One Moment in Time (17 page)

The three of us got into it outside before first period, so badly that I was afraid it might come to a fistfight. But even though I knew Lyla was really mad—it was the worst fight we'd had since we'd been friends—I thought the whole thing was going to end up flaming out. I figured it was kind of like a bomb—it had gone off, and now we'd pick up the pieces, talk about it, and move on.

But it wasn't like that.

Lyla shut down. Completely.

She wouldn't talk to me or Aven. I tried texting her a
bunch of times, but she didn't want to hear my apologies. I tried to explain it to her, to tell her that that if I'd known my mom was going to run into her mom, I never would have said anything. But Lyla didn't care.

Looking back, I think she'd taken the anger she felt toward her dad for making her choose between her parents, and toward her mom for being such a mess that she couldn't deal with Lyla not living with her for a while, and put it onto Aven and me.

But I still felt horrible.
Why
had I told my mom? Aven had asked me not to tell anyone, and even though I didn't really consider my mom someone of importance, I'd still told. I'd broken my promise, and I felt awful.

At first, Aven and I worked together to make sure Lyla would talk to us again. But when it started to become clear that Lyla wasn't going to just get over it, Aven started resenting me. She never said it, but I think deep down, she blamed me for what had happened. Aven and I started slowly drifting apart, and after a while, we drifted completely apart.

I'd never felt more alone in my life. So I did what I always did when things got hard—I threw myself into my work. Extra credit, extra responsibilities, volunteering, committees, meetings . . . now that I had no friends, I had no need for free time, so I was able to pack my schedule with things that would look good to Stanford.

And after about six months, I met Celia while working at
the food pantry. We bonded over our Ivy League ambitions, and she introduced me to Paige, who was working there, too. They invited me to a party that night, to blow off steam after our long day of being on our feet handing out food. I usually avoided parties like the plague, opting instead for sleepovers with Lyla and Aven, or nights out to the mall or the movies. But obviously I hadn't been doing any of that, and so my lack of socialization made me desperate enough to say yes.

And that was it. I slid into Celia and Paige's threesome, not because I was all that suited for it, but because I was hungry for a group to be in.

And after a while, Lyla and Aven started to fade from my memory.

WHEN I GET BACK TO THE HOTEL AFTER TALKING
to my mom and leaving Abram and Lyla on the beach, I head right for Celia and Paige's room. I'm in full-on damage-control mode now, and I need to make up with them. I mean, what the hell was I thinking, blowing them off for some guy? It's completely humiliating and totally against every girl code in the book. I almost threw away my friendships, my future,
everything
for some guy I didn't even know. I flush as I think about the fact that I lost my virginity to him. I slept with him. I had sex with him! I might be able to make up with Celia and Paige, but I'm never going to be able to change that.

But I'm not going to think about that right now. I just need to focus on one thing at a time. Almost like a to-do list. One, make up with Celia and Paige. Two, get my outfit ready for tomorrow's interview. Three, figure out if there's any way
I can help my parents get me into Stanford. Maybe I can write a special statement, or ramp up my volunteer work, or send updated transcripts showing I've kept my grades up and haven't gotten senioritis like a lot of kids at my school.

Of course I know the only thing that's
really
going to get me into Stanford is my dad writing a check or making them some kind of promise, but it still makes me feel a little better to think there might be
something
I can do.

When I get to Celia and Paige's room, I pause before knocking, trying to figure out what I'm going to say to the two of them. Finally, I decide to just keep it simple. Apologize. Say I'm sorry. Explain that I didn't mean to hurt them, that I just got caught up in a boy and the thrill of it all.

But you didn't just get caught up in a boy. You really liked him. And you didn't want to stay and take care of Celia when she was drunk—you've never really wanted to do that.

I hesitate. But then I tell myself those thoughts are coming from the part of me that wants to take the easy way out. My feelings for Abram are based on nothing but hormones and vacation and stupid teenage lust. They don't have anything to do with Abram himself. And this whole thing with Celia and Paige—yes, I didn't want to stay and take care of Celia, but some of that was motivated by wanting to go see Abram. Which was based on hormones and vacation and stupid teenage lust. It's a vicious cycle.

I knock on the door, hoping they'll be there.

“Come in!” Celia opens the door without even asking who it is. I get nervous for a second that they're not going to accept my apology, that maybe they'll say they've realized they can't count on me and so they're just . . . done with me. I know that's crazy. It wasn't like I did anything horrible to them. But then I have a flashback to standing outside school that day, Lyla yelling at me and Aven, the two of us just standing there, helpless.

Celia sits at the desk chair, one of those plug-in lighted magnifying mirrors in front of her. Paige stands behind her, holding strands of long blond hair extensions.

“You need to place them perfectly,” Celia is instructing. “It's really important, because if you don't, they're going to slip. And if they slip, everyone's going to be able to see the tops of them, and that, like, defeats the purpose. You know, of people thinking they're real.”

“Okay,” Paige says, not sounding that sure.

The two of them have full faces of makeup on, way too much for daytime, so I'm assuming they're getting ready for something.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” Celia says stiffly.

Paige doesn't say anything. She just clips an extension onto Celia's head.

“Good!” Celia says, turning her head and admiring Paige's work. “Good job, Paige!” Paige beams, and a flash
of annoyance pulses through me. Why does Paige have to do everything Celia says? And why does she need Celia's approval so much? And over something so trivial and demeaning as putting in hair extensions? Why couldn't Celia put in her own damn hair extensions?

“I see you're feeling better,” I say, making sure my voice stays upbeat.

“You know I recover quickly,” Celia says. It's true. She's always having little drunken mishaps and feeling sick, but after she eats something and takes a quick nap, she's usually fine. Last year she got drunk on the field trip to Conifer Lake, puked in the bushes and everything, and by the time Paige got her a honey bun and Celia took a nap on the bus home, she was able to finish the rest of the school day like it was nothing.

“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Listen,” I say. “I'm not . . . I'm sorry about what happened earlier.”

Celia gets quiet, takes a deep breath through her nose, then swivels around in her chair and looks at me. Paige sets the hair she's holding down on the desk and turns to look at me, too. I see her eyes flick to Celia's face, trying to figure out what Celia's going to say. And I get it—Celia is the one in charge of this. If Celia says I'm forgiven, then Paige will follow suit. If Celia decides she's still mad, then so is Paige.

“Go on,” Celia says patiently.

“I just got confused for a little while,” I say. “I was just
really . . .” I trail off, because now that she's put me on the spot, I don't know what exactly it is I'm sorry for. Is it because I didn't want to hang out with them? Because I didn't want to order Celia's pizza? I'm not really sorry for those things. But I can't say that. There's no way Celia's going to want to hear about how I'm sick of taking care of her.

It's not that bad, I tell myself. She's a good friend. So what if she's a little bit spoiled? She's been there for me when I had no one. And if I blow her off just because she can be a little entitled, isn't that exactly like what Lyla did to me, by just giving up on a friendship after one fight?

“You were just really . . . ,” Celia prompts.

“I just really got worked up over Abram,” I say. “He's really good-looking, and it was fun getting attention. So I kind of got, like, caught up in him.” I try to convince myself the words are true—maybe if I say them enough, I'll start to believe them.

Celia nods, like she can accept this. “Okay,” she says. “I mean, I understand.”

“Me too,” Paige says kindly. “I know you don't get that much attention from guys. So it would make sense you kind of freaked out.”

“So can we just move on?” I ask, feeling my fists clench at my side. It's actually better to move on, and the faster the better, because if I have to sit here and explain myself to them for one more second, I'm pretty sure we're going
to get into another fight.

“Yes,” Celia says. She jumps up from her chair and envelops me in a hug.

And after a moment, Paige does the same.

They don't ask me any questions about losing my virginity. I don't think it's because they don't care, although that could be a small part of it. They're doing it mostly because they want to make it clear they're still mad at me, that they're not going to go out of their way to show an interest in my life or be super nice to me right away. In their opinion, I messed up, and I'm going to have to prove myself again, at least for a little while.

On the other hand, they're getting ready for a sunset cruise around the key, and they just assume I'm going with them. I kind of have to, since (a) I don't want them to be mad at me anymore, and (b) I need something to do, especially since I'm not going to be meeting Abram.

Abram. Whenever I think of him, emotion flows through my body like a wave. But I push him out of my mind and focus on getting ready for the cruise. When I think of sunset cruises, I think of people getting dressed up in semi-nice clothes and being served a fancy dinner consisting of exquisite-sounding seafood dishes, like mussels in garlic butter with truffle oil. But Celia quickly sets me
straight when I come out of the bathroom wearing a simple red T-shirt dress.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You can't wear that. It's not sexy enough.”

She's changed into a black glittery miniskirt and a hot-pink top that ties behind her neck and hits just below her belly button. Paige is in a red bandeau dress with straps that crisscross in the back and show off her tanned skin.

“You can borrow this,” Paige says, holding up a pair of short shorts and a tuxedo-style tank top.

Celia nods. “Very fashion forward,” she says. “And those shorts will look killer with your legs.”

I reach out and take the clothes, thinking of how ridiculous they're going to look on me. It's definitely not an outfit I would ever choose for myself, even if I decided I wanted to go for a sexier look. This isn't last night, when I was pretending to be something I'm not.

Abram.

I glance over at the clock.

Two minutes after six.

I should be meeting him now.

I wonder if he's at the restaurant, waiting for me, wondering where I am, if he's worried about me or if he knows he's being stood up. The desire to be there with him is so overwhelming that for a moment, my eyes fill with tears.

“Jesus, Quinn, you don't have to cry about it,” Celia says,
sounding annoyed. “If you want to wear a T-shirt, go ahead and wear it.”

“It's not a T-shirt,” I say. “It's a T-shirt dress.”

“Whatever,” Celia says.

“It's a nice color,” Paige says, deciding to show me a little sympathy. “It's nice for a sunset cruise.”

“Thanks,” I say. I turn around and head back into the bathroom, blinking back the tears that are threatening to spill down my cheeks.

Stop being pathetic,
I tell myself.
He's just a boy you barely know. You're only feeling this way because you feel guilty about standing him up, and because you had sex with him.

I know better than to think sex means anything. Just because you sleep with someone doesn't mean you have a connection. In fact, it's just your body tricking you into
thinking
you have a connection. Especially for girls. It's, like, a scientific fact that once a woman has sex with someone, a hormone gets secreted in her body that makes her feel like she's in love with the person she just slept with.

It's not real. It's just biology.

And Abram's a big boy—I'm sure he can handle the fact that he's been stood up. He's probably not even worried about it. He's probably already moved on. I picture him standing there by the hostess stand, waiting for me, and then when it becomes obvious that I'm not coming, walking down the beach, stopping to talk to whatever sorority girls
or vacationers in bikinis happen to be around. His parents are probably still out of town. Maybe he'll take one of those girls back to his house tonight, the same way he did with me.

“Quinn!” Paige calls. “Are you almost ready?”

“Yeah,” I say, pushing the thoughts of Abram out of my head once again. “Just a second.”

“I'm going to hook up with someone tonight,” Celia says. The sunset cruise takes off from a different part of the key than the one we're staying on—it's only about a mile or so away from the hotel, but there was no way Celia was going to make it there in the shoes she's wearing. Paige, either, really. She still has blisters from last night.

Plus, even though it's six o'clock, the humidity is killer. We would have been sweating by the time we got to the dock, and I don't think that would have been good for Celia's hair extensions. She's very worried about them. She keeps reaching up and touching them nervously, like she's afraid they're going to come out at any moment. I hope whoever she hooks up with doesn't end up running his fingers through her hair. He might end up with a surprise.

Anyway, the three of us are smushed into the back of a pedicab on our way to the other side of Siesta Key. It's kind of awkward, sitting here while some guy works his ass off to haul us to a sunset cruise, but Celia and Paige thought
it would be so fun riding in a pedicab! Which it so totally isn't. Every time we go over a bump, it feels like we're going to tip over.

“Who?” Paige asks. “Who will you hook up with?”

“Someone on the party cruise,” Celia says.

“What party cruise?” I ask.

Celia pats her hair. “The party cruise we're going on. Right now. Hello?”

Paige shakes her head at me. “You're still being kind of weird.”

“I thought you said this was a sunset cruise,” I say.

“It is,” Celia says. “A sunset party cruise.”

I sigh. A sunset party cruise is a lot different from a sunset cruise. A sunset cruise means dinner and standing on the deck (bow? stern?), watching the sun go down. A sunset
party
cruise means drinking and boys and standing in a corner while Celia and Paige grind on random guys. I'm so not in the mood for any of that.

You're only in the mood to be with Abram right now.

The pedicab goes over another bump. I decide to take it as a sign that I shouldn't be thinking about Abram. Kind of like one of those negative reinforcements where you snap a rubber band against your wrist every time you think of something you don't want to think about, and then eventually, you stop thinking about whatever it is because you start associating it with pain.

“Sir, can you please be careful!” Celia screeches to the driver, an older man with sunburn on the bald part of his head. “We really need to get there in one piece.”

I'm not sure if he can hear Celia, but if he does, he doesn't acknowledge her. Not that I blame him. I mean, the man is hauling three entitled girls down to a sunset party cruise during their senior trip. If I were him, I wouldn't give a shit about jostling us around, either.

When we finally get to the harbor and climb out of the pedicab, Celia pays the guy, shaking her head the whole time. When she's not looking, I make sure to give him an extra ten dollars for a tip and thank him profusely. Not that he did that great of a job—we almost got hit by cars a few times, and after Celia yelled at him, he made sure to go over every single bump full force. But still.