One Moment

by Kristina McBride

  “A day in the sun will do you more good than you can imagine,” she said. “Trust me.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the other reason I didn’t want to do much of anything anymore. “Is Shannon going?”

  “Yes. But don’t let that—”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to see her after the other night.”

  “It’s been four days, Mags. If you let this drag out for too long, it’ll get to be like Adam. A total disconnect.”

  “I’m not so sure I care,” I said. “She accused me of cheating, Tanna.”

  “It was a heated moment. She wasn’t thinking.”

  “Still, she threw it out there.”

  “We all know Shan can be a bitch sometimes. And considering everything that’s happened with Joey, maybe we should cut her a break.”

  “Yeah. But what she said was just stupid,” I said.

  “Right. But Joey drunk equals Joey crazy. Who the hell knows what went down between him and Adam the night of Dutton’s party? Or what Shannon overheard from that phone call after Joey dropped you off? Bottom line is she’s one of your best friends. You don’t want to lose her, too, so we just need to move on. To take a day to focus on the basics: bikinis, sun, and swimming.”

  I groaned and looked down at my feet.

  “I’ll need a few to get ready,” I said, pulling the drawer on the right side of my dresser open.

  “Well, make it snappy,” Tanna said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “I’m painting my toenails, at the very least.”

  “I promise this will make you feel better.”

  “I hope so. See you in a few.”

  I ended the call and placed my phone on the dresser, digging through my stash of nail polish, mentally cataloging everything I’d need for a day in the sun: sunscreen, magazines, iPod—

  And that’s when I saw it.

  When my hand danced closer to the back of the drawer, aiming for a bottle of Perfectly Pink. There, tucked between the Totally Teal and Raspberry Sorbet was my rainbow-colored flower necklace. I was confused at first, and then I remembered. Stupid, stupid me. The Spring Carnival. Pete throwing colored balls through the open mouth of a cardboard clown, tossing his arms up in the air once, twice, three times. He’d won three prizes. One for me, one for Tanna, and one for Shannon. And the prizes he’d chosen had been identical.

  I sat there, running the slippery beads through the fingers of my left hand, thinking that I’d been wrong. I wondered what it meant, that I was sitting there holding my necklace when Tanna’s or Shannon’s had been wrapped around the handle of Joey’s closet door. But none of my conclusions made any sense.

  And then I remembered Tanna pulling her hair off her neck, twisting it into a bun for one of the wild spinning rides, the elastic thread of her necklace snapping. Then there were the flashing lights of the carnival’s exit, and the trash can we’d passed on our way out, Tanna’s hand flinging her broken flowers in the trash as we traipsed through the gates and into the parking lot on our way home. Tanna’s necklace, it was in some landfill next to a dirty diaper or a soggy box of Wheat Thins. And mine was in my hands.

  The necklace in Joey’s room, it had belonged to Shannon.

  As I laced the beaded flowers through my fingers, I saw her. Eyes wide. A smile splitting across her face.

  “I’m going in,” Shannon had said, her sandals clicking on the blacktop of the parking lot as the carnival lights tripped across her face, reflecting in her eyes. She stood there, twisting the flower necklace around her thumb. “That Toby Miller is hot-hot-hot.”

  “You sure?” Tanna had asked. “Maybe wait until you’re a little more …”

  “Sober?” I’d asked with a laugh.

  Shannon had burped then. Pressed a finger against her lips. Shook her head. “No way, guys. He’ll take me home if he thinks I’ve been left behind.”

  Then she’d taken off, a shaky half skip, half run. When she was a few cars away, Shannon turned, her yellow skirt fanning out around her legs, motioning for us to step back. “Duck,” she’d whisper-shouted. “Don’t let him see you!”

  Tanna and I watched from the shadows as Shannon tapped Toby on a broad shoulder, as he turned, as they spoke. He smiled, laughed, and ran a hand through his hair (choice I-want-you body language, according to Shannon). When he turned and started toward the shadows of the back lot, Shannon threw us a high thumbs-up.

  Tanna tossed her head back and laughed in that wide-open way I loved so much.

  “She gets anything she wants, doesn’t she?” Tanna had asked as she slid into the driver’s side of her blue Honda.

  “It is amazing.” I’d turned to watch Shannon disappear between two dark minivans. To where I now knew Joey had been sitting, waiting for something. Something that, for some reason, had nothing to do with me.

  “You’re still pissed, aren’t you?” Shannon leaned forward in the green lawn chair situated between Tanna’s and mine and reached into her beach bag for a bottle of sunscreen.

  I didn’t say anything. Instead, I focused on three middle schoolers with deep tans as they flip-flopped past our chairs, laughing and juggling hot dogs, Slushies, and Twizzlers. My eyes followed them as they made their way to their towels, which were laid out on the large stretch of lawn in the back of Blue Springs Swim and Tennis Club. I found myself wishing I could jump out of my own life and into the simple happiness that seemed to enfold them.

  “You were pretty harsh the other night,” Tanna said, readjusting the straps of her bikini top.

  “Yeah, whatever.” Shannon rubbed white lotion into her shoulders and upper arms in quick little circles. “I’d had a little too much to drink; I started before you guys even got there. And Adam, he was pissing me off, acting like Joey means nothing to him.”

  I wanted to ask her if she really thought Adam felt that way. But there were more urgent questions. Like, what was her necklace doing in Joey’s bedroom? And what else did she know that I didn’t? But I wasn’t sure where to start. Or where it might end. So I decided to wait until I figured a few things out before I dove into the questions that were making me feel nauseous.

  I bit my lip, grabbing a magazine from the foot of Shannon’s lawn chair, wishing I’d trusted my first instinct and avoided this pool day altogether.

  “So, Shan,” Tanna said. “Isn’t there something you wanted to say to Maggie?”

  “Right,” Shannon said, throwing the sunscreen into her bag as she leaned against the chair’s back, propping one knee up in the air with the casual-sexy vibe that she always tried to emit. “I’m sorry if what I said upset you, Maggie. I know we’re all just trying to deal, and calling you out wasn’t fair.”

  “It wasn’t fair to me or Adam,” I said, flipping to the middle of the magazine, zoning on an ad for hairspray where a girl with spiky hair walked into a nightclub. “I just hope you didn’t push him even further away.”

  Shannon propped her sunglasses on her nose and tipped her face up to the sky. I could tell by the way her foot was shaking that she was agitated, close to leaping off her chair, even, but was trying to restrain herself.

  “He’ll come around,” Shannon said. “We just need to give him a little more time.”

  I looked down at the magazine again, trying to escape through the doors of the nightclub with that spiky-haired girl. But before I could even read the stupid slogan, I was jolted as the five lifeguards blew their whistles simultaneously, ending the rest period. Peals of laughter rang through the humid air as kids dove into the water from all sides of the large pool. Three guys with long hair hopped into the crystalline water a few feet from our chairs, splashing us. I threw the splattered magazine back onto Shannon’s chair. It was pointless, anyway, trying to distract myself.

  “I’m burning up,” Tanna said, standing and tossing a mess of damp hair over her shoulder. “I gotta jump in.”

  I looked up then, shielded my eyes from the sun that was positioned almost perfectly o
ver Tanna’s head.

  “Anyone wanna join?” she asked.

  Shannon grabbed the iPod sitting on her flowered towel, twirling the wires from the earphones around one finger. “Not yet,” Shannon said. “I wanna listen to some tunes first.”

  “I’m game.” I was glad to have an excuse to get away from Shannon and hoped the water might wash away all the uncertainty that had flooded me since finding my necklace.

  I’d just swung my feet over the side of the lawn chair and was about to stand up when Toby walked by. I had about a millisecond to react, or I would have lost my chance altogether. It was his shoulders, broad and bare, tanned from his many days stationed at his lifeguard post, the same shoulders that I’d seen in the parking lot as we left the Spring Carnival. Those shoulders kicked my mouth into action. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was after, or if I would find it, but if I didn’t ask a few questions, I knew I’d never get rid of the uneasy feeling that had settled in my chest.

  “Hey, Toby,” I said, standing quickly, sure to speak over the steady roll of splashing and laughing coming from kids in the pool.

  He stopped, turning only partially, the whistle hanging from a red string around his neck swaying back and forth across his six-pack abs. “Oh. Hey, guys.” He gave us a half wave.

  “How’s your summer?” I asked, willing him to step a little closer.

  Those shoulders swiveled all the way toward us, and I knew I had him. “Okay, I guess.” His voice was tight. A little unsure. He was confused about why I’d chosen to talk to him as though we were old friends when we’d only ever spoken once or twice before.

  “You working a lot?” I asked, tipping my head toward the nearest lifeguard chair.

  Toby shrugged. “Just about every day. But it doesn’t feel like work.”

  “Shan,” I said, looking down to see that her hands were frozen in the air, her skinny little iPod clutched in one, the earphone wires dangling from the fingers of the other. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth hanging open. And that made me feel good. “This job would be perfect for you. You’d get paid for working on your tan.” I giggled then. All of them looked at me like I was crazy.

  “But I’d have to wear a one-piece,” Shannon said, her voice quiet. “I don’t do one-pieces.”

  Toby laughed. So I did, too.

  “Hey, I wanted to thank you,” I said, an idea forming as the words tripped off my tongue.

  “Me?” Toby pointed a finger at his chest.

  I nodded. “I know it was almost two months ago, but Tanna and I feel awful about leaving Shannon behind at the Spring Carnival. Total miscommunication. It was awesome of you to take her home.”

  Toby’s eyes creased, and he looked from me to Shannon and back. “I don’t have any idea—”

  “Maybe Maggie’s right,” Shannon said, interrupting him, hopping up and grabbing his glistening forearm. “Is there an application or something? In the office? I mean, getting paid to sit in the sun sounds pretty nice. And my mom’s been all over my ass to get a summer job.”

  “I think the schedule’s full,” Toby said. “But you can fill out an application, anyway. If you really want to.”

  Shannon turned and yanked the sundress off the back of her lawn chair, tossed it over her head, and grabbed Toby’s arm again. “Let’s do it,” she said with a smile.

  Toby started to turn away, but he stopped. Faced me once again. “Hey, Maggie. I’m really sorry about Joey. He was cool. A little insane, but cool.”

  I nodded. Smiled. But it was forced, so I had to look down.

  Shannon tugged at his arm. “To the office?” she asked, urgency springing from each word.

  “I gotta stop by the locker room. I’ll meet you in a minute,” Toby said. “Nice to see you guys.” Toby nodded his head toward Tanna and me, and the two turned and started toward the clubhouse office.

  “What’s up with her?” Tanna asked, moving to stand next to me.

  I watched the way Shannon’s tiny little butt swayed from side to side, the wave of her sundress swooshing around her thighs. Her hand dropped from Toby’s arm, and she moved away from him. Not much. But the distance was telling. I wondered if she’d ever had a thing for Toby Miller.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This thing with Toby. She’s throwing herself at him. Totally against her rules.”

  “Maybe she’s in love,” I said. “Love makes you break all the rules, doesn’t it?” My chest exploded, hot and heavy. The thought nearly knocked me down. But then I pushed it away. Because whatever had been going on between Shannon and Joey, it couldn’t be that.

  Tanna twirled her hair up on top of her head, tucking it into a makeshift bun. “I guess with Shannon, there really are no rules, huh?”

  I shrugged. “Guess not.”

  “You coming in?” Tanna stepped toward the edge of the pool, the water sparkling, throwing diamonds of light across her tanned stomach.

  “In a minute,” I said, leaning down to reach into Shannon’s bag. “I gotta call my mom to tell her I’m here. She wants me to check in every five minutes these days.”

  Tanna gave me a pouty look. Then, with creased eyes, looked at the phone my fingers were clutching. Shannon’s phone.

  “Mine’s almost dead,” I said, tipping my head toward my purse. “Go on without me. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’m heading over to the deep end,” Tanna said. “Those college guys are here. I want to position myself for when they start to practice their diving.”

  I laughed. “Being fully submerged in water does nothing to flatter your figure.”

  Tanna tipped her head to the side. “Maybe not. But if I get a cramp and need help, they’ll get a great view when they pull me out of the water.”

  “Tanna, you’re very creative,” I said as she hopped into the water with a little splash and a giant squeal.

  “It feels awesome,” she said, flipping to her back and swimming away.

  I looked to the office and could see through the large opening at the window counter that Shannon was twirling her hair around one finger as she talked to several guys. I had a few minutes at least. Even if she wasn’t interested in them, she was interested in them being interested in her.

  As I watched her, my mind flipped through several incidents I’d forgotten. Little things that seemed like nothing. Until now. The barrette in Joey’s car that she said she’d forgotten when he took her home after a football game. His shirt on the carpet in her bedroom, which he’d supposedly loaned her after she spilled pizza down hers at lunch one day.

  I sat on my towel, turning my attention to that phone. Scrolling through her messages, my fingers and breathing and heart got all tripped up. I was scared of what I’d find. But I needed answers, and the only people who had them were either not talking, or acting like they didn’t know anything.

  I couldn’t risk looking for too much. I was dying to. But there wasn’t enough time. So I searched for the date. Friday, April 28. The night of the Spring Carnival.

  I had to figure it out. If he was with her. To know for sure what I only suspected.

  But as I searched the history of messages between Shannon and Joey, I found a string of texts from another, more recent night.

  The night of Jimmy Dutton’s party.

  An entire conversation.

  Right at my shaky fingertips.

  12:53 a.m.: Shan, we nd 2 tlk.

  12:53 a.m.: What did A say 2 u?

  12:53 a.m.: Ur nt gng 2 b happy.

  12:54 a.m.: He’s nt making threats, is he?

  12:54 a.m.: Something like that.

  12:54 a.m.: U dropped P off?

  12:55 a.m.: Yup. I’m abt 2 leave.

  12:55 a.m.: Get over here.

  12:56 a.m.: B there in 10. Meet me outside.

  13

  Hiding Out

  “So this is where you’ve been hiding out,” I said, stepping from between two trees and into the moonlight. The creek was directly in front of me,
bubbling its way through the back edge of the park that bordered our neighborhood. Before the guys found the Jumping Hole, this clearing had been one of our favorite hangouts. Since Adam had started avoiding us, I’d imagined him here several times, wondering if he might be sitting with nothing but the rustling trees as his companions. But I hadn’t been ready to investigate.

  I stood there, still, trying not to think about where all this water had come from; that this creek was fed by the flow that came from the gorge—from our Jumping Hole—where Joey had spent his last moments alive.

  Adam looked over his shoulder, as if he’d been expecting me.

  “This is one of my hideouts,” he said from his seat on a large rock at the edge of the water. I remembered a younger version of him, sitting in that exact place, his shoes tossed to the side, his bare feet plunged into the flow of the creek.

  “I’ve texted you, like, a zillion times since yesterday.” I’d been hoping I could find him alone so we could talk, just the two of us, to see if maybe I might be the one thing to bring him back.

  “Been ignoring my phone,” Adam said. “It’s easier that way.”

  “Not for us.” I stuffed my hands into the front pockets of my capris.

  Adam patted the rock beneath him and scooted sideways to make room for me. I walked over and curled my legs underneath my body, bumping his shoulder as I sat.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I took in a deep breath and shook my head slowly, side to side, tasting the moist scent of the earth, swallowing the ball of fear that had risen in my throat.

  “Me, neither.” The golden hues of Adam’s blond hair practically shone in the night. Alcohol rode the wave of his words, a thick, syrupy scent that made my head swirl.

  “You have something to drink?” I asked.

  “M-hmm.” Adam held a bottle in the air. The moonlight flickered through the leaves above us, playing with the curves of the glass, splashing light in all directions.