One Moment (16 page)

I waved him over. But he just stood there watching. I wondered how long he’d been there. If he was upset that I’d been dancing with Adam. But Joey wasn’t like that. Never had been.

Then I wondered if my thoughts had been so loud that maybe he’d heard them. If he knew I’d pictured Adam kissing me, and me kissing Adam right back. I wanted to explain. To tell him that it was a simple moment of drunken curiosity. I wanted to assure Joey that I would never, ever do anything to answer the questions that had been spinning around in my mind. But that would have been crazy, spilling all that out into the space between us. So my only choice was to act normal.

“Joey,” I yelled. “C’mere.”

That’s what got him moving. The sound of my voice. He jumped the five steps, pummeling the grass with his feet, and bounded across the yard.

“Here you go.” He handed me a beer and then passed one to Tanna and Shannon, too. “Didn’t know you were here, man,” Joey said to Adam.

“Got here a while ago.” Adam’s voice was tight.

“Mmm.” Joey took a swig from his beer. “It’s a wild one.”

I looked up at both of them. They were standing next to each other, but they were stiff. Awkward. I felt like something was going on, and I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with Joey knowing me so well he could read my thoughts. Then another song started, painting the irritation that drifted between them deep shades of dusty pink, indigo, and green, whisking it away after just a few notes.

Joey began to tap his hand on his knee. And then, without warning, his eyes flashed mischievously, and he started to speak. As always, he surprised me.

“I found something in there.” He threw a hand toward the house. “Anyone up for a little excitement?”

“Way to be mysterious.” Shannon hopped up from her spot on the ground, her wavy brown hair flying around her shoulders. “I’m totally in.”

Adam shook his head, looking from Joey to Shannon. “You two,” he said. His lips parted as if he were about to say more, but then he pressed them together, trapping the words.

“Leave it alone,” Joey said, his eyes tight with irritation. “You don’t wanna come along, fine by me. But don’t spoil our fun, dude.”

Adam grunted as Joey and Shannon turned and started toward the house. I squealed and jumped up, tugging Tanna with me. “Wonder if it’s some secret passageway.” I envisioned pressing Joey up against a curved wall, bound to him by total and complete darkness, and showing him with one single kiss how very much he meant to me.

“C’mon, Adam,” Tanna called over her shoulder. “You need a beer, anyway.”

I looked back and caught Adam as he took a few slow steps after us. “Come on!” I shouted, tossing my head toward the house, throwing myself off balance, thinking it was a good thing that Tanna was there to keep me upright.

12

Shaky Fingertips

“You
do
know it’s summer, right?” Tanna asked from the other end of the line.

I pressed the phone against my cheek and slid off my bed, moving across the room to the mirror above my dresser. “I’m so pale, you can almost see through me.”

“Exactly my point. And that, my friend, calls for a pool day.”

“Tanna, I’m not sure.” Guilt flared through my stomach. I felt like I shouldn’t allow myself to go on doing all the stuff Joey couldn’t. Like I’d be betraying him if I went to Gertie’s Dairy Farm for ice cream or sat around laughing with our friends. But then Dr. Guest’s voice trailed through my mind, a direct quote from our last session, asking me to list the worst things that could happen if I decided to go on living my life. And the worst thing I could come up with was the guilt, which Joey would have hated.

“A day in the sun will do you more good than you can imagine,” she said. “Trust me.”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking of the other reason I didn’t want to do much of anything anymore. “Is Shannon going?”

“Yes. But don’t let that—”

“I don’t think I’m ready to see her after the other night.”

“It’s been four days, Mags. If you let this drag out for too long, it’ll get to be like Adam. A total disconnect.”

“I’m not so sure I care,” I said. “She accused me of cheating, Tanna.”

“It was a heated moment. She wasn’t thinking.”

“Still, she threw it out there.”

“We all know Shan can be a bitch sometimes. And considering everything that’s happened with Joey, maybe we should cut her a break.”

“Yeah. But what she said was just stupid,” I said.

“Right. But Joey drunk equals Joey crazy. Who the hell knows what went down between him and Adam the night of Dutton’s party? Or what Shannon overheard from that phone call after Joey dropped you off? Bottom line is she’s one of your best friends. You don’t want to lose her, too, so we just need to move on. To take a day to focus on the basics: bikinis, sun, and swimming.”

I groaned and looked down at my feet.

“I’ll need a few to get ready,” I said, pulling the drawer on the right side of my dresser open.

“Well, make it snappy,” Tanna said. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“I’m painting my toenails, at the very least.”

“I promise this will make you feel better.”

“I hope so. See you in a few.”

I ended the call and placed my phone on the dresser, digging through my stash of nail polish, mentally cataloging everything I’d need for a day in the sun: sunscreen, magazines, iPod—

And that’s when I saw it.

When my hand danced closer to the back of the drawer, aiming for a bottle of Perfectly Pink. There, tucked between the Totally Teal and Raspberry Sorbet was my rainbow-colored flower necklace. I was confused at first, and then I remembered. Stupid, stupid me. The Spring Carnival. Pete throwing colored balls through the open mouth of a cardboard clown, tossing his arms up in the air once, twice, three times. He’d won
three
prizes. One for me, one for Tanna, and one for Shannon. And the prizes he’d chosen had been identical.

I sat there, running the slippery beads through the fingers of my left hand, thinking that I’d been wrong. I wondered what it meant, that I was sitting there holding my necklace when Tanna’s or Shannon’s had been wrapped around the handle of Joey’s closet door. But none of my conclusions made any sense.

And then I remembered Tanna pulling her hair off her neck, twisting it into a bun for one of the wild spinning rides, the elastic thread of her necklace snapping. Then there were the flashing lights of the carnival’s exit, and the trash can we’d passed on our way out, Tanna’s hand flinging her broken flowers in the trash as we traipsed through the gates and into the parking lot on our way home. Tanna’s necklace, it was in some landfill next to a dirty diaper or a soggy box of Wheat Thins. And mine was in my hands.

The necklace in Joey’s room, it had belonged to Shannon.

As I laced the beaded flowers through my fingers, I saw her. Eyes wide. A smile splitting across her face.

“I’m going in,” Shannon had said, her sandals clicking on the blacktop of the parking lot as the carnival lights tripped across her face, reflecting in her eyes. She stood there, twisting the flower necklace around her thumb. “That Toby Miller is
hot-hot-hot
.”

“You sure?” Tanna had asked. “Maybe wait until you’re a little more …”

“Sober?” I’d asked with a laugh.

Shannon had burped then. Pressed a finger against her lips. Shook her head. “No way, guys. He’ll take me home if he thinks I’ve been left behind.”

Then she’d taken off, a shaky half skip, half run. When she was a few cars away, Shannon turned, her yellow skirt fanning out around her legs, motioning for us to step back. “Duck,” she’d whisper-shouted. “Don’t let him see you!”

Tanna and I watched from the shadows as Shannon tapped Toby on a broad shoulder, as he turned, as they spoke. He smiled, laughed, and ran a hand through his hair (choice
I-want-you
body language, according to Shannon). When he turned and started toward the shadows of the back lot, Shannon threw us a high thumbs-up.

Tanna tossed her head back and laughed in that wide-open way I loved so much.

“She gets anything she wants, doesn’t she?” Tanna had asked as she slid into the driver’s side of her blue Honda.

“It is amazing.” I’d turned to watch Shannon disappear between two dark minivans. To where I now knew Joey had been sitting, waiting for something. Something that, for some reason, had nothing to do with me.

“You’re still pissed, aren’t you?” Shannon leaned forward in the green lawn chair situated between Tanna’s and mine and reached into her beach bag for a bottle of sunscreen.

I didn’t say anything. Instead, I focused on three middle schoolers with deep tans as they flip-flopped past our chairs, laughing and juggling hot dogs, Slushies, and Twizzlers. My eyes followed them as they made their way to their towels, which were laid out on the large stretch of lawn in the back of Blue Springs Swim and Tennis Club. I found myself wishing I could jump out of my own life and into the simple happiness that seemed to enfold them.

“You
were
pretty harsh the other night,” Tanna said, readjusting the straps of her bikini top.

“Yeah, whatever.” Shannon rubbed white lotion into her shoulders and upper arms in quick little circles. “I’d had a little too much to drink; I started before you guys even got there. And Adam, he was pissing me off, acting like Joey means nothing to him.”

I wanted to ask her if she really thought Adam felt that way. But there were more urgent questions. Like, what was her necklace doing in Joey’s bedroom? And what else did she know that I didn’t? But I wasn’t sure where to start. Or where it might end. So I decided to wait until I figured a few things out before I dove into the questions that were making me feel nauseous.

I bit my lip, grabbing a magazine from the foot of Shannon’s lawn chair, wishing I’d trusted my first instinct and avoided this pool day altogether.

“So, Shan,” Tanna said. “Isn’t there something you wanted to say to Maggie?”

“Right,” Shannon said, throwing the sunscreen into her bag as she leaned against the chair’s back, propping one knee up in the air with the casual-sexy vibe that she always tried to emit. “I’m sorry if what I said upset you, Maggie. I know we’re all just trying to deal, and calling you out wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t fair to me or Adam,” I said, flipping to the middle of the magazine, zoning on an ad for hairspray where a girl with spiky hair walked into a nightclub. “I just hope you didn’t push him even further away.”

Shannon propped her sunglasses on her nose and tipped her face up to the sky. I could tell by the way her foot was shaking that she was agitated, close to leaping off her chair, even, but was trying to restrain herself.

“He’ll come around,” Shannon said. “We just need to give him a little more time.”

I looked down at the magazine again, trying to escape through the doors of the nightclub with that spiky-haired girl. But before I could even read the stupid slogan, I was jolted as the five lifeguards blew their whistles simultaneously, ending the rest period. Peals of laughter rang through the humid air as kids dove into the water from all sides of the large pool. Three guys with long hair hopped into the crystalline water a few feet from our chairs, splashing us. I threw the splattered magazine back onto Shannon’s chair. It was pointless, anyway, trying to distract myself.

“I’m burning up,” Tanna said, standing and tossing a mess of damp hair over her shoulder. “I gotta jump in.”

I looked up then, shielded my eyes from the sun that was positioned almost perfectly over Tanna’s head.

“Anyone wanna join?” she asked.

Shannon grabbed the iPod sitting on her flowered towel, twirling the wires from the earphones around one finger. “Not yet,” Shannon said. “I wanna listen to some tunes first.”

“I’m game.” I was glad to have an excuse to get away from Shannon and hoped the water might wash away all the uncertainty that had flooded me since finding my necklace.

I’d just swung my feet over the side of the lawn chair and was about to stand up when Toby walked by. I had about a millisecond to react, or I would have lost my chance altogether. It was his shoulders, broad and bare, tanned from his many days stationed at his lifeguard post, the same shoulders that I’d seen in the parking lot as we left the Spring Carnival. Those shoulders kicked my mouth into action. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was after, or if I would find it, but if I didn’t ask a few questions, I knew I’d never get rid of the uneasy feeling that had settled in my chest.

“Hey, Toby,” I said, standing quickly, sure to speak over the steady roll of splashing and laughing coming from kids in the pool.

He stopped, turning only partially, the whistle hanging from a red string around his neck swaying back and forth across his six-pack abs. “Oh. Hey, guys.” He gave us a half wave.

“How’s your summer?” I asked, willing him to step a little closer.

Those shoulders swiveled all the way toward us, and I knew I had him. “Okay, I guess.” His voice was tight. A little unsure. He was confused about why I’d chosen to talk to him as though we were old friends when we’d only ever spoken once or twice before.