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“Nans, Alice may be right about not pretending about this now. Last night was—” She nods, a quick inhale of breath, nibbling on her thumbnail. “I know. I know. A disaster. But packing him off to some boot camp? I don’t see how that’s going to help him.” The woman has come up to the register, her arms full of shirts, all pink.
Nan turns to her with a bright, professional smile. “I can ring those up for you. Would you like to put them directly on your club tab, or pay separately?”
I hover nearby until the clock tells me I’ve got to report for duty. Nan doesn’t say anything else, though, until I’m getting ready to leave, when she pauses in changing the paper for the cash register to say,
“Samantha. You have what every girl wants.”
“You have Daniel,” I say.
“Sure. But you have everything. How do you always do that?” Her voice is ever so slightly bitter. I think of the Nan who just has to do the optional extra credit work for every school project. Who has to point out to me whenever I have a minus next to my grade while she has a plus. Who has to comment that pants that fit me would be “way too big” for her. I’ve never wanted to compete with her, only be her friend, the one person she doesn’t have to best. But sometimes—like now—I wonder if, for Nan, there’s any such thing.
“I don’t do anything special, Na
“Maybe you don’t.” Her voice is weary. “Maybe you’re not even trying. But it all works out for you anyway, doesn’t it?” She turns away before I can offer an answer. Assuming I even had one.
Chapter Twenty-three
I pour myself a lemonade after work and am climbing out of my stupid crested bathing suit right in the kitchen when the doorbell rings. Even our doorbell chime has changed since summer began. Now we have this one that can chime the first few notes of about twenty different tunes, all the way from “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” to “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” In the last two weeks, Mom’s programmed it to chime the opening of “It’s a Grand Old Flag.” I kid you not.
I grab a tank top and shorts from the laundry room and pull them on hastily, then peer through the frosted glass. It’s Nan and Tim. Odd. Thursday and Friday are Daniel nights for Nan. And my house is not exactly Tim’s preferred hangout. It’s not even my preferred hangout.
“Are you interested in a closer relationship with the Lord?” Tim asks when I open the door. “’Cause I’ve been saved, and I want to pass on the Good News to you—for only a thousand dollars and three hours of your time. Kidding. Can we come in, Samantha?”
As soon as they get into the kitchen, Nan heads for the fridge to get some of my mother’s lemonade.
After all these years, she knows exactly where to locate the special ice cubes with mint and lemon peel.
She pours a glass for Tim and he takes it, frowning at the little ice cubes with their flecks of yellow and green frozen inside.
“Got any tequila? Just kidding, once again. Ha-ha.”
He’s uncomfortable. It’s been a long time since I’ve really seen anything from Tim but bored indifference, stoned apathy, or jacked-up contempt.
“Tim wanted to say he was sorry about last night,” Nan offers, crunching an ice cube.
“Ac-tu-ally, Nan wanted me to say I’m sorry,” Tim clarifies, but he looks directly at me. “I wanted to say I’m fucking sorry. That was wicked stupid, and I would have thought anyone else who did that with my sister—or you—was a complete and unredeemable asshole, which of course, leads to the inescapable conclusion that that is, in fact, indubitably what I am.” He shakes his head, takes a gulp of lemonade.
“Note my use of impressive SAT words, though. Too bad I got my ass booted out of boarding school, huh?”
How long has it been since I’ve heard Tim apologize for anything? He’s got his head hunched down, sandwiched between his folded arms, taking deep breaths as though he’s been ru
“Thanks, Tim. We all survived. But you’re really scaring me. How are you?”
“Well, aside from being the same idiot I was yesterday—only not quite as trashed—I’m fine. And you?
S’up with ole Jase Garrett and you? Is he gettin’ any further than my buddy Charley did? ’Cause Charley was pretty damn frustrated. More importantly, what’s doin’ with Jase’s hot sister?”
“His hot sister has a boyfriend who’s a football player and weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds,” I answer, dodging the Jase question.
“Course she does,” Tim says with a smirk. “He probably teaches Sunday school too.”
“No. But I think he might be a Mormon.” I smile back. “Cheer up, though. They’ve been together for about a month, and from what Jase tells me, that’s pretty much Alice’s limit.”
“I’ll live in hope, then.” Tim drains his glass and plunks it down. “Do you have anything like plain carrots or celery or apples? Everything in our fridge has some kind of crap in it.”
“It’s true,” Nan says. “I bit into a perfectly ordinary-looking plum this afternoon and it had some weird blue-cheese filling. It’s that thing Mommy got from QVC.”
“The Pumper. It injects tasty filling deep into the heart of all your favorite foods,” Tim quotes in a Moviefone voice.
Just then the doorbell rings again. It’s Jase this time. He’s wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans—
must have come straight from work.
“Hi!” Nan says brightly. “In case you didn’t figure this out last night, I’m Nan, Samantha’s best friend.
I’d love to say I’ve heard all about you, but actually, she hasn’t said a word. My brother says he knows you, though.” She extends her hand to Jase. After a beat, he takes it, shakes it, looking over at me with a slightly nonplussed expression.
“Hullo Nan. Mason.” His voice gets an edge as he greets Tim, and I see Tim’s jaw muscles clench.
Then Jase moves to my side and slips an arm tight around my waist.
We wind up in the backyard, because everything inside my house is so hard and formal, no comfortable place to sit and lounge. Jase lies on his back in the grass on our sloping lawn, and I lie, crossways, with my head on his stomach, ignoring the occasional flick of Nan’s eyes.
We don’t talk much for a while. Jase and Tim idly discuss people they knew from soccer in middle school. I find myself studying the boys together, wondering what my mother would see. There’s Jase with his olive skin and broad shoulders, his air of being older than seventeen, nearly a man. Then there’s Tim, so pale, dark circles under his eyes, freckles standing out in strong relief, rangy ski
Wiping his hand on the grass, Tim says, “I need to get my GED, or I’ll either be shipped to the foreign legion by my parents, or spend the rest of my life—which will then be very short—living in their basement.”
“My dad did that—got a GED,” Jase offers, playing with my hair. “You could talk to him.”
“Your sister Alice didn’t do it too, by any chance?”
Jase’s lips twitch. “Nope.”
“Bummer. I also need a job so I don’t have to spend my days at home with Ma, watching her figure out new uses for the Pumper.”
“There’s an opening at Mom’s campaign,” I say. “She needs all the help she can get now that she’s totally distracted by Clay Tucker.”