“My God, Kat,” Harper said, horrified. “You could’ve killed him.”
I loved my cousin, but her steadfast insistence on keeping me in check freaking annoyed me sometimes. “I know, but I didn’t.”
“Who was he?” Aunt Carrie asked from the couch where she was curled up with her coffee and a book.
“No idea.” I opened a container of blueberries and dumped some in the batter.
“Didn’t you say there were new people moving in?” Harper asked.
Duh. Of course. Obviously, he had to be one of the infamous Reeses, who’d taken over the Cantings’ cottage. I wondered if they’d noticed the missing light bulb yet. “So, yeah,” I said, handing the mixing bowl to Harper so she could start the pancakes. “I think I might have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new neighbors.”
The three of us sat down to eat, filling our plates from the huge platter of pancakes and fruit in the middle of their small table.
“Heard from your aunt Beth lately, honey?” Aunt Carrie asked me as she speared a strawberry from the fruit tray.
“Not since Christmas. You?”
She shook her head, chewing. “You know how she is . . . always on the go, too busy to return her big sister’s calls.”
I nodded even though I didn’t really know “how she was.” I barely had any contact with Aunt Beth. She’d lived in England all my life and I’d only met her twice. Once when I was six, when she came to visit for a couple weeks in the summer, and once when I was twelve, when my dads and I went to London on vacation. Well, theoretically I’d met her three times, but I never counted that first time, seeing as I was just an embryo.
Aunt Beth was Pop’s second youngest sister . . . and also my egg donor. When my dads decided they wanted a baby, she was the one who’d selflessly offered up her eggs for implantation. Growing up, my friends were always fascinated and slightly confused when I told them I was biologically related to both my fathers. Back then, I loved telling the story of how I came to be. It made me interesting. Unique. Of course, once my classmates and I hit preteen age and had some sex education under our belts, the first question asked was always something like, “Wait, so your father had sex with your aunt?” To this, I always rolled my eyes. For one, Dad was one hundred percent gay and always had been. For another, how weird would that be? The person who’d carried me and ultimately given birth to me hadn’t been my aunt. For that part, they’d used a woman named Valerie from a surrogacy agency who wasn’t genetically related to any of us. My friends usually lost interest after I started explaining to them how the fertility clinic had used one father’s sperm and the other father’s sister’s eggs, mixed them in a dish like pancake batter, and then inserted the concoction into the surrogate. Of course, that was back when I was still comfortable discussing my dad’s sperm. Shudder.
So yes, my aunt Beth was technically my “bio mom” too, but I’d never thought of her like that any more than she thought of me as her daughter. She was simply the woman who’d bravely and generously donated her eggs so that my dads could realize their dream of having a child who was biologically connected to both of them. And the surrogate? She was a vessel, nourishing me and keeping me safe until it was time to hand me over to my real parents. I’d never wanted or needed a mother. My dads had always been enough. And I had Aunt Carrie, who always said she would’ve been my donor if it hadn’t taken her ten years and several thousand dollars’ worth of fertility treatments to have Harper. Harper and I often joked that we were too competitive to share her eggs anyway.
After brunch, Aunt Carrie took the leftover pancakes over to my dads while Harper and I took off for the lake. The sun had finally made an appearance and was quickly burning off the clouds. Maybe later it would get nice enough to lie out on my dock and start working on our tans.
Harper and I walked along the rocky shoreline, talking and jokingly looking for pretty stones like we used to when we were smaller. My room at the cottage was still filled with jars of interesting rocks, summer relics that lived there year-round. I didn’t take home souvenirs at the end of August like some people. To me, summer only existed at the lake.
As we approached the McCurdys’ dock, I almost grabbed Harper’s arm and turned back. Nate McCurdy was standing at the edge of it, holding his cell phone up to the sky as if trying to get a signal. Idiot. Nate and his family had been coming to the lake as long as we had; he should’ve known how incompatible Millard Lake and modern technology could be.
“Try standing on your head while singing ‘Jingle Bells’,” Harper called to him.
Great, I thought. Now he’s going to speak to us.
Nate spun around, almost dropping his phone in the water. “Oh hey, ladies.” He recovered quickly, presenting us with his signature smarmy grin. Yes, he was the kind of teenage boy who called girls ladies, which was likely part of the reason why he never got any. Nate was good-looking, if you liked the gelled-hair preppy type, but he was just too douchy to take seriously.
“Hey, McTurdy,” I said, resurrecting the nickname I’d given him when we were twelve. It was still funny.
“Hey, Hurricane Katrina. How’s it blowing?” At this, he cracked up.
“You do know that Hurricane Katrina killed almost two thousand people and left millions homeless, right?” I reminded him for the millionth time. I didn’t like being referred to as a devastating natural disaster. Especially hours after I’d almost killed the new neighbor with my ATV.
“Who are you trying to call, McCurdy?” Harper asked, crossing her arms as she peered up at him from the shore. “Your girlfriend?”
I snorted. Any girlfriend Nate had ever managed to snag turned out to be short-lived. Not that it stopped him from trying. He’d been working on charming Harper and me for years, but we were too smart and self-respecting to fall for it.
“Why, are you jealous?” Nate said, slipping his phone into the front pocket of his board shorts and moving closer to us.
“More like sympathetic,” she replied. “Toward her, I mean.”
I snorted again, even louder. Normally, Harper was pretty shy, but Nate brought out the snark in her.
“For your information,” Nate said, sitting on the edge of the dock, facing us. “I was trying to text Emmett to let him know that the bonfire was officially on for tonight.”
“Who’s Emmett?” I asked.
Nate smirked, like he enjoyed dangling scraps of bait for us to nibble on. “Emmett’s the guy who moved into the Cantings’ cottage. I met him earlier while I was looking for some dry kindling in the woods. I mentioned that I planned to have a bonfire tonight if the weather cleared up and told him he should come. He said okay. Seems like a cool guy.”
Harper looked at me and raised a blond eyebrow. Emmett. The cute guy who’d yelled at me in the woods that morning was named Emmett. And he was going to McTurdy’s summer-kick-off bonfire on the beach, an annual event that Harper and I never missed because his mom always bought enough s’mores provisions to feed a small army.
“We’re looking forward to meeting him,” Harper said, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Aren’t we, Kat?”
My mind flashed on those blue, blue eyes, burning with anger and aimed directly at me. I swallowed. “Yeah. Can’t wait.”
chapter 5
“He probably won’t even recognize you,” Harper assured me that evening while we were in my yard, batting around the soccer ball. “You’re, like, covered head-to-toe when you ride.”
“True,” I said, gently tapping the ball with the inside of my foot and then flicking it toward her. “But he did see my eyes, and they aren’t exactly a common color.”
She stopped the ball with her knee and then kicked it back almost simultaneously, making me run for it. Once upon a time, Harper and I had been pretty evenly matched during these casual scrimmages. But I’d quit playing at twelve while she continued on. She was hoping to play for her college next year. Still, I’d never really lost my competitive spirit.
&n
bsp; “Getting kind of rusty there, Henley,” Harper taunted me as I ran, out of breath, back to my position.
“Shut it, Griggs.”
The game was on when we started calling each other by our last names. Laughing, I hauled my foot back and booted the ball as hard as I could, sending it flying over her head and down the green wooden stairs to the lake. A moment later, we heard a dull splash.
I looked back at my cousin. “Rusty, you say?”
She stuck her tongue out at me and then went to retrieve the ball. The second she was out of sight, I collapsed on the grass, exhausted. I was rusty. Feeling forgotten muscles throb from disuse made me miss soccer all the more. As usual, the longing came with a side dish of resentment when I thought back to the reason I’d quit in the first place.
Before we got our condo in the city, we’d lived in a small town called Oakfield, about twenty minutes away. My dads had left their cramped apartment downtown and moved us to suburbia because they figured that was what a kid needed—a regular house and grass and yard sales and good, safe schools. But one thing Oakfield didn’t have was a lot of diversity in its residents. The town mostly consisted of traditional families, moms and dads and kids. We were the only “dads and kid” family in the entire town, and eventually I started noticing. Not only were we different, but some people treated us like we were different. It made my dads sad.
When I was around four or five, I figured out a way to help. Whenever I saw someone staring or heard someone make a hurtful comment, I’d do whatever I could to divert their attention off my dads and onto me. I’d start dancing, or singing, or faking an injury, or pretending to be a horse. Anything to turn their heads my way. As time went on, I started seeking attention even when my dads weren’t getting stared at. Like during my soccer games, for example. I’d monopolize the ball and act aggressive toward my teammates, which usually resulted in the coach kicking me off the field for a time-out. It was during one of those time-outs that I overheard Mrs. Jolley say to Mrs. Fiedler, “Someone needs a lesson on how to act like a proper young lady.”
“Two fathers and no mother,” Mrs. Fiedler replied with a tsk. “No wonder she’s so rough with the other kids.”
That was my last season on the team. I quit sports, developed an interest in my looks, and started emulating the refined, elegant women I saw in Dad’s black-and-white classics. Like Lauren Bacall, whom I’d adopted as my personal icon. I became the consummate girly girl, and no one called me rough or boyish or claimed I needed a maternal influence ever again. My dads were more than capable of raising a “proper young lady,” and I was proof.
Summer, though, was different. At the cottage, surrounded by the people who’d known me all my life, I let that rough little tomboy punch her way through.
“Hey,” Harper said, startling me as I lay half-comatose in the grass. “On your feet, Henley. It’s go time.”
I groaned. “Shouldn’t we start getting ready for McTurdy’s bonfire?”
“I am ready,” she said, looking down at her black Nike shorts and tank top. Fitness wear. She was hopeless.
“Come on.” I hoisted my body into its upright position and brushed grass off my butt. “Let’s at least change into something less sweaty.”
I sent her to her cottage to shower and I did the same, changing into a short, white sundress with spaghetti straps. Attempting one of my vintage hairstyles in the humidity was pointless, so I brushed my hair smooth, letting it flip up on the ends, and added a thick white ribbon to match my dress. The entire ensemble made me look innocent in a slightly naughty way, just like I’d hoped. Satisfied, I headed over to Harper’s.
When I entered the cottage, my dads and aunt all turned away from their cribbage game to stare at me.
“Oh Kat,” Aunt Carrie said, clapping excitedly. “You look like Natalie Wood in West Side Story.”
“Stay away from the water,” Dad said with a snicker. When I gave him a blank look, he added, “Natalie Wood drowned.”
“Okay then,” I said. Clearly, they’d gotten into the wine already. “Where’s Harper?”
“Hiding from you,” Pop told me, placing his cards face down on the table. “She thinks you’re going to make her wear a dress.”
Aunt Carrie laughed. “Harper doesn’t even own a dress.”
My cousin emerged from her room then, wearing black denim shorts and a slightly dressier tank top than the Nike one she’d had on earlier. It was a start.
“Midnight curfew, Noodle,” Pop said as we got set to leave.
“You too, Harper,” Aunt Carrie chimed in, and they went back to their crib board.
Outside on the deck, Harper rolled her eyes. Sometimes our parents forgot that we were seventeen and eighteen, practically full-grown adults. It didn’t help that Pop still called me Noodle, a pet name he’d christened me with when I was a baby for reasons even he’d forgotten. Oh well, I much preferred being called after a pasta than a catastrophic hurricane.
We walked to the McCurdys’ via the road instead of going the beach way like earlier. As we passed their cottage on our way to the lake, we could see Mrs. McCurdy through the kitchen window, busy with something at the counter. Probably assembling the ingredients for s’mores. Nate’s father was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t unusual. He was an obstetrician and worked nonstop. The odd time he did have a day off, he spent it fishing. Due to this lack of help, Mrs. McCurdy was overwhelmed to the point of indifference, which meant Nate and his three younger brothers regularly got away with murder. And underage drinking.
When Harper and I stepped into the clearing a few yards to the right of Nate’s dock, the bonfire was blazing and he had already passed around cans of beer from his not-so-secret stash in their cottage’s crawl space. The only person who didn’t have one in hand was Nate’s eleven-year-old brother, Keaton, who was still innocent enough to be content with roasting marshmallows and lighting sparklers in the fire. He was currently doing a combination of both.
“Ladies,” Nate bellowed when he saw us. “It’s about time. Come on over! I saved a spot on my log just for you.”
Finn and Declan, his fifteen-year-old twin brothers, chortled appreciatively. Nate was a horrible influence on his siblings. Keaton was the only sweet one left, and it was only a matter of time before he ended up corrupted, too.
I moved toward the log on the other side of the bonfire, messing up Nate’s blond, perfectly-gelled hair on the way. Harper followed, and we sat down next to Zoe and Gabriella, two local girls who’d been hanging around the past couple of summers. They didn’t like Harper and me because we were “summer people” and not true Erwin dwellers. Nate and his brothers were summer people, too, but they got away with it because they were male and cute.
The pissed-off dude from earlier—Emmett—wasn’t there. My body lightened in relief. I wasn’t eager to test Harper’s “he won’t even recognize you” theory.
Keaton came over to say hello and show off his clever innovation—a marshmallow stuck on the end of a sparkler. That could only end messily.
“Hey, Buster, how was fifth grade?” I asked him.
He grinned. He loved it when I called him Buster. He thought it sounded tough, but it was actually a reference to Buster Keaton, the silent film star. “It was fun,” he said, sticking the marshmallow sparkler in the fire. “But I’d rather be here.”
I nodded and looked out at the calm, inky water in front of me. The small island situated in the middle of the lake looked like a smudge of gray against the dark sky. All along the shore, fragments of light peeked through the thickets of trees, the only indication of the various cottages nestled in their midst. I took a deep breath, inhaling the aromas of spruce and pine and mud and wood smoke. “Me too,” I told Keaton.
As I spoke, footsteps sounded on the rocks and angry Emmett appeared. Only he didn’t look angry as he stood there in the clearing, hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts. He looked self-conscious. Unsure. Like he wanted to jump into the lake and swim far,
far away.
“Hey, man,” Nate said, gesturing for him to join him and the twins on their log. When he did, Nate reached into the cooler next to him and handed him a can of beer. The way we were seated around the fire made me think of a gymnasium during a sixth-grade dance—boys on one side and girls on the other . . . only with a fire between us instead of a buffed floor.
Like a proper little host, Nate introduced Emmett to his brothers and then to Zoe and Gabriella, who subtly nudged each other and exchanged Ooh, fresh meat smiles. Then his gaze landed on Harper and me. “And this,” he said with an exaggerated flourish, “is Harper and her cousin, Hurricane Katrina.”
“Kat,” I corrected, and Emmett nodded with barely a glance in my direction. I felt another wave of relief. Clearly, he hadn’t made the connection between the girl sitting in front of him in the flouncy white dress and the helmeted psycho on the ATV who’d almost mowed him down that morning. Maybe I had been sufficiently disguised.
I glanced over at Harper, expecting to see a look of smug victory on her face, but she wasn’t even looking at me. Her eyes darted between the fire and Emmett, one of which was causing her cheeks to turn uncharacteristically pink. My guess was the latter, as bonfires didn’t usually make her fidget like she was wishing she’d taken more care with her hair and makeup. It appeared she was suffering from an acute case of lust-at-first-sight.
“So, Emmett, where you from?” Zoe asked, rearranging her legs so that her micro-shorts slid up higher. Apparently, the lust bunny had bitten her, too.
He mumbled, “Hyde Creek,” which was a medium-sized town about halfway between my home city of Weldon and Erwin.
“Cool,” Gabriella said brightly as if the news was just so fascinating. As if she didn’t constantly rant about outsiders and how they rolled through Erwin in their fancy cars and acted like they owned the place all summer.
“So what was with the hardcore running in the woods this morning, dude?” Nate asked, reaching for the marshmallow bag and popping one in his mouth. “You on a track team or something?”
Any Other Girl Page 4