hanging around, maybe Annie can pawn me off on him. Maybe he will keep me out of her hair until the blessed time when her mother can shove my butt on a plane and get me out of her life. Outrage makes my tongue dry. How dare she toss Carl at me like a scrap from Amal’s feasting on Andrew?
I pour some lotion on my stomach, concentrating on making a perfect circle. Neither Leslie nor Emily speak. Annie’s word is law. There will be no rallying of support and outpouring of sympathy. I have slipped from my lofty perch as a cousin of the queen and slid into the vague role of peasant. I am now The Expendable One. Just like Carl is expendable in their guy world, carrying their stuff or picking up everyone’s food at the club when their number is called.
In addition to my utter demotion, there exists the much more important issue of the new force in town. Nothing can interfere with the courting of Amal as Friend. Nothing can stop the crescendo of energy required to gather her into their midst, mark her with thei
r words, phrases and private jokes so that they never have to fear her coming at them. Never have to turn a corner and see her stealing one of their own, one of their guys. The fact that she stole Andrew from me is of no consequence. I don’t matter.
Carl comes up to us and sits by Emily. He says hi to all of us. Everyone says hi back to him, and when I do it, he blushes and Leslie nudges him in the arm and giggles. Annie gives me a sharp look and I force a half giggle. I feel as if I’ve just opened another box of faded hand-me-downs from my older cousins.
Emily and Leslie giggle again. My mouth is too stiff to go up into another giggle. I still feel a sharp needle in my heart when I think about Andrew. I really liked him, and then poof, like that, it’s all over.
I need to turn over on my stomach, close my eyes and fade into the world of Harriet Tubman, just to get my bearings. Since I’ve buried Nancy Drew I get headaches from having to be me for so long.
When I’m only on my side, just about to roll onto my stomach, slapping and pushing rumbles from the stairs and I know that the rest of the group is here. I hurry and fall onto my towel. I don’t have time to unhook my strap and I hope nobody will know I’m faking concentrating on my tan because the girls never leave the straps across their backs.
The herd thunders toward us. There’s a jostling around the towels. Amal’s southern accent is being tried on by all the guys, especially Andrew. Annie and Amal lie next to each other and speak in excited whispers. I hear Annie say, “because both our names start with A,” and they both laugh.
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