The Summer I Turned Pretty

I had to think for a second about whether he was being nice or making fun of me. His expression looked normal and bland, so I took it as a little of both. If he was going to pretend our fight from before hadn't happened, then so would I.

"Who knows," I said, rummaging around the fridge and pulling out a yogurt. "Who cares?"

"Lover's spat?"

The smug look on his face made me want to slap him. "Mind your own business," I said, sitting down next to him with a spoon and a container of strawberry yogurt. It was Susannah's fat-free stuff, and the top looked watery and solid. I closed the foil flap on the yogurt and pushed it away.

Conrad pushed the watermelon over to me. "You shouldn't be so hard on people, Belly." Then he stood up and said, "And put your shirt on."

I scooped out a chunk of watermelon and stuck my tongue out at his retreating figure. Why did he make me feel like I was still thirteen? In my head I heard my mother's voice--"Nobody can make you feel like anything, Belly. Not without your permission. Eleanor Roosevelt said that. I almost named you after her." Blah, blah, blah. But she was kind of right. I wasn't giving him permission to make me feel bad, not anymore. I just wished my hair had at least been wet, or I'd had sand in my clothes, so he could have thought we'd been up to something, even if we hadn't been.

I sat at the table and ate watermelon. I ate it until I had scooped out half of the middle. I was waiting for Cam to come back inside, and when he didn't, I only felt madder. Part of me was tempted to lock the door on him. He'd probably meet some random homeless guy and become best friends with him, and then he'd tell me the man's life story the next day. Not that there were any homeless guys on our end of the beach. Not that I'd ever seen a homeless person in Cousins, for that matter. But if there was, Cam would find him.

Only, Cam didn't come back to the house. He just left. I heard his car start, watched from the downstairs hallway as he backed down the driveway. I wanted to run after his car and yell at him. He was supposed to come back. What if I'd ruined things and he didn't like me anymore? What if I never saw him again?

That night I lay in bed, thinking about how summer romances really do happen so fast, and then they're over so fast.

But the next morning, when I went to the deck to eat my toast, I found an empty water bottle on the steps that led down to the beach. Poland Spring, the kind Cam was always drinking. There was a piece of paper inside, a note. A message in a bottle. The ink was a little smeared, but I could still read what it said. It said, "IOU one skinny-dip."

Chapter thirty - three

Jeremiah told me I could come hang by the pool while he life guarded. I'd never been inside the country club pool. It was huge and fancy, so I jumped at the chance. The country club seemed like a mysterious place. Conrad hadn't let us come the summer before; he'd said it would be embarrassing.

Midafternoon, I rode my bike over. Everything there was lush and green; it was surrounded by a golf course. There was a girl at a table with a clipboard, and I went over and told her I was there to see Jeremiah, and she waved me in.

I spotted Jeremiah before he saw me. He was sitting in the lifeguard chair, talking to a dark-haired girl in a white bikini. He was laughing, and so was she. He looked so important in the chair. I'd never seen him at an actual job before.

Suddenly I felt shy. I walked over slowly, my flip-flops slapping along the pavement. "Hey," I said when I was a few feet away.

Jeremiah looked down from his chair and grinned at me. "You came," he said, squinting at me and shielding his eyes with his hands like a visor.

"Yup." I swung my canvas bag back and forth, like a pendulum. The bag had my name on it in cursive. It was from L.L .Bean, a gift from Susannah.

"Belly, this is Yolie. She's my co-lifeguard."

Yolie reached over and shook my hand. It struck me as a businessy thing to do for someone in a bikini. She had a firm handshake, a nice grip, something my mother would have appreciated. "Hi, Belly," she said. "I've heard a lot about you."

"You have?" I looked up at Jeremiah.

He smirked. "Yeah. I told her all about the way you snore so loud that I can hear you down the hall."

I smacked his foot. "Shut up." Turning to Yolie, I said, "It's nice to meet you."

She smiled at me. She had dimples in both cheeks and a crooked bottom tooth. "You too. Jere, do you want to take your break now?"

"In a little bit," he said. "Belly, go work on your sun damage."

I stuck my tongue out at him and spread out my towel on a lounge chair not too far away. The pool was a perfect turquoise, and there were two diving boards, one high and one low. There were a ton of kids splashing around inside, and I figured I'd swim too when I got too hot to stand it. I just lay there with my sunglasses on and my eyes closed, tanning and listening to my music.

Jeremiah came over after a while. He sat on the edge of my chair and drank from my thermos of Kool-Aid. "She's pretty," I said.

"Who? Yolie?" He shrugged. "She's nice. One of my many admirers."

"Ha!"

"So what about you? Cam Cameron, huh? Cam the vegetarian. Cam the straight edge."

I tried not to smile. "So what? I like him." "He's kind of a dork."

"That's what I like about him. He's . . . different." He frowned slightly. "Different from who?" "I don't know." But I did know. I knew exactly who he was different from.

"You mean he's not a dick like Conrad?"

I laughed, and so did he. "Yeah, exactly. He's nice."

"Just nice, huh?"

"More than nice."

"So you're over him, then? For real?" We both knew the "him" he was talking about. "Yes," I told him.

"I don't believe you," Jeremiah said, watching me closely---just like when he was trying to figure out what kind of hand I had in Uno.

I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eye. "It's true. I'm over him."

"We'll see," Jeremiah said, standing up. "My break's over. Are you okay over here? Wait around and I'll drive us home. I can put your bike in the back."

I nodded, and watched him walk back to the lifeguard chair. Jeremiah was a good friend. He'd always been good to me, watched out for me.

Chapter thirty - four

My mother and Susannah sat in beach chairs, and I lay on an old Ralph Lauren teddy bear towel. It was my favorite one because it was extra long, and soft from so many washings.

"What are you up to tonight, bean?" my mother asked me. I loved it when she called me bean. It reminded me of being six years old and falling asleep in her bed.