Thousand Words (2 page)

Before I became the subject of all the gossip at Chesterton High School, there was a rumor that Darrell had beat up his stepdad pretty badly; the guy had supposedly spent a week in the hospital with his jaw wired shut and a collapsed lung, and Darrell was lucky that all he got was some time in juvie followed by community service. If his stepdad had died, it could have been a lot worse. But anything Darrell had done was nowhere near as juicy as what I had done.

I bit my lip and tried not to think about it as I typed in the words “sexting and teens” and hit “search.” Articles popped up, one after another, and I groaned inwardly.

Most of them were about me.

Vonnie’s annual end-of-summer parties were legendary. The kind people were still talking about in December. The kind where someone spends three hours on hands and knees in the grass looking for lost car keys, the diving board gets broken, and somehow—though nobody will admit to doing it—the pool water is pranked with a grocery bag full of blue Jell-O powder.

I never missed Vonnie’s parties. Even if she hadn’t been my best friend since sixth grade, I still wouldn’t have missed them. Her parties were where all the best stories were born, and where everybody who was anybody hung out.

But when I got there this year I wasn’t exactly in the partying mood, partly because Coach Igo had decided summer break was officially over for cross-country athletes and had practically killed us doing hill runs in what felt like an oven pushed up to a thousand degrees. But I had other reasons for not really feeling like partying.

“You’re late,” Rachel Wellby said as soon as I walked through the front door. Rachel was Vonnie’s friend from the volleyball team, and while I knew her from hanging out with Vonnie, there was something about Rachel I didn’t really like all that much. She had an underlying air of bitchy competitiveness, especially when it came to my relationship with Vonnie. I always felt like Rachel didn’t care for me, either, even though I never exactly knew why, and like she’d be thrilled if Vonnie decided to one day dump me. Honestly, I didn’t get why Vonnie was such good friends with her, but it didn’t matter. Vonnie was friends with a lot of people. I didn’t own her.

Rachel was swaying in front of me, her wet swimsuit dripping in the entryway, a chlorinated puddle forming on the very expensive-looking throw rug. I could practically hear Vonnie’s mom shouting all the way from their Cancún timeshare that the rug had been handwoven by an elderly craftsman they’d stumbled across in a little village in some foreign country I couldn’t pronounce and that he’d died exactly nineteen minutes after weaving it and she could never get her memories of that amazing trip replaced, so get your wet clothes off it. “We’re practically already sunburned,”
Rachel slurred. “And you missed the pizza. I don’t think there’s any left.”

“Trust me, I know I’m late,” I mumbled. My skin felt so hot I thought if I looked down I might see steam rising from my legs. The scent of the pool on Rachel made me all the more antsy to get into the water. I kicked off my shoes and rooted around in my gym bag for my bikini. “And I’m already sunburned, thanks to Coach Igo’s love of torture.”

“Whoa, somebody’s crabby,” Rachel said, then singsonged, “Don’t worry. Kaleb will make you smile again.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s got a game.”

This was the real reason I was cranky. Not because of an exhausting run, but because instead of dancing or drinking or floating lazily on a raft with my boyfriend, I was going to be doing those things alone. And this definitely wasn’t the first time. It seemed like I’d been doing everything alone all summer.

Kaleb had been playing on a baseball team in a neighborhood league for something like twelve years. The guys on the team were like brothers. They did everything together. And this was their last summer on the field. Josh was going off to the marines in two weeks. Carlos was heading to some private college in Illinois. Daniel had started his new job a month earlier, and he never had time for anything anymore. And Jake, in a total surprise move, had shown up one day with a one-way ticket to Amsterdam and a plan to stay over there until he’d hooked up with enough sexy European girls
to make him forget Katie, who’d broken up with him the last day of senior year.

I need to hang with my boys, Ash
, Kaleb had told me when I suggested he blow them off for the most epic pool party of the summer.
I only have a few more weeks with them.

But you only have a few more weeks with me, too
, I’d argued.

No way. I have you forever.

Kaleb was exactly the kind of guy I’d want to have forever with. And I really wished I could believe him when he said stuff like that. I used to. At one time it really felt like forever might happen for us. But somehow we didn’t feel so foreverish anymore. We felt temporary and dramatic and like we were always away from each other.

What seemed like forever was how long he’d been choosing his “boys” over me. All summer I’d practically had to beg for alone time with him before he went to college. In a few days he would be living four hours away. I’d be stuck at Chesterton High to finish up what were likely going to be the slowest two years of my life, and he would be partying with God-knew-how-many girls. College girls. Girls who would be impressed by his athletic build and his academic scholarship. Girls who were more ready for forever than any high school junior could ever be.

I continued pawing through my gym bag, trying to shake my irritation and my crummy boyfriend situation so I could have fun like everyone else at the party. I glanced up at
Rachel, but laughter in the kitchen had caught her attention and she’d already turned to follow it, giggling before she even knew what was so funny. Typical. I was surprised she’d stuck through a conversation with me as long as she had.

I located my swimsuit and trudged to the downstairs bathroom to change. I peeled off my smelly running clothes, threw on my suit, then made a beeline for the pool out back.

Vonnie was sprawled backward on a chaise lounge, her feet propped on the reclined back, her head lying where her feet should have been. One hand trailed off the edge of the lounge, her fingers delicately tracing the lip of a red plastic cup. Cheyenne and Annie sat on towels next to her. Cheyenne played with strands of Vonnie’s hair, braiding them into teeny wet braids that would probably take ages to undo later.

“You should take your sunglasses off,” I said, plopping onto the empty chaise next to Vonnie’s. “You’re going to get a tan line.”

She turned her head to look at me, and after a couple of seconds, registered who I was. “Ashleigh!” she squealed, sitting up and throwing her arms drunkenly around my neck. “You came!”

I laughed—as if I’d ever not come—hugged her, then was practically pulled onto the ground when she flopped back onto the chaise. “Sorry I’m late,” I said, trying to untangle myself from her hug. “Run went long. Igo about killed us today.” I picked up her drink and took a swig. It was warm, and the sweetness made my jaws ache.

She waved her hand in front of her nose. “Phew! So I
smell!” She and the other girls burst into laughter; then she flipped over onto her stomach and called, “Stephen! Ashleigh needs the same treatment you gave me earlier!”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but after a second, Stephen Fillman and his friend Cody, both of whom had graduated last year with big-time football scholarships to state universities, pulled themselves out of the deep end and loped toward me, rivers of water coursing down their hairy legs and off their trunks and landing with loud splats on the concrete pool deck.

“No!” I squealed as Stephen bent over and wrapped my kicking feet into the crook of his arm. Cody came around the lounge and grabbed me by the waist. “Stop!” I yelled, gasping at how cold the water dripping off them felt on my skin. I playfully smacked at Cody’s hands. I dropped Vonnie’s cup on the pool deck, heard her curse and yell, “You owe me a drink, woman!,” but I honestly couldn’t even really register the words because the boys were carrying me and then swinging me in arcs over the deep end of the pool before letting go.

I free-fell into water so crisp and cold it startled me. I blew bubbles through my nose as soon as my head went under, letting the water caress my limbs and pull me down to the painted pool floor. My hair drifted around my face and I waved my arms, slow and dreamlike, then found the floor with my feet and pushed myself back up toward the sky, which looked impossibly blue filtered through the water.

I came up sputtering and laughing, feeling weightless,
like any worries, any fears, anything heavy I might have been holding on to were sliding off me and collecting on the bottom of the pool like silt.

It was the last moment I would feel that way for a long time.

As the sun started to go down, someone suggested a game of pool volleyball. I played on the boys’ team: a bunch of football players and runners, most of whom had been drinking pretty heavily for a while, versus a rotation of girls from our state-title-winning girls’ volleyball team. The guys needed me—the girls were killing us.

But we didn’t care. It was fun losing. Adam took a spike directly to the head, twice, and we all laughed while he made the culprit, Cheyenne, kiss it. I sat on Stephen’s shoulders to get the high shots. Vonnie had cranked up the stereo
inside the house, setting the speakers in the open back door, and the game took on a rhythm that matched the music.

Everything felt different at this year’s party. We were all older now. We were upperclassmen. Masters of our own destinies. We could do this. We could handle whatever came our way.

But then Rachel’s new acrylic was ripped off. There was blood dripping from her finger into the water, which grossed Vonnie out and caused her to start gagging, and Rachel was making a huge wailing deal out of it. She staggered to the upstairs bathroom and the game broke up, everyone wrapping themselves in their towels or pillaging the kitchen cabinets for snacks or showing off on the diving board.

Cheyenne and Annie and a bunch of the guys tossed around a Frisbee that one of them found in the crawl space under the deck, and someone had lit the tiki torches that lined the patio. I found myself stretched out on the chaise next to Vonnie’s again. She still had her sunglasses on, though the sun had gone down. Her hand had knocked over the fresh drink she’d poured for herself and she hadn’t even noticed that the pink puddle was stretching toward the pool’s edge.

“I think Stephen’s into you,” she said after a while.

I took a sip of a drink Cody had poured me earlier and made a face. “What are you talking about? No he’s not.” My mouth felt numb and I found myself laughing at everything, which was so annoying and I knew it, but I couldn’t help it. This was the best I’d felt all day; maybe all summer.
I wished Kaleb had come with me. It would’ve been nice to have a good time with him for once.

Vonnie sat up. “Yes he is. He was totally rubbing your legs during that game.”

“He was holding on to me. I would’ve fallen off,” I said. She leaned forward and slid her sunglasses down her nose, staring at me over the top of them cynically. We both cracked up. “Okay, maybe,” I said. “But I’m not interested. Remember Kaleb?”

Vonnie pulled off her glasses and rolled her eyes. “Who isn’t here, by the way. Just in case you didn’t notice.” Vonnie hadn’t had a boyfriend since Russell Hayes broke her heart last summer. She’d said she was swearing off teen romance and would wait for the real thing somewhere down the road when guys started maturing. In the meantime, her idea of a committed relationship was whatever relationship was available at the moment. Earlier I would have bet there was a good chance Vonnie was going to strike up a “relationship” with Stephen that night, so why she was grilling me about him when she knew I was dating Kaleb was beyond me.

“He had a baseball game.”

“Which is interesting, given he’s not actually on a baseball team.”

“Von, I told you, it’s an informal league. They’ve been playing forever. And everyone’s—”

“I know, I know.” She recited in a bored voice, “Everybody’s splitting up because half of them are going away and the other half are stuck at Chesterton and it’s going to be all
sad and horrible because he won’t get to see them again for a really long time.” She turned toward me, her face serious. “But what about you, Buttercup?”

I smiled at the nickname Vonnie had been calling me ever since fourth grade, when we’d gone through a phase of being obsessed with the song “Build Me Up Buttercup.” “I’m here, aren’t I?” I took another swig and gazed at my pruny toes. The nail polish I’d put on the day before was all chipped and ugly, but I felt too floppy and relaxed to do anything about it.

“Of course you are. I didn’t mean that.” She leaned over to put her head on my shoulder, but the gap between our chairs was too wide, and her chair tipped sideways, spilling her onto the concrete. She laughed, her fingers digging into my arm. “I sat in my drink,” she giggled, feeling the puddle under her butt with her other hand.

“Ow, you’re shredding my arm, cat lady,” I said, barely feeling her grip and laughing too hard to care.

Rachel came out of the house, dressed in street clothes, her finger wrapped in a huge bandage. She righted Vonnie’s chaise and sat in it, leaving Vonnie on the ground between the two lounges. Rachel eyed us with a frown.

“She is messed up,” Rachel said, as if she hadn’t been equally messed up before the Great Nail Calamity.

“I am not,” Vonnie said, letting go of my arm and lying back on the concrete. She waved her hand at Rachel dismissively. “I’m concerned for my best friend. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t worry about my best friend?”

“Why, what’s up with you?” Rachel asked me.

“Nothing,” I said, exasperation creeping into my voice. “Everything is fine. She’s worrying for no reason.”