Summer's Edge, page 14
Chelsea couldn’t see, but she felt them—the blue lady’s anger, sadness from somewhere else, another feeling I couldn’t pin down. Her teacup rattled in her shaking hands as proof. Then in a blur, I felt arms hook around me and yank me to my feet. Chelsea screamed and scurried down the ladder, and I teetered dizzily for a moment, and then turned furiously to face the blue lady. I threw a teacup to the floor and shattered it. I smashed, stomped, destroyed, until there was nothing left of the set, and there would be no more parties and no friendship between us. My parents were furious. Chelsea cried all night, convinced that I had blown up at her unprovoked.
And in the morning I woke up to a headless Kennedy doll at the foot of the bed.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my real mistake wasn’t bringing Chelsea to the party. It was getting angry. They don’t like anger. It’s dangerous to test them on that. They began to fade after that night. I figured out the wine trick eventually, and they faded faster. I knew the blue lady had forgiven me when she began leaving me gifts and doing chores for me again.
But I never did find my doll’s head.
* * *
“Can we just agree to let it go?” I avoid Chelsea’s gaze now as I unpack my socks into the drawer. Tennis socks on the left, whites in the middle, brights on the right. A drawer for delicates, and one for denims, a closet of cottons, a shelf for wools. A place for everything, and everything in its place. Book, puzzle, doll. Eating, sleeping, towel arrangements. There is a harmony to the way we conduct ourselves. A way the hosts of the lake house find acceptable. It falls to me, and it’s an intense amount of pressure. I rely on order. The rules. The way we have always done things. The balance that has made everyone happy. I follow routine because if something goes wrong, blood is on my hands. The rules of the house matter. Stick to the familiar. That way I don’t forget one little thing and ruin everything.
“No.” She folds her arms over her chest. “Not talking about it isn’t the same thing as letting it go, and this is your grudge, Kennedy. Not mine.”
The cold spills over me as the words vibrate through me. Your grudge. I feel ice in my veins, and even through the buzz of my drink, the walls of the room seem to stretch. Chelsea seems to fade backward somehow and I reach for her, but I’m already rewinding. I squeeze my eyes shut. It isn’t my grudge, I think to myself. It isn’t my grudge. I keep my eyes clamped shut as I feel layers of the present peel back like the skin of fruit, until I hear footsteps creaking toward me.
“Chelsea?”
“What?” She sounds irritated. Not quite angry. Not yet. They’re becoming less forgiving.
The girl on the stairs walks between us as if we aren’t there. Chelsea looks straight through her, and every hair on my body stands on end. The girl’s long, tangled mess of hair covers her face as it always does, and I watch, spellbound as she pauses in front of the magic mirror for a moment, raising a hand slowly to her face to touch her hair with her pale, slender fingers. Her pinkie is obviously broken, stuck in an awkward, useless position, and I curl my fingers into a fist, phantom pain shooting through my hand. She bends down with a loud, knuckle-cracking sound and reaches for the drawer where I keep my hairbrush, and my breath freezes in my throat. I don’t want to see her face. The long, dark hair always seemed like a protective curtain. As a child, I lay awake at night imagining what was beneath. Maybe it was a bare skull, or a mass of worms, or layers of exposed muscle like in an anatomy book. Now I can’t imagine anything at all, and that’s somehow more frightening than maggots or bones. The unimaginable is always the most horrifying. The thought of parting her hair and seeing nothing, the absence of anything, is the quintessence of my deepest dread. That is my fear of death described in one word: nothing.
This is the first time one of them has appeared to me, actually appeared in person, in years. They’re getting stronger. But just as her hand touches the drawer, she suddenly turns to face me and vanishes. I stumble backward into the open balcony door, the handle digging painfully into my back, my heart hammering in my chest.
Chelsea steps between me and my suitcase and folds her arms, her brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”
I rub the small of my back. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
She frowns. “Seriously, Kennedy. What was all that about Ryan’s secret girlfriends?”
I shrug, deflecting. “Nothing. I was talking him up.”
She glares at me. “The whole comment was passive-aggressive.”
“You take his side in a conversation he’s not even party to. Shocking.”
“Because it’s not just his side.” Her cheeks are beginning to flush pink.
“No, to you, any comment about Ryan is a comment about both of you. Honestly, if I just met us, I’d think you and Ryan were together and I was the outsider.” It slips out before I can stop it.
Chelsea’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open. “I cannot believe you just said that.”
I shrug one shoulder uncomfortably. “You act like you’re better than the rest of us. Like our lives are trivial. I know Ryan calls me a spoiled brat. But he’s the brat. He isn’t as smart as Chase, as clever as Emily, and doesn’t have as many friends as I do, and he acts like if he doesn’t have something, it’s morally deficient.”
“And money, right? You and Chase are the stars and we’re the nothings. Even Emily.” She sits on the bed and pushes her hair back from her flushed face, her eyes bright.
“I didn’t say either of those things.”
“But they’re true. Did it ever occur to you that that’s what Ryan and I have in common? That maybe it’s hard being dragged around by special people and being known as the guests all the time?”
“You’re not…” I trail off. That’s exactly what Ryan and Chelsea are. “But you’re all guests here.” Even me.
“But we’re guests at Chase’s in the Hamptons, too. And at Emily’s art shows. At the games where Ryan is stuck on the bench. We are always the guests. And you know what? I’m not pretending to like Mila anymore. I do like her, and I do think Ryan is a better match. Because I love Chase, but I also love Ryan, and Chase already has Emily.”
The words I also love Ryan are the only ones that register, and they slap me in the face. I take a moment to gather myself.
“I like her too. I don’t know why we play these games, and I don’t want to fight. But Chase doesn’t like Emily and he’s never going to. She’s never going to give it up. It’s pathetic.”
Right then, the door swings open and my stomach drops. Emily and Ryan are standing there. Emily steps in and closes it behind her, leaving a stunned Ryan alone in the hallway. Her eyes are brimming, but she doesn’t look sad. She looks absolutely furious. I push the sock drawer closed behind me. I should have locked the door. That’s one little thing I could have done to prevent ruining everything. But some things can’t be kept out, and an unimaginable cold sweeps into the room with Emily.
She looks at Chelsea and then at me. “I’m pathetic?”
I take a hesitant step toward her. “No. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said,” she hisses in a low, vicious voice. She takes a breath and lets it out shakily, the ghost of a cloud forming in the air before her lips. “I’ll stay here tonight, but I’m leaving in the morning. But before I go, I want you to know that I think you are both terrible people. Chelsea, you went behind Kennedy’s back for four months with my brother.”
Chelsea’s face turns white. “That’s not true. Nothing actually happened. You’re twisting things.”
“You can paint it any way you want. You were together and you hid it and now you’re lying about it. You kept it a secret, maybe because you were ashamed of my loser family, maybe because you wanted to wait around for the better catch and dump him the second she came around. And look what happened.”
I study Chelsea. Her hands are clutching her knees to her chest, and her lips are trembling.
“That’s not true. You have no idea what my personal life is like.”
“Nothing is personal between twins.” She turns to me. “And you lied about the heirloom. You specifically told me it was stolen, and Chelsea—”
“I never said Chelsea stole it!” I shout over her.
“Yes, you did!” She gets up in my face, and Chelsea scoots backward on the bed. “You can’t change what already happened, Kennedy. You made me do it, and then you punished me for it because you always get away with everything since you know everyone is going to believe you over me.”
“Liar. You’re a liar,” I say calmly. But I feel a rage swirling inside me that terrifies me. She is lying, and nobody should be allowed to get away with a lie like that. A friendship-breaking lie, a love-destroying lie. The kind of lie that takes people away from you forever. “Tell Chelsea you’re lying right now.”
She shakes her head, and the room seems to grow even colder. “No. I’m not letting you win, Kennedy. I’m not the pathetic one.”
I place my hands on her shoulders and turn her toward Chelsea, but Emily whips around and shoves me backward into the dresser. It bangs hard against the wall and the mirror topples down, smacking me in the back of the head and shattering. Chelsea screams, and I crouch down under an explosion of pain. I’m afraid to move, afraid that there are shards of glass in my skull and neck, but I don’t feel any blood or sharp slices, only the dull ache that you feel when you slam a body part into something hard. Chelsea lifts the mirror off me, the fairy carvings grinning impishly from the intricately carved heavy wooden frame, and helps me onto the bed as my parents rush into the room. The cold lifts, and just like that, our invisible friends have left us. Or maybe stopped caring. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
“What happened?” my mother shrieks, combing her hands through my hair. She’s a pediatrician and remains calm in every medical situation except the ones involving me.
“I fell into the dresser, and the mirror came down on my head,” I say.
Chelsea looks at me, surprised, then nods. “It was an accident.”
“You should be more careful,” Emily says before she slips out the door. Chelsea stares after her, mouth agape.
I don’t know why I lied about it. It just came out. I don’t want Emily to get in trouble, but I think the bigger thing is, I don’t want World War II. World War I was hard enough. We’ve already had shots fired, and I want it to stop. If this is what it takes, a little lie, even a lie about a mirror smashed against my head? I guess I didn’t even have to think about it. Anything to avoid another battle.
36
After it was determined that I had sustained no major injuries, my parents decided to go out after all, as long as I promised to rest with ice on my head and allow my friends to make dinner and clean up. I thought it would probably be nice to be the guest for once.
Mila and I sit together on the hammock while Chase and Emily warm my mother’s patented homemade grill-top pizzas with smoked salmon, red onions, and capers in the kitchen. Ryan picks at his guitar out by the fire pit as the sun begins to lower in the sky, Chelsea brings us gemonades, and we try to avoid the awkwardness between us as we learn a little more about Mila. It actually isn’t that hard. It’s weird how sickness and injury erase bad feelings, or at least suppress them. My grandmother was the biggest bitch. She cut my father out of her will because she didn’t approve of my mom, and then suddenly she got really sick and everyone was devastated because all they could think about were the nice things she did in between emotionally manipulating everyone. P.S. She lied about cutting my father out of her will. One last trick from beyond the grave. Surprise! Here’s the money with which I tried to extort you out of true love. These are my last words to you. Remember me fondly.
Chelsea hands us our drinks and hovers over us awkwardly. “One of us should probably go check on Emily.”
I nod reluctantly. One of us just had a mirror smashed over our head. But sure. Check on super smash sister. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine.” She kisses my forehead gingerly, and I grit my teeth as pain radiates through my skull, and then she heads into the kitchen.
Mila eyes my head with a pitying look. “It just fell on you?”
“Pretty much.”
She shudders. “That thing looked solid.”
“It is.” I take a sip of my drink. I know it’s not the smartest idea to drink when I’ve taken a painkiller. But I can’t get the image of the girl standing in front of the mirror, inches away from me, close enough to touch, out of my head. I take another sip, desperate to push her away. “So. You’re from Islip?”
Mila’s expression relaxes and she leans back, dangling one arm over the edge of the hammock lazily. “Not originally. Iowa first, but I was born in Zagreb.”
I squint at her, geography class playing on hyperspeed in my head. “Croatia, right?”
“Yep. I don’t remember it, though.” She draws a heart on the condensation on the side of her glass. “Adopted as a baby. I don’t remember too much of Iowa, either, because we moved to the city when I was four. My mom works there. We moved to Islip around fifth grade so I would have a wholesome suburban Long Island childhood.”
“And?”
She grins. “And I corrupted them all.”
I smile back. “As one must.”
She takes another sip and shoots me a sidelong glance. “You realize we’re sworn enemies.”
I nearly choke on an ice cube. “Why do you say that?”
“Islip and Three Village,” she says seriously. “Our sports teams are deadly rivals.”
I let out a deep sigh of relief. I would feel so awful at this point if she knew how we’d looked at her when she first walked in the door. Like an intruder. The other woman. What kind of antiquated way of thinking is that anyway? It crosses the line from loyalty to something darker. I’m not sure the kind of loyalty Emily wants from us—or maybe sometimes demands—is right. Maybe loyalty isn’t even the right word for it.
“There’s no official cheer program for lacrosse,” Mila continues animatedly. This is obviously a subject she cares about deeply. “But cheer is immersive, right? Why should one sport be prioritized over another? It’s about spirit, not favoritism. So I went to the administration, I petitioned the board, I personally led the effort to expand the program to attend as many games as possible. Win-win, we increased school spirit, it doesn’t look terrible on my college apps, and I met Chase.”
“Smart. But of course you’re just having fun.” I study her for a reaction and she blushes.
“Sure. Because watching your boyfriend’s ex throw herself at him is a fucking riot. You would know, right?”
I stare at her, taken aback. “I’m sorry.”
She blinks. “No, no, I’m sorry. That was completely uncalled for. It’s a reflex. Defense mechanism. For a second I thought… But you’ve been really nice.” She offers a shaky smile, and I realize she’s not completely oblivious to everything that’s been going on this weekend. Of course she isn’t. Anyone would have noticed Emily throwing herself at Chase. And probably Chelsea and I talking up Ryan. Although maybe—I desperately hope—we were more subtle than that.
“You’re really cute together,” I say. And I mean it. I really do.
“So are you and Chelsea,” she echoes. But she’s not smiling. And she’s looking over my shoulder.
I turn around with a sinking feeling in my stomach, to see Chelsea sitting next to Ryan in the backyard. Their heads close together, whispering urgently, Ryan’s body angled in toward hers in a way that makes me feel nauseous and dizzy that the pain in my head doesn’t account for.
I feel anger gathering white-hot in the pit of my stomach, but before I can rise to my feet, there’s a loud bang from behind me, and Mila and I whip our heads around in unison to see the cellar door smack against the wall and slam shut on the other side of the living room.
“Who did that?” Mila whispers.
I can hear Chase and Emily in the kitchen, talking and laughing over the sounds of clinking cutlery. Ryan and Chelsea are still outside. “The wind,” I say.
But I’m not so sure. I’ve been making a lot of mistakes this weekend. I made a mistake once, a bad one, and the quiet ones punished me. I’m the only one who knows about them, so I’m the only one who knows the whole story. But everyone knows a fragment or two of what happened.
It was the Summer of Eagles, the first summer I was allowed to bring all of my friends to the lake house for a whole weekend. I wanted everything to be perfect, and I had planned a surprise. My mother had spoken to Mrs. Oglebie and arranged for us to adopt our class pet, Miss Palindrome, over the summer while our former teacher was studying overseas. My father had driven up a day early with Miss Palindrome, who would be waiting for us when we arrived. For once, I was thrilled to have a secret.
But when we arrived, my father quickly took my mother aside. I tore through the house looking for the cage, but it wasn’t there. I eventually found it in the boathouse—my father had apparently moved it there so that we wouldn’t be upset to find it empty. So much for that. I wasn’t there when the rest of my friends found Miss Palindrome. I was still puzzling over the empty cage in the boathouse.
My father apologized over and over. He insisted that he left the cage in the kitchen, securely locked, and went to sleep. When he awoke, the door was open and Miss Palindrome was gone. He guessed that somehow a raccoon had gotten in through the attic and worked the cage door open, then chased the poor thing down into the cellar and attacked it. I didn’t buy that for a second, but exterminators did find some holes that needed mending, so no one gave the matter another thought. The cage was carefully disposed of, and there was another secret for me to keep. None of my friends ever learned what happened to the real Miss Palindrome—how could they, when for all they knew, she was safe at home? We bought Mrs. Oglebie a new rabbit, and she opted to keep the secret and name it Miss Palindrome. Her incoming class was already excited to pet the legendary class bunny.
