I found myself in the unaccustomed position of waiting for someone else to explain a reference. “What’s that?”
“You haven’t seenThe Notebook?” Arden sat back, looking stunned, before visibly gathering her resolve. “That’s it, we’re going to my house right now. It’s totally based on a book,” she assured me, reaching for her purse.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lydia said.
“Of course we’ll help clean up first.” Arden reached for one of the untouched glasses.
Lydia shook her head. “Are you up for this, Mary?”
“It’s Ryan Gosling,” Arden pointed out, as if that answered the question for me.
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Maybe she’s disappointed? Since we built up this whole Nature Boy thing and now”—she blew a raspberry—“we have nothing?”
“Not nothing,” Arden protested.
“Excuse me, I forgot the valuable lesson we all learned.” Lydia pretended to make a note. “Don’t try to get with a guy who has the hots for your sister.”
“It’s fine. Really.” The prospect of romance had been gossamer as a soap bubble, here and then gone. The odds of unrequited pining for Jeff, whom I had barely met, seemed slim.
“Trust me, this is the perfect movie for when you’re having all the feels.” Arden raised her index finger, in the universal sign for someone about to make a point. “I’m having another brain wave. Let’s take this to the next level. Tomorrow, my house, movie nightanda slumber party. A two-for-one special.” She consulted her phone. “We are blazing through my list.”
“What list?” Jasper asked.
“None of your business.” The last thing I wanted to discuss in front of him was my induction into Normal Teenage Life. The mockery would never end.
“Tampon, maxi pad, cramps.” Arden’s incantation sent Jasper and Bo fleeing, hands over their ears.
“Nice,” said Lydia.
Arden winked. “Works every time.”
After dinner, I spread my books out on the dining room table and dived into the morass of homework. That was another difference between Millville High and my old school: due dates were a lot less negotiable.
When I finally looked up, rubbing tired eyes, the rest of the house was dark. Yawning, I rolled the kink out of my shoulders before depositing my tea cup in the sink. Then I gathered my things in a messy bundle and crept up the stairs, avoiding the creaky spots. As I passed Cam’s room I heard a series of rhythmic thuds and grunts, as if she’d installed a punching bag. Somehow she had returned to the house unobserved, suggesting either supernatural stealth or the tree outside her window. After a moment’s hesitation, I knocked softly.
“Yeah?” she called.
I pushed open the door. Cam was on her back on the braided rug, legs bent at the knee and arms crooked behind her head.
“You’re doing sit-ups?” On the face of it this was a stupid question, but Cam seemed to understand the unspokennow?
“I couldn’t sleep.” She wiped her forehead with the hem of her T-shirt.
“And ... sit-ups help?”
She shrugged, looking away.
It seemed I would have to introduce the subject of the Incident, but how? It felt silly asking my fearless older sister if she was okay, though perhaps not as embarrassing as inquiring whether she now had a boyfriend, and if so what that was like.
“Jeff said your friend invited him over.” Cam’s words emerged reluctantly, but I was still grateful for the opening.
“I didn’t know,” I said quickly. “That the two of you had, you know, history. I mean, I saw you together a couple of times—”
“You did?” she interrupted, startled into looking up.
I nodded. “At that party. And your game.” Her eyebrows climbed fractionally, which by Cam standards was practically a double-take. “I’m a younger sister,” I said modestly. “We notice things.”
Belatedly, I recalled that Cam was also a younger sister. Strange that I’d never thought of her that way. “Is there a reason you didn’t want to talk to him?” I asked delicately, leaning against her dresser.
