The Summer I Turned Pretty

I didn't wait for my mother's response. I walked right in and said, "What's going on?" I looked at my mother when I said it, and I knew I sounded like I was blaming her, but I didn't care.

"Nothing. Everything's fine," my mother said, but her eyes looked red and tired.

"Then why were you fighting?"

"We weren't fighting, hon," Susa

"It didn't sound like it."

"Well, it is," Susa

"Promise?" I asked. I wanted to believe her.

"Promise," she said without hesitation.

My mother walked away from us, and I could see from the stiffness of her shoulders that everything was not fine, that she was still upset. But because I wanted to stay with Susa

"What's the matter with her?" I whispered to Susa

"It's nothing. Tell me about your date with Cam," she said, leading me to the wicker couch in the sunroom.

I should have kept pressing her, should have tried to figure out what had really happened between the two of them, but my worry was already fading away. I wanted to tell her everything about Cam, everything. Susa

She sat on the couch and patted her lap. I sat down next to her and put my head in her lap and she smoothed my hair away from my forehead. Everything felt safe and cozy, like that fight hadn't happened. And maybe it hadn't even been a fight, maybe I'd misread the whole thing. "Well, he's different from anyone I've ever met," I began. "How so?"

"He's just so smart, and he doesn't care what people think. And he's so good-looking. I can't even believe he pays me any attention."

Susa

"Ha," I said, but I felt flattered. She was so good at making people feel special. "I'm glad I have you to talk to about this kind of stuff."

"I am too. But you know, you could talk to your mother."

"She wouldn't be interested in any of it, not really. She'd pretend to care, but she wouldn't."

"Oh, Belly. That's not true. She would care. She does care." Susa

I didn't want to talk about my mother anymore. I wanted to talk about Cam. "You'll never believe what Cam said to me tonight," I began.

chapter twenty - six

Just like that, July turned into August. I guessed summer went by a lot faster when you had someone to spend it with. For me, that someone was Cam. Cam Cameron.

Mr. Fisher always came the first week of August. He'd bring Susa

Shells, too. She loved shells. She kept them in hurricane glasses. When she'd come back from a walk on the beach, she'd always come back with a handful of shells. She'd arrange them on the kitchen table, admire them first, say things like, "Doesn't this one look just like an ear?" Or, "Isn't this one the perfect shade of pink?" Then she'd put them in order from biggest to smallest. It was one of her rituals, something I loved to watch her do.

That week, right around when Mr. Fisher usually came, Susa

After she went to bed, early, Conrad said to me, conversationally, "They're getting a divorce."

"Who?" I said.

"My parents. It's about time."

Jeremiah glared at him. "Shut up, Conrad."

Conrad shrugged. "Why? You know it's true. Belly's not surprised, are you, Belly?"

I was. I was really surprised. I said, to both of them, "I thought they seemed like they were really in love."

Whatever love was, I was sure they had it. I thought they had it a million times over. The way they gazed at each other at the di

"They were in love," Jeremiah told me. "I don't really know what happened."

"Dad's a dick. That's what happened," Conrad said, getting up. He sounded so blasé and matter-of-fact, but that didn't seem right. Not when I knew he adored his dad. I wondered if Mr. Fisher had a new girlfriend the way my father did. I wondered if he'd cheated on Susa

"Don't tell your mom you know," Jeremiah said suddenly. "Mom doesn't know we know."

"I won't," I said. I wondered how they'd found out. My parents had sat Steven and me down and told us everything, explained it all in detail.

As Conrad left, Jeremiah said to me, "Before we left, our dad had been sleeping in the guest room for weeks. He's already moved out most of his clothes. They think we're retarded or something, for us not to notice." His voice cracked at the last part.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He was really hurting. I guessed maybe Conrad was too, even if he didn't show it. It all made sense, when I thought about it. The way Conrad had been acting, so different, so lost. So un-Conrad-like. He was suffering. And then there was Susa

chapter twenty - seven

"You and Cam have been spending a lot of time together," my mother said, looking at me over her newspaper.

"Not really," I said, even though we had been. At the summer house one day just kind of melted into the next; you didn't notice time passing. Cam and I had been hanging out for two weeks before I realized it: He was kind of my boyfriend. We'd spent practically every day together. I didn't know what I'd done before I'd met him. My life must have been really boring.

My mother said, "We miss you around the house." If Susa

"Belly, will you bring this boy of yours to di

I wanted to say no, but for me, saying no to Susa