Fifteenth Summer (9 page)

I considered going back in to say good-bye in a less awkward way, but going back in seemed more awkward still.

And besides, he hadn’t waved back.

I left so fast, he didn’t have time to,
I told myself as I trotted across the street after my sisters.
Right? It’s not because he realized I’m a spaz with even spazzier siblings. Right? Right?

I was lost in these neurotic thoughts as my sisters bought up the dregs of the Pop Guy’s wares. As we headed down the street toward home, Hannah handed me a napkin and a creamy white frozen pop.

“What flavor is this?” I asked. I held it up. It looked like there were
raisins
in it.

“Rice pudding,” Hannah said.

“Oh, yuck!” I said, curling my lip.

“Hey, at least it doesn’t have tarragon or sage in it,” Abbie said. “We know you hate those.”

“What’d you guys get?” I said, tentatively taking a lick of
my pop. It was actually cinnamony and delicious, if I could just ignore the nubbly texture of the rice.

“Coconut jalapeño,” Abbie said, hanging her tongue out. “Spicy!”

“Cherry vanilla,” Hannah said. “Mmmm.”

“Ooh,” I said. “Let’s go halvesies.”

“Nope!” Hannah said. “Abbie said I could have the good one. Wingman’s honor.”

I grumbled as I nibbled at my pop, trying to avoid the bits of rice.

It was only when we turned off Main Street and Abbie and Hannah started debating outfits for the lantern party that my thoughts drifted back to Dog Ear. Suddenly I remembered something Josh had said.

“We could both read it.”

My eyes widened. I froze mid-lick.

He asked me to form an anti–book club with him,
I realized.
That’s definitely more meaningful than just saying, “You should come into Dog Ear sometime,” right?

I started to get a little short of breath. I trailed behind my sisters as I debated with myself.

Okay, hold on,
I told myself.
It’s not like he was asking me out on a
date.
He just wants to goof on a bad book. It’s not a big deal. Or is it?

“We could both read it and make fun of it.” That’s what he said. So where would this fun-making take place? Over coffee? On the beach? On a picnic blanket on the beach on which he has laid out a spread of all my favorite herb-free foods?

The itchy feeling of melted ice pop dripping down my arm pulled me out of my daydream, which had been veering into the truly ridiculous anyway. As I mopped the melted milk off my wrist, I shook my head.

He just means we could have a laugh the next time I wander into Dog Ear,
I admonished myself.
That’s all. I bet he won’t even bother to actually read it.

But that night in bed, as I flicked on my reading light and regarded the two books on my nightstand—
Coconut Dreams
and
Sense and Sensibility
—I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing the tropical romance.

As I read it, every florid paragraph seemed to have a footnote filled with the banter I could have with Josh.

And suddenly
Coconut Dreams
became a book that I really didn’t want to put down.

B
y the day of the lantern party, we’d been in Bluepointe for almost three weeks. We’d gotten used to having nothing to do—no jobs or sports practices to rush to, no exams to study for, no friends to meet up with. Everything had slowed down. And what little we had to accomplish could be stretched out for
hours.

Which was why, after a morning at the beach and a protracted, piecemeal lunch on the screened porch, my sisters and I spent almost the entire afternoon getting ready for our evening.

This was not our usual thing. Abbie was strictly a wash-and-wear
kind of girl, and Hannah could blow-dry her hair into a perfect, sleek ’do in about three minutes. My routine mostly involved working copious amounts of product into my hair to make it go corkscrewy instead of turning into a giant poof of frizz.

But this afternoon we were a veritable movie montage of primping, perfuming, and outfit sampling.

But that was the thing about having sisters. We fought and made fun of each other and stole each other’s clothes, but we also kept each other’s secrets. Abbie and I, for instance, never reminded Hannah about the time she threw up in the mall food court in front of about a hundred people. And whenever Abbie lost at a swim meet, Hannah and I knew that she wanted us to be near, but silent. So we’d sit with her on the couch, turn on a dumb reality show, and hand her a big bowl of Lay’s potato chips. By the time she made it to the bottom of the bowl, she was ready to talk about the meet, and we were there to listen.

So today, when all three of us turned into total girly-girls, which we definitely
weren’t
in our “real” lives, we knew that nobody outside that room would ever hear about it. We could be as ridiculously giggly as we wanted.

“I can’t decide!” Abbie groaned. She was looking at three outfits arranged on the big bed in Hannah’s room. “I can’t wear the dress, can I? That’s just trying too hard.”

“So you wear the white capris and the tank top,” I said. I was on the floor painting my toenails a buttery yellow color. “That’s more you anyway.”

“Yeah, but white means I have to be careful not to get dirty,” Abbie complained.

“What are you going to do?” Hannah demanded. “Roll around in the dirt with What’s His Name?”

Abbie tapped a fist on her head.

“Argh,” she groaned. “What
is
J-boy’s name? It’s too late to ask now!”

“Somebody will say it at the party,” Hannah said. “You just have to keep your ears open.”

“Or you could just skip right to ‘honey,’ ” I posed. “That wouldn’t freak him out at all!”

“I would
never
,” Abbie gasped. “Now, ‘Pooh Bear’ on the other hand is completely acceptable.”

“Totally,” Hannah said. “You know what’s even better? ‘Sweet Cheeks.’ ”

“Love Muffin!” I yelled.

“Come here, Love Muffin,” Abbie cried, grabbing a pillow and kissing it passionately.

“Ew, I sleep on that,” Hannah said. She snatched the pillow away from Abbie and tossed it back onto the bed. Then she spotted my pedicure and gasped.

“Oh,
no
!” she said. She grabbed the bottle of polish remover from the dresser and plopped down in front of me. “
So
wrong.”

“What?” I said. “I love this color.”

“Me too,” Hannah said, “but not on your feet. You’re too pale. You need contrast.”

She held up two bottles of polish—one shimmery hot pink, the other a bright turquoise.

“All right,” I grumbled, pointing at the blue-green bottle. “But you do it. I hate painting my toes.”

While Hannah polished, Abbie got busy on my hair.

“You can’t keep yanking it back like you do,” she said, fluffing up my hair. “You’re gonna get a bald spot.”

“What!” I cried, clutching at my scalp. “Is that even possible with this much hair?”

Abbie didn’t answer as she rifled through her cosmetics bag. She came up with a wide elastic headband with a cute blue and green flower pattern on it. She snapped it around my head and arranged my curls behind it, with a couple tendrils popping out at the temples.

“Really?” I said skeptically. “There’s just so
much
of it.”

“Wear a tank top,” Abbie said decisively. “Then your hair isn’t competing with your sleeves.”

Hannah finished my toes, and I leaned over to fan them dry with one of Hannah’s
National Geographic
s.

“How come
I’m
getting all the makeover attention?” I said. “You’re the ones trying to bag the love muffins.”

Abbie and Hannah glanced at each other.

“What?” I demanded.

“We’re just trying to help you, Chels,” Hannah said.

“Why?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing, except you’re a little . . . stuck,” Hannah said carefully. “Uncomfortable in your skin. You need to be more confident and own who you are.”

“ ‘Own who I am’?” I said mockingly. “Who are you, Oprah?”

“Okay, smart-mouth,” Abbie said. “Let’s put it this way. You are standing in the way of your own hotness with this shy, bookwormy I-hate-my-hair routine. You need to lose the
ponytail and stop hunching over just because you have boobs.”

I could almost feel my eyebrows meet my hairline. I was literally speechless. We were always blunt with each other, but this was new terrain.

When I got over my shock, I scowled.

“I’m not shy,” I said. “Just because I don’t want to be the center of attention like some people I could name”—I looked pointedly at Abbie—“doesn’t mean I’m an introverted freak.”

“Look,” Hannah said. “You’re lucky. You’ve got two sisters who’ve just been through all this. We’re trying to help you.”

I frowned at my turquoise toenails. I hated to admit it—and I sure
wasn’t
going to admit it to them—but deep down I knew Abbie and Hannah were right. Not about the hot part. Even if I did have boobs, I still couldn’t fathom a version of hot that included bright red hair and freckly skin.

But it was true that I didn’t exactly exude confidence. And I knew you didn’t have to be gorgeous or super-popular to have it. Look at Emma. Sure, she had that graceful ballerina bod, but she also had oily skin and a hawkish nose. But it didn’t matter, because Emma knew she was talented—special—and she carried herself that way. Sure enough, Ethan had fallen so hard for her that he was practically asphyxiating himself with all the kissing.

But how do you just suddenly decide you’re special? Emma got on that track when she took her first baby ballet class at age four. Hannah had studied her way to brilliance, and Abbie had just been born with all that personality.

Me? I had nothin’. Reading about extraordinary people in books didn’t make you extraordinary.

Of course, if I chose to believe my sisters (and that was a big
if
), I wasn’t a total untouchable.

Own who you are,
Hannah had said.

It would have sounded great on a greeting card, but in real life? I had no idea how to do that. I wondered if being “comfortable in my skin” was just another area in which I was doomed to fall short of my sisters.

T
he moment we showed up at the dock that night, just after sunset, we knew we’d wasted all that time primping.

Not that we didn’t look kind of fabulous, with our fresh, color-correct mani-pedis, our summery makeup, and our bare shoulders dusted with shimmery powder. (Hannah had read about that in a magazine that was
not
, for the record,
National Geographic
.)

As Abbie had directed, I’d chosen a white sundress with skinny straps. It also had a tight bodice and a flared, knee-length skirt. The salesgirl at the vintage store where I’d bought it had told me it was made in the early 1960s.

To match my headband I’d borrowed Hannah’s flat, royal blue sandals. Between those and my turquoise toes, my feet had never been so colorful. I hoped they would draw attention away from my voluminous hair.

But as it turned out, looking good at a lantern party didn’t seem to be the point. At all. Most of the kids milling around the dock—which was a big square wood plank platform surrounded by anchored speedboats—looked happily disheveled in
shorts and T-shirts. They had paint smears on their arms and arts-and-crafts glitter in their hair. And every one of them held an elaborate homemade lantern. Even though they weren’t lit yet, presumably because there was still a bit of dusky light left, the lanterns were dazzlingly creative. There was a lantern that looked like a Japanese temple and one that looked like a fairy-tale mushroom, the kind with the white-dotted red cap. One lantern was an elaborate geometric shape that even Hannah might not have been able to identify. And there were side-by-side lanterns that looked like Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

Hannah walked over to a nearby girl who was bobbing her head to the music. Her lantern dangled from the end of a long stick. It was a cylinder made of flowery paper. Cut into the lantern was a window of waxed paper, which contained a funny silhouette of a dog.

“Love your lantern!” Hannah said as Abbie and I stood behind her. “Did you make it yourself?”

“Thanks!” the girl said, crinkling her nose happily at her lantern. “It was a hard one. It took me the whole pre-party. I guess you guys weren’t there?”

“Pre-party?” Abbie said, closing in on the girl. “When was that?”

“Oh, it started around noon,” the girl said. “We do it every year—get together and make our lanterns. We order in fried chicken and get all gluey. It’s pretty goofy, but we’ve all been doing it since, like, middle school, so you know—it’s a tradition now. At the end of the night there’s a lantern contest.”

“Wow, that sounds awesome,” Abbie said flatly. If there was
anything she hated more than being left out of the loop, it was losing a contest. “Where was this pre-party?”

“It was at Jason’s house,” the girl said, cheerfully pointing to a far corner of the dock. There stood Abbie’s J-boy, flanked by two laughing girls. He was holding up his lantern like it was a trophy. It was a very lumpy papier-mâché sculpture of Darth Vader’s head. Presumably, once it was lit up, the eyes would glow.

Abbie’s face darkened, but she kept her voice light as she answered, “Oh, it was at
Jason’s
house. That’s cool. Well, good luck in the contest.”

“Thanks!” the girl chirped as Abbie drifted away.

Hannah and I gave each other a look.

“Let’s see if there are any potato chips on the refreshment table,” I whispered.

“She’s already on her way,” she said, pointing at Abbie as she made a beeline for the junk-food-laden table. Luckily, it was on the opposite side of the dock from Jason.

I arrived at Abbie’s side just as she scooped a handful of chips out of a big bowl and stuffed at least four of them into her mouth.

“Well,” I said brightly. I sounded just like our mom, who always got annoyingly chipper when the going got rough. “The good news is, now we know your guy’s name! J-boy is Jason.”