Rule of Thirds, The (7 page)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
8 DAYS UNTIL VANTAGE POINT

Why
hasn’t
Dylan replied to my text? Isn’t it common courtesy to reply? How hard is it to just type “Yes” or “No”? It’s not hard at all. It’s a few buttons plus the Enter button. It’s EASY.

And then, while packing my stuff for Dace’s, I get a text.

Dylan: Yes! What time?

He said yes. He didn’t delete me from his phone. He likes me. Or doesn’t
not
like me. My fingers are shaking as I text back, giving him Dace’s address and telling him to come anytime after
4
.

• • •

Dace was a bit concerned about her parents finding out about the party if I told Mom.

THE RISKS IN TELLING MOM ABOUT THE PARTY

She could tell Dace’s parents.

She could forbid me to go.

She could forbid me to go and tell Dace’s parents.

THE RISKS IN NOT TELLING MOM ABOUT THE PARTY

She could find out.

I could be grounded for life for lying.

That would be the end of Sleepover Saturdays.

The deciding factor came down to the fact that this Saturday we were supposed to be sleeping at my house. If we changed it, my mom would be suspicious. So I told my mom. Which went over surprisingly well, though she did have a few rules, which she typed up at work (shouldn’t she be busier with sick animals?) and handed to me when she got home from the clinic:

MOM’S PARTY RULES

1. No drugs
   
2. No drinking
   
3. No sleepover
   

“Are we clear?” Mom asks.

“Yeah, I’ll put this through the laminator so it doesn’t get wet at the party. That way I can keep referring to it all night.”

“Pippa . . .” Mom says warningly.

“I’m kidding! I got it.” I’m not worried about the drugs part—at least, me doing them. Dace and I tried smoking pot last summer but it made me lethargic and boring, and I’m not about to start doing something more hardcore. Besides, I like drinking
just fine. So #
2
is definitely going to be a problem since the definition of a party when you’re in high school is “excuse to drink while someone’s parents are away.”

But #
3
? “No sleepover?”

“NO sleepover,” Mom says.

“But we can’t break tradition.”

“No sleepover or no party.”

“But if I don’t sleep over I won’t be able to help Dace clean up. Not that we plan on making a mess, but we can’t control what everyone does. Not that there will be a lot of people, but there will be boys. Not a lot of boys . . .”

I was digging myself my own pool.

“
If
everyone is still at the party when you leave, which I would suggest is not a good idea anyway, but if they are, then you can go back in the morning to help Dace clean up. Home by eleven.”

“One.”

“Midnight. And not a second later.”

• • •

My mom may have had some rules, but Dace and I have a few rules of our own.

DACE & PIPPA’S PARTY RULES

1. No one gets in the house.
   
2. If you’re about to let someone in the house, remember Rule #1.
   

“
We’re
still using the bathroom in the house, though, right?” I ask as we walk out to the backyard. Dace is carrying a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses on a tray and I’ve got a stack of trashy magazines. Our towels are wrapped around our waists. “The last thing I want to do is pee in the poolhouse after
50
other drunk people have gone in there.”

Dace nods and removes her towel, revealing her orange bikini bottom.

“You mixed?” I say, eyeing her pink top as she removes the strap around her neck.

“I couldn’t settle on just one. I guess I like my bikinis like I like my boys. Two at a time,” she says, laying her towel on her lounge chair. I do the same and sit down.

“Only two? I thought you liked to have at least three on the go at once,” I joke, adjusting the top of the blue-and-white striped bikini that Dace lent me—she got a whole bunch of cute bikinis from one of her shoots. It’s a perk, for sure, but I still feel self-conscious. I don’t exactly fill it out in the right places the way Dace does.

“Good point.” She rattles off the list of invited guys who are definitely potential makeout partners: “Kevin, Cole, Asher . . .”

“Aren’t you worried each of them will think you’ve already got a boyfriend and back off?”

Dace takes a sip of her lemonade. “Worried? No. Boys love a little healthy competition. They’re like soda. Some are like Pepsi, always trying to be better than Coke. The Cokes know they’re the best, but are always on their A-game because the Pepsis are hanging around.”

“What about if they’re root beer?”

“Root beers are the wild card. A little crazy.”

I stand up and walk over to the edge of the pool. The pool is L-shaped—the main part is just like a normal swimming pool, except with a gradual beach entry on one side, so you wade in from the deck. Then in the deep end, the other part has this little diving area and there are not one, but two diving boards. And then there’s a hot tub and a sauna. Total resort.

I hit the higher diving board. “Request?”

“Double twist-triple-toe-loop-back-flip!” she yells from her lounger. Right.

I swan dive into the water. It’s pretty much my only dive. In the summer I almost had a flip down pat, but I haven’t practiced in a while and if I land on my back it hurts like a mother. And makes my back totally red. Not attractive.

After a few more dives I do some laps, then climb out and walk over to the lounge chair beside Dace’s. I shake my hair out over her, letting the beads of water spray her. She squeals.

I lay down on the lounger. Dace tops up her glass with lemonade and pours me a glass. I take a sip.

“Um. Not lemonade.”

“Yes, but spiked. The best kind. I can’t believe Fred thought hiding the key to the liquor cabinet in his sock drawer was a good idea.” She takes a sip. “So good, right?”

“Yum.” And so wrong. Oh so wrong. “I can’t get wasted, remember. I have to be home by midnight. Mom’s rules.” The rules I threw in Dace’s bedroom trash bin. “And I have to work on my Vantage Point entry tomorrow.”

“Come on. It’s
3
:
30
. You’ll be sober by the time you go home. Also, this is just a little something to loosen you up,” she says, taking her bikini top off.

“Dace!” The backyard is big—but it isn’t
that
big. The neighbors can totally see over the fence—especially from the second story.

“What? I don’t want tan lines,” she says.

“Tan lines? How is that even possible? You’ve religiously
worn sunscreen since, like, the fifth grade.”

She shakes her head. “Not today. I’m breaking all my sunscreen rules. Guess it’s a rules-breaking kind of day.”

“What will Elise say if you get a burn?”

“With any luck, that I can’t do the Cheektowaga car show.”

“Why don’t you just tell her you don’t want to do it?”

“I tried. But she said it’s that or back to mall fashion shows. This is all Viv’s fault. If she’d have let me go to Japan when I signed with Elise, then I wouldn’t even be talking about some dumb Cheektowaga
car show.
” She sighs. “I’m sorry. Are you freaking out?”

I look at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Just—the pact. For our future. You must be a bit worried how we’re going to make it happen when I’m dicking around. I’m just in a rut. I’m sorry.”

My stomach drops. The guilt almost makes me tell Dace about my Vantage Point theme. That I’ve moved on from fashion to memories. If it were anyone else, it might be worth it so that she felt like I’m not adding any additional pressure for her to make it big, but I know better. With Dace, she’ll just think I’m bailing on her. Even though it has nothing to do with her at all.

“You’ll get to Japan,” I say. “And in the meantime, I like having you here. I’d miss you if you took off.” Going to Japan is important if you want to make it—apparently you go there for a year, do a billion shoots and after that you can pretty much get any editorial job. But I really can’t imagine being at Spalding without Dace. That’s the hard thing about friendship, you want what’s best for your best friend, but sometimes it’s not what’s best for yourself.

“Thanks. Let’s just get drunk and forget all about
this, K?”

“OK. You should probably put your top back on before everyone gets here. You’re going to give your mantourage the wrong idea.”

“Maybe that’s the right idea,” Dace says with a coy smile, but obliges.

Dace is still a virgin, even though she totally doesn’t act like it. Some of our other friends are having sex, but we both want to wait. Dace, despite being a super-flirt, doesn’t want to have sex with a guy if she doesn’t want to be his girlfriend, and right now, she doesn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend. Dace has been talking more and more about doing it though, just to get it over with so it’s not such a big deal. I’m worried about that because it
is
a big deal, but also because, if she starts having sex and I’m not, I feel like we won’t be as close anymore. It’s silly, because we’re best friends and one little thing like that shouldn’t matter but I still worry it will.

“Hey girls!” Emma and Gemma call as they come through the gate to the backyard. Carrying overnight bags.
Overnight?
They’re staying over? I stifle the surge of jealousy.

“Any word on your iPod?” I ask Emma as I follow her inside so they can drop off their things. The story comes out on Friday, but so far there haven’t been any leads on the thief. She shakes her head and says her mom’s mad at her for being so irresponsible for losing it, but Gemma believes her that someone outright stole it.

An hour later the backyard’s packed, and so’s the pool. Dace’s iPod is connected to the sound system—the playlist she made at the start of summer on repeat for one final hurrah. I’m contemplating another glass of spiked lemonade when I feel an arm slip around my waist. I turn to face Ben, who pulls me in for a soft kiss. When we break, I kind of want to wipe off my lips—he’s a really
wet
kisser.

“Hey babe,” he purrs.

Babe?

“Nice bikini,” he says, totally talking to my chest.

“Do you want a drink?” I ask, noticing he’s empty handed aside from his leather satchel, slung across his body. It’s a known fact that parties are BYOB—but maybe they did things differently wherever Ben used to go to school.

“Sure—a beer’d be great.”

Dace is at the cooler with a guy, who, when he stands up, looks like he could be Ben’s Abercrombie twin: polo shirts, khakis and deck shoes.

“Cole, this is Pippa!” Dace says happily, and I give a small wave. Ben puts his arm around me protectively and kisses me on the ear, then throws his hand up in a sort of hey-wave. “Ben,” he says to Cole.

“Beer?” Cole asks Ben, holding out a can. Ben takes it.

“So you go to Spalding with the girls?” Cole asks as I untangle myself from Ben. Dace pours another spiked lemonade from the jug on the table and hands it to me, takes a sip of her own, then links arms with me and leads me away from them. “Oh swoon,” she whispers. “Isn’t that cute? Our boys are getting along.”

“He’s not my boy,” I say defensively. I don’t want to be with Ben by default. Where is Dylan?

“Would you relax and have fun? Ben’s crazy about you. What’s the problem?”

“Sorry,” I say, but I’m not feeling it. If Ben’s going to be my boyfriend, shouldn’t I be thinking about him?

“Ooh, there’s Asher,” Dace says, clinking glasses with me and sauntering over to the gate. I pull on my cover-up, then find Emma and hang out with her and a bunch of other girls in our class for a while, until Ben is back at my side.

“What do you say we get out of here for a bit? I need some Pippa time,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me close.

“Well, I don’t want to be a bad party host,” I say. Where
is
Dylan?

“It’s not your party, it’s Dace’s. And you’d be a good host to me.”

Ben grabs my hand and starts leading me around the side of the house.

“Hang on, I just have to pee,” I say once we get through the gate to the side of the house. He follows me up the steps, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind as I grab the key and unlock the door, then put the key back under the mat. “Pretend you didn’t just see that. And you have to wait here,” I say, one hand on the doorknob.

“Why?”

“Nobody’s allowed in the house. If you have to go to the bathroom, you have to use the poolhouse. I’m sorry, but Dace’ll kill me if I break the rules.”

“Come on. You can trust me,” he begs, his big blue eyes wide and sad, like a puppy dog.

I shake my head. He comes closer and nuzzles on my ear, which tickles, even though I bet it’s supposed to feel sexy. I squirm away but I can’t back up since I’m already pressed against the door. I
really
have to pee.

“I’ll just be a second.”

“And I’ll just wait inside the door. Surely it’s not breaking the rule if I’m not
doing
anything inside the house.”

“Um . . .” Does his logic make sense? Between the spiked lemonades and my bladder, I can’t focus. I turn the door handle and . . . he’s inside. “Wait here,” I say, pointing at the floor like he’s a dog. But he doesn’t listen. Instead of using the bathroom on the main floor, I race up the stairs, thinking I can get away from him and he’ll stay downstairs, but that’s obviously faulty logic, because he follows me right up the stairs. As I pass Vivian’s room, I see Cole by the bed with Dace. Whoops. I guess she’s breaking our only rule too.

Dace’s room is two doors down. “You wait here for me.” I say, pushing him inside. I shut the door, thinking he’s at least hidden if Dace comes out, though really, if she finds him in there she’ll probably be more upset with me for letting him in her room at all. I’ll just blame it on the spiked lemonade. And besides, I highly doubt she’s coming out of her mom’s room anytime soon.

“I missed you,” Ben says as soon as I return to Dace’s room.

“I was only gone a minute.”