by Kieran Scott
“So, what? It’s Gray Nathanson, is it?” my dad said, his voice bitter. “You’re gonna tell me you’re in love with him now? Go ahead. Go ahead and shack up with him, then. We’ll see how that works out for you.”
I heard the slap before I even realized what my mom was doing. I gasped and my hand flew up to cover my mouth. I could see the red marks on his cheek, left behind by her fingers. I stared through the windshield at my father, sorrow welling up inside of me. Why had we ever thought this would work? What were we thinking? My dad was so stunned he didn’t even move. For the first time in my life, he looked small. Broken. Old. And then we were peeling out into traffic, lurching toward and through a yellow light. Just like that, it was over. The day that I’d been looking forward to, the day that was supposed to save my family—obliterated.
My mother’s breath was so ragged I thought she might faint. I slowly put the flowers on the floor, the cellophane crackling loudly, and leaned back in my seat. My heart and stomach felt hollow, like they weren’t there at all. Carefully, I reached for my seat belt and clicked it, feeling as though any sudden movement might set her off. When I finally hazarded a look at my mother, she was leaned forward over the wheel, as if she could somehow make the car go faster by throwing her weight behind it.
“Mom?”
“Don’t.”
“But I—”
“Don’t, Ally.”
I swallowed hard and blinked back tears. She didn’t say one word to me for the entire drive back to the shore.
“Have you ever been inside this one?”
Jenny and I paused in the middle of the beach that night as she pointed up at the darkened Appleby house. My feet were buried in the cold sand and the wind whipped around us like it was trying to kill something. The reeds at the top of the beach were flattened against the dunes, and the clouds overhead moved so fast against the cobalt blue sky, it was making me dizzy. My face already stung from spending hours in my room alone, thinking about the look on my dad’s face that afternoon, and crying my eyes out. Now I was so tense my arms were permanently wrapped around myself. My mother still wouldn’t talk to me, and when I’d come down for dinner, Gray had given me a look that could have killed a charging elephant, then dropped a folder of take-out menus on the counter and walked out with Quinn for destinations unknown. I was officially persona non grata in the world of my pseudo-family. All I felt like doing was curling up in a ball and dying, but the last place I wanted to be was inside that house. Thankfully, Cooper had called to tell me he and his friends were going to be partying a little ways up the beach. So here I was.
“Cuz I looooove this one,” Jenny added.
I blinked, returning to the now. What was with the Lane family’s jones for Chloe’s house?
“Yeah, actually. One of my friends lives there.”
It seemed easier than saying former friends and then explaining the whole sordid idiocy.
“Really? Does she keep any clothes in there?” Jenny asked, taking a couple of steps toward the deck. “I bet she has awesome clothes.”
“All right, all right. Let’s go before you get yourself into trouble,” I joked, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Jenny shot me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “What? I was just asking.”
We started up the beach together and she shook her head, glancing back over her shoulder. “How do you have a house like that and not even use it?”
I took a deep breath and looked out at the ocean, not about to explain why Chloe hadn’t come down. There were whitecaps on the water as far as the eye could see, and the surf was so loud we had to raise our voices to be heard. Thinking about Chloe made me feel sad all over again. I’d recently seen her get devastated, just like my dad had been devastated that afternoon. And both were sorta kinda my fault.
“Come on, let’s go back to the fire. It’s freaking freezing out here.”
There was a whoop and a shout down the beach, and I saw Charlie’s shadow loping toward the others, which gave me more of an excuse to get back there.
“Chum’s here,” I said.
“Oh! I love Chum! He always brings beef jerky!” Jenny gave a little jump, tugged her red-and-white-striped hood over her braids, and jogged ahead of me. Her heels kicked up so much sand, I had to slow down and shield my eyes.
“Hey, Ally,” Charlie said, lifting his chin.
My shoulders felt heavy as I said “hi.” Because I suddenly remembered that there was something I had to tell him. Something I figured he’d want to know. God. Could this day get any more depressing?
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” I asked.
Cooper looked back and forth at the two of us with a suspicious, possibly jealous, expression. I managed to feel flattered for a second, before the weight of what I was about to do flattened it like a two-hundred-pound dumbbell to the pinky toe.
“Sure. What’s up?” Charlie asked.
He walked over to me, hands in the pockets of his blue sweatshirt, head bowed. I moved a few steps away from the fire and he followed.
“Uh oh. This seems serious,” he joked, and laughed. But when he looked at my face, he stopped smiling. “What is it? Did something happen to my mom? Did he—”
“No. Your mom’s fine,” I said quietly. The fire crackled and sparked behind us, the wind blasting our faces with smoke. “She’s . . . here.”
Charlie actually looked over his shoulder.
“No, not here here, but down the shore. She’s staying with us. And so is Shannen,” I said.
“Shit. You didn’t tell them, did you?” he asked.
“No, but . . . here’s the thing. . . . My mom says your parents are getting a divorce,” I said.
Charlie’s head popped up. His eyebrows, too. He looked, suddenly, like the Charlie I used to know. All happy and alive inside.
“She’s leaving him? Shut the eff up.” He smiled and nodded a few times as he looked at our feet. “Go, Mom.”
Okay. So maybe this wasn’t a bad piece of news. All of a sudden, I sensed a disturbance in the force. Everything went quiet, except for the crackling of the fire and the whistling of the wind and the crashing of the surf. Before I could even look over at Cooper for an explanation, she was there.
“Hey! What’re we drinking?” Shannen asked, slapping her hands together.
Charlie ducked behind me. As much as a lanky giant can duck behind a girl like myself. He grabbed my elbows from behind and pressed his head into the small of my back.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
“What?” Shannen said as the locals just stared. She lifted her chin in my direction. “I’m with her.”
You are so not with me, I thought. And would have said were it not for the fact that her brother’s long-ass toenails were cutting into my heels. Only Shannen would feel like it was okay to crash a party with my friends mere weeks after completely destroying me. She really did live in her own little world where everyone else revolved around her.
“Chum? What the hell are you doing back there?” Dex asked.
“Fuuuuuuck,” Charlie said to the ground. Then, ever so slowly, he released me and stood up. Shannen’s face fell so fast it made a dent in the sand at her feet. “Hey, Shan.”
“Charlie!?”
It was like that scene in Grease in the parking lot when Danny and Sandy first see each other after their summer of love and Rizzo’s the only one who knows what the heck is going on. I was Rizzo. Shannen threw herself at Charlie and they hugged. He picked her up off the ground and her legs kicked up.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Shannen demanded as her feet hit the sand again.
“Slumming, you know,” Charlie lifted his shoulders.
“Hey! Watch it,” Cooper joked, but he sounded serious.
“Come on,” Shannen said, shoving his arm so hard he turned sideways. “I thought you were in Arizona.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of a long story,” Charlie said, hanging his head. What was with all this head hangin
g? Back in the day this kid wore his chin higher than anyone I knew. “Don’t be mad at Ally, though. I made her promise not to tell you.”
Shannen’s eyes flashed as she looked up at me. “You knew?”
I bit down so hard on my tongue my taste buds filled with blood. Don’t kill her. Do not kill her. There are too many witnesses.
“Yes,” I said slowly, loudly. “I knew where your brother was and I didn’t tell you.” I spoke like she was a tourist in from Greece who knew zero English. Very slowly. Very succinctly. Determined to get my point across.
Shannen sort of flinched. She tucked her hair behind her ear, which was something she always used to do when she didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t seen her do it once since I’d been back in Orchard Hill.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she said to Charlie.
“Like where?” he said.
“I don’t know. Anywhere. We need to talk,” she said. “There’s a lot going on.”
Charlie glanced at me, but didn’t say that he already knew. Instead he nodded, lifted a hand at the crowd, and trudged off with Shannen by his side. From behind, it was amazing how much they looked like each other. Same long legs, same dark hair, same hunched shoulders. They’d always been the perfect pair. The brother and sister who made only children like me wish for a sibling. He shouldn’t have been exiled, and she shouldn’t have turned into a bitch.
“Damn,” Jenny said, stepping up next to me.
“What?” I asked. In the sullen mood I found myself in, I expected her to say something deep and meaningful. Something that would make sense of all this contradictory crap spinning in my head.
“He took the jerky with him.”
I scoffed a laugh. For some people, it was all just about the jerky. Must have been nice when life was so simple. Over her shoulder, a light flickered to life a little ways off in the distance. The deck light at Gray’s house. My heart skipped a tense beat as my mom walked out to the railing and leaned into it. The wind tugged her hair back from her face as she scanned the beach, and I realized with a surge of hope that she was looking for me. Of course she was looking for me. I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. Maybe she was ready to talk about this afternoon. And for the first time all summer, I was more than ready to listen.
I took one step toward the house, and then Gray came out behind my mom and slipped his arms around her waist. She turned to face him and he held her in his arms and the two of them started kissing like they were auditioning for some awful, middle-aged porn movie.
So, she wasn’t looking for me at all. Apparently she didn’t give a crap where I was, who I was with, or what I was doing. Maybe Cooper had been right all along. Maybe all I was to my mother was the person keeping her from the people she really wanted to be with.
Suddenly I felt very small. And stupid and angry and naïve.
“Hey, Crestie Girl. Want a beer?”
I looked up at Cooper. He held a can of something with the word “Lite” splashed across it. Ice dripped from the can and hit my feet, sending shivers up and down my legs.
“Sure,” I said, taking it from him. “Why not?”
And while Gray slid his hands under my mom’s T-shirt in the distance, I chugged a beer for the very first time.
Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Sunday, July 11
Position: Gourmet salad bar at Dickson’s Farm (favorite Crestie summer lunch spot).
Cover: Deciding between Kalamata or regular, martini-type olives.
Observations:
12:34 p.m.: The Halloran Electrical van pulls up outside. Brakes squeal. Music is cut dead. Will, who’s much more of a Wendy’s guy than a salad guy, gets out from behind the wheel, walks around the front, and opens the passenger-side door. A pink espadrille searches for the ground. I recognize it before I see the person it’s attached to. Subject Chloe Appleby. (Note: THIS is interesting .)
12:36 p.m.: Will and Subject Chloe walk to the salad bar, pick up plastic trays, and go about making their salads. They talk, laugh. Subject Chloe makes suggestions.
12:37 p.m.: Will’s hand touches Subject Chloe’s back. She doesn’t flinch away. It doesn’t linger long.
12:43 p.m.: On their way to have their salads weighed, they grab a basket and fill it with eight premade wraps and a bunch of sodas.
12:48 p.m.: There’s some kind of debate at the register as Subject Chloe and Will both try to pay. Not sure who wins. The Weight Watchers crowd has just arrived and is blocking my view.
12:50 p.m.: Subject Chloe and Will walk out. He opens the car door for her. She smiles as she gets in. They speed away. (Innocent Assessment: They were just buying lunch for the crew working on her house. Not-So-Innocent Assessment: They’re totally doing it.)
There was a circle on the page in front of me, with a big “x=?” over the diameter line. Or was that the radius? Which one went straight across? I used to know this. I had a feeling that if it was gray and raining and less than sixty degrees outside, I would know this. But today? With the sun in my face and the pool shining out there and knowing that every single person on the planet was having more fun than me? I didn’t know what the hell that frickin’ line was and I didn’t care.
Why hadn’t Ally texted me back? Was she so pissed at me that she couldn’t even be text buddies? Or was it because I’d asked her to be friends? Maybe she still wanted to be more than friends, so when I’d asked to be friends, she’d been offended. Couldn’t she just write something back? Let me know she’d gotten the text? Was it so hard to type yes, no, or maybe into a damn phone?
I took out my cell, deciding to call her out with another text. Something that struck the exact balance between caring and not caring. What was the word? Aloof. I needed to find the aloofness.
Ten minutes later, I was trying to think of something good to say. Maybe I should be paying more attention in English class.
Suddenly, Chloe appeared in my yard. She just walked out from behind the bushes and I almost had a heart attack. She squinted up at the house, like she was looking for something. I stood up and waved, shoving my phone back into my pocket. She smiled and waved back. Then she motioned for me to come downstairs.
This was the benefit of having the biggest house in town. My mom was in it somewhere, but clearly nowhere with a window on the backyard. I walked to the door of my room, opened it silently, and peeked my head out. Nothing. I ran downstairs on my tiptoes and cut through the dining room—which we use about four times a year—to get to the backyard. Mom was more likely to visit the kitchen than the dining room. Like, ninety-nine percent more likely. If they made SAT questions about how to avoid my family members, I’d be going to Harvard.
“Hey!” Chloe said as I slid open the glass door to the back patio.
I lifted a finger to my mouth to shush her, then pulled her around the corner. No windows. Awning overhead. Unless you were in the pool, you couldn’t see us.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
She was wearing a pink bikini under her white tank dress and I could see about seventy-five percent of her breasts from my angle. I cleared my throat and looked away. I’d also be going to Harvard if the questions were about how best to sneak a glance at cleavage. But Chloe was my friend, and still Hammond’s girl in my mind, so I’d have to control myself.
“I’m still grounded. Seriously grounded.”
“Oh, sorry.” She pulled her lips down and back for a second. “Faith told me she saw you down the shore over the weekend, so . . .”
“Yeah. Big mistake,” I said.
“Oh.” She tilted her head and ran her fingertips along the wrought iron edge of our smaller patio table. “So, did you see anyone?”
I bit my lip. I hated it when girls dug for info. I wasn’t good at knowing what they wanted to hear and what they didn’t. “Well, I saw Faith.” She looked at me like I knew that already. “And Hammond and Ally,” I admitted.
“Were they, like, hooking up?” she asked.
“What? No
.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Ally doesn’t like him.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “So you think he likes Ally.”
Crap. Was that what that sounded like? “No. No, of course not,” I said. “Chloe, they weren’t even at the same party. Ally’s, like, hanging with some local crowd. Hammond said he’s barely even seen her.”
Her expression brightened. “Yeah?”
I suddenly recalled, vividly, the sight of Ally on top of that local dude, and felt sick to my stomach. But she didn’t need to hear about that. I’d made her feel better already.
“Yeah.”
“So if you’re grounded, I guess that means you can’t hang out,” she said.
“I wish.”
She groaned and leaned back against the pillar behind her. I breathed out, relieved. Looking down at her cleavage accidentally was no longer an issue. “I’m so bored!” she said.
“At least you don’t have to take some dumb-ass class this afternoon,” I said, rolling my head around to crack my neck.
“What class?” she asked.
“English Literature,” I said in a low voice, trying for a British accent. “My mom’s making me take it.”
She stood up straight and frowned. She wasn’t interested, was she? That would be insane.
“When’s it meet?” she asked.
“Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for, like, six weeks,” I said. “It’s two o’clock at Bergen.”
“Okay. I’m in.”
“What?” I laughed. “Are you serious?”
She shrugged. “It sounds like fun.”
I reached forward and put my hand on her forehead, which I’d seen Shannen do a hundred times. Chloe rolled her eyes and smiled as she batted my hand away.
“Just making sure you’re feeling okay,” I said.
“I know. I get it,” she said. “I like to read.” She walked a few steps past me and took her sunglasses off her head, folding them in front of her. “Besides, if I join the class, then we can hang out and study together. Your mom can’t ground you from studying.”