by Jenny Han
The house, all lit up with people inside, felt a million miles away. I knew he’d come after me. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was him. But I did anyway.
“Come back to the house,” Conrad said. He had the bottle of tequila in his hand. I grabbed it out of his hand and took a swig like I’d done it a million times before, like I was the kind of girl who could drink right from the bottle.
I was proud of myself for not spitting it back up. I took a step toward the water, smiling big at him. I was testing him.
“Belly,” he warned. “I’m telling you now, I’m not going to pull your dead body out of the ocean when you drown.”
I crossed my eyes at him and then I dipped my toe in. The water was colder than I’d thought it’d be. Suddenly swimming didn’t sound like such a great idea. But I hated backing down to Conrad. I hated losing to him. “Are you gonna stop me?”
He sighed and looked back toward the house.
I continued, took another glug of tequila. Anything to make him pay attention. “I mean, ’cause I am a stronger swimmer than you. I’m way, way faster. You probably couldn’t catch me if you wanted to.”
He was looking at me again. “I’m not coming after you.”
“Really? You really aren’t?” I took a big step, then another. The water was up to my knees. It was low tide, and I was shivering. It was stupid, really. I didn’t even want to swim anymore. I didn’t know what I was doing. Far down on the other side of the beach, somebody shot off a firecracker. It sounded like a missile. It looked like a silver weeping willow. I watched it drop down into the ocean.
And just when I started to feel disappointed, just when I’d resigned myself to the fact that he didn’t care, he moved toward me. He heaved me up, over his shoulder. I dropped the bottle right into the ocean.
“Put me down!” I screamed, pounding on his back.
“Belly, you’re drunk.”
“Put me down right now!”
And for once, he actually listened. He dropped me, right in the sand, right on my butt. “Ow! That really hurt!”
It didn’t hurt that bad, but I was mad, and more than that, I was embarrassed. I kicked sand at his back and the wind kicked it right back at me. “Jerk!” I yelled, sputtering and spitting out sand.
Conrad shook his head and turned away from me. His jeans were wet. He was leaving. He was really leaving. I’d ruined everything again.
When I stood up I felt so dizzy I almost fell right back down.
“Wait,” I said, and my knees wobbled. I pushed my sandy hair out of my face and took a deep breath. I had to say it, had to tell him. My last chance.
He turned back around. His face was a closed door.
“Just wait a second, please. I need to tell you something. I’m really sorry for the way I acted that day.” My voice was high and desperate, and I was crying, and I hated that I was crying, but I couldn’t help it. I had to keep talking, because this was it. Last chance. “At . . . at the funeral, I was awful to you. I was horrible, and I’m so ashamed of how I acted. It wasn’t how I wanted things to go, not at all. I really, really wanted to be there for you. That’s why I came to find you.”
Conrad blinked once and then again. “It’s fine.”
I wiped my cheeks and my runny nose. I said, “Do you mean it? You forgive me?”
“Yes,” he said. “I forgive you. Now stop crying, all right?”
I stepped toward him, closer and closer still, and he didn’t back away. We were close enough to kiss. I was holding my breath, wanting so badly for things to be like before.
I took one step closer, and that’s when he said, “Let’s go back, okay?”
Conrad didn’t wait for me to answer him. He just started walking away, and I followed. I felt like I was going to be sick.
Just like that, the moment was over. It was an almost moment, where almost anything could have happened. But he had made it be over.
Back at the house, people were swimming in the pool in their clothes. A few girls were waving sparklers around. Clay Bertolet, our neighbor, was floating along the edge of the pool in one of his wifebeaters. He grabbed my ankles. “Come on, Belly, swim with me,” he said.
“Let go,” I said, kicking him off and splashing his face in the process.
I pushed my way through all the people on the deck and made my way back into the house. I accidentally stepped on some girl’s foot and she screamed. “Sorry,” I said, and my voice came out sounding far away. I was so dizzy. I just wanted my bed.
I crawled up the stairs with my hands, like a crab, the way I used to when I was a little kid. I fell into bed, and it was just like they say in the movies, the room was spinning. The bed was spinning, and then I remembered all the stupid stuff I said, and I started to cry.
I made a real fool of myself out on that beach. It was devastating, all of it—Susannah gone, the thought of this house not being ours anymore, me giving Conrad the chance to reject me one more time. Taylor was right: I was a masochist.
I lay on my side and hugged my knees to my chest and wept. Everything was wrong, and most of all me. Suddenly I just wanted my mother.
I reached across the bed for the phone on my nightstand. The numbers lit up in the darkness. My mother picked up on the fourth ring.
Her voice was drowsy and familiar in a way that made me cry harder. More than anything in the world, I wanted to reach inside the phone and bring her here.
“Mommy,” I said. My voice came out a croak.
“Belly? What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m at Susannah’s. At the summer house.”
“What? What are you doing at the summer house?”
“Mr. Fisher’s gonna sell it. He’s gonna sell it and Conrad is so sad and Mr. Fisher doesn’t even care. He just wants to get rid of it. He wants to get rid of her.”
“Belly, slow down. I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“Just come, okay? Just please come and fix it.”
And then I hung up, because suddenly the phone felt very heavy in my hand. I felt like I was on a merry-go-round, and not in a good way. Somebody was setting off fireworks outside, and it felt like my head was pounding right along with them. Then I closed my eyes and it was worse. But my eyelids felt heavy too and soon I was asleep.
chapter thirty-two
jeremiah
Pretty soon after Belly went up to bed, I cleared everybody out and it was just Conrad and me. He was lying facedown on the couch. He’d been lying there since he and Belly came back from the beach. They were both wet and sandy. Belly was wasted, and she’d been crying, I could tell. Her eyes were red. Conrad’s fault—no doubt about that.
People had tracked sand inside and it was all over the floor. There were bottles and cans everywhere, and somebody had sat on the couch in a wet towel, and now the cushion had a big orange spot. I flipped it over. “The house is a wreck,” I said, falling onto the La-Z-Boy. “Dad will freak out if he sees it like this tomorrow.”
Conrad didn’t open his eyes. “Whatever. We’ll clean it in the morning.”
I stared at him, just feeling pissed. I was sick of cleaning up his messes. “It’s gonna take us hours.”
Then he opened his eyes. “You’re the one who invited everybody over.”
He had a point. The party had been my idea. It wasn’t the mess I was pissed about. It was Belly. Him and her, together. It made me sick.
“Your jeans are wet,” I said. “You’re getting sand all over the couch.”
Conrad sat up, rubbed his eyes. “What’s your problem?”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I started to get up, but then I sat back down. “What the hell happened outside with you guys?”
“Nothing.”
“What does that mean, nothing?”
“Nothing means nothing. Just leave it, Jere.”
I hated it when he got like that, all stoic and detached, especially when I was mad. He’d always been like that, but it was more and more th
ese days. When our mom died, he changed. Conrad didn’t give two shits about anything or anyone anymore. I wondered if that included Belly.
I had to know. About him and her, how he really felt, what he was going to do about it. It was the not knowing that killed a guy.
So I asked him flat out. “Do you still like her?”
He stared at me. I’d shocked the hell out of him, I could tell. We’d never talked about her before, not like this. It was probably a good thing that I’d caught him off guard. Maybe he’d tell the truth.
If he said yes, it was over. If he said yes, I would give her up. I could live with that. If it were anyone but Conrad, I’d have tried anyway. I’d have given it one last shot.
Instead of answering the question, he said, “Do you?”
I could feel myself turn red. “I’m not the one who took her to the freaking prom.”
Conrad thought that over and then said, “I only took her because she asked me to.”
“Con. Do you like her or not, man?” I hesitated for about two seconds, and then I just went for it. “Because I do. I like her. I really like her. Do you?”
He didn’t blink, didn’t even hesitate. “No.”
It really pissed me off.
He was full of shit. He liked her. He more than liked her. But he couldn’t admit it, wouldn’t man up. Conrad would never be that guy, the kind of guy Belly needed. Someone who would be there for her, someone she could count on. I could. If she’d let me, I could be that guy.
I was pissed at him, but I had to admit I was relieved, too. No matter how many times he hurt her, I knew that if he wanted her back, she was his. She always had been.
But maybe now that Conrad wasn’t standing in the way, she’d see me there too.
chapter thirty-three
july 5
“Belly.”
I tried to roll over, but then I heard it again, louder.
“Belly!” Someone was shaking me awake.
I opened my eyes. It was my mother. She had dark circles around her eyes and her mouth had all but disappeared into a thin line. She was wearing her house sweats, the ones she never left the house in, not even to go to the gym. What in the world was she doing at the summer house?
There was a beeping sound that at first I thought was the alarm clock, but then I realized that I had knocked the phone over, and it was the busy signal I was hearing. And then I remembered. I’d drunk-dialed my mother. I’d brought her here.
I sat up, my head pounding so hard it felt like my heart was hammering inside it. So this was what a hangover felt like. I’d left my contacts in and my eyes were burning. There was sand all over the bed and some was stuck on my feet.
My mother stood up; she was one big blur. “You have five minutes to pack up your stuff.”
“Wait . . . what?”
“We’re leaving.”
“But I can’t leave yet. I still have to—”
It was like she couldn’t hear me, like I was on mute. She started picking my things up off the floor, throwing Taylor’s sandals and shorts into my overnight bag.
“Mom, stop! Just stop for a minute.”
“We’re leaving in five minutes,” she repeated, looking around the room.
“Just listen to me for a second. I had to come. Jeremiah and Conrad needed me.”
The look on my mother’s face made me stop short. I’d never seen her angry like this before.
“And you didn’t feel the need to tell me about it? Beck asked me to look after her boys. How can I do that when I don’t even know they need my help? If they were in trouble, you should have told me. Instead you chose to lie to me. You lied .”
“I didn’t want to lie to you—,” I started to say.
She kept on going. “You’ve been here doing God knows what . . .”
I stared at her. I couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “What does that mean, ‘God knows what’?”
My mother whirled around, her eyes all wild. “What am I supposed to think? You snuck out here with Conrad before and you spent the night! So you tell me. What are you doing here with him? Because it looks to me like you lied to me so you could come here and get drunk and fool around with your boyfriend.”
I hated her. I hated her so much.
“He’s not my boyfriend! You don’t know anything!”
The vein in my mother’s forehead was pulsing. “You call me at four in the morning, drunk. I call your cell phone and it goes straight to voice mail. I call the house phone and all I get is a busy signal. I drive all night, worried out of my mind, and I get here and the house is a wreck. Beer cans everywhere, trash all over the place. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Isabel? Or do you even know?”
The walls in the house were really thin. Everyone could probably hear everything.
I said, “We were going to clean it up. This was our last night here. Don’t you get it? Mr. Fisher is selling the house. Don’t you care?”
She shook her head, her jaw tight. “Do you really think you’ve helped matters by meddling? This isn’t our business. How many times do I have to explain that to you?”
“It is so our business. Susannah would have wanted us to save this house!”
“Don’t talk to me about what Susannah would have wanted,” my mother snapped. “Now put your clothes on and get your things. We’re leaving.”
“No.” I pulled the covers up to my shoulders.
“What?”
“I said no. I’m not going!” I stared up at my mother as defiantly as I could, but I could feel my chin trembling.
She marched over to the bed and ripped the sheets right off of me. She grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the bed and toward the door, and I twisted away from her.
“You can’t make me go,” I sobbed. “You can’t tell me anything. You don’t have the right.”
My tears did not move my mother. They only made her angrier. She said, “You’re acting like a spoiled brat. Can’t you look beyond your own grief and think about someone else? It’s not all about you. We all lost Beck. Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t helping anything.”
Her words stung me so badly I wanted to hurt her back a million times worse. So I said the thing I knew would hurt her most. I said, “I wish Susannah was my mother and not you.”
How many times had I thought it, wished for it secretly? When I was little, Susannah was the one I ran to, not her. I used to wonder what it would be like, to have a mom like Susannah who loved me for me and wasn’t disappointed in all the ways that I didn’t measure up.
I was breathing hard as I waited for my mother to respond. To cry, to scream at me.
She didn’t do either of those things. Instead she said, “How unfortunate for you.”
Even when I tried my hardest, I couldn’t get the reaction I wanted from my mother. She was impenetrable.
I said, “Susannah will never forgive you for this, you know. For losing her house. For letting down her boys.”
My mother’s hand reached out and struck my cheek so hard I rocked back. I didn’t see it coming. I clutched my face and right away I cried, but part of me was satisfied. I finally got what I wanted. Proof that she could feel something.
Her face was white. She had never hit me before. Never ever, not in my whole life.
I waited for her to say she was sorry. To say she didn’t mean to hurt me, she didn’t mean the things she’d said. If she said those things, then I would say them too. Because I was sorry. I didn’t mean the things I said.
When she didn’t speak, I backed away from her and then around her, holding my face. Then I ran out of the room, stumbling over my feet.
Jeremiah was standing in the hallway, looking at me with his mouth open. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize me, like he didn’t know who this person was, this girl who screamed at her mother and said terrible things. “Wait,” he said, reaching out to stop me.
I pushed past him and moved down the stairs.
In the living room, C
onrad was picking up beer bottles and tossing them into a blue recycling bag. He didn’t look at me. I knew he’d heard everything too.
I ran out the back door and then I almost tripped going down the stairs that headed down to the beach. I sank to the ground and sat in the sand, holding my burning cheek in the palm of my hand. And then I threw up.
I heard Jeremiah come up behind me. I knew it was him right away, because Conrad would know not to follow me.
“I just want to be alone,” I said, wiping my mouth. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see my face.
“Belly,” he started. He sat down next to me and kicked sand over my throw up.
When he didn’t say anything more, I looked at him. “What?”
He bit his upper lip. Then he reached out and touched my cheek. His fingers felt warm. He looked so sad. He said, “You should just go with your mom.”
Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that. I’d come all this way and I’d gotten in so much trouble, just so I could help him and Conrad, and now he wanted me to leave? Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes and I wiped them away with the back of my hands. “Why?”
“Because Laurel’s really upset. Everything’s gone to crap, and it’s my fault. I never should have asked you to come. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Pretty soon we’ll all have to.”
“And that’s it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
We sat in the sand for a while. I had never felt more lost. I cried a little more, and Jeremiah didn’t say anything, which I was grateful for. There was nothing worse than your friend watching you cry after you just got in trouble with your mother. When I was done, he stood up and gave me his hand. “Come on,” he said, pulling me to my feet.
We went back inside the house. Conrad was gone and the living room was clean. My mother was mopping the kitchen floor. When she saw me, she stopped. She put the mop back into the bucket and leaned it against the wall.
Right in front of Jeremiah, she said, “I’m sorry.”
I looked at him, and he backed out of the kitchen and went up the stairs. I almost stopped him. I didn’t want to be alone with her. I was afraid.