by Kieran Scott
2:45 p.m.: Eureka! The white convertible approaches. I lean over the handlebars, ready to follow.
2:46 p.m.: Subject Chloe Appleby stops the car right in front of me, parallel parks like a pro (Note: Of course. Is there NOTHING she’s bad at?), and checks her hair in the rearview. I fall off my bike trying to get away before they notice me. Knee officially skinned.
2:48 p.m.: Subject Chloe and Subject Jake Graydon walk to the corner. I scoot my back against the wall around the corner from them, clutching my knee to my chest.
Jake: . . . no idea it was going to be that easy.
Chloe: It wasn’t THAT easy.
Jake: Not the essay, but the multiple choice, psssh, come on.
Chloe: Okay! Stop rubbing it in, genius! Have you started the next book yet?
Jake: No. But I’m starting it tonight. I bet I got at least a B on that test! My mom will die if I get a B.
Chloe: Maybe she’ll unground you!
2:49 p.m.: Traffic lets up and they jog across the street and into Scoops. I stare, baffled. (Query: Studying? They’ve been STUDYING?)
Saturday afternoon, I was lying out on the beach in front of Faith’s house with Shannen, Faith, Quinn, and Quinn’s friend Lindsey, thinking that if Cooper could see me now, he’d probably break up with me for my complete hypocrisy. But when Faith had called that morning and included Quinn in the invite, Quinn had actually fallen on her knees begging me to say yes, obsessed as she was with the elder Cresties. I’d been so stunned by the sight of her down on the floor, and still affected by my residual guilt over the whole “my mom’s dead, you idiot” thing, I hadn’t realized I’d agreed until I hung up the phone.
But whatever. I’d been feeling a lot better ever since I’d heard my mom and dad talking. A lot less tense and pissed at the world. Might as well let others benefit from my new attitude.
I was just starting to doze to the sound of the waves when Faith’s phone rang. She reached down from her striped beach chair, fished it out of her Kate Spade beach bag—exactly like Quinn’s, but with green trim instead of pink—and checked the display. Her rattan sun hat was so huge it cast enough of a shadow for her to actually see the screen in all this blazing sunlight.
“It’s my mom.” She rolled her eyes and got up, inching away from us as she talked.
“What’s that about?” I asked as we all watched Faith gesture with her free hand, scaring off a seagull that had gamely wandered close to our little camp.
“Her mom’s being a beyotch about the guest list for the end-of-summer party,” Shannen said with a yawn, turning her face to lie on her left cheek. She’d been splayed on her stomach for the last half hour, the straps of her black bathing suit pulled down her shoulders to avoid tan lines. There were deep creases pressed into her cheek from her eye to her ear. “Apparently they’re scaling back this year.”
Quinn and Lindsey exchanged a startled look, probably worried they wouldn’t be invited. The Kirkpatricks’ end-of-summer parties were legendary in Crestie circles. Everyone who was anyone was there, so if you weren’t invited, well, ergo you were no one.
“Ugh!” Faith tossed her phone at her bag and plopped back into her beach chair.
“What happened?” Shannen asked.
“She’s holding me to fifty guests. Fifty!” Faith took out a brush and yanked it through her damp hair. “I’m going to have to cut Tori and all the other seniors.”
“Who cares? They’re out of here anyway,” Shannen said, sounding bored.
Faith’s jaw sort of dropped, but then she paused, brush still in hair, and considered. “Right. They are out of here. . . .”
“I think it’s far more important that you invite the people who are sticking around,” Lindsey piped up, looking up from her Star magazine. She wore a light pink bikini that showed off her dark skin and how she was way too endowed for a soon-to-be sophomore. In the past half hour I’d spied men of all ages doing double takes on her as they walked by. “You know, the underclassmen who are going to go see all your plays . . .”
“And who are going to vote for school officers,” Quinn added, catching on.
“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” Faith said, staring across the ocean. “They’re not seniors anymore. We are.”
“So screw ’em,” Shannen said.
Faith smirked and sat back in her chair. “Yeah. Screw ’em.”
Lindsey and Quinn surreptitiously high-fived. Crises averted.
“When is the end-of-summer party, anyway?” I asked, pushing myself up onto my elbows. The surf was surprisingly close to our little camp. In the time that I’d been lying on my back, the tide had started coming in.
“August seventh,” Quinn said, before Faith could answer.
Faith shot her a perturbed look, and Quinn’s already-pink face darkened. “I already have it in my iPhone.”
“August seventh. Not exactly the end of summer,” Shannen said with a yawn.
“It’s the guys. They all have to get home for their ‘soccer mini-camp’ that week,” Faith said with air quotes. “If we want an acceptable guy to girl ratio, it has to be that weekend.”
August seventh was the next weekend Annie was coming down. Normally I wouldn’t even consider attending the Kirkpatricks’ all-Crestie bash, but Annie would kill to go. The hook ups alone would have her burning up the keyboard on her laptop. And I’d already forced her to miss the July Fourth party. But Faith detested Annie. And now, with the smaller guest list . . . But still, I had to ask. I mean, Annie’s head would explode if I didn’t at least try.
“Faith?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I was kind of hoping to bring a guest,” I said casually.
“Oh, don’t worry.” Faith waved a hand as she put her brush away. “You can totally bring your local boy toy.”
I blinked. That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Going to a Crestie party was probably the last thing he’d ever want to do. “Actually, I was sort of thinking I’d bring Annie.”
Faith’s lips flattened. “Um, no.”
I sat up straight now, all the blood rushing to my face. “Faith—”
“Ally, she’s a total freak! And this party is for us. The last party of the summer. The—”
“Omigod, Faith, just let the girl come,” Shannen groaned, propping herself up on her forearms. “What’s the big deal?”
We both looked at Shannen, stunned.
“Didn’t you used to be friends with her or something?” Shannen asked, pulling her hair around to check it for split ends.
Faith and I exchanged a surprised look over Shannen’s prone back. The very idea that Shannen (a) noticed anything about Faith’s life that didn’t directly pertain to her and (b) remembered it even after two years was kind of astonishing. “Yeah,” Faith said.
“So let her come,” Shannen replied, flicking her hair back again and shrugging one shoulder. “It’s probably the last one you’re ever gonna have anyway. Might as well go out with a bang.”
“The last one?” Quinn said. “Why?”
Faith pursed her lips, like she’d just popped a lemon lollipop into her mouth. She looked down at her perfectly tan thigh and shooed a fly away. “My parents are getting divorced and they can’t decide who’s getting the house, so they might sell it.”
“What?” I blurted.
Faith sighed. She gave me a don’t go there look that made me feel, all over again, that her parents’ impending split was somehow my fault.
“Don’t worry. I plan to talk them out of it,” Faith said. She lifted her sunglasses from atop her head and placed them over her eyes, then leaned back again. “All right. Your little friend may come. But bring Cooper, too. He’s hot.”
“Gee, thanks,” I shot back, wondering why I’d ever even opened this can of worms. Annie so owed me one.
“Isn’t it so weird?” Shannen said, smoothing out the sand in front of her towel with the palm of her hand. “I mean, did you ever think that all our parents would
be getting divorced?”
A hot stone burned to life in the center of my stomach.
“I know. Especially yours, Ally,” Faith said, her face tilted casually toward the sky. Like she was discussing the weather and not my parents’ marriage. “I always thought they were the perfect couple.” She glanced sideways at Quinn. “No offense.”
Quinn didn’t reply, nor did she look at me. She was, in fact, looking pointedly away at her iPhone, scrolling through iTunes endlessly.
“Wait, what are you talking about? Did you hear something?” I asked, leaving my pride buried in the sand.
Faith looked at Shannen, who looked at me. “No. Not exactly. We just assumed . . .”
“Assumed what?” I asked, even though I knew.
“Well, your dad came back and your mom still came down the shore to play house with Dr. Nathanson,” Shannen said. She glanced at Quinn. “No offense.”
Quinn looked at Lindsey. Clearly she was starting to have second thoughts about the attractiveness of hanging out with her elders. “I think I’m gonna go in. Wanna come?”
“Definitely,” Lindsey replied, dropping the mag.
“Wait.”
Quinn was dusting the sand off the bottom of her flowered bikini, and froze.
“Have you heard something?” I asked.
She turned and looked at me with an apologetic sort of smile as she backed away toward the water. “I really don’t want to be a part of this conversation.”
But wait. No. My parents had been talking on the phone. She was laughing. She said she loved him. This couldn’t be right. My heart pounded so hard it was making it difficult to breathe.
“Quinn. If you know something—”
“Come on, Lindsey,” she said, grabbing her friend’s hand.
The two of them ran into the surf, hair bouncing, sun gleaming off their skin, screeching happily like some Coppertone commercial as their calves hit the water. Shannen turned over and sat up. She rested her wrists across her knees.
“It’s pretty clear they’re breaking up, Al,” she said. “For real.”
The pitying look she gave me made me hate her more in that moment than I had at her party. Much more.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I blurted, gathering my things. I yanked my denim shorts on over my bathing suit and stood up. “My parents are talking again. They’re going to get back together.”
“Ally—”
“I have to go,” I said.
Neither one of them tried to stop me as I threw my towel over my shoulders and stormed off. They were wrong about this. They had to be. They just had to be.
“Mom!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, closing the screen door with a bang. “Mom! Are you home!?”
She and Gray both came racing onto the landing outside their bedroom and leaned over the wooden railing to look down at me.
“Ally! What’s wrong? Why are you shouting?” my mother asked.
I threw my wet, sandy towel on the back of the couch and saw Gray flinch. If he’d been in front of me at that moment, I seriously might have tackled him to the floor.
“I need to talk to you,” I said shakily.
“What is it?” She jogged down the stairs, eyeing me with concern. Clearly she could tell this was of dire importance, because she’d barely spoken to me, let alone looked at me in a motherly way, in well over a week. She hit the first floor, Gray hot on her heels, and crossed over to me. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Her hands were on my shoulders. I glared at Gray and his floppy blond hair and his inappropriately unbuttoned plaid shirt. I wanted more than anything to tell him to go away, but I knew that was a waste of time. If he had to be here for this, then fine. I looked my mother in the eye, and my chin quivered.
“Are you and dad getting a divorce?” I asked, clutching my elbows.
Gray looked at the floor. My mother blinked. “What?”
“I was just down on the beach and Shannen and Faith said you guys were getting divorced,” I told her, my voice wet. “So are you?”
Gray moved past me, slipped my towel from the couch, and draped it over his arm. “I think I should go.”
My mom just sort of looked sideways at him as he made his way out to the deck and closed the glass door behind him. She reached up and touched my face, tilting her head as she looked at me.
“Oh, Ally—”
I pulled away from her, doubling over at the waist. “Oh my God, you are! Who knows about this? Does Quinn know? Do all the Cresties know? Have you even told Dad?”
“No decisions have been made,” she said, holding her hands out flat.
“But you were talking to him on the phone! You said you loved him!”
My mother shook her head. “How did you—”
“How can you do this so fast? You’re not even going to give him a chance?” I blurted.
“Ally, he was gone for almost three years,” my mother said. “What’s so fast about that?”
“That’s not what I meant!” I cried. Everything around me swam. The modern wood sculptures, the glass dining table, the striped curtains. I felt like I couldn’t focus on anything. Like the whole world was blurring out of my control.
“Ally, all I can tell you is your dad and I still have some talking to do,” my mother said gently. “And Gray as well. He’s a part of this too.”
“Why?” I screeched, clutching my stomach. “Why should he be a part of anything?”
“Because I love him, Ally,” my mother said simply.
My throat completely closed over and I felt like I was going to throw up. “You don’t love him. You can’t. You love Dad.”
My mother sighed and looked past me out the window. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, what about me?” I blurted.
“What?”
“You said Gray is a part of this. What about me? Don’t I get a say in who I want to be my father?” I asked.
“Your father will always be your father, Ally,” she said. “He still loves you. That hasn’t changed. We both do.”
“Yeah, well. You could have fooled me.”
I strode by her, grabbing a hooded sweatshirt off the hook by the door as I ran out.
“Where’re you going?” my mother shouted after me. “I hope you’re not going out with that Cooper kid!”
“Why not?” I blurted, whirling on her.
“Because I don’t like the person you are when you’re around him,” she replied, walking toward me. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how late you’ve been coming home, Ally. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Like you even care,” I spat. “At least Cooper wants me around!”
Her jaw dropped and I fled, slamming the door as hard as I could.
“You know what pisses me off?” I said, one foot crossing over the other as Cooper and I navigated the crowded sidewalk in front of Fantasy Island, the family amusement park in the middle of Beach Haven. “All these families.”
I swung my arm wide and almost knocked over a scrawny kid flying by on a skateboard.
“I mean, look at them! Look at that guy!” I pointed in the general direction of a beefy dad with two kids hanging on his arms as he tried to check his BlackBerry. His skinny, tan wife walked ahead of him, chatting on her phone, while one kid whined that he had to pee and the other begged for ice cream. “I mean, why are you even here? It’s like they’re pretending to be a happy family cuz it’s, like, something they’re supposed to do, but if you’re just gonna be on your freaking phone all night, why not just stay home?!” I shouted as the dad passed us by. He glanced over his shoulder at me with an irritated look, but didn’t seem to think I was talking specifically about him. He probably thought I was just some random, drunk teenager. Which, let’s face it, I was. “Your kids would be happier in front of the TV than screaming to get your attention!”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough with the public service announcement,” Cooper said, stopping me and pinnin
g my arms to my sides. He looked me in the eye. “Man. Who knew you were going to turn out to be a mean drunk?”
“I’m not,” I pouted. “Just honest.”
Some woman wearing her sunglasses and straw hat at night sideswiped me with her huge Michael Kors purse and I bristled. “Why are we here again? I liked the beach. Let’s go back to the beach.”
“We’re here because you had a sudden craving for funnel cake, remember?” Cooper said, turning me toward the elaborate Fantasy Island gates with the carousel horse at the top, smiling down at us.
“Oh yeah. Right.” I slung my arm around his shoulder as we walked by the security dude at the entrance. He gave me the stink eye and I tried to look casual and sober. “And you brought me here because you’re the best boyfriend ever.”
“That’s me,” Cooper said.
He held me around the waist as we skirted clumps of screaming children and a huge puddle of melting ice cream. There was a line in front of the funnel cake stand, so Cooper deposited me on a bench, told me not to move, and walked up to the window. He, of course, knew the girl behind the counter. As he waited for the food, ignoring the grousing of the other people on line, my phone beeped. I didn’t even look at it. I knew it was my mother. She’d been calling and texting for the past three hours. Like she was worried about me. Yeah, sure. Just another parent pretending to give a crap about her kid.
“Here we go!” Cooper said, offering me a funnel cake on a flimsy paper plate. He tore off one end and popped it into his mouth. “You wanna eat it here or . . .”
“Let’s go someplace else,” I said as the kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl screamed. All the flashing lights, swirling rides, and wailing voices were making me dizzy. “Someplace alone.”
Cooper nodded and tugged me up with one hand. “I know a spot.”
I leaned my head into his shoulder as we walked out the back exit of the park and through the parking lot toward the bay. There was a playground in the sand near the edge of the water with a plastic climbing wall and a cave beneath it. Cooper ducked inside, then stuck his head out.
“You coming?”