I spent the whole next day in the ocean with Cam. We packed a picnic. Cam made avocado and sprout sandwiches with Susannah’s homemade mayonnaise and whole wheat bread. They were good, too. We stayed in the ocean for what felt like hours at a time. Every time a wave began to crest, one of us would start to laugh, and then we’d get overtaken by the wave and water. My eyes burned from the salty seawater, and my skin felt raw from scraping against the sand so many times, like I’d scrubbed my whole body with my mother’s St. Ives Apricot Scrub. It was pretty great.
After, we stumbled back to our towels. I loved getting cold and wet in the ocean and then running back to the towels and letting the sun bake the sand off. I could do it all day—ocean, sand, ocean, sand.
I’d packed strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups, and we ate them so quick my teeth hurt. “I love Fruit Roll-Ups,” I said, reaching for the last one.
He snatched it away. “So do I, and you already had three and I only had two,” he said, peeling away the plastic sheet. He grinned and dangled it above my mouth.
“You have three seconds to hand it over,” I warned. “I don’t care if you had two Fruit Roll-Ups and I had twenty. It’s my house.”
Cam laughed and popped the whole thing into his mouth. Chewing loudly, he said, “It’s not your house. It’s Susannah’s house.”
“Shows how much you know. It’s all of our house,” I said, falling back on my towel. I was suddenly really thirsty. Fruit Roll-Ups will do that. Especially when you have three in about three minutes. Squinting up at him, I said, “Will you go back to our house and get some Kool-Aid? Pretty please?”
“I don’t know anyone who consumes more sugar than you do in one day,” Cam said, shaking his head at me sadly. “White sugar is evil.”
“Says the guy who just ate the last Fruit Roll-Up,” I countered.
“Waste not, want not,” he said. He stood up and brushed the sand off his shorts. “I’ll bring you water, not Kool-Aid.”
I stuck my tongue out at him and rolled over. “Just be quick about it,” I said.
He wasn’t. He was gone forty-five minutes before I headed back to the house, loaded up with our towels and sunscreen and trash, breathing hard and sweating like a camel in the desert. He was in the living room, playing video games with the boys. They were all lying around in their swimming trunks. We pretty much stayed suited up all summer.
“Thanks for never coming back with my Kool-Aid,” I said, tossing my beach bag onto the ground.
Cam looked up from his game guiltily. “Whoops! My bad. The guys asked me to play, so…” He trailed off.
“Don’t apologize,” Conrad advised him.
“Yeah, what are you, her slave? Now she’s got you making her Kool-Aid?” Jeremiah said, jamming his thumb into the controller. He turned around and grinned at me to show me he was kidding, but I didn’t grin back to show him it was okay.
Conrad didn’t say anything, and I didn’t even look at him. I could feel him looking at me, though. I wished he’d stop.
Why was it that even when I had my own friend I still felt left out of their club? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Cam was so grateful to be a part of it all. The day had been so good, too.
“Where’s my mom and Susannah?” I snapped.
“They went off somewhere,” Jeremiah said vaguely. “Shopping, maybe?”
My mother hated shopping. Susannah must have dragged her.
I stalked off to the kitchen for my Kool-Aid. Conrad got up and followed me. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was him.
I went about my business, pouring myself a tall glass of grape Kool-Aid and pretending he wasn’t standing there watching me. “Are you just going to ignore me?” he finally said.
“No,” I said. “What do you want?”
He sighed and came closer. “Why do you have to be like that?” Then he leaned forward, close, too close. “Can I have some?”
I put the glass on the counter and started to walk away, but he grabbed my wrist. I think I might have gasped. He said, “Come on, Bells.”
His fingers felt cool, the way he always was. Suddenly I felt hot and feverish. I snatched my hand away. “Leave me alone.”
“Why are you mad at me?” He had the nerve to look genuinely confused and also anxious. Because for him, the two things were connected—if he was confused, he was anxious. And he was hardly ever confused, so then he was hardly ever anxious. He’d certainly never been anxious over me. I was inconsequential to him. Always had been.
“Do you honestly care?” I could feel my heart thudding hard in my chest. I felt prickly and strange, waiting for his answer.
“Yes.” Conrad looked surprised, like he couldn’t believe he cared either.
The problem was, I didn’t entirely know. I guessed it was mostly the way he was making me feel all mixed-up inside. Being nice to me one minute and cold the next. He made me remember things I didn’t want to remember. Not now. Things were really going well with Cam, but every time I thought I was sure about him, Conrad would look at me a certain way, or twirl me, or call me Bells, and it all went to crap.
“Oh, why don’t you go smoke a cigarette,” I said.
The muscle in his jaw twitched. “Okay,” he said.
I felt a mixture of guilt and satisfaction that I had finally gotten to him. And then he said, “Why don’t you go look at yourself in the mirror some more?”
It was like he had slapped me. It was mortifying, being caught out and having someone see the bad things about you. Had he caught me looking at myself in the mirror, checking myself out, admiring myself? Did everyone think I was vain and shallow now?
I closed my lips tight and backed away from him, shaking my head slowly.
“Belly—,” he started. He was sorry. It was written all over his face.
I walked into the living room and left him standing there. Cam and Jeremiah stared at me like they knew something was up. Had they heard us? Did it even matter?
“I get next game,” I said. I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.
