We finally had our movie night. My mother, Susannah, Jeremiah, and I watched Susannah’s favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies in the rec room with all the lights off. My mother made kettle corn in the big cast-iron pot, and she went out and bought Milk Duds and gummy bears and saltwater taffy. Susannah loved saltwater taffy. It was classic, like old times, only without Steven and Conrad, who was working a dinner shift.
Halfway through Notorious, her most favorite of all, Susannah fell asleep. My mother covered her with a blanket, and when the movie was over, she whispered, “Jeremiah, will you carry her upstairs?”
Jeremiah, nodded quickly, and Susannah didn’t even wake up when he lifted her in his arms and carried her up the rec room stairs. He picked her up like she was
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weightless, a feather. I’d never seen him do that before. Even though we were almost the same age, in that moment he almost seemed grown-up.
My mother got up too, stretching. “I’m exhausted. Are you going to bed, too, Belly?”
“Not yet. I think I’ll clean up down here first,” I said.
“Good girl,” she said, winking at me, and then she headed upstairs.
I started picking up the taffy wrappers and a few kernels that had fallen onto the carpet.
Jeremiah came back down when I was putting the movie into its case. He sank into the couch cushions. “Let’s not go to sleep yet,” he said, looking up at me.
“Okay. Do you wanna watch another movie?”
“Nah. Let’s just watch TV.” He picked up the remote and started flipping through channels randomly. “Where’s Cam Cameron been lately?”
Sitting back down, I sighed a little. “I don’t know. He hasn’t called, and I haven’t called him. The summer’s almost over. I’ll probably never see him
again.”
He didn’t look at me when he said, “Do you want to? See him again?” “I don’t know I’m not sure. Maybe. Maybe not.”
Jeremiah put the TV on mute. He turned and looked at me then. “I don’t think he’s the guy for you.” His eyes looked somber. I’d never seen him look so somber.
Lightly I said, “Yeah, I doubt it too.” 237
“Belly ,” he began. He took a deep breath of air and puffed up his
cheeks, and then he blew it out so hard the hair on his forehead fluttered. I could feel my heart start to pound–something was going to happen. He was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. He was going to go and change everything.
I opened my mouth to speak, to interrupt him before he said something he couldn’t take back, and he shook his head. “Just let me get this out.”
He took another deep breath. “You’ve always been my best friend. But now it’s more. I see you as more than that.” He continued, scooting closer to me. “You’re cooler than any other girl I’ve ever met, and you’re there for me. You’ve always been there for me. I I can count on you. And you can
count on me too. You know that.”
I nodded. I could hear him talking, see his lips moving, but my mind was working a million miles a minute. This was Jeremiah. My buddy, my best pal. Practically my brother. The hugeness of it all made it hard to breathe. I could barely look at him. Because I didn’t. I didn’t see him that way. There was only one person. For me that person was Conrad.
“And I know you’ve always liked Conrad, but you’re over him now, right?” His eyes looked so hopeful, it killed me, killed me to not answer him the way he wanted me to.
“I I don’t know,” I whispered.
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He sucked in his breath, the way he did when he was frustrated. “But why? He doesn’t see you that way. I do.”
I could feel my eyes starting to tear up, which wasn’t fair. I couldn’t cry. It was just that he was right. Conrad didn’t see me that way. I only wished I could see Jeremiah the way he saw me. “I know. I wish I didn’t. But I do. I still do.”
Jeremiah moved away from me. He wouldn’t look at me; his eyes looked everywhere but at mine. “He’ll only end up hurting you,” he said, and his voice cracked.
“I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me. I couldn’t take it if you were mad at me.”
He sighed. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just–why does it always have to be Conrad?”
Then he got up, and left me sitting there. 239
chapter forty one AGE 12
Mr. Fisher had taken the boys on one of their overnight deep-sea fishing trips. Jeremiah couldn’t go; he’d been sick earlier that day so Susannah made him stay home. The two of us spent the night on the old plaid couch in the basement eating chips and dip and watching movies.
In between The Terminator and Terminator 2, Jeremiah said bitterly, “He likes Con better than me, you know.”
I had gotten up to change the DVDs, and I turned around and said, “Huh?”
“It’s true. I don’t really care anyway. I think he’s a dick,” Jeremiah said, picking at a thread on the flannel blanket in his lap.
I thought he was kind of a dick too, but I didn’t say so. You’re not supposed to join in when someone
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is bashing his father. I just put the DVD in and sat back down. Taking a corner of the blanket, I said, “He’s not so bad.”
Jeremiah gave me a look. “He is, and you know it. Con thinks he’s God or something. So does your brother.”
“It’s just that your dad is so different from our dad,” I said defensively. “Your dad takes you guys fishing and, like, plays football with you. Our dad doesn’t do that kind of stuff. He likes chess.”
He shrugged. “I like chess.”
I hadn’t known that about him. I liked it too. My dad had taught me to play when I was seven. I wasn’t bad either. I had never joined chess club, even though I’d kind of wanted to. Chess club was for the nose-pickers. That’s what Taylor called them.
“And Conrad likes chess too,” Jeremiah said. “He just tries to be what our dad wants. And the thing is, I don’t even think he likes football, not like I do. He’s just good at it like he is at everything.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Conrad was good at everything. I grabbed a handful of chips and stuffed them into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything.
“One day I’m gonna be better than him,” Jeremiah said.
I didn’t see that happening. Conrad was too good. “I know you like Conrad,” Jeremiah said suddenly.
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I swallowed the chips. They tasted like rabbit feed all of a sudden. “No, I don’t,” I said. “I don’t like Conrad.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, and his eyes looked so knowing and wise. “Tell the truth. No secrets, remember?” No secrets was something Jeremiah and I had been saying for pretty much forever. It was a tradition, the same way Jeremiah’s drinking my sweet cereal milk was tradition– just one of those things we said to each other when it was just the two of us.
“No, I really don’t like him,” I insisted. “I like him like a friend. I don’t look at him like that.”
“Yes, you do. You look at him like you love him.”
I couldn’t take those knowing eyes looking at me for one more second.
Hotly I said, “You just think that because you’re jealous of anything Conrad does.”
“I’m not jealous. I just wish I could be as good as him,” he said softly.
Then he burped and turned the movie on.
The thing was, Jeremiah was right. I did love him. I knew the exact moment it became real too. Conrad got up early to make a special belated Father’s Day breakfast, only Mr. Fisher hadn’t been able to come down the night before. He wasn’t there the next morning the way he was supposed to be. Conrad cooked anyway, and he was thirteen and a terrible cook, but we all ate it. Watching him serving rubbery eggs and pretending not to be sad, I thought to myself, I will love this boy forever.
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chapter forty -two
He’d gone running on the beach, something he’d started doing recently–I knew because I’d watched him from my window two mornings in a row. He was wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt; sweat had formed in a circle in the
middle of his back. He’d left about an hour before, I’d seen him take off, and he was running back to the house now.
I walked out there, to the porch, without a real plan in my mind. All I knew was that the summer was almost over. Soon it would be too late. We would drive away, and I would never have told him. Jeremiah had laid it all out on the line. Now it was my turn. I couldn’t go another whole year not having told him. I’d been so afraid of change, of anything tipping our little summer sailboat–but Jeremiah had already done
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that, and look, we were still alive. We were still Belly and Jeremiah.
I had to, I had to do it, because to not do it would kill me. I couldn’t keep yearning for something, for someone who might or might not like me back. I had to know for sure. Now or never.
He didn’t hear me coming up behind him. He was bent down loosening the laces of his sneakers.
“Conrad,” I said. He didn’t hear me, so I said it again, louder. “Conrad.” He looked up, startled. Then he stood up straight.
Catching him off guard felt like a good sign. He had a million walls.
Maybe if I just started talking, he wouldn’t have time to build up a new one.
I sucked in my lips and began to speak. I said the first words I thought of, the ones that had been on my heart since the beginning. I said, “I’ve loved you since I was ten years old.”
He blinked.
“You’re the only boy I’ve ever thought about. My whole life, it’s always been you. You taught me how to dance, you came out and got me the time I swam out too far. Do you remember that? You stayed with me and you pushed me back to shore, and the whole time, you kept saying, ‘We’re almost there,’ and I believed it. I believed it because you were the one
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who was saying it, and I believed everything you ever said. Compared to you, everyone else is saltines, even Cam. And I hate saltines. You know that. You know everything about me, even this, which is that I really love you.”
I waited, standing in front of him. I was out of breath. I felt like my heart would explode, it was so full. I pulled my hair into a ponytail with my hand and held it like that, still waiting for him to say something, anything.
It felt like a thousand years before he spoke. “Well you shouldn’t. I’m not the one. Sorry.”
And that was all he said. I let out a big breath of air and stared at him. “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You like me too; I know it.” I’d seen the way he’d looked at me when I was with Cam, I’d seen it with my own two eyes.
“Not the way you want me to,” he said. He sighed, and in this sad way, like he felt sorry for me, he said, “You’re still such a kid, Belly.”
“I’m not a kid anymore! You just wish I was, so that way you wouldn’t have to deal with any of it. That’s why you’ve been mad at me this whole summer,” I said, my voice getting louder. “You do like me. Admit it.”
“You’re crazy,” he said, laughing a little as he walked away from me.
But not this time. I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. I was sick and tired of his brooding James
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Dean routine. He had feelings for me. I knew it. I was going to make him say it.
I grabbed his shirt sleeve. “Admit it. You were mad when I started hanging out with Cam .You wanted me to still be your little admirer.”
“What?” He shook me off. “Get your head out of your ass, Belly. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”
My cheeks flamed bright red; I could feel the heat beneath my skin. It was like a sunburn times a million. “Yes, exactly, because the world revolves around you, right?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was a warning in his voice, but I didn’t stop to listen. I was too mad. I was finally saying what I really thought, and there was no turning back now.
I kept getting in his face. I wasn’t going to let him walk away from me, not this time. “You just want to keep me on this hook, right? So I’ll keep chasing after you and you can feel good about yourself. As soon as I start to get over you, you just reel me back in. You’re so screwed up in the head.
But I’m telling you, Conrad, this is it.”
He snapped, “What are you talking about?”
My hair whipped around my face as I spun around to walk backward, facing him. “This is it. You don’t get to have me anymore. Not as your friend or your admirer or anything. I’m through.”
His mouth twisted. “What do you want from me? 246
You have your little boyfriend to play with now, remember?”
I shook my head and backed away from him. “It’s not like that,” I said. He’d gotten it all wrong. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. He’d been the one stringing me along, like, my whole life. He knew how I felt, and he let me love him. He wanted me to.
He stepped closer to me. “One minute you like me. Then Cam …” Conrad paused. “And then Jeremiah. Isn’t that right? You want to have your cake and eat it too, but you also want your cookies, and your ice cream . . .”
“Shut up!” I yelled.
“You’re the one who’s been playing games, Belly.” He was trying to sound casual, offhand, but his body was tense, like every muscle was as tight as his stupid guitar strings.
“You’ve been an ass all summer. All you think about is yourself. So your parents are getting divorced! So what? People’s parents get divorced. It’s not an excuse to treat people like crap!”
He snapped his head away from me. “Shut your mouth,” he said, and his jaw twitched. I had finally done it. I was getting to him.
“Susannah was crying the other day because of you– she could barely get out of bed! Do you even care? Do you even know how selfish you are?”
Conrad stepped up close to me, so close our faces 247
were nearly touching, like he might either hit me or kiss me. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I was so mad I almost wished he’d hit me. I knew he’d never do it, not in a million years. He grabbed my arms and shook me, and then he let go just as suddenly. I could feel tears building up, because for a second there, I thought he might. Kiss me.
I was crying when Jeremiah walked up. He’d been at work lifeguarding; his hair was still wet. I didn’t even hear his car pull up. He took one look at the two of us, and he knew something bad was happening. He almost looked scared. And then he just looked furious. He said, “What the hell is going on? Conrad, what’s your problem?”
Conrad glared at him. “Just keep her away from me. I’m not in the mood to deal with any of this.”
I flinched. It was like he really had hit me. It was worse than that.
He started to walk away, and Jeremiah grabbed his arm. “You need to start dealing with this, man. You’re acting like a jerk. Quit taking your anger out on everybody else. Leave Belly alone.”
I shivered. Was this because of me? All summer, Conrad’s moodiness, locking himself up in his room– had it really been because of me? Was it more than just his parents divorcing? Had he been that upset over seeing me with someone else?
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Conrad tried to shrug him off. “Why don’t you leave me alone? How about we try that instead?”
But Jeremiah wouldn’t let go. He said, “We’ve been leaving you alone. We’ve left you alone this whole summer, getting drunk and sulking like a little kid. You’re supposed to be the older one, right? The big brother? Act like it, dumbass. Freaking man up and handle your business.”
“Get out of my face,” Conrad growled.
“No.” Jeremiah stepped closer, until their faces were inches apart, just like ours had been not fifteen minutes before.
In a dangerous voice Conrad said, “I’m warning you, Jeremiah.”
The two of them were like two angry dogs, growling and spitting and circling each other. They’d forgotten I was there. I felt like I was watching something I shouldn’t, like I was spying. I wanted to put my hands over my ears. They’d never been like this with each other in all the time I’d known them. They might have argued, but it had never been like this, not once. I knew I should leave, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just stood there on the periphery, holding my arms close to my chest.
“You’re just like Dad, you know that?” Jeremiah shouted.
That’s when I knew it had nothing to do with me. This was bigger than anything I could be a part of.
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This was something I knew nothing about.
Conrad pushed Jeremiah away roughly, and Jeremiah pushed him back.
Conrad stumbled and nearly fell, and when he rose up, he punched Jeremiah right in the face. I think I screamed. Then they were wrestling around, grabbing at each other, hitting and cursing and breathing heavy. They knocked over Susannah’s big glass jar of sun tea, and it cracked open. Tea spilled out all over the porch. There was blood on the sand. I didn’t know whose it was.
They kept fighting, fighting over the broken glass, even though Jeremiah was about to lose his flip-flops. A few times I said,” Stop!” but they couldn’t hear me. They looked alike. I’d never noticed how alike they looked. But
right then they looked like brothers. They kept struggling until suddenly, in the midst of it all, my mother was there. I guessed she’d come through the other screen door. I don’t know–she was just there. She broke the two of them apart with this incredible kind of brute strength, the kind only mothers have.
She held them apart with a hand on each of their chests. “You two need to stop,” she said, and instead of sounding mad, she sounded so sad. She sounded like she might cry, and my mother never cried.
They were breathing hard, not looking at each other, but they were connected, the three of them. They understood something I didn’t. I was just standing there on the
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periphery, bearing witness to it all. It was like the time I went to church with Taylor, and everyone else knew all the words to the songs, but I didn’t. They lifted their arms in the air and swayed and knew every word by heart, and I felt like an intruder.
“You know, don’t you?” my mother said, her hands crumpling away from them.
Jeremiah sucked in his breath, and I knew he was holding it in, trying not to cry. His face was already starting to bruise. Conrad, though, his face was indifferent, detached. Like he wasn’t there.
Until his face sort of opened up, and suddenly he looked about eight years old. I looked behind me, and there was Susannah standing in the doorway. She was wearing her white cotton housedress, and she looked so frail standing there. “I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her hands up helplessly.
She stepped toward the boys, hesitant, and my mother backed away.
Susannah held out her arms and Jeremiah fell right in, and even though he was so much bigger than she was, he looked small. Blood from his face smeared over the front of her dress, but they didn’t pull away. He cried like I hadn’t heard him cry since Conrad had accidentally closed the car door on his hand years and years ago. Conrad had cried just as hard as Jeremiah had that day, but this day he didn’t. He let Susannah touch his hair, but he didn’t cry.
“Belly, let’s go,” my mother said, taking my hand. She 251
hadn’t done that in a very long time. Like a little kid, I followed her inside. We went upstairs, to her room. She closed the door and sat down on
the bed. I sat down next to her.
“What’s happening?” I asked her, faltering, searching her face for some kind of answer.
She took my hands and put them in hers. She held them tight, like she was the one holding on to me and not the other way around. She said, “Belly, Susannah’s sick again.”
I closed my eyes. I could hear the ocean roaring all around me; it was like holding a conch shell up to my ear really close. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. I was anywhere but there, in that moment. I was swimming under a canopy of stars; I was at school, sitting in math class; on my bike, on the trail behind our house. I wasn’t there. This wasn’t happening.
“Oh, bean,” my mother sighed. “I need you to open your eyes. I need you to hear me.”
I wouldn’t open them; I wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t even there.
“She’s sick. She has been for a long time. The cancer came back. And it’s–it’s aggressive. It’s spread to her liver.”
I opened my eyes and snatched my hands away from her. “Stop talking.
She’s not sick. She’s fine. She’s still Susannah.” My face was wet and I didn’t even know when I had started to cry.
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My mother nodded, wet her lips. “You’re right. She’s still Susannah. She does things her way. She didn’t want you kids to know. She wanted this summer to be– perfect.” Her voice caught on the word “perfect.” Like a run in a stocking, it caught, and she had tears in her eyes too.
She pulled me to her, held me against her chest and rocked me. And I let her.
“But they did know,” I whimpered. “Everybody knew but me. I’m the only one who didn’t know, and I love Susannah more than anybody.”
Which wasn’t true, I knew that. Jeremiah and Conrad, they loved her best of all. But it felt true. I wanted to tell my mother that it didn’t matter anyway, Susannah had had cancer last time and she’d been fine. She’d be fine again. But if I said it out loud, it would be like admitting that she really did have cancer, that this really was happening. And I couldn’t.
That night I lay in bed and cried. My whole body ached. I opened all the windows in my room and lay in the dark, just listening to the ocean. I wished the tide would carry me out and never bring me back. I wondered if that was how Conrad felt, how Jeremiah felt. How my mother felt.
It felt like the world was ending and nothing would ever be the same again. It was, and it wouldn’t.
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chapter forty – three
When we were little and the house was full, full of people like my father and Mr. Fisher and other friends, Jeremiah and I would share a bed and so would Conrad and Steven. My mother would come and tuck us in. The boys would pretend they were too old for it, but I knew they liked it just as much as I did. It was that feeling of being snug as a bug in a rug, cuddly as a burrito. I’d lie in bed and listen to the music drifting up the steps from downstairs, and Jeremiah and I would whisper scary stories to each other till we fell asleep. He always fell asleep first. I’d try to pinch him awake, but it never worked. The last time that happened might have been the last time I ever felt really, really safe in the world. Like all was right and sound.
The night of the boys’ fight, I knocked on Jeremiah’s door. “Come in,” he said.
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He was lying in bed staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. His cheeks were wet and his eyes looked wet and red. His right eye was purpley gray, and it was already swelling up. As soon as he saw me, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Hey,” I said. “Can I come in?” He sat up. “Yeah, okay.”
I walked over to him and sat on the edge of the bed with my back pushed up against the wall. “I’m sorry,” I began. I’d been practicing what I would say, how I would say it, so he would know how sorry I was. For everything. But then I started to cry and ruined it.
He reached over and kneaded my shoulder awkwardly. He could not look at me, which in a way was easier. “It’s not fair,” I said, and then I began to weep.
Jeremiah said, “I’ve been thinking about it all summer, how this is probably the last one. This is her favorite place, you know. I wanted it to be perfect for her, but Conrad went and ruined everything. He took off. My mom’s so worried, and that’s the last thing she needs, to be worrying about Conrad. He’s the most selfish person I know, besides my dad.”
He’s hurting too, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud because it wouldn’t help anything. So I just said, “I wish I had known. If I had been paying
attention, it would have been different.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “She didn’t want you to know. 255
She didn’t want any of us to know. She wanted it to be like this, so we pretended. For her. But I wish I could have told you. It might have been easier or something.” He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt collar, and I could see him trying so hard to keep it together, to be the strong one.
I reached for him, to hug him, and he shuddered, and something seemed to break inside of him. He began to cry, really cry, but quietly. We cried together, our shoulders shaking and shuddering with the weight of all of it. We cried like that for a long time. When we stopped, he let go of me and wiped his nose.
“Scoot over,” I said.
He scooted closer to the wall, and I stretched my legs out next to him. “I’m sleeping in here, okay,” I said, but it wasn’t a question.
Jeremiah nodded and we slept like that, in our clothes on top of the comforter. Even though we were older, it felt just the same. We slept face- to-face, the way we used to.
I woke up early the next morning clinging to the side of the bed.
Jeremiah was sprawled out and snoring. I covered him with my side of the comforter, so he was tucked in like with a sleeping bag. Then I left.
I headed back to my room, and I had my hand on the doorknob when I heard Conrad’s voice. “Goood morning,” he said. I knew right away he’d seen me leave Jeremiah’s room.
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Slowly I turned around. And there he was. He was standing there in last night’s clothes, just like me. He looked rumpled, and he swayed just slightly. He looked like he was going to throw up.
“Are you drunk?”
He shrugged like he couldn’t care less, but his shoulders were tense and rigid. Snidely he said, “Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me now? Like the way you were for Jere last night?”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, to say that nothing had happened, that all we’d done was cry ourselves to sleep. But I didn’t want to. Conrad didn’t deserve to know anything. “You’re the most selfish person I ever met,” I said slowly and deliberately. I let each word puncture the air. I had
never wanted to hurt somebody so bad in my whole life. “I can’t believe I ever thought I loved you.”
His face turned white. He opened and then closed his mouth. And then he did it again. I’d never seen him at a loss for words before.
I walked back to my room. It was the first time I’d ever gotten the last word with Conrad. I had done it. I had finally let him go. It felt like freedom, but freedom bought at some bloody, terrible price. It didn’t feel good. Did I even have a right to say those things to him, with him hurting the way he was? Did I have any rights to him at all? He was in pain, and so was I.
When I got back into bed, I got under the covers and 257
cried some more, and here I was thinking I didn’t have any more tears left. Everything was wrong.
How could it be that I had spent this whole summer worrying about boys, swimming, and getting tan, while Susannah was sick? How could that be? The thought of life without Susannah felt impossible. It was inconceivable; I couldn’t even picture it. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for Jeremiah and Conrad. She was their mother.
Later that morning I didn’t get out of bed. I slept until eleven, and then I just stayed there. I was afraid to go downstairs and face Susannah and have her see that I knew.
Around noon my mother bustled into my room without even knocking. “Rise and shine,” she said, surveying my mess. She picked up a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and folded them against her chest.
“I’m not ready to get out of bed yet,” I told her, turning over. I felt mad at her, like I had been tricked. She should have told me. She should have warned me. My whole life, I had never known my mother to lie. But she had. All those times when they’d supposedly been shopping, or at the museum, on day trips–they hadn’t been any of those places. They’d been at hospitals, with doctors. I saw that now. I just wished I had seen it before.
My mother walked over to me and sat on the edge of my bed. She scratched my back, and her fingernails felt
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good against my skin. “You have to get out of bed, Belly,” she said softly. “You’re still alive and so is Susannah. You have to be strong for her. She needs you.”
Her words made sense. If Susannah needed me, then that was something I could do. “I can do that,” I said, turning around to look at her. “I just don’t get how Mr. Fisher can leave her all alone like this when she needs him most.”
She looked away, out the window, and then back down at me. “This is the way Beck wants things to be. And Adam is who he is.” She cradled my cheek in her hand. “It’s not up to us to decide.”
Susannah was in the kitchen making blueberry muffins. She was leaning up against the counter, stirring batter in a big metal mixing bowl. She was wearing another one of her cotton housedresses, and I realized she’d been wearing them all summer, because they were loose. They hid how thin her arms were, the way her collarbone jutted up against her skin.
She hadn’t seen me yet, and I was tempted to run away before she did.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“Good morning, Susannah,” I said, and my voice sounded high and false, not like my own.
She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s past noon. I don’t think it counts as morning anymore.”
“Good afternoon, then.” I lingered by the door. 259
“Are you mad at me too?” she asked me lightly. Her eyes were worried, though.
“I could never be mad at you,” I told her, coming up behind her and putting my arms around her stomach. I tucked my head in the space between her neck and her shoulder. She smelled like flowers.
She said, still in her light voice, “You’ll look after him, won’t you?” “Who?”
I could feel her cheeks form into a smile. “You know who.”
“Yes,” I whispered, still holding on tight. “Good,” she said, sighing. “He needs you.” I didn’t ask who “he” was. I didn’t need to. “Susannah?” “Hmm?”
“Promise me something.” “Anything.”
“Promise me you’ll never leave.” “I promise,” she said without hesitation. I let out a breath, and then I let go. “Can I help you with the muffins?” “Yes, please.”
I helped her make a streusel topping with brown sugar and butter and oats. We took the muffins out of the oven too early, because we couldn’t
stand to wait, and we ate them while they were still steaming hot and gooey in the
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middle. I ate three. Sitting with her, watching her butter her muffin, it felt like she’d be there forever.
Somehow we got around to talking about proms and dances. Susannah loved to talk about anything girly; she said I was the only person she could talk to about those kinds of things. My mother certainly wouldn’t, and neither would Conrad and Jeremiah. Only me, her pretend-daughter.
She said, “Make sure you send me pictures of you at your first big dance.”
I hadn’t gone to any of my school’s homecomings or proms yet. No one had asked me, and I hadn’t really felt like it. The one person I wanted to go with didn’t go to my school. I told her, “I will. I’ll wear that dress you bought me last summer.”
“What dress?”
“The one from that mall, the purple one that you and Mom fought over that time. Remember, you put it in my suitcase?”
She frowned, confused. “I didn’t buy you that dress. Laurel would’ve had a fit.” Then her face cleared, and she smiled. “Your mother must have gone back and bought it for you.”
“My mother?” My mother would never. “That’s your mother. So like her.”
“But she never said . . .” My voice trailed off. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it had been my mother who’d bought it for me.
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“She wouldn’t. She’s not like that.” Susannah reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “You’re the luckiest girl in the world to have her for a mother. Know that.”
The sky was gray, and there was a chill in the air. It would rain soon. It was so misty out that it took me a minute to find him. I finally did,
about half a mile down. It always came back to the beach. He was sitting, his knees close to his chest. He didn’t look at me when I sat down next to him. He just stared out at the ocean.
His eyes were these bleak and empty abysses, like sockets. There was nothing there. The boy I thought I knew so well was gone. He looked so lost sitting there. I felt that old lurch, that gravitational pull, that desire to
inhabit him–like wherever he was in this world, I would know where to find him, and I would do it. I would find him and take him home. I would take care of him, just like Susannah wanted.
I spoke first. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I wish I had known–” “Please stop talking,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, starting to get up. I was always saying the wrong thing.
“Don’t leave,” Conrad said, and his shoulders collapsed. His face did too.
He hid it in his hands, and he was five years old again, we both were.
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“I’m so pissed at her,” he said, each word coming out of him like a gust of concentrated air. He bowed his head, his shoulders broken and bent. He was finally crying.
I watched him silently. I felt like I was intruding on a private moment, one he’d never let me see if he weren’t grieving. The old Conrad liked to be in control.
The old pull, the tide drawing me back in. I kept getting caught in this current–first love, I mean. First love kept making me come back to this, to him. He still took my breath away, just being near him. I had been lying to myself the night before, thinking I was free, thinking I had let him go. It didn’t matter what he said or did, I’d never let him go.
I wondered if it was possible to take someone’s pain away with a kiss.
Because that was what I wanted to do, take all of his sadness and pour it out of him, comfort him, make the boy I knew come back. I reached out and touched the back of his neck. He jerked forward, the slightest motion, but I didn’t take my hand away. I let it rest there, stroking the back of his hair, and then I cupped the back of his head, moved it toward me, and kissed him. Tentatively at first, and then he started kissing me back, and we were kissing each other. His lips were warm and needy. He needed me. My mind went pure blinding white, and the only thought I had was, I’m kissing Conrad Fisher, and he’s kissing me back. Susannah was dying, and I was kissing Conrad.
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He was the one to break away. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raw and scratchy.
I touched my lips with the backs of my fingers. “For what?” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.
“It can’t happen like this.” He stopped, then started again. “I do think about you. You know that. I just can’t . .. Can you .. . Can you just be here with me?”
I nodded. I was afraid to open my mouth.
I took his hand and squeezed it, and it felt like the most right thing I had done in a long time. We sat there in the sand, holding hands like it was something we’d been doing all along. It started to rain, soft at first. The first raindrops hit the sand, and the grains beaded up, rolled away.
It started to come down harder, and I wanted to get up and go back to the house, but I could tell Conrad didn’t. So I sat there with him, holding his hand and saying nothing. Everything else felt really far away; it was just us.
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chapter forty – four
Toward the end of summer everything slowed down, and it started to feel ready to be done. It was like with snow days. We once had this great big blizzard, and we didn’t go to school for two whole weeks. After a while you just wanted to get out of the house, even if that meant school. Being at the summer house felt like that. Even paradise could be suffocating. You could only sit on the beach doing nothing so many times before you felt ready to go. I felt it a week before we left, every time. And then of course, when the time came, I was never ready to leave. I wanted to stay forever. It was a total catch-22, like a contradiction in terms. Because as soon as we were in the car, driving away, all I wanted to do was jump out and run back to the house.
Cam called me twice. Both times I didn’t answer. I let it go to voice mail.
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a message. The second time he said, “Hey, it’s Cam I hope I get to
see you before we both leave. But if not, then, well, it was really nice hanging out with you. So, yeah. Call me back, if you want.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I loved Conrad and I probably always would. I would spend my whole life loving him one way or another. Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s. How did I say those things to Cam? How did I tell him that there was a piece saved for him, too? He was the first boy to tell me I was beautiful. That had to count for something. But there was no way for me to
say any of those things to him. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I just left it alone. I didn’t call him back.
With Jeremiah it was easier. And by that I mean he went easy on me. He let me off the hook. He pretended like it hadn’t happened, like we hadn’t said any of those things down in the rec room. He went on telling jokes and calling me Belly Button and just being Jeremiah.
I finally understood Conrad. I mean, I understood what he meant when he said he couldn’t deal with any of it–with me. I couldn’t either. All I wanted to do was spend every single second at the house, with Susannah. To soak up the last drop of summer and pretend it was like all the summers that had come before it. That was all I wanted.
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chapter forty -five
I hated the last day before we left, because it was cleanup day, and when we were kids, we weren’t allowed to go to the beach at all, in case we brought in more sand. We washed all the sheets and swept up the sand, made sure all the boogie boards and floats were in the basement, cleaned out the fridge and packed sandwiches for the drive home. My mother was at the helm of this day. She was the one who insisted everything be just so. “So it’s all ready for next summer,” she’d say. What she didn’t know was that Susannah had cleaners come in after we left and before we came back.
I caught Susannah calling them once, scheduling an appointment. She covered the phone with one hand and whispered guiltily, “Don’t tell your mom, okay, Belly?”
I nodded. It was like a secret between us, and I liked 267
that. My mother actually liked to clean and didn’t believe in housekeepers or maids or in other people doing what she considered our work. She’d say, “Would you ask someone else to brush your teeth for you, or lace up your shoes, just because you could? “The answer was no.
“Don’t worry too much about the sand,” Susannah would whisper when she’d see me going over the kitchen floor with a broom for the third time. I would keep sweeping anyway. I knew what my mother would say if she felt any grains on her feet.
That night for dinner we ate everything that was left in the fridge. That was the tradition. My mother heated up two frozen pizzas, reheated lo mein and fried rice, made a salad out of pale celery and tomatoes. There was
clam chowder too, and half a rack of ribs, plus Susannah’s potato salad from more than a week before. It was a smorgasbord of old food that no one felt like eating.
But we did. We sat around the kitchen table picking off of foil-covered plates. Conrad kept sneaking looks at me, and every time I looked back, he looked away. I’m right here, I wanted to tell him. I’m still here.
We were all pretty quiet until Jeremiah broke the silence like breaking the top of a crème brulee. He said, “This potato salad tastes like bad breath.”
“I think that would be your upper lip,” Conrad said. 268
We all laughed, and it felt like a relief. For it to be okay to laugh. To be something other than sad.
Then Conrad said, “This rib has mold on it,” and we all started to laugh again. It felt like I hadn’t laughed in a long time.
My mother rolled her eyes. “Would it kill you to eat a little mold? Just scrape it off. Give it to me. I’ll eat it.”
Conrad put his hands up in surrender, and then he stabbed the rib with his fork and dropped it on my mother’s plate ceremoniously. “Enjoy it, Laurel.”
“I swear, you spoil these boys, Beck,” my mother said, and everything felt normal, like any other last night. “Belly was raised on leftovers, weren’t you, bean?”
“I was,” I agreed. “I was a neglected child who was fed only old food that nobody else wanted.”
My mother suppressed a smile and pushed the potato salad toward me. “I do spoil them,” Susannah said, touching Conrad’s shoulder, Jeremiah’s
cheek. “They’re angels. Why shouldn’t I?”
The two boys looked at each other from across the table for a second.
Then Conrad said, “I’m an angel. I would say Jere’s more of a cherub.” He reached out and tousled Jeremiah’s hair roughly.
Jeremiah swatted his hand away. “He’s no angel. He’s the devil,” he said. It was like the fight had been erased. With boys it was like that; they fought and then it was over.
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My mother picked up Conrad’s rib, looked down at it, and then put it down again. “I can’t eat this,” she said, sighing.
“Mold won’t kill you,” Susannah declared, laughing and pushing her hair out of her eyes. She lifted her fork in the air. “You know what will?”
We all stared at her.
“Cancer,” she said triumphantly. She had the best poker face known to man. She held a straight face for four whole seconds before erupting into a fit of giggles. She rustled her hand through Conrad’s hair until he finally wore a smile. I could tell he didn’t want to, but he did it. For her.
“Listen up,” she said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m seeing my acupuncturist, I’m taking medicine, I’m still fighting this the best I can. My doctor says that at this point that’s the most I can do. I refuse to put any more poison into my body or spend any more time in hospitals. This is where I want to be. With the people who matter most to me. Okay?” She looked around at us.
“Okay.” We all said it, even though it was in no way, shape, or form okay. Nor would it ever be.
Susannah continued. “If and when I go off slow dancing in the ever after, I don’t want to look like I’ve been stuck in a hospital room my whole life. I at least want to be tan. I want to be as tan as Belly.” She pointed at me with her fork.
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“Beck, if you want to be as tan as Belly, you’ll need more time. That’s not something you can achieve in one summer. My girl wasn’t born tan; it takes years. And you’re not ready yet,” my mother said. She said it simply, logically.
Susannah wasn’t ready yet. None of us were.
After dinner we all went our separate ways to pack. The house was quiet, too quiet. I stayed in my bedroom, packing up clothes, my shoes, my books. Until it was time to pack my bathing suit. I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I wanted one more swim.
I changed into my one-piece and wrote two notes, one for Jeremiah and one for Conrad. On each of them I wrote, “Midnight swim. Meet me in ten minutes.” I slid a note under each door and then ran downstairs as quick as I could with my towel streaming behind me like a flag. I couldn’t let the summer end like this. We couldn’t leave this house until we had one good moment, for all of us.
The house was dark, and I made my way outside without turning on the lights. I didn’t need to. I knew it by heart.
As soon as I got outside, I dove into the pool. I didn’t dive so much as belly flop. The last one of the summer, maybe ever–in this house, anyway.
The moon was bright and white, and as I waited for the boys, I floated on my back counting stars and listening to the ocean. When the
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tide was low like this, it whispered and gurgled and it sounded like a lullaby. I wished I could stay forever, in this moment. Like in one of those plastic snowballs, one little moment frozen in time.
They came out together, Beck’s boys. I guessed they’d run into each other on the stairs. They were both wearing their swimming trunks. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Conrad in his trunks all summer, that we hadn’t swum in this pool since that first day. And Jeremiah, we’d only swum in the ocean once or twice. It had been a summer with hardly any swim time, except for when I swam with Cam or when I swam alone. The thought made me feel unspeakably sad, that this could be the last summer and we’d hardly swum together at all.
“Hello,” I said, still floating on my back.
Conrad dipped his toe in. “It’s kind of cold to swim, isn’t it?”
“Chicken,” I said, squawking loudly. “Just jump in and get it over with.”
They looked at each other. Then Jeremiah made a running leap and cannonballed in, and Conrad followed right behind him. They made two big splashes, and I swallowed a ton of water because I was smiling, but I didn’t care.
We swam over to the deep end, and I treaded water to stay afloat. Conrad reached over and pushed my bangs out of my eyes. It was a tiny gesture, but Jeremiah saw, and
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he turned away, swam closer to the edge of the pool.
For a second I felt sad, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it came to me. A memory, pressed in my heart like a leaf in a book. I lifted my arms in the air and twirled around in circles, like a water ballerina.
Spinning, I began to recite, “Maggie and milly and molly and may / went down to the beach (to play one day) / and maggie discovered a shell that sang / so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and / milly befriended a stranded star / whose rays five languid fingers were–”
Jeremiah grinned. “And molly was chased by a horrible thing / which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and / may came home with a smooth round stone / as small as a world and as large as alone ”
Together, Conrad too, we all said, “For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) / it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.” And then there was this silence between us, and no one said anything.
It was Susannah’s favorite poem; she’d taught it to us kids a long time ago–we were on one of her guided nature walks where she pointed out shells and jellyfish. That day we marched down the beach, arms linked, and we recited it so loudly that I think we woke up the fish. We knew it like we knew the Pledge of Allegiance, by heart.
“This might be our last summer here,” I said suddenly. 273
“No way,” Jeremiah said, floating up next to me.
“Conrad’s going to college this fall, and you have football camp,” I reminded him. Even though Conrad going to college and Jeremiah going to football camp for two weeks didn’t really have anything to do with us not coming back next summer. I didn’t say what we were all thinking, that Susannah was sick, that she might never get better, that she was the string that tied us all together.
Conrad shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll always come back.” Briefly I wondered if he meant just him and Jeremiah, and then he said,
“All of us.”
It got quiet again, and then I had an idea. “Let’s make a whirlpool!” I said, clapping my hands together.
“You’re such a kid,” Conrad said, smiling at me and shaking his head.
For the first time, it didn’t bother me when he called me a kid. It felt like a compliment.
I floated out to the middle of the pool. “Come on, guys!”
They swam over to me, and we made a circle and started to run as fast as we could. “Faster!” Jeremiah yelled, laughing.
Then we stopped, let our bodies go limp and get caught in the whirlpool we’d just made. I leaned my head back and let the current carry me.
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chapter forty – six
When he called, I didn’t recognize his voice, partly because I wasn’t expecting it and partly because I was still half-asleep. He said, “I’m in my car on my way to your house. Can I see you?”
It was twelve thirty in the morning. Boston was five and a half hours away. He had driven all night. He wanted to see me.
I told him to park down the street and I would meet him on the corner, after my mother had gone to bed. He said he’d wait.
I turned the lights off and waited by the window, watching for the taillights. As soon as I saw his car, I wanted to run outside, but I had to wait. I could hear my mother rustling around in her room, and I knew she would read in bed for at least half an hour before she
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fell asleep. It felt like torture, knowing he was out there waiting for me, not being able to go to him.
In the dark I put on my scarf and hat that Granna knit me for Christmas. Then I shut my bedroom door and tiptoe down the hallway to my mother’s room, pressing my ear against the door. The light is off and I can hear her snoring softly. Steven’s not even home yet, which is lucky for me, because he’s a light sleeper just like our dad.
My mother is finally asleep; the house is still and silent. Our Christmas tree is still up. We keep the lights on all night because it makes it still feel like Christmas, like any minute, Santa could show up with gifts. I don’t bother leaving her a note. I’ll call her in the morning, when she wakes up and wonders where I am.
I creep down the stairs, careful on the creaky step in the middle, but once I’m out of the house, I’m flying down the front steps, across the frosty lawn. It crunches along the bottoms of my sneakers. I forgot to put on my coat. I remembered the scarf and hat, but no coat.
His car is on the corner, right where it’s supposed to be. The car is dark, no lights, and I open the passenger side door like I’ve done it a million times before. But I haven’t. I’ve never even been inside. I haven’t seen him since August.
I poke my head inside, but I don’t go in, not yet. I want to look at him first. I have to. It’s winter, and he’s
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wearing a gray fleece. His cheeks are pink from the cold, his tan has faded, but he still looks the same. “Hey,” I say, and then I climb inside.
“You’re not wearing a coat,” he says.
“It’s not that cold,” I say, even though it is, even though I’m shivering as I say it.
“Here,” he says, shrugging out of his fleece and handing it to me.
I put it on. It’s warm, and it doesn’t smell like cigarettes. It just smells like him. So Conrad quit smoking after all. The thought makes me smile.
He starts the engine.
I say, “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
He sounds almost shy when he says, “Me neither.” And then he hesitates. “Are you still coming with me?”
I can’t believe he even has to ask. I would go anywhere. “Yes,” I tell him.
It feels like nothing else exists outside of that word, this moment. There’s just us. Everything that happened this past summer, and every summer before it, has all led up to this. To now.
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JENNY HAN has her master’s degree in creative writing for children from the New School. She lives in New York City. This is her second novel.
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