Kiss Crush Collide (16 page)

The word
USED
, written in thick black marker along the face of the pages, appears, disappears, then appears again as if she is playing with a homemade flip book.

“Everything you’ve ever done,” she says, steadying the book in her hands before looking up at me. “It all just falls into your lap.”

That’s right. I smile to myself.

“You don’t have to try. Ever. Not even with Jon Duffy.”

I suck in my breath at the mention of his name. That’s what you think, screams through my brain, but I can’t say it.

“Whatever.” I hold my hand up, stopping her.

I’m done. I don’t even want to know what she is talking about. I don’t care. I stare out at the pool, my jaw tight, intent on saving a drowner.

Troy stands, tall and tan, and stretches for the sky. I hear the short blast of his whistle, and it’s time to move on. I grab my water bottle and reach for my beach towel.

Valerie leans in, her red painted fingertips clinging onto my chair as she asks, “Do you realize how much it sucks to work this hard and always come in second? Always?”

I don’t, obviously.

I look out, past the fence and the hills thick with trees, specks and flecks of yellow dandelions popping up through the green grass as it rolls out through the park and say coldly, “Lucky for me, Valerie, my life is not one of your little second-place science experiments.”

I hop down from the lifeguard chair and land lightly on the sizzling hot pavement right in front of her. I shrug my shoulders and flick my ponytail, intending to breeze right by her and make my way to the next chair, already warming itself for me in the bright sunshine.

But face-to-face, up close, her teased hair is melting in the sun and her red lipstick is worn away, feathering at the edges from that nervous habit she has of pressing her lips together, and I remember Valerie, small and smiling proudly, spelling bee runner-up year after year, perpetual class play understudy who never quite made it onto the stage even though her lines were perfectly memorized, even second chair in a morose clarinet quartet at Solo and Ensemble.

She’s always been so smart, too smart for her own good. When we went to the science museum in second grade, we all had our lunches packed, sitting in our laps for the long and bumpy bus ride. The kids with neurotic parents like mine had juice boxes, both healthy and economical. The spoiled ones and the forgotten ones had soda. I was so jealous, an entire can of soda, wrapped in tinfoil to keep it cold.

Valerie gave a long, stuttering speech from the front seat about how the tinfoil wouldn’t keep the soda cold. It would actually draw the cold out of the can. Probably something she thought we should all know since we were on our way to a science museum.

She sat alone for the rest of the ride. Didn’t have a partner to climb inside the giant ear. Nobody shared a soda with her at lunch, and she posed for the souvenir photo inside a classic Model T by herself, even though she had her collar popped just like everybody else. She’s never known when to stop.

“Move,” I say to her impatiently. Right now the red ribbon winner is standing between me and where I want to go.

“I just want you to try for once,” she says as she takes a step back, her heel landing right along the edge of the pool on the small white square marked 6FT, allowing me to pass, and I know this is about more than just Duffy or our failed grade school friendship.

“Try,” she calls out, “fair and square.” Her voice trails after me as I walk along the maze of beach towels and deck chairs.

Fair and square?
My ears burn with embarrassment. Is she serious? Is she eighty? God, it would be so much easier to hate her if she weren’t such a Girl Scout. Then I remember, of course, that she was. The girl is a minefield.

And even though you didn’t have to wear the thing to school, just to the meetings, Valerie showed up in class at least once a week in her sad little green uniform. She had all the badges. They lined her vest and her sash, proving to the world that she was smart and helpful and could cook a pan of baked beans.

When I came home one day in third grade and announced that I wanted to join scouts, too, my mother, completely exasperated, said, “Really, Leah, nobody looks good in a green tam.”

I feel condensation running lazily down my water bottle and dripping through my fingers. I don’t turn back to look at Valerie, but I do consider, kind of frighteningly, that maybe my mother did know best. I haul myself up and take my place high above the tanning masses with a shaky smile.

“Get me a skinny caramel macchiato,” Yorke commands from the curvy little couch in the bridal salon as she twists her newly highlighted superblond hair up onto the top of her head. “Decaf!” she yells after my mother, who, even though Jinny the bridal shop lady offered to run out, is quickly disappearing down the flocked hall.

I am the only one who really needs this final dress fitting since I have the jugs to contend with. Freddie, of course, is a perfect size six. And Yorke made the surprising last-minute decision to wear our mother’s wedding dress. It’s a beautiful white silk gown, simple and elegant, with an empire waist and delicate beading at the hem and the neck. With just a few nips and tucks, it fit Yorke perfectly.

“A lovely tradition,” Jinny coos as she helps Yorke step into the swirl of white silk puddling around her ankles behind the saloon-style doors of the large brides only dressing room.

“A necessity,” I hear Freddie remark from behind the scrolled white door of her much tinier dressing room.

Swinging the dressing room door open with one hand, the sparkling hem of her dress trailing behind her, Yorke sweeps out into the main salon and pushes past me to step up onto the raised pedestal and stand in front of the gilded mirrors.

“Haven’t seen Shane much lately,” she says casually as she leans back so that Jinny can pin the long filmy veil into place at the crown of her head.

“Yeah,” I say sharply while Zuska, the Slavic altering lady I have gotten to know too well, digs around in my armpits yet again, strategically placing the final pins.

I feel a little stab and could swear that Yorke picked a strapless dress just to spite me.

“There’s a reason for that,” I say into my armpit, feeling for the sharp offender.

I glance up with a dot of blood on my finger and find Yorke’s expectant gaze on me in all three of the huge mirrors.

“I’m kind of over that,” I say. And I am. Mentally I have broken up with him, over and over again. It’s just that I haven’t told him yet.

“Over what?” Freddie asks as she steps in front of the mirrors, her tiny, flat chest perfectly wrapped in satin.

“Over Shane,” Yorke scoffs.

“Ri-ight.” Freddie rolls her eyes at Yorke.

Watching them snickering together, I decide that maybe my dress might have taken a lot more work and that it still may be held together with a couple of straight pins, but it looks better on me. Definitely.

“I’m serious,” I say.

“Come on . . .” Yorke chides as she turns to admire her side view, adjusting her uncooperative veil over one shoulder. “You and Shane are not breaking up.”

“Who’s breaking up?” my mother asks as she bustles in, snapping her cell phone shut and dropping it into her bag. An iced coffee and Yorke’s caramel concoction are balanced in a recycled cardboard tray in her free hand. There’s nothing for the nonbetrothed.

“Apparently Shane and Leah,” Yorke says as she turns and reaches for the tray. “Yes!” she exclaims as she grabs at the coffee greedily and my mother backs off, ice rattling loudly when the cups slosh.

“Not officially,” I say to Freddie quietly. “It’s not official yet.”

“Don’t be silly,” my mother says, swerving out of Yorke’s reach. “Leah and Shane are not breaking up.”

She sets the tray down, wedging it between the bridal magazines and the bounty of fresh flowers on the table. She straightens up to look at us. “They’re fine.” She smiles. “They’re perfect.”

My mother walks toward Yorke, head cocked to one side as she moves in. She lifts Yorke’s veil expertly and lets it fall, slowly, so that it drifts down to settle over Yorke’s shoulders. She passes behind Freddie, stops, and places one index finger on each shoulder, pulling back gently, making Freddie’s bodice so tight the satin sings.

“Perfect,” Freddie repeats to her reflection, almost silently.

My mother’s hands graze across my shoulders when she steps behind me, lightly brushing over my fading tan lines and scuffed shoulder blade. I have been working hard, with a variety of bathing suits and a lot of self-tanner, to be strap mark free.

She smooths my hair back, adjusting it to fall over one shoulder, Chanel No. 5 filling my lungs as her eyes meet mine in the mirror.

“Your sister doesn’t need any more stress right now,” she stage whispers, and I droop under the weight of my dress. How can it be that the people who are supposed to love me the most are here, so close, all lined up shiny and promising, yet I feel so alone?

“She doesn’t look stressed,” I say, watching Yorke, sliding out of her dress behind the curved sofa.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Yorke says thickly, sipping the hot coffee and curling up on the satin settee in her underwear, her wedding dress in a ball at her feet. “I am totally stressed.”

My mother lifts her brow at me before she reaches over to pick up Yorke’s dress and heads off to find Jinny and a satin-covered hanger and protective bag.

“Why would you break up with Shane a couple of days before my wedding?” Yorke asks. “Are you retarded?”

She looks at me as if I am dumb enough to dignify that with an answer.

“He
has
to be there, Leah. Roger asked him to be an usher, for Christ’s sake. What are you going to do about
that
?” She snaps a pink packet of sweetener before tearing it open. “And what about homecoming next year? And prom?” She rests the cup on her leg as she reaches for packet number two.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, shaking her head, pausing only to stir. “You’re not breaking up.” She dumps the last packet into her coffee and dismisses me, and the whole idea, with a wave of a brown stir stick and the turn of her head.

“You know what I think, though?” she says, looking over at Freddie with a dangerous grin. “You know who
should
be breaking up?” She rises slowly and saunters over to stand behind Freddie. We all know that according to the schedule, Evan should be gone by now. His time was up at the beginning of summer.

“Cut that boy loose already,” Yorke says to Freddie’s buttoned back. “I worry about you.”

I watch her as she swirls the coffee stirrer around playfully in her tall cup, waiting for a reaction, her reflection clear in the two mirrors not blocked by Freddie. Her stomach is tight, the skin stretched across a tiny bulge, low but in the middle. Obvious now, but well hidden by her summer dresses and newly fitted wedding gown. My eyes are glued to it, my mouth open, my brain reeling, adding up the days and the months since Roger first appeared.

I step back, feet muffled in the thick cream carpet, eyes wide. I am not entirely surprised to find Freddie watching my reaction, nodding knowingly at me, because, like always, she knew but kept her mouth shut.

When we were really, really little, before we were good girls and had learned how to behave ourselves, our mother used to bribe us through boring things, like church, with the promise of candy.

“Whoever is quiet the longest gets a piece,” she would say under her breath, holding her purse open a crack so we could peek inside and see the sweet prizes waiting for us there, knowing full well that Freddie could shut up forever if it was a competition.

Yorke would break down about halfway through the sermon and start whispering to whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting next to her, usually me, or humming to herself, sometimes even pinching Freddie in an attempt to get a rise out of her. It never worked. Freddie was so good that she even knew how to unwrap the candy that she had saved from the week before without a wrinkle of the wrapper, not so much as a rustle or a crinkle. She would sit back, feet swinging happily under the pew, a smug grin on her butterscotched lips.

“You know what I think?” Freddie says clearly, with a marked glance over her shoulder in Yorke’s direction as she walks back to her dressing room. “I think you already have enough to worry about.”

Well, I think, give that girl a sourball. Freddie wins again.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually felt this way before. I am boiling over and betrayed, and I think I might be bitter. About Duffy, whose mom died and he could barely even be bothered to tell me. How come he didn’t want to tell me? I guess he never did like me. He certainly never really trusted me.

And about Yorke, who managed to get pregnant
and
keep it a secret, a monumental feat for her, and Freddie, for faithfully, to the end, keeping her end of the bargain, even if that meant leaving me out.

Yorke and Freddie I can deal with, I have a lifetime of being last in line with them. But Duffy is fresh and new, the wound all mine, brewing and bubbling just under the surface of my skin.

“Just skim, Leah,” Troy says, walking behind me with a padlock dangling from his finger as I stretch, reaching the long pole out over the well of the pool. “Don’t stab and poke.”

After we clean the pool, it takes me two tries to swing my leg up onto the first rung of my chair for my last night swim of the season. It’s the second week of August, and the thought that this may be my last night swim ever, if my mother has her way, fills my veins with lead.

The pool has always been my place, separate from my sisters and my mother, a shimmering L-shaped space of chlorine and solitude. I hardly ever even get wet above the ankles, but at least it’s all mine. And I don’t want it to disappear, the way Duffy did.

I haven’t seen him in forever. I have been avoiding Shane this whole time, but why bother if Duffy is not even going to show up?

He said the choice was mine to make. Actually, I think his exact words were, “You need to choose, Leah,” as he rested his head so softly against mine, but how the hell can I choose when he goes ahead and does it for me? Between him and my mother, it’s as if I never even got the chance.