“Hell, no, I didn’t tell them I kissed Turducken!” he said. “And you better not either! Pinky promise.”
I offered him my pinky, and we shook on it.
“Christi Turnduck. She did kiss nice. She taught me everything I know. I wonder what ever happened to her.”
I wondered if Turducken had been a better kisser than me too. She must have been, if she had taught Jeremiah.
We stalled out again. “This sucks. I quit.”
“There’s no quitting in driving,” Jeremiah ordered. “Come on.”
I sighed and started the car up again. Two hours later, I had it. Sort of. I still stalled out, but I was getting somewhere. I was driving. Jeremiah said I was a natural.
By the time we got back to the house, it was after four and Steven had left. I guessed he’d gotten tired of waiting and had gone to the driving range by himself. My mother and Susannah were watching old movies in Susannah’s room. It was dark, and they had the curtains drawn.
I stood outside their door a minute, listening to them laugh. I felt left out. I envied their relationship. They were exactly like copilots, in perfect balance. I didn’t have thatkind of friendship, the forever kind of friendship that will last your whole life through, no matter what.
I walked into the room, and Susannah said, “Belly! Come watch movies with us.”
I crawled into bed in between the two of them. Lying on the bed in the semi-dark, it felt cozy, like we were in a cave. “Jeremiah’s been teaching me how to drive,” I told them.
“Darling boy,” Susannah said, smiling faintly.
“Brave, too,” my mother said. She tweaked my nose.
I snuggled under the comforter. Hewaspretty great. It had been nice of him to take me out driving when no one else would. Just because I’d banged up the car a few times, it didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to end up being an excellent driver like everyone else. Thanks to him, I could drive stick now. I was going to be one of those confident girls, the kind who knows what she’s doing. When I got my license, I would drive up to Susannah’s house and take Jeremiah for a drive, to thank him.
chaptereighteenAGE 14
After Taylor got out of the shower, she started rummaging through her duffel bag and I lay on my bed and watched her. She pulled out three different sundresses—one white eyelet, one Hawaiian print, and one black linen. “Which one should I wear tonight?” she asked me. She asked the question like it was a test.
I was tired of her tests and having to prove myself all the time. I said, “We’re just eating dinner, Taylor. We’re not going anywhere special.”
She shook her head at me, and the towel on her head bounced back and forth. “We’re going to the boardwalk tonight, though, remember? We have to look cute for that. There’ll be boys there. Let me pick out your outfit, okay?”
It used to be that when Taylor picked out my clothes, I felt like the nerdy girl transformed at the prom, in a good way. Now it felt like I was her clueless mom who didn’t know how to dress right.
I hadn’t brought any dresses with me. In fact, I never had. I never even thought to. I only had two dresses at home—one my grandmother bought me for Easter and one I had to buy for eighth-grade graduation. Nothing seemed to fit me right lately. Things were either too long in the crotch or too tight in the waist. I had never thought much about dresses, but looking at hers all laid out on the bed like that, I was jealous.
“I’m not getting dressed up for the boardwalk,” I told her.
“Let me just see what you have,” she said, walking over to my closet.
“Taylor, I said no! This is what I’m wearing.” I gestured at my cutoff shorts and Cousins Beach T-shirt.
Taylor made a face, but she backed away from my closet and went back to her three sundresses. “Fine. Have it your way, grumpy. Now, which one should I wear?”
I sighed. “The black one,” I said, closing my eyes. “Now hurry up and put some clothes on.”
Dinner that night was scallops and asparagus. When my mother cooked, it was always some sort of seafood with lemon and olive oil and a vegetable. Every time. Susannahonly cooked every once in a while, so besides the first night, which was always bouillabaisse, you never knew what you were going to get. She might spend the whole afternoon puttering around the kitchen, making something I’d never had before, like Moroccan chicken with figs. She’d pull out her spiral bound Junior League cookbook that had buttery pages and notes in the margins, the one my mother made fun of. Or she might make American cheese omelets with ketchup and toast. Us kids were supposedly in charge of one night a week too, and that usually meant hamburgers or frozen pizza. But most nights, we ate whatever we wanted, whenever we felt like eating. I loved that about the summer house. At home, we had dinner every night at six thirty, like clockwork. Here, it was like everything just kind of relaxed, even my mother.
Taylor leaned forward and said, “Laurel, what’s the craziest thing you and Susannah did when you were our age?” Taylor talked to people like she was at a slumber party, always. Adults, boys, the cafeteria lady, everyone.
My mother and Susannah looked at each other and smiled. They knew, but they weren’t telling. My mother wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “We snuck onto the golf course one night and planted daisies.”
I knew that wasn’t the truth, but Steven and Jeremiah laughed. Steven said in his annoying know-it-all kind of way, “You guys were boring even when you were teenagers.”
“Ithink it’s really sweet,” Taylor said, squirting a glob of ketchup onto her plate. Taylor ate everything with ketchup—eggs, pizza, pasta, everything.
