by Rachel Vail
“Okay. Thanks.” He put down the sodas and the towel and came to check out what was in there. Great. Fine. Take some chips. What do I care? I had come in for a soda, nothing more. I’ve got bigger stuff to deal with than snacks, or hungry boys. Take every bag of chips in the whole cabinet, for all I care.
I held the door handle and he leaned forward to choose what he liked from the freaking buffet of chip choices. “Um,” he said.
I let out my breath, maybe impatiently. I was starting to get cold in there, waiting for him to choose his damned snack. He stood up, and his face was moving toward mine before my mind registered what he was doing.
In fact, I wasn’t sure what was happening until his lips touched mine.
11
IT CAN’T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN a minute before Gosia called my name. I pulled my face reluctantly back from Luke’s but didn’t answer her. He blinked twice at me when she yelled my name again. His body was so much warmer than mine, and his mouth tasted so good.
“What!” I yelled.
“Dinnertime,” Gosia yelled, right outside the pool house door.
Luke turned away.
“Okay, okay,” I yelled, and then whispered, “Sorry.”
“No, that’s…” He went into the changing room and grabbed his stuff and William’s. “We should…” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, and realized I wasn’t sure what I was agreeing with, so I added, “I mean…”
“Mm-hmm,” he said, eyes on the floor, and wiggled past me to get to the door. I followed him but it turns out he wasn’t holding it open for me so it kind of slammed in my face. By the time I got out, he was diving into the pool, the pile of clothes dumped on the side. Gosia gave me a quizzical look. I shrugged and looked back at the pool to see Luke swimming fast to the shallow end. He climbed out and said to William, “Let’s go.”
William looked back and forth between me and Luke as he scrambled out of the pool and into his clothes. “I’ll just call my mom to pick us…”
“Use your cell,” Luke said. “They’re having dinner. Come on.”
“If you…” I started.
“Thanks for…” Luke looked up at me for a second. “I mean, thanks.” His cheeks turned deep red on the sides. He grabbed William by his damp T-shirt and pushed him. “Their dinner is ready!”
“Dude,” William said with a laugh in his voice. “Chill!”
I turned to shrug at Gosia, expecting her to grin at me knowingly. She was pale and serious. “Dinnertime,” she said, and walked toward the back door.
Following her inside, I grabbed a sweatshirt off a hook and turned to go to the kitchen, but nobody was there. He kissed me, I was thinking. Gosia was holding open the dining room door, looking down at her ballet flats. Beyond her, my sisters and my parents were all sitting at the dining room table.
I almost asked what we were doing, if company was coming—but their quietness erased the smile off my freshly kissed lips. I squeezed into my chair next to Allison without pulling it out first.
There were plates of salad in front of us all. Nobody had touched a fork. I didn’t know where to look.
“For this and for so much else,” Mom quietly said, “we are very grateful.”
It’s how we always used to start meals when I was younger. It was Daddy’s thing, that we should have moments of gratitude before meals and other rituals, too. Daddy likes rituals. The first Saturday every month he goes at 6 A.M. to give out food at the homeless shelter; at least twice a year he makes us gather up all the stuff we don’t wear anymore and he brings it to the Salvation Army; every fifty-six days he gives blood at the blood bank. When he kisses us good night he says, “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” Or he used to. I don’t know if he still does; maybe after I’m sleeping he comes in and kisses my forehead. We hadn’t started a meal with “For this and for so much else” in a long time.
He smiled slightly at Mom, who was grinding pepper on her salad.
We all abruptly tried to eat. I did some cutting but when I got mesclun leaves into my mouth they felt like play food: rubber, unswallowable.
Mom put down her fork and knife. “I was fired today,” she said.
We all put down our silverware, too, and looked at her with our hands under the table.
She took a deep breath. Her eyes were clear and her voice was steady. “What happened is, I have been doing research for years on a pharmaceutical company named Galen. You might have heard me mention it?”
We nodded.
Mom continued, “It’s a small company, but well capitalized, very exciting stuff in the pipeline. Well, it ran into some snags this week and I lost a lot of money on it. A lot of money. I still think I was right to take an aggressive position on it. I still say you’ll see it hit twenty-five or even thirty before year-end. But it’s not enough to be right. You have to be right at the right time.” She forced a small smile. “Because the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
I glanced at my sisters to see if this made any sense to them. It was hard to tell. They were focusing on Mom with serious faces so that’s what I did, too.
“But I think this can be remedied,” Mom said. “I’m setting up a meeting with the principals, and I think I can make a case to them. Everything is going to be okay. I don’t want you girls to worry.”
My sisters nodded so I nodded, too.
“I would like this all to be kept as private as possible,” Mom continued.
“Of course,” Quinn said immediately.
“Absolutely,” Allison said.
“Absonitely,” I said, not wanting to copy but changing to “definitely” mid-word, too late.
Mom smiled at me. “Thanks. So, how was everybody else’s day? Anything interesting happen?”
My sisters shook their heads so I shook mine, too, and then Gosia came in with turkey and rice and broccoli, which we all forced down as quickly as possible. I didn’t think it was the right time to share the fact that only a few minutes earlier, I had been making out in the pool house. Although that certainly qualified as interesting, I was pretty sure it wasn’t what Mom meant. I felt like I had to tell somebody, and almost said something to Allison on our way upstairs. But then I didn’t. She and Quinn were both being so quiet, I had to be, too.
They each went to their own bedrooms and quietly closed their doors. I stood in my doorway for a minute, thinking we should really be clumped together on one of our beds, talking about what just happened. But when neither of their doors opened, I closed mine, too, and went to sit alone on my bed.
I wasn’t sure what to think about. It was beyond weird to have so much happen and then not talk about it with my sisters at all.
Well, I decided, maybe it’s good to have private stuff. I could deal with this whole Mom thing without their help. Not that there was anything particular for me to deal with. She’d work it out, she’d said. Of course she would. So nothing even to think about, there.
Which left the Luke thing.
How was I going to keep that to myself?
Well, I thought, why should I cheapen what happened by blurting it out all over the place? It’s not like Quinn and Allison told me every time they kissed a boy. They totally never did! So I didn’t have to tell anybody, either. It could just stay private, between me and Luke. That was way more romantic, anyway. So I resolved to keep (and enjoy keeping) the secret of kissing Luke to myself, forever.
12
“SO, YEAH, WE MADE OUT,” I heard myself announcing. Behind us the grandfather clock chimed twice. I wasn’t tired at all, though I did wish we could go back upstairs to Kirstyn’s room and go to bed. I already regretted breaking my vow of secrecy.
But how do you not tell your best friends you kissed your ex? Especially when you are so busy not telling them everything else, something has to be let out.
“I knew it,” Kirstyn said, shaking her head. “Didn’t I tell you she liked Luke?”
“You did,” Gabr
ielle whispered.
“I don’t,” I insisted, thinking, Wait, do I? No, no I don’t. I can’t. We’re friends, just friends. Friends who kissed two days ago. That’s all. I don’t want more, I don’t need more. The last thing I needed was complications. “I totally don’t.”
“Oh.” Gabrielle made a face at Kirstyn, who laughed behind her hand.
“I was horny,” I said, choosing Gabrielle’s favorite word.
“You?” Gabrielle asked.
“You’re not the only one who gets horny.” I shrugged, trying to act as casual about it as I was trying to feel. “No big deal. So what, we made out. It wasn’t the first time.”
Maybe it won’t be the last. No. Don’t think about that.
“So you were just using him?” Kirstyn asked.
I wasn’t sure what to answer, what she wanted me to say. I gathered the blanket around me tighter. “I guess,” I said.
“Why not?” Gabrielle asked.
The flashlight in the middle of our tight huddle, pointed up at the coffered ceiling of the formal living room of Kirstyn’s house, dimmed a little. It was Kirstyn’s way of getting back at her parents: After they are snoring between their thousand-thread-count sheets, Kirstyn goes into the off-limits rooms of her house. She’s been doing it all year. She doesn’t eat or smoke or do drugs or have sex or anything while she’s in there, and she doesn’t sit on the couches or chairs because her butt would indent the down-filled cushions and she might get caught. She just goes in and sits there, on the floor, where she isn’t allowed to be. And when we sleep over, we sit there with her. When the sky begins to brighten we have to back out of the rooms, rubbing away traces of our footprints from the silk rugs. But while we’re in there, we lean toward one another and whisper secrets, or away from one another to think. It feels naughty, weird, and boring, all at the same time.
So that’s what we were doing, leaning back, and my butt was starting to itch. I was wishing I could sit on the couch a few inches away that looked so soft and inviting.
“You were that horny?” Kirstyn asked.
I shrugged. It seemed like the simplest way to explain. I mean, I wasn’t going out with Luke. He hadn’t asked me out or anything—afterward, or since then. He’d had plenty of chances during the day in school.
“You know,” I said, “It’s not like it has to be true love or something. I mean, please. Right?”
“Absolutely,” Gabrielle said, taking a big gulp from her water bottle. “We’re way too young for love. We gotta just mess around awhile.”
I nodded. “As you always say, Kirstyn, when we’re in high school we’ll do whatever we want with whichever guys we want. But right now these are the guys available and sometimes, you know, you kiss what you got!”
“Well, can’t argue with that!” Kirstyn whispered, and we rocked back and forth, trying to hold in our laughs. When we had ourselves under control, Kirstyn said, “It’s kind of perfect, really, because he’s obviously willing, and it’s not like you have somebody from camp to fall back on…” She gestured toward Gabrielle, whose camp boyfriend is sixteen. “So, why not use him?”
“Yeah,” I said, although that was not really it. “I mean, it’s not like…I mean, we’re friends.”
“Whatever,” Gabrielle said. “They’re buddies. They both get horny so who cares. You use each other, nobody gets hurt. It doesn’t have to be anything romantic.”
“Right,” I agreed. She was just agreeing with what I said. So why was my stomach a fist?
“Absolutely,” Kirstyn said.
At least she wasn’t angry at me like I thought she might be, after I swore up and down I didn’t like Luke and then went ahead and made out with him.
“I mean, you don’t want to be a slut or anything,” Kirstyn added. “But…”
The flashlight died. We all sat there for another minute until Kirstyn whispered, “Let’s go up to my room.” We backed out, with Kirstyn going last so she could smudge over our footprints. Kirstyn’s house has like thirty rooms but she’s only ever supposed to go in three: her room, the kitchen, and the media room. We tiptoed up the stairs behind her.
Kirstyn turned on her TV and we all sat on her bed for a while, watching, getting dozy. After a while, Kirstyn hit mute. “Did I tell you Justin and I were texting like all night last night?”
“No,” Gabrielle and I both said.
“I told him I was busy tonight, though,” she said. “Hard to get, you know.”
We both nodded.
“Oh, so anyway, I was talking about the party with my mom and we think, I mean, I’m really glad we’re doing it.”
I smiled at her. She looked kind of sad. I hadn’t realized it but maybe she was feeling left out, that I had made out with Luke. I didn’t want her to feel like Gabrielle and I were all coupled up suddenly and she wasn’t. “Yeah, me, too,” I whispered. “We’re so lucky, the five of us…”
Kirstyn looked at me like I had lost my mind. “I meant because of how we’re growing apart.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The five of us,” she said, and looked to Gabrielle for confirmation. “Zhara and Ann are great, you know I love them to death, but Zhara is just so serious and wonky, like, have a little fun, you know? And Ann, I mean, she is just more awkward by the day. And could somebody tell her to count a calorie? I don’t want to be mean, but she is seriously spreading out. Right?”
Gabrielle shrugged. “They’re just a little boring. Not their fault, but…”
“You think Zhara is really no fun?” I asked. “She’s just…she’s like the kind of funny you have to be standing right next to her to get, I think.”
Gabrielle nodded. “You may be right. Maybe I need to stand right next to her more.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t you think? And Ann, I mean, I know she’s kind of going through a stage of overly deep and down, but…”
“Ugh,” Kirstyn said. “She’s such a wet blanket.”
“But…”
“Please!” She rolled her eyes. “I swear, you’re getting almost as drippy as Ann lately. Lighten up, would you?” She smiled, but it was not a happy smile, and gave me what I think was supposed to be a playful kick. It hit me kind of off-balance though, and I fell off her bed.
It was one of those make-a-choice moments I sometimes have with Kirstyn, I could feel it—if I didn’t want her to think I was a wonky, serious loser myself, I needed to come up with a jokey, light comment: Kick me out of your bed, why don’t you? But as those words passed through my head and almost fell out of my mouth, they got stuck. Was she kicking me out? Why? Lighten up, I yelled silently at myself, but I couldn’t lighten. I smacked a smile onto my mouth but couldn’t manage a jokey comeback; I didn’t trust my voice to be steady.
What was wrong with me?
I just sat there smiling psychotically at them. They were starting to look a little worried. I tried to pull the smile down a notch but it was stuck. Kirstyn and Gabrielle glanced at each other warily.
“Yeah,” I finally forced myself to say. “I guess you’re right. About them. About Zhara and Ann.” I was seriously about one second from bursting into tears. I felt like such a low-life nasty traitor. The first rule is self-defense; I know I heard that somewhere, and I tried to convince myself that’s all I was doing. Still, my teeth felt like they were rotting right in my head. “They are kind of…both…”
Kirstyn nodded and turned to me, her big blue eyes soft and gentle, like I was her stupid but beloved underprivileged cousin. “So I think it’s pretty obvious to everybody that this party is really like a good-bye to our tight friendship, which is why I think it is so important to all of us, really. Don’t you think so, Phoebe?”
I shrugged. I had thought everything was fine, that we were all still best friends, that we loved one another. When did all this happen, and did everybody know it except me? I tried to swallow.
We all just sat there for another few minutes, saying nothing, until Kirstyn said, “Anywa
y, it’ll be an awesome party. I’m really looking forward to it. Aren’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Gabrielle said. “Did you hear the soccer boys at lunch? Talking about getting a limo for it?”
“Yeah,” I managed. “They sounded pretty into it.”
“Oh, totally. Party of the year. Well, I gotta get some sleep,” Gabrielle said. “I have a tennis match in the morning.” She scooted down onto the air mattress. I turned to shrug at Kirstyn, because we always stay up until dawn at sleepovers.
“Yeah, let’s go to sleep,” Kirstyn said. She shut off the TV and snuggled down under her covers. I took the hint and got into my air-mattress-bed between them.
“You guys?” I whispered.
“Shh,” Kirstyn whispered back, and turned over.
When the sunrise finally came, I was the only one still awake. Usually at that point we are all in the kitchen eating Oreos and giggling.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt lonelier.
13
I WALKED INTO THE ARCTIC BLAST of my house from the thick humidity outside and dropped my duffel. “Phoebe?” Mom called. I ventured into the kitchen. She usually works on Saturdays. Oh, yeah. It all came rushing back.
“Mom?”
She closed the refrigerator, a bottle of water in her hand. She was in sweaty running clothes. I watched her chug the water in quick gulps, and then yank the sweatband back off her hair.
“Hi,” I said.
“Dress shopping,” she answered.
“Huh?”
“For your party. Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll go find something spectacular.” She leaned toward me and I froze. Was there a Rice Krispie on my cheek from breakfast at Kirstyn’s? But no, she was kissing the air near my face, weirdly. Before I could manage to pronounce okay, she was out of the kitchen, taking the stairs by twos up to her room.