Страница 9 из 43
"I told you not to eat all those baked beans, Steven," Jeremiah said, his eyes focused on the TV screen.
I snickered. But it wasn't gas; I smelled it too. It was pot. "It's pot," I said, loudly. I wanted to be the one who said it first, to prove how sophisticated and knowledgeable I was.
"No way," said Jeremiah.
Conrad took off his headphones and said, "Belly's right. It's pot."
Steven paused the game and turned to look at me. "How do you know what pot smells like, Belly?" he asked me suspiciously.
"Because, Steven, I get high all the time. I'm a burn-out. You didn't know?" I hated it when Steven pulled the big brother routine, especially in front of Conrad and Jeremiah. It was like he was trying to make me feel small on purpose.
He ignored me. "Is that coming from upstairs?"
"It's my mom's," Conrad said, putting his headphones back on again. "For her chemo."
Jeremiah didn't know, I could tell. He didn't say anything, but he looked confused and even hurt, the way he scratched the back of his neck and looked off into space for a minute. Steven and I exchanged a look. It was awkward, whenever Susa
My mother didn't, though. She was matter-of-fact, >calm, the way she is about everything. Susa
When they came downstairs a little while later, they were giggling like two teenagers who had snuck into their parents' liquor cabinet. Clearly my mother had partaken in Susa
Steven and I exchanged another look, this time a horrified one. My mother was probably the last person on earth who would smoke pot, with the exception of our grandmother Gran, her mother.
"Did you kids eat all the Cheetos?" my mother asked, rummaging through a cabinet. "I'm starving."
"Yes," Steven said. He couldn't even look at her.
"What about that bag of Fritos? Get those," Susa
"How are you liking Emma so far?" she asked me. Susa
I opened my mouth to lie and tell her how great I thought it was, but before I could, Conrad said very loudly, "She hasn't turned a page in over an hour." He was still wearing his headphones.
I glared at him, but inside I was thrilled that he had noticed. For once, he had been watching me. But of course he'd noticed--Conrad noticed everything. Conrad would notice if the neighbor's dog had more crust in its right eye than its left, or if the pizza delivery guy was driving a different car. It wasn't really a compliment to be noticed by Conrad. It was a matter of fact.
"You'll love it once it gets going," Susa
"It always takes me a while to get into a book," I said, in a way that sounded like I was saying sorry. I didn't want her to feel bad, seeing as how she was the one who'd recommended it to me.
Then my mother came into the room with a bag of Twizzlers and the half-eaten bag of Fritos. She tossed a Twizzler at Susa
Susa
"Mom, everyone knows you guys were smoking pot upstairs," Conrad said, just barely bobbing his head to the music that only he could hear.
Susa
"Whoops," my mother said. "I guess the cat's out of the bag, Beck. Boys, your mother's been taking medicinal marijuana to help with the nausea from her chemo."
Steven didn't look away from the TV when he said, "What about you, Mom? Are you toking up because of your chemo too?"
I knew he was trying to lighten the mood, and it worked. Steven was good at that.
Susa
Steven picked the Twizzler up and dusted it off before popping it into his mouth. "So I guess it's okay with you if I smoke up too?"
"When you get breast cancer," my mother told him, exchanging a smile with Susa
"Or when your best friend does," Susa
Throughout all of this, Jeremiah wasn't saying anything. He just kept looking at Susa
Our mothers thought we were all at the beach that afternoon. They didn't know that Jeremiah and I had gotten bored and decided to come back to the house for a snack. As we walked up the porch steps, we heard them talking through the window screen.
Jeremiah stopped when he heard Susa
My mother said, "I know you don't mean that."
I hated it when my mother said that, and I guessed Susa
"Okay. Okay. I won't."
Susa
I wished I could do that for Jeremiah. I knew it would make him feel better, but I couldn't. Instead, I reached over and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. He didn't look at me, but he didn't let go either. This was the moment when we became true, real friends.
Then my mother said in her most serious, most deadpan voice, "Your boobs really are pretty goddamn amazing."
Susa
I let go of Jeremiah's hand and stood up. He did too. We walked back to the beach, neither of us saying anything. What was there to say? "Sorry your mom has cancer"? "I hope she doesn't lose a boob"?
When we got back to our stretch of beach, Conrad and Steven had just come out of the water with their boogie boards. We still weren't saying anything, and Steven noticed. I guessed Conrad did too, but he didn't say anything. It was Steven who said, "What's with you guys?"
"Nothing," I said, pulling my knees to my chest.
"Did you guys just have your first kiss or something?" he said, shaking water off his trunks and onto my knees.
"Shut up," I told him. I was tempted to pants him just to change the subject. The summer before, the boys had gone through an obsession with pantsing one another in public. I had never participated, but at that moment I really wanted to.