“Deal.” I fell back onto his bed and pushed my feet up against his wall. He hated it when I did that. “I’ll probably miss you, a little bit.”
“You’ll be too busy drooling over Conrad to notice I’m gone,” Steven said.
I stuck my tongue out at him.
Steven left really early the next morning. Conrad and Jeremiah were going to drive him to the airport. I went down to say good-bye, but I didn’t try to go along because I knew he wouldn’t want me to. He wanted some time, just them, and for once I was going to let him have it without a fight.
When he hugged me good-bye, he gave me his trademark condescending look—sad eyes and a half grimace—and said, “Don’t do anything stupid, all right?” He said it in this really meaningful way, like he was trying to tell me something important, like I was supposed to understand.
But I didn’t. I said, “Don’t you do anything stupid either, butthead.”
He sighed and shook his head at me like I was a child.
I tried not to let it bother me. After all, he was leaving, and things wouldn’t be the same without him. At the very least I could send him off without getting into a petty argument. “Tell Dad I said hi,” I said.
I didn’t go back to bed right away. I stayed on the front porch awhile, feeling blue and a little teary—not that I would ever admit it to Steven.
In a lot of ways it was like the last summer. That fall, Conrad would start college. He was going to Brown. He might not come back next summer. He might have an internship, or summer school, or he might backpackacross Europe with all his new dorm buddies. And Jeremiah, he might go to the football camp he was always talking about. There were a lot of things that could happen between now and then. It occurred to me that I was going to have to make the most of this summer, really make it count, in case there wasn’t another one quite like it. After all, I would be sixteen soon. I was getting older too. Things couldn’t stay the same forever.
chaptertwentyAGE 11
The four of us were lying on a big blanket in the sand. Conrad, Steven, Jeremiah, and then me on the edge. That was my spot. When they let me come along. This was one of those rare days.
It was already midafternoon, so hot my hair felt like it was on fire, and they were playing cards while I listened in.
Jeremiah said, “Would you rather be boiled in olive oil or skinned alive with a burning hot butter knife?”
“Olive oil,” said Conrad confidently. “It’s over quicker.”
“Olive oil,” I echoed.
“Butter knife,” said Steven. “There’s more of a chance I can turn the tables on the guy and skinhim.”
“That wasn’t an option,” Conrad told him. “It’s a question about death, not turning the tables on somebody.”
“Fine. Olive oil,” Steven said grumpily. “What about you, Jeremiah?”
“Olive oil,” Jeremiah said. “Now you go, Con.”
Conrad squinted his eyes up at the sun and said, “Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?”
Jeremiah didn’t say anything for a minute. He loved this game. He loved to mull over the different possibilities. “With that one perfect day, would I know I was reliving it, likeGroundhog Day?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll take the perfect day,” he decided.
“Well, if the perfect day involves—,” Steven began, but then he looked over at me and stopped speaking, which I hated. “I’ll take the perfect day too.”
“Belly?” Conrad looked at me. “What would you pick?”
My mind raced around in circles as I tried to find the right answer. “Um. I’d take living my life with decent days. That way I could still hope for that one perfect day,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to have a life that’s just one day over and over.”
“Yeah, but you wouldn’t know it,” Jeremiah argued.
I shrugged. “But you might, deep down.”
“That’s stupid,” Steven said.
