She's So Dead to Us

“Hello, ladies,” he said, giving my mom a kiss as he joined us. I looked away. “Enjoying the show so far?”

“Yeah. It’s great,” I said flatly. “She’s a natural.”

My phone suddenly vibrated. My heart leapt into my throat, and I yanked the phone out of my jacket pocket. It was a text from Jake.

Thnx 4 bday wish. Sry been out w rents all day.

I smiled and texted back.

No prob. Get ur license?

Yep. Am official driver.

“She acts, too,” Gray was saying proudly. “In fact, next weekend I’m taking her down to Long Beach Island so she can audition for this local theater group. If she gets the part we’ll be living down there all summer.”

Suddenly I was feeling very perky. Between Jake getting back to me and this, my “attitude” was doing a complete 180. “Really? That’s great. You have a house at the shore?” Which you will be moving to? For eight to twelve whole weeks? Sayonara, dude! So much for spending quality time together. I don’t know why I was surprised. Every Crestie family had a house on LBI. We’d even had one, before. This was the best news ever.

“Yep. Qui

I nearly dropped my phone. My mother looked at me hopefully. Clearly this was something they had already discussed.

“What do you think, Ally? A whole summer at the beach?” my mother said brightly.

Um, I thought it sounded like my own personal version of hell. Living with Gray and Qui

Plus, Hammond spent the entire summer down there. And Chloe and Faith and the Idiot Twins. If they all still had their houses after what my father had done.

But then . . . did Jake’s family have a house down there? It made sense. They went to Sunday night di

“I think . . .”

My mother’s eyes were sort of pleading. And I’d just promised to drop the attitude. And suddenly I was having visions of me and Jake hanging out on the beach, going waterskiing on the bay, sharing a seat on the Ferris wheel at Fantasy Island. . . . There was something magical about the idea. About summer. About being away from home, away from here. Even though some of his friends would be around, there was that idea that anything could happen. That all the rules could be broken. Because it was summer.

“I think it sounds great,” I said.

“Yeah?” My mother seemed surprised.

“Yeah,” I said. The lights in the lobby started to flash, signaling the begi

I saw my mom and Gray exchange a happy look as I walked in ahead of them, and my stomach turned, but less violently than usual. Yes, I was going to have to deal with them being all coupley all summer. And probably having Qui

And lots of possibility.

jake

I blew out the candles on my cake. Actually it was two cakes. One was shaped like a one, the other like a seven. Every year it was the same. My mother baked a cake in the shape of the number of the birthday and bought exactly that many balloons. Every year we took a family picture with the cake and the balloons, and every year that picture was framed and nailed to the wall in my mom’s craft room by the following afternoon. There was one wall for mine, one wall for Jonah’s. Every year it was the same, and every year she acted like it was all insanely exciting.

But it was her thing, so I went with it. Besides, between my multiple groundings and all the tension about grades and SATs lately, it seemed like a good idea to just chill.

“Did you make a good wish?” my mother asked, squeezing my shoulders from behind.

“Yeah,” I replied. I hadn’t made a wish since I was ten.

She plucked the candles from the cake, and my father moved in with the cake cutter. He hacked off a huge chunk and slapped it on a plate for Jonah.

“Looks like we’re going to have a lot of leftovers,” he said.

“I don’t know why you didn’t want to invite your friends over, Jake,” my mother put in as my father jammed the knife into the cake. I smirked, wondering what his plastic surgery patients—the ones who trusted their faces and thighs and boobs to his delicate hands—would think if they could see him going to town on this cake.

“I just didn’t feel like it,” I said. Then, because my mother looked stricken, I added, “I just wanted to hang out with you guys.”

That immediately cheered her up. What I didn’t tell her was that I had a plan for tonight. A birthday present to give myself. And it didn’t involve my friends.

“Here you go, Jake.” My father handed me a piece of cake. I wasn’t remotely hungry.

“What about presents?” I asked. There was no pile of wrapped gifts at the end of the table like there usually was. We all knew I was getting a car. That’s what Crestie kids got on their seventeenth birthdays. It wasn’t like I was going to pout if I didn’t get one, but I knew my mother well enough to know that if everyone else on the Crest was going to be getting a car, she would be physically unable to buck the trend. I’d been hinting about wanting a Jeep Wrangler for months. Now I was curious to see if my parents had gotten me what I wanted, or if my mother had decided that a Jeep wasn’t upscale enough for her son to be driving around town.

“Presents?” My dad looked at my mom with a fake frown. “Did we get him any presents this year, Linda?”

“Not that I can recall, Ted,” she said. “I feel just horrible. How can we have spaced on such a thing?”

“You guys,” I said as Jonah snorted a laugh. “Come on.”

“I know. Why don’t you take these and go to the mall?” my father suggested. He tossed me a set of keys. “Get yourself something good.”

The Jeep logo stared up at me from the key chain.

“Shut up,” I said.

My parents gri

“Happy birthday, kid,” my dad said, ruffling my hair.

I ducked away but then hugged him. Then my mom. “Thanks guys. This is insane. You didn’t have to do this.”

“Take her for a spin,” my dad said.

“I’m coming!” Jonah a

“No. No way,” I said, stopping him as he tried to get into the passenger seat.

“Come on!” he protested.

“I’ll take you out tomorrow, Jonah, I swear,” I said.

“Mom!” he whined.

“Jonah, it’s his birthday,” my mother said. “He told you he’d drive you around tomorrow.”

Jonah’s head drooped, and he moped back into the house. “Fine. But I’m eating all your cake.”

“Go crazy, dude,” I replied. “Thanks, guys,” I said again. Then I jumped into the car and shoved the key into the ignition. The rev of the engine rattled my lungs, and my fingertips sizzled. It was official. I was free. I could go out whenever I wanted to. Drive to the mall. Drive to the shore. Drive anywhere I wanted and take along, or not take along, whomever I wanted.

Suddenly my phone rang. My heart stopped. Was she psychic? I fumbled it out of my back pocket and looked at the screen. The call was from Sha