Reunited (20 page)

Instead, she got a laundry list.

“Well . . . you’re smart, and you’re nice, and you’re funny. And you’ve got an incredible smile. Not to mention an amazing ass,” he said with a chuckle.

Summer didn’t know exactly what she’d wanted Jace to say, but she knew it wasn’t this. She wanted him to tell her she was special, even if she was only special to him. Even if it came out in plain old Jace kind of words.

That was one of the things she liked best about poetry—the way ordinary words, if you used them right, turned magical. How the whole became greater than the sum of its parts. But there was no magic in Jace’s inventory of compliments. And “Uh . . . my parents really like you” definitely wasn’t poetry.

When he was done Summer was silent.

“You know what I think is going on with you?” Jace said accusingly. “I think you’re holding a grudge.”

Summer bit the inside of her cheek. If she was hotheaded and impetuous like Tiernan, she might have chucked her cell phone right into the waterfall.
That ought to be worth something in the wish-making department.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said, sounding more sure of himself. “You’re the master of holding grudges.”

Summer rode the wave of anger flooding though her body. “
You’re
the one who dumped
me
because you wanted to add some notches to your belt with a bunch of meaningless hookups. I think I’m allowed to feel a little resentful.”

That got him quiet. When Jace finally spoke, his voice was so soft she could barely hear him. “I got scared,” he confessed. “Everything’s changing, Summer. You’re going away to school in the fall—”

“Thirty minutes away!”

“I don’t care if it’s five minutes away.
I’ll
still be right here.” He paused again. “You keep talking about moving on and finding a new life. And I’m afraid . . . that you’ll end up leaving me behind.”

Summer’s eyes welled with tears. Other than the time Jace cried when his dog got hit by a car, she’d never actually heard him share such honest emotion. Even the way he said “I love you” always reminded Summer of one of those guys from some cheesy daytime soap. But his fear of being abandoned was real. She could tell it was, because it was her fear too.

“Jace.” She said his name to soothe him. “It’s okay.”

There was nothing more irresistible than a man who was broken. It was kind of a messed-up thing to admit, but it was true. Summer always had a thing for boys who were a little off, boys who, on the surface, seemed impervious to pain but had a layer of sadness underneath. Like Travis Wyland. Alice and Tiernan used to think her crush on Travis was all about his looks, but Summer was just as attracted to his suffering. Even before his brother had died, she could feel Travis’s pain in every song he wrote.

“I guess I am holding a pretty big grudge against you,” she admitted.

“Well, you got over your grudge with that Tiernan chick. Maybe you could do the same for me?”

Summer scoffed.
Had
she gotten over her grudge against Tiernan, or had she just forgotten about it for the time being? Forgive and forget. Summer understood the forgetting part, but she never really knew what the deal was with forgiveness. Were you supposed to just go around pretending as though it didn’t matter that someone had done something really horrible to you? And, if so, why not forgive all the murderers, too? Just open up the jail cells and let them roam free.

No.
Tiernan had betrayed her, and nothing could ever take that away. It didn’t matter if it happened four or four hundred years ago. Tiernan had taken what Summer had told her in confidence and used it against her. Even worse, she’d twisted her words. Not that Alice had been any better, embarrassing her with a huge public scene.

Even now, thinking about that night at the Winter Wonderland Dance made the anger rush out of Summer with such force her whole body trembled. And the worst part was, Summer had just let herself fall in with them all over again, as if none of this nastiness had ever happened. Like a little giggling on some ridiculous road trip could just magically make it all go away.

“So, what am I supposed to do, Jace? Just forgive and forget?”

“If you want to,” Jace said softly.

Summer was close enough to the waterfall now that she could feel its mist settling on her bare skin.

Part of her
did
want to trust Jace again. Graduation day aside, he was one of the steadiest, most reliable people she knew. Even his football game was like that—solid, dependable. He didn’t have a lot of dazzling moments on the field, but you could always count on Jace to play well, to be consistent.

Tiernan, on the other hand, was a wild card. One minute, she was a normal fourteen-year-old girl, a friend. The next, she was a Goth-punk backstabber. But unlike her dyed hair and combat boots, betrayal didn’t look good on anyone.

“There’s a computer room here, at the hotel,” Summer said. “I’ll go look at flights.”

“Call me when you’ve found something,” Jace said. “And Summer . . . I love you,” he added, like an afterthought.

“Me too,” she said absently. But her mind was already someplace else. A new poem was flowing out of her so fast and loud that, for a second, she couldn’t even hear the waterfall. She pulled her journal from her purse, scrawling furiously.

The Collage

You can take all the snapshots you

want,

but you will not capture me.

I have already been torn to pieces

by you,

and pasted myself together again.

I may just be an amateur

But I have found what it takes to

make me whole

And it turns out, the only things I

need

Are time, a little glue, and a

design of my own.

The Gaywether Hotel business center rented computers for fifty cents a minute, so Summer handed the man her ID and plunked herself in front of a machine in the corner. The least expensive flight was out of New Orleans at six a.m. on Friday. It would time out perfectly. Tomorrow they’d hit the road early and head down to New Orleans. All she had to do was make it through her the night on the town with Alice and Tiernan,
then they could drop her off at the airport and Jace would pick her up in Boston on his way to the Cape on Friday morning.

Summer used the credit card number Jace had given her to purchase the tickets. She could already see the tragic look on Alice’s face when she broke the news about leaving. It was hard to say if it would be more or less painful than Tiernan’s inevitable shrug of cool indifference.

Whatever
. She didn’t owe them anything, least of all loyalty. The reason they were all here had nothing to do with personal stuff anyway. They were here because they all liked Level3. That was the only real bummer—that she wouldn’t get to see the show.

Summer ran to catch the elevator up to the third floor, but just as she got there, the brass double doors started to close and she found herself glaring at her own reflection, the seam in the doors splitting her face in two.

Thankfully, the next elevator was empty. Summer could use a minute alone to practice how she’d deliver the news.
Hey, you guys, when we get to New Orleans, I was wondering if you could . . .?
Then she noticed the music in the elevator, or more precisely, Muzak. It was Level3. Not that Level3 Muzak was shocking in and of itself—sadly, they were popular enough to suffer the indignity of being turned into easy listening. The weird thing was hearing Level3 at the Gaywether Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. Down here they force-fed you country music until your ears bled. And yet, there it was—“Sad Songs,” the power
ballad off of
Natural Causes
, being piped into the elevator for her listening pleasure.

Summer hurried back to their room. She couldn’t wait to tell Alice and Tiernan about “Sad Songs.” But as she dug out her key card, her heart sank a little. How could she burst into the room all excited about the coincidence of some dumb elevator music when she had bigger news to deliver?

Tiernan and Alice were both on Alice’s bed, huddled on a mountain of pillows, watching TV.

“Oh my God, you have to see this!” Alice gushed, pointing to the TV. “It’s the Level3
True Hollywood Story
!”

Tiernan smiled, a Twizzler hanging limply from her mouth.

Summer sat down on the edge of the bed and watched with them. She had come back just in time for the heartbreaking part.

“. . . Then, as Level3 was preparing to go into the studio to record their second album . . . tragedy struck.”
The narrator had one of those melodramatic movie trailer voices. “
Travis Wyland’s twenty-four-year-old brother Dean was rushed to the hospital due to complications from Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Three days later, Dean was dead. . . .”

“God!” Tiernan laughed. “Do they have to use those awful sound effects? Do they think we won’t get that it’s sad if they don’t put in a
bump-bump-buuuuum
at the end?”

Summer got up off the bed so Alice and Tiernan wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. She’d probably feel much better once the show ended and she could just tell them she was leaving.
Even if Alice got upset, chances were it would be more about someone disrupting her plans as opposed to actually caring whether Summer left or stayed.

Tiernan offered her a Twizzler and she took it. After everything she’d eaten on this trip, a few more grams of high fructose corn syrup couldn’t hurt. She watched the rest of the
E! True Hollywood Story
from the corner of the desk, riveted. It was weird how she could be that into a story when she already knew the ending.

Summer knew the ending to the three of them, too. She would leave the trip tomorrow. Back home, they’d be Facebook friends, at best. Then in the fall, they’d each head off for college. And maybe—
maybe
—they’d see each other again at their ten-year high school reunion.

The show ended with “Sad Songs” over the credits. A funny fluke, to be sure, but life was full of stuff like that.

“So, you guys . . . ,” Summer began, keeping her eyes on the TV. “About New Orleans tomorrow—”

But a knock at the door cut her off.

Alice shot Tiernan a look. “Tell me you didn’t order room service.”

“Dude, I don’t have that kind of cash. But maybe it’s turndown service! Score!”

“What’s turn-down service?” Summer asked. Her family stayed in
mo
tels, not
ho
tels. That is, if they went anywhere at all.

Tiernan leaped off the bed. “It’s when the hotel maids come
in to fold down your covers and put a chocolate on your pillow!” she said, flinging open the door like she was expecting to see a truckload of M&M’s in the hallway.

Instead, what Tiernan found waiting for her on the other side of the door lacked the ability to melt in either her mouth
or
her hands (and was definitely a whole lot less sweet). Her mother.

“UNDERGROUND”

THE EARTHWORMS

WELL, THEY LIKE TO KEEP IT SIMPLE.

THEY SLEEP IN DIRT

AND THEY EAT IT, TOO.

BUT, THERE’S SOMETHING TO BE SAID

FOR HAVING LUNCH IN BED.

THEY’LL NEVER GO HUNGRY

AND THEY’RE ALWAYS RIGHT AT HOME.

—from Level3’s third CD,
Natural Causes

“TIERNAN, GIRLS. MAY I COME IN?” HER MOTHER ASKED, THOUGH
it wasn’t really a question. And even if it was, Tiernan had no voice to answer it, the air had been sucked from her lungs into the black hole that was Judy Horowitz.

Judy wore a red silk blouse, black slacks, and heels—half corporate lawyer, half matador dressed for a bullfight. Her makeup was perfect.

“You girls wouldn’t mind giving us a little privacy, would you?” she asked, smiling at Alice and Summer. Her voice had that soothing tone she used to coax their cat into its travel box for a trip to the vet. The cat always made a break for it. Tiernan fought off the urge.

“Sure, not a problem,” Alice said, practically falling over herself to get out the door.

Summer heaved her massive purse onto her shoulder. “We’ll be back . . . later.”

Then the door slammed shut and it was just Tiernan and her mother, mano a mano at the Gaywether Hotel. It had all the makings of a pay-per-view special.

With a flick of her manicured fingernail, Judy turned off
the TV so that the only sound left was the hum of the white noise machine. Hotels used white noise machines to drown out sounds from adjoining rooms—voices, the television, the moans and groans of the newlyweds next door. Judy had one at her law firm to protect her clients’ privacy. Her own daughter’s privacy was clearly less of a concern.