Iwas on pins and needles. The pointy tips of them.
“Zoey, you could not be more annoying!” my sister informed me, but that wasn’t true. Just recently, I had been even more annoying because I’d been checking my phone every few seconds. That behavior had bothered her so much that she’d confiscated it and tucked it into the top of the sarong that she’d tied around her hips.
“We’re supposed to be having fun,” Willow said next. “It’s a beautiful day and you got a little color.” She examined my pale limbs. “A tiny bit. And you don’t have to be at work for once. You’re always at work.”
That was true. As the summer season started to warm up, visitors had begun to flood our area and even the crappy motel where I was at the front desk had gotten busy. So had Jannie’s bar—busy for her, that was, but still not doing booming sales. The tourist traffic meant that I’d been needed at both places and had been working a lot this summer, too busy to go out. Anyway,everyone I’d known from the band in high school was working hard, too. Many of us had graduated this past spring and they were settling into real jobs, which I would also do once the school year started. Maybe we didn’t have our dream careers, but we were doing something.
Apparently, she was also wondering about my contact with my old friends. “Is it just Everett Ford?” she wanted to know. “Is he the only person that you want to hear from?”
“I don’t really talk to many people from band. We all have so much going on,” I explained. “Is that what you mean?”
She shrugged. “Want more to eat? A beer? There’s plenty,” she reminded me.
That was also true. Boyd’s family hadn’t spared any expense when they’d bought alcohol for their beach party today and there was also a lot of food. I didn’t like drinking and my stomach was in too much of a knot to eat, so I wasn’t taking advantage of either of those things. Willow kept telling me how generous they’d been to invite me, the sister of their son’s girlfriend. They seemed to be pretending that they didn’t remember the history between our families, and I was following their lead and acting oblivious as well. They had never called or texted after my sister’s accident, they’d pretended not to see me when we’d spotted each other around town, and in all the years since…
But actually, I wasn’t focusing on those things because something else was going on. The Woodsmen team and their head coach had gone up to Mackinac Island for their annual retreat there, but the assistant coaches had remained here toevaluate the players trying to make the roster. It had meant that every day, Everett had been at the Woodsmen practice facility, that same place where he’d played with the Junior team. Now, of course, he was getting to use the nice parts of the building and he wasn’t out on the ratty field anymore. But the pressure was different, too. There had been two other quarterbacks in the training camp besides him and Dallas Laforet, the guy who’d been the backup the season before. But those other guys had already been cut, so now it was down to—
“Zoey!”
I realized that I had been crushing tortilla chips in my hands rather than eating them, and Willow was shaking her head. “Why are you so invested in this?” she asked. “Why do you care?”
“It’s really important!” I told her. And it was happening today, soon, because according to Everett, the team roster was going to be released. Today. Soon. “This could be his career. If he doesn’t make it, he might have to go back to the Junior Woodsmen.” And from what he’d said, I didn’t think he’d left there very gracefully—he’d mentioned how they’d bothered him about cleaning out his old locker, and he’d replied by saying something about his ass and someone kissing it.
Now she looked more understanding. “It would really suck to be there when he has the chance to play in much a nicer place.” She had been very impressed by Woodsmen Stadium on Fan Day. “Boyd says he’d make a lot more money, too.”
“What does Boyd know about anything?” I snapped, but immediately backtracked. “Sorry, sorry! He knows a lot.” He probably believed that about himself.
He definitely thought that he was an expert in sunscreen application. He’d taken that job very seriously when he’d rubbed it all over my sister’s body. She had kept the sarong tied around her hips and lower back to hide the scars she had there, but Boyd must have seen them at one point. I assumed that they were naked a lot, but I had never asked. She was still embarrassed about the accident—
My phone erupted loudly. I’d turned the volume up high so I wouldn’t miss any notifications due to the beach party sounds of amplified music, yelling during games, or crashing waves (although admittedly, this little lake was calm). Several people jumped and then turned to look at where we sat under a beach umbrella that Boyd had carried over.
“Oh, geez!” Willow jerked the phone out of her sarong. “Is it about the Woodsmen? Is it from Everett? What does it say?” she demanded.
It wasn’t a message from Everett but it was information. I’d signed myself up for alerts from several Woodsmen-centric social media accounts and they were all reporting the same thing: the final roster for the season had been set. I opened the first link and she leaned over my shoulder. Why were there so many surnames at the beginning of the alphabet on this team? I scrolled quickly past Baines…Boone…Bowman…finally, we arrived at F.
“Everett Ford!” my sister said triumphantly, and there it was. His name was listed in orange and next to it, his position: quarterback. “Does this mean that he’s the starter?” she asked.
No, it didn’t, but it was really good news and the pain I’d felt above my eyes started to ebb. “This just means that he’s on the team. Maybe he’ll let me know about the starting job.”
But as the time passed, my phone was silent, and not just because Willow had forced me to turn down the volume and turn off notifications. I texted him, saying that I’d seen the news and was so happy, but I hadn’t gotten an answer. She had gone off with Boyd—not into the water, because I was watching, but talking to people and having fun. She seemed to be doing ok, even though sand was a tough surface for her to navigate. We hadn’t gone to the beach together in years.
I wandered over to the food table again, not because I was hungry but because I didn’t have anything to do with myself. I wished I had brought a book to read like I did at the gym at the college. I’d been getting in some good workouts but I hadn’t met anyone nice there, not yet.
“It seems nuts to me,” I heard a woman announce emphatically. She and her friend were standing next to a bowl of seven-layer dip that was looking soggy and wilted after so many hours in the sun.
“Right? And nervy. That’s what I think,” her friend answered.
The first woman nodded in agreement. “Totally. It’s like they’re ignoring it when we all know what happened.”
“But she seems like a nice girl and he’s so happy,” the friend added, and they both sighed a little. “Why is the sister here?”
“My daughter says that she’s pathetic,” the woman said, nodding again. They both did. “Willow must feel sorry for Zoey, so she brings her around. The whole family was just—”
She turned slightly as she spoke, and she caught sight of me standing next to the brown guacamole and runny sour cream. I recognized her as the mom of one of my sister’s former high school friends, a woman I’d met before and had seen around town in the years since Willow’s accident. She’d never come by to help out or even to say hello, and neither had her empty-headed daughter. I remembered how that girl hadn’t understood why you needed a key to start a car. I’d had to explain it several times after she’d lost her fob somewhere in the school and had wanted to go home.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Zoey.” Her friend looked at me too, eyes wide. “Uh…”
I walked away and found Willow, still having fun with her boyfriend. His arm was around her waist and she seemed to be leaning against him as they talked to a group of people that included the dumb girl who had lost her keys and other high school friends, the people who had been happy to forget that my sister ever existed.
