Twice As Nice (2 page)

Bethany rolled her eyes, looked at her watch and sighed. “They're late,” she announced.

“Who? Your royal coach and driver?” Ryan joked.

Lauren giggled, but Bethany clearly was not amused. “No. My parents. They have to go over my party details with the staff.”

“I guess that means me,” GoGo said, with a little edge in her voice. “If you kids will excuse me, the staff has to review the benefits of sliders versus mini pizzas.” Then looking at me, she added, “I'm sure you girls have a lot to discuss as well.”

I knew GoGo didn't have to leave that minute, but I figured she thought that if we kids were left alone, we would start a fun conversation and before you know it, Lauren and I would be talking again. GoGo always says that anger doesn't last, but friendship does.

Well, she was wrong this time.

“Come on, Bethany,” Lauren said, the minute GoGo was gone. “We have better things to do than hang out with
her
. Ryan, you can come with us.”

“Not so fast, Lauren,” Bethany said. “I don't believe I've given you permission to stop clucking and strutting.”

“You said I could stop when you got here,” Lauren said.

“I said you could stop when I told you could stop. And I haven't yet.”

“Bethany, please,” Lauren begged.

“No whimpering, little cousin,” Bethany said. “If you want to be in The Waves, you have to do what the president says. You'll understand that when you're president of the Junior Waves. You'll want everyone to follow what you say, too.”

Lauren looked really annoyed but didn't say anything. Ryan, Mr. Sensitive, filled the silence with a series of duck quacks. Lauren forced a little laugh, but Bethany was not amused. I couldn't blame her for that. Giving Ryan
a
grow
up
,
you
dork
look, Bethany gathered her hair into a ponytail. I noticed that she was wearing this soft gray-lavender nail polish, and suddenly, I felt like a total idiot for having neon-green nails. It's like my nails were screaming,
“Charlie Diamond is a total dork, too!”

“Okay,” Bethany said to Lauren. “I'm going to give you a break this time. No more chicken, but only if you go into the kitchen and get me a cold bottle of peach iced tea and bring it to our table.”

“There are only two tables on the whole deck,” Ryan pointed out. “You guys get one all to yourselves?”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Bethany answered, without even looking at him.

“No,” Ryan said. “For all I care, you can sit wherever you want. I'm going for a run on the beach anyway.”

“I'll take you as far as the kitchen,” Lauren said, hooking her arm in his. The two of them trotted off together, leaving me there staring at Bethany.

Now that Lauren was gone, I thought maybe she'd be nicer to me.

“So I'll bet it's really cool to be in The Waves,” I began in my nicest tone of voice.

“Of course it is,” she snapped. Then she turned and headed toward “her” table.

I followed. I shouldn't have, I know. I should have just gone back to my room. I shouldn't have cared whether she liked me or not, but I think I was secretly hoping that she would find me so sweet and fun that she would tell Lauren how wrong she was to end our friendship.

“Charlie is such a great girl
,” I imagined her saying.
“Anyone would want to be her friend.”

I caught up to her, my brain racing to try to think of something cool to say.

“I hear you guys have your own Wave T-shirts and do special cheers at all the football games,” I said, forcing a grin. “That must be a total blast.”

“It is,” she answered. “Too bad you'll never know.”

That was it. End of conversation. We had reached her table, and Bethany sat down on one of the red-and-white striped beach chairs, reached into her purse and pulled out her sunglasses. She put them on, then turned her face up to the sky, basking in the warm rays of the early afternoon sun. I just stood there watching her ignore me, feeling even more miserable than I had before.

Trust me, friends. Being left out hurts.

“Well, this is an interesting twosome,” Lauren said, skipping out of the kitchen and handing Bethany her iced tea.

Bethany pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, and turned to stare at me.

“Are you still here?” she asked. “Don't you have something better to do than to stand there looking all pathetic?”

I wanted my feet to move, to take me back to my room, away from the embarrassment of the moment. But it was like I was glued to the spot.

“Honestly, Lauren,” Bethany went on, as she unscrewed the bottle top and took a delicate swig of the frosty drink. “I can't imagine how on earth you two were friends.”

“Oh, that was forever ago,” Lauren answered.

“Three weeks,” I said quietly. “It was three weeks ago yesterday.”

Lauren sat down on the chair next to Bethany and threw her long tan legs up on the table.

“Whatever,” she said. “You'll have to excuse me if I'm not a human calendar like you.”

She and Bethany both laughed, and I felt about the size of an ant. Any normal person would have just left, but not me. I started talking a mile a minute, which I do when I get nervous. I either freeze up completely and can't think of a thing to say, or I talk nonstop. There's nothing in between.

“Honestly, Lauren, you can't even imagine how bad I feel about everything that happened,” I rambled. “I didn't like telling on Sean and Jared. I know you guys think I wanted to get them in trouble, but that's just not true. They're my friends, too.”

“Were,” she said tartly.

“But if I hadn't told the truth,” I jabbered on, “Alicia's cousin Oscar would have been blamed for what Sean and Jared did. And then he would have been sent back to El Salvador and never would have gotten the operation he needed on his leg. I couldn't live with myself if that had happened.”

“Oh, really?” Lauren said, whirling around to face me. “Well now look at what you've done to Sean and Jared.”

She pointed toward the beach where the far end of the deck meets the sand. Sean and Jared were both on their hands and knees, applying varnish to the redwood planks. They were wearing their baseball caps and Oakleys, so you couldn't see much of their faces, but you didn't have to. You could tell from their body language that they were not happy, to say the least.

“Thanks to you, they have to spend every weekend of the next two months doing all sorts of grungy chores around here,” she said. “Weeding the garden and folding the towels and refinishing the deck. It's so embarrassing.”

“They're helping Candido and Esperanza,” I told her. “I don't see what's so embarrassing about that.”

Candido is the groundskeeper at the club, and his wife, Esperanza, cleans and helps in the kitchen. Their daughter Alicia goes to Beachside with us and has become one of Sammie's best friends.

Lauren put her hands on her hips and spoke to me in the tone of voice you would use to explain kickball rules to a first-grader.

“Candido works here,” she declared. “He is
not
a member. He will
never
be a member. Sean and Jared, on the other hand,
are
members. Their parents and grandparents have been in the Sporty Forty since before they were born. They shouldn't be doing the kind of work Candido does. It's just not right.”

“And I suppose it's right to set a house on fire?” an angry voice said from behind me. “Because that's what your so-called friends did.”

I whipped around to see Alicia standing there. She had obviously overheard what Lauren said, and I couldn't blame her for being mad. It was very insulting to her family. My sister, Sammie, was standing right next to her.

“At least Candido and Esperanza do honest work and don't hurt anyone,” Sammie chimed in. Then, glancing over at Sean and Jared, she added, “Can you say the same thing about those jerks over there?”

Sammie is not at all intimidated by the SF2 girls or by the rich members of the club. She says what she wants, no matter what anyone thinks. That's why she and those Truth Teller friends of hers get along so well. They call it speaking from the heart. I love my sister, but sometimes I wish her heart would not have so much to say.

Bethany focused her eyes on Sammie. “I take it you're the other sister,” she said. “The pudgy one with the sassy mouth.”

“You mean the one who tells it like it is,” Alicia said.

“And proud of it,” Sammie added.

I closed my eyes and made a wish.

Please, Sammie. Don't go into your Truth Teller speech. Not here. Not now. In fact, not ever.

She probably would have, but I was saved by the arrival of Dennis and Carol Ann Wadsworth.

“Oh look,” Bethany said as the white picket gate from the parking lot opened up. “Finally. Hi, Mom! Hi, Daddy! Over here.”

Bethany's mom and dad waved and made their way across the deck over to us.

Mrs. Wadsworth was what GoGo likes to call “a handsome woman,” meaning she wasn't pretty in a frilly kind of way but in a sleek “I-only-wear-black” kind of way. She was dressed in black pants and a black silk top that matched her shiny black hair. Not exactly what you'd call a beach look. Her husband, on the other hand, had on the ultimate in beach wear—he was decked out in powder-blue shorts with flip-flops to match, and a pink polo shirt, collar popped, naturally. He had a nice smile, though, so I forgave him for the collar look.

“Hi, girls,” Mrs. Wadsworth said when she reached us. She seemed unaware of the tension in the air. Holding out her hand to me, she said, “I'm Carol Ann Wadsworth. I don't believe we've met. You must be new to the club.”

“Oh no—” I began, but was cut off by Mr. Wadsworth.

“How about that, Carol Ann,” he said. “We go to Spain for the summer and come back to a whole new membership.”

“I'm Charlie Diamond,” I persisted, “and this is my twin sister, Sammie. We're not actually members.”

I wanted to set the record straight before this got any more embarrassing.

“Diamond? Oh, yes . . .” Mrs. Wadsworth said with a nod. “The children of the new tennis pro. Well, it's nice to meet you, anyway.”

As she shook my hand, I felt her diamond rings crunching up against my fingers.

“Oh, and hello Alicia,” she said. “Or now that we've summered in Spain, perhaps I should say,
buenos días, señorita
.”

“That's okay, Mrs. Wadsworth.” I could tell Alicia was annoyed. “I've lived in America since I was three. I speak English.”

“Oh I know, darling, but don't you find it such
fun
to speak Spanish?”

I could see that Alicia's mouth was twitching slightly, like she had words right behind her lips that were bursting to come out. I knew that at any second, she could snap and point out that her family didn't speak Spanish for fun but because it's the language that people who come from El Salvador actually speak. Mrs. Wadsworth didn't seem aware that there was any problem with Alicia. She just smiled and threw one of her tan arms around Lauren.

“So, my darling niece, Bethany said she was going to give you a little initiation assignment today,” she said. “How'd it go?”

“Mom, it was so hilarious,” Bethany answered for Lauren. “Lauren had to walk and cluck like a chicken until I said she could stop.”

To my surprise, Mrs. Wadsworth threw back her head and laughed, too. If it had been my mother, she would have given me a lecture about being nice to other people and not giving in to peer pressure. But Mrs. Wadsworth just said, “You know, girls, I was a Wave, too, back in the day. For my initiation, I had to wear all my clothes inside out for a week. It was so embarrassing, but that's half the fun of initiation, don't you think, Charlie?”

Before I could open my mouth, Lauren answered for me.

“Charlie wouldn't know,” she snapped, “because she's not going to be initiated.”

“What's the matter?” Mr. Wadsworth asked me. “You're not interested in joining the Junior Waves? It's lots of fun and a good way to meet football players. That's how Carol Ann and I met.”

“Daddy, you don't understand,” Bethany said. “It's not going to be a club that's open to just anyone.”

“It's going to be open only to my friends,” Lauren added. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and her look made it clear that did not mean me.

“None of us would want to join your club, anyway,” Sammie interrupted. “We have better things to do with our time than sit around and make up cheers.”

I wished Sammie would speak for herself. I loved the idea of being in the Junior Waves. It sounded totally cool.

“Besides,” Sammie went on, as if she hadn't done enough damage already. “You guys don't even know if you're going to get permission to start a club at Beachside. You're only allowed to start an afterschool club if your grades are good, you know.”

I could see that Lauren looked very surprised by this.

“You never mentioned grades,” she whispered to Bethany.

“I'm sure you guys all do fine,” Bethany answered. “It's easy to get good grades in middle school. Wait until you get to the hard stuff in high school, like chemistry and trig-o-whatever-it-is.”

“Trigonometry, honey,” her father said.

“If you say so, Daddy.”

Lauren looked a little worried. I happen to know that her grades are not that good. And as for the other girls in the SF2s: Lily March was a good student, but Jillian Kendall and Brooke Addison were not exactly on the honor roll. In fact, pretty much the opposite. Jillian's main source of information is reality television, and Brooke, well, let's just say that if they gave out As for getting tan, she'd be a straight-A student. As far as other subjects go, she's pretty marginal.

The screen door to the clubhouse slammed and we all turned around to see GoGo limping out.

“You must be Dennis and Carol Ann,” she said. “I heard you pull up. Bethany and I have had quite a planning session for her party. Why don't we all go into the kitchen and talk food? It's one of my favorite topics.”

She took Bethany by the arm and as she started to guide her toward the kitchen, she turned to Sammie.

“You and Alicia should come into the living room. I believe Lauren and Charlie have a lot to talk over, and they might want a little privacy.”

She flashed me a look, but I knew that even if Lauren I were left alone, it would do no good. She had made it very clear that our friendship was over.

“I was hoping that you and I could talk this whole thing through, Lauren,” I said giving it a last desperate shot. “We were too close to just let our friendship die.”

Did her expression soften? I wasn't sure.

But before she could say anything, the gate from the parking lot swung open, and Jillian, Brooke, and Lily walked up, laughing like they had just heard the funniest joke in the world.

“Hey, Lauren!” Jillian yelled. “Come check out what Lily's got on. Another fabulous outfit that only Miss Style could pull off.”

Lily was wearing red cowboy boots and jean shorts and as always, she looked so original. She just has a way with clothes, and we all know she's going to be a fashion designer when she grows up. Or before.

Lauren nodded in my direction, and the others followed her gaze. When they saw me, Jillian and Brooke suddenly stopped laughing. Only Lily March said something.

“Hi, Charlie,” she said, “It's nice to see you.”

“Oh really?” Brooke said. “Maybe it is for you, Lily, but not so much for me.”

My cheeks started to burn. “Lauren and I were just having a talk,” I managed to say.

“Looks like you guys were in the middle of a major heart-to-heart,” Jillian said. “Like the one I saw on
Teen Super Models
last night where Tori told Ella that she was going to own the runway and then Ella tells Tori that she was nothing but a runway hog and everybody knew she only got the cover of
Teen Vogue
because her dad's a famous fashion photographer.”

“Actually, Charlie and I are done talking,” Lauren declared.

Then turning to me, she said, “If you'll excuse us, we have to get to work on our Junior Waves application. So maybe you can, like, go somewhere else?”

That stung.

I went inside. On the couch, Sammie and Alicia were looking over a bunch of ocean crud.

“This rock is smooth on one side, but jagged on the other,” Sammie was saying. “Like the way our feelings are tumbled smooth by the waves of life but still some areas remain jagged.”

Oh brother. Sammie and I may be identical on the outside, but we sure weren't on the inside.

I pressed my face against the window and saw Lauren sitting at the table with the other girls. She had the application in front of her, and they were all talking at the same time while she filled it out.

It was just another Saturday at the Sporty Forty Beach Club. Everyone had something to do, someone to be with.