“No,” she said. “He said he’d call back.”
“Why didn’t you ask for it?” I said, and I hated the whininess in my voice, but when it came to my mother, it was like I couldn’t help it.
That’s when she looked at me, perplexed. “I don’t know. He wasn’t offering it. Who is he anyway?”
“Forget it,” I told her, walking over to the refrigerator for some lemonade.
“Suit yourself,” my mother said, going back to her paper.
She didn’t press the issue. She never did. She at least could have gotten his number. If Susannah had been down here instead of her, she would have been singsongy and she would have teased and snooped until I told her everything. Which I would have, gladly.
“Mr. Fisher called this morning,” I said.
My mother looked up again. “What did he say?”
“Nothing much. Just that he can’t come this weekend.”
She pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything.
“Where’s Susannah?” I asked. “Is she in her room?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t feel well. She’s taking a nap,” my mother said. In other words, Don’t go up and bother her.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She has a summer cold,” my mother said automatically.
My mother was a terrible liar. Susannah had been spending a lot of time in her room, and there was a sadness to her that hadn’t been there before. I knew something was up. I just wasn’t completely sure what.
chaptertwenty-three
Cam called again the next night, and the night after that. We talked on the phone twice before we met up again, for, like, four or five hours at a time. When we talked, I lay on one of the lounge chairs on the porch and stared up at the moon with my toes pointed toward the sky. I laughed so hard that Jeremiah yelled out his window for me to keep it down. We talked about everything, and I loved it, but the whole time I wondered when he was going to ask to see me again. He didn’t.
So I had to take matters into my own hands. I invited Cam to come over and play video games and maybe swim. I felt like some kind of liberated woman calling him up and inviting him over, like it was the kind of thing I did all the time. When really, I was only doing it because I knew no one was going to be at home. Ididn’t want Jeremiah or Conrad or my mother or even Susannah to see him just yet. For now, he was just mine.
“I’m a really good swimmer, so don’t be mad when we race and I beat you,” I said over the phone.
He laughed and said, “At freestyle?”
“At any style.”
“Why do you like to win so much?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, except to say that winning was fun, and anyway, who didn’t like to win? Growing up with Steven and spending my summers with Jeremiah and Conrad, winning was always important, and doubly so because I was a girl and was never expected to win anything. Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you’re the underdog.
Cam came over, and I watched from my bedroom window as he drove up. His car was navy blue and old and beat-up looking, like his hoodie that I was already planning on keeping. It looked like exactly the kind of car he’d drive.
He rang the doorbell, and I flew down the stairs to open the door. “Hi,” I said. I was wearing his hoodie.
“You’re wearing my hoodie,” he said, smiling down at me. He was even taller than I’d remembered.
“You know, I was thinking that I want to keep it,” I told him, letting him in and closing the door behind me. “But I don’t expect to get it for free. I’ll race you for it.”
“But if we race, you can’t be mad if I beat you,” hesaid, raising an eyebrow at me. “It’s my favorite hoodie, and if I win, I’m taking it.”
“No problem,” I told him.
We went out to the pool through the back screen door, down the porch steps. I threw off my shorts and T-shirt and his hoodie quickly, without even thinking—Jeremiah and I raced all the time in the pool. It didn’t occur to me to be self-conscious to be in a bikini in front of Cam. After all, we spent the whole summer in bathing suits in that house.
