Between the Girls (The Basin Lake Series Book 3)

by Stephanie Vercier

  Mom and Grandma both look on, neither seeming sure of what to say.

  “We all understand how hard this is for you,” I say, taking a different tact, “but the only way you’ll overcome this burden is if you talk to people and let us in.”

  Red-faced and tight-lipped, Kate looks at me as though she’d like me dead. “Mom told you?” Then she turns to Mom who passively nods, earning an angry, “How could you?” from Kate.

  “Kate…” Mom is up before I am, already on her way to the stairs Kate has just run up.

  Grandma puts her hand up when I start to follow them. “Let your Mom do this,” she says.

  “I totally screwed up,” I say, sliding back into my chair. “She’s not ready for me to know.”

  “It’s not your fault, dear,” Grandma says, dipping her hand down to offer Lucille II a morsel of food. “You need to be young. You need to have your own fun, too. Go to this bonfire and do exactly that and let us take care of Kate. She’ll let you back in eventually, but maybe just not quite yet.”

  I think Grandma is right, and yet the idea of going out and trying to have fun still feels a little wrong considering my sister is so unhappy.

  “You really should go, dear,” Grandma says, apparently seeing my trepidation.

  “Okay, I guess… sure.” I gather up the empty plates and bring them into the kitchen and ease into the more appropriate teenage girl worry of what I should wear.

  TYLER

  Dad wasn’t kidding about having more time for things outside of work. For the third night in a row, he’s sitting down for dinner with us in the giant room that acts as the dining, living and family room. If he really is enjoying this extra time, then that eases some of my guilt about our move.

  “I’m so glad you’re going to this bonfire,” Mom says, passing me the bowl of red potatoes, even though I’ve already had two helpings.

  “Bonfire?” Dad holds his fork, speared with some meat, mid bite and then sets it down on his plate.

  “Oh, it’s not a safety hazard or anything,” Mom says, as if that’s why Dad is actually concerned. “It’s over by the lake. When I went into town, even the cashier in the checkout line was saying her daughter was going.”

  Dad clears his throat, then asks, “You going with anyone?”

  “Picking up my friend, Nick,” I say, checking the time on my phone. “And I should probably get ready. Mom, you mind if I put the rest of this in the fridge for leftovers?” Truth is I couldn’t eat another bite, but Mom seems happiest when I’m eating her cooking.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she says. “Go and get ready.”

  I hazard a brief glance at Dad who only nods slightly and then looks back down at the table.

  I’m grateful to get away.

  I take a decently long shower in the bathroom that is all mine. This house in Basin Lake is bigger than the one we had in Denver, and for as long as I live here I’ll have a pretty sweet sized room and my own bathroom.

  After my shower, I dry off and head back into my bedroom, catching my reflection in the full-length mirror on the other side of the bathroom door. Making a habit of staring at myself naked isn’t my thing. If anything, I try not to look, but for whatever reason, I feel frozen, unable to step away. I hadn’t ever wanted Laney to see me like this, see the deep scarring across my abdomen, my flanks, over my hips and on my thighs. When Pepper had attacked me, she’d knocked me down, crazed and apparently going after the turkey sandwich Mom said I could finish outside. I’d stuffed it in my pocket, and besides going all Cujo on me, Pepper apparently determined that sandwich was like a bloody slab of fresh meat. In the process of her going ape-shit on me, I’d hit my head on the pavement in just the right way to lose consciousness. I hadn’t been able to pull myself into one of those protective fetal positions because of that, and Pepper went on attacking, taking bites out of my flesh, into my muscle, the bit between my legs being just one more chunk she decided to rip up.

  All of me was eventually patched back together, but damn if some of those fixes weren’t ugly.

  Sam told me during a video chat once that most girls wouldn’t have a problem with the scarring everywhere else. “Girls like that kind of shit,” he’d said one night, slightly drunk and thus more open and truthful I decided. “Makes you seem more dangerous or damaged or whatever. But mess with the dick, and all bets are off. Girls have a thing for nice, unblemished dicks.”

  I’d wanted to laugh my ass off when he said it because it just sounded so ridiculous, and yet it was my life, and I couldn’t laugh because it was so completely true.

  The first time Laney and I were together, I didn’t show her that part of myself. The room was dark and we were under the covers. It was enough just worrying about whether I could get everything right for what would be the first time for both of us, let alone having the added pressure of her seeing all of my scars and the part of me I was most self-conscious about. After, I felt like I’d done okay with her, thought I’d given her the same kind of pleasure she’d given me. But eventually she wanted to see, and the next time I showed her.

  “It makes me love you more,” she’d said, looking over the nakedness of my body and touching my scars, some of which had only properly healed with skin grafts, some that still ached with a dull pain or were partially numb. But even though she’d said that, I’d sworn there was a brief moment of disgust in her eyes, a look that said this was more than she’d bargained for, that my patchwork of scars was just too much.

  And in the end, it was. She cheated on me six months later with Heath Larson, the kid who used to taunt Pepper to make her bark, the kid that maybe deserved to get attacked instead of me. I’d had to almost force it out of her, but Laney, through tears, had admitted my scars were “a lot to handle.” I hadn’t been able to hold it together after that. With a broken heart, you don’t think straight, and you do things you later regret.

  It would be easier to just stay home tonight, to fire up my computer and see if Sam’s free to talk, but I think he’d tell me to go out, to stop feeling sorry for myself and be around some actual people. Plus, Nick is counting on me. While it’s not the right time for me to even hope something could happen between Claire and I, I can’t help but smile at the idea of helping Nick realize his dream of hooking up with Nina Vargo.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CLAIRE

  “Kate will be fine,” McKenzie says after James has parked his truck at the edge of the lake amongst all the other cars, the three of us all jumping out into the warm night air and making our way to the bonfire.

  “I hope so. I feel so bad about leaving her at home.”

  “Whatever she’s going through, she just has to work it out. We’ve seen this kind of thing before, haven’t we?”

  “If you’re talking about your brother and my sister, most of that drama happened in North Carolina.”

  “Sure, but it was still happening, and they figured it out.”

  “Are we really going to talk about Kate all night?” James butts in, looking like he regrets saying it the moment it passes his lips.

  “Aren’t you capable of even some infinitesimal compassion?” McKenzie snarls at him.

  “It’s fine,” I say, not wanting to cause a rupture in their relationship. “We have been talking about my sister since you guys picked me up.”

  “Because she’s important!” McKenzie makes sure to glare at James when she says it.

  “Sorry,” he says, realizing he’s disappointed his girlfriend yet again.

  “Please guys, no arguing on account of me. We should try to have fun tonight. Kate doesn’t want me hovering all over her anyway.”

  “That’s probably true,” James says.

  “Okay, but you’re still allowed to talk about her if you change your mind.”

  “Thanks, McKenzie.” I link my arm with hers while James walks along her other side.

  After saying hi to half a dozen people, we see a good spot open up on one of the weathered logs arou
nd the big bonfire and snap it up before anyone else can. There are probably a little over a hundred of our fellow classmates out here, and that number will fluctuate as the night wears on, getting a little bigger and then smaller as people start heading home.

  Last year, Austin and I had been one of the last few holdouts after a bonfire on a cool October night. That was the night I’d lost my virginity to him on a sleeping bag in the back of his truck. I’ll always have a certain fondness for that first time, even if it hurt like crazy, but I don’t have a great deal of fondness for Austin now, and I’ve been more than a little irritated over the past few days at him trying to start things up again, just one more annoyance I don’t need.

  “Is that Nick… and Tyler over there?” McKenzie, with beer in hand, is leaning into me, and through the flickering of the giant fire I can see pieces of the green hoodie Nick likes to wear and a red baseball cap that I think is covering Tyler’s head.

  “Has Nick ever come to one of these?” I ask, trying to put the emphasis on him instead of Tyler because my heart pings ever so slightly just at his presence.

  “I think so.” McKenzie takes a quick sip of her beer. “He thinks he’s such an outcast, but he’s not. He’s just like the rest of us.”

  “I’m not sure you could convince him of that.” For as long as I’ve known him, Nick has always come across to me as someone who hates this town and thinks most of its inhabitants are inferior.

  “You know, I used to hang out with him when I was little,” James adds in, so close to McKenzie that he’s practically on top of her. “But that kind of changed when I started playing football.”

  “Your loss then,” McKenzie says.

  James shrugs. “Hey, like Claire said, he thinks we’re all inferior. I’d probably still be the guy’s friend, but he told me I talked about football too much and that it was killing his brain cells.”

  “Maybe he is better than all of us,” McKenzie muses. “He knows things we don’t.”

  That’s when I laugh. “Like what? The secrets of the universe?”

  “I don’t know. He could end up like Bill Gates or that guy who talks through the computer… Stephen Hawking? You know, so smart that he either makes a zillion dollars or helps explain the universe to us.”

  “Sure thing,” James says. “You want to jump his bones now so that he knows you don’t just want him for his money when he becomes that zillionarie?”

  “You jealous or something?” she pushes back.

  I’m waiting to see where their discussion will go when a pair of heavy hands land on my shoulder. Caught off guard, I stumble forward before jumping to my feet and turning to face Austin.

  “Hey, it’s just me!” He’s laughing hysterically, as is the guy next to him, one of his football buddies that graduated last year.

  “Don’t do that!” I admonish him. “You scared the shit out of me!”

  His laughter settles. “I was hoping to surprise you, not scare you.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” McKenzie grills him, she and James on their feet too now.

  “I always come to the bonfires,” he says, taking a long draw off a bottle of beer.

  “Hey, man,” James says, low key.

  “At least he’s happy to see me!” Austin pulls the neck of his beer away from his mouth and points it to James as if he were a witness willing to testify for him at a murder trial.

  McKenzie throws James a quick glare before it returns to Austin. “This bonfire is only for Basin Lake High School people.”

  “Uh, I go to Basin Lake,” Austin reminds her, swinging his beer as he says it, a few drops shooting out and just missing me.

  “Well, you shouldn’t be. You should have graduated last year.”

  “Do we have to do this shit here?” James looks stuck between a rock and a hard place, trying not to piss off his friend but not wanting to torpedo his relationship either.

  “Look, I’m just trying to be friendly,” Austin says. “Can we sit?” he asks me.

  I sigh, annoyed, and then settle myself back on the log. Austin sits on my far side, McKenzie and James grabbing their spots back too.

  “This has to stop,” I tell Austin, the yellows, oranges and reds of the fire reflecting over his features. “We broke up for a reason.”

  “I know that.” He pushes the bottom of his beer into the sand. “You told me I was a shit boyfriend.”

  “At the very least,” McKenzie says, unwilling to let this be a one-on-one discussion.

  “Yeah, well, I can be whatever she needs,” he tells McKenzie before his eyes settle back on me.

  After he’d walked out of Pamela’s the other day, I thought we were clear that I didn’t need him to be anything at all to me.

  “Friends?” I offer, willing to meet him halfway if he truly wants some kind of relationship.

  He smiles at me, leans in and gives me a hug before whispering, “Friends with benefits?”

  I’m not surprised, but what he said still pisses me off. I pull away from him, pop up, nearly elbowing him in his jaw before I announce, “I’m going for a walk.”

  “I’ll come with you.” McKenzie is the next up, but I shake my head.

  “I just need a few minutes on my own. I’ll be back.”

  Stomping off, I don’t wait around for her to argue that. She’s fired up enough about Austin that I know if she were to come with me, that’s all she’d talk about, and I sort of just want to clear my mind of Austin for a while.

  TYLER

  I had wanted the bonfire to be fun, to bring back that feeling of hanging out with friends and just forgetting about what a bad day or a bad week we’d had. Even if a few of my friends could be insensitive about my childhood accident—and acquaintances or strangers complete and total assholes—it was actually comforting that they all knew what now felt like my biggest secret here in Basin Lake.

  So here, at a bonfire with people I’ve maybe seen at school but mostly don’t know, the paranoia I’d felt at Pamela’s returned, and I was pretty much uncomfortable, even after having a beer to try to settle my nerves down.

  Nick suggested we head further down the beach and start our own bonfire.

  “What about Nina Vargo?” I asked, not disliking his idea but not wanting him to give up on putting the moves on his dream girl.

  He laughed at that, cutting and amused. “That was a fool’s errand. I don’t even think she’s here yet, and when she is, she’s going to be surrounded with her friends and half the football team—don’t even know what the hell I was thinking.”

  At just that moment, I caught sight of Claire from a distance and beyond the bonfire, in a short sundress, her beautiful hair up again. She was next to McKenzie and James.

  “Just give it a few more minutes,” I said, battling the desire to get away from all of these people while wanting to keep an eye on Claire a little longer.

  “I’m telling you it’s a lost cause, but whatever.” Nick went on to talk about a three-day-long young inventors conference he’d gone to in Seattle last year and how, since being exposed to city life, he was crossing the days off of his calendar until he could get back to civilization.

  “But then you’ll lose your chance with Nina Vargo,” I said, keeping an eye out for Claire through the flames.

  “It’s not like she isn’t going to college. She was playing dumb in chemistry, man. She’s not like that. She’s smart.”

  “Smart like Claire?” I asked, unable to keep her off my mind. Dangerous.

  “Come on, man,” Nick said like I was crazy. “No girl at this school is quite as brainy as Claire.”

  “You and she never, uh… dated or anything?” Contrary to what Nick said about Claire not giving the time of day to mere mortals, I couldn’t help but to imagine that she’d have made an exception for Nick who has the smart and funny thing wrapped up pretty good.

  Another laugh. “I’m not her type, man. That’s just the truth.”

  I was about to pepper him
with a few more questions about Claire—disguised as getting more information on Nina—when I noticed that guy from the cafeteria sitting next to her. He just kind of came out of nowhere, or maybe I’d missed his entrance entirely when some obviously inebriated guys had started throwing a football through the fire and yelling at the top of their lungs.

  But regardless of how or when he got there, I didn’t like it, not one damn bit, and my reaction to seeing them together was visceral.

  “I’m ready if you are,” I said, standing up and turning away from the fire.

  “Don’t have to ask me twice,” Nick said, jumping up and leading the way.

  CLAIRE

  Taking a swing around the bonfire, I check to see if Nick and Tyler are still where McKenzie first spotted them between the flames. They’re gone, replaced by a couple that is displaying way too much PDA for my taste. I’m mildly disappointed by their absence.

  I keep walking, past my classmates, some of them drunk, others in the water, some laughing and yelling, a few guys tossing around a football, three girls cheering them on, two other girls giving the cheering girls death stares, and at least half a dozen couples making out.

  When I was with Austin, I was one of those couplings, drawn into a guy’s world that I had nothing in common with and contemplating putting my own hopes and dreams on the backburner. And him trying to reignite that is really pissing me off. Once I get to college—which can’t come soon enough—I’ll be surrounded by people who are just as serious as I am about their education, and I won’t be mired in high school drama, stuck with a boy chasing after me who will probably graduate with a fractional grade point average, if that’s even possible.

  Once I finally catch my breath and begin to settle the swirl of thoughts going through my head, I find myself alone, well beyond the edges of the partygoers. It’s dark here, the light of the moon reflecting over the rippling water of the dark lake. Far across are lights from the cabins and small resorts that dot the north end of the lake—it’s where all the tourists go because that’s where the best beaches and the boat launch are, along with a bunch of little tourist traps that sell kites, flip flops and embroidered sweatshirts for when it gets colder. I’m jealous of them, the tourists, and their ability to leave this town after a few days and go back to their bigger lives.