Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (37 page)

heart beating faster and faster, and I knew I was starting to

panic. This was more than I could handle. This was not trying to

prevent Bruce or Rosie from saying my name aloud. This was

worlds colliding on a whole advanced level and I wasn’t sure I was

up for it. It was like a grenade had just gently rolled up to me and

was resting by my feet— not exploding yet, but about to, any sec-

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ond now. “I . . .” I started. “She’s . . .”

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“Hello,” Hallie called, a question in the greeting.

The driver got back into the taxi and it pulled away and

Sophie turned, squinting. I took an instinctive step back into the

porch shadows, trying to buy myself time, even if it was only

seconds.

“Hey,” Josh said, coming up from the beach, around the side

of the house, Reid behind him, chewing on what I assumed was

another marshmallow. “Did I hear a car?”

I took the microsecond this distraction bought me to type the

fastest text of my life.

Me

11:19 PM

YOU’RE NOT YOU. I’M YOU.

OKAY??? BUT YOU’RE NOT YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Sophie’s phone chimed with the text, and she looked down at

the message, then squinted into the darkness, like she was try-

ing to locate me. “Hello?” she called.

“Hi,” Hallie said, taking a step closer to her, sounding con-

fused but not unfriendly. “Can I help you?”

“Hallie,” I said, as I stepped out onto the driveway to stand

next to her, deciding that it would be better to take charge of the

situation and salvage what I could from it, rather than watch as

it blew up in my face. “This is . . . my friend. I just didn’t realize

she was going to be here. Or in the Hamptons at all.”

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Sophie’s expression, which had registered happiness and re-

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lief over seeing me, suddenly did a 180 into confusion. “No,” she

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said, looking from me to Hallie, baffl ed. “It was kind of a last-

minute thing . . .” She turned to me. “This isn’t your house?” she

added, her voice quieter, and I could tell she was starting to get

embarrassed.

“Well, any friend of Sophie’s is a friend of ours, right, Hallie?”

Josh asked, coming a little closer with Reid.

Sophie’s eyebrows shot up at the mention of her name, and

she glanced down at her phone again, then back at me, looking

totally lost, and understandably so.

“Right,” Hallie said, smiling easily. “Of course. Sorry you missed

the party.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, still sounding as confused as I’d ever heard

her, “that’s okay.” She gave me a desperate
help me
look, but I

forced my expression into something neutral and friendly, and

not what I was currently feeling, which more accurately resem-

bled the skinny guy by the railing in
The Scream
.

“I’m Hallie,” Hallie said. “You know Sophie, of course.” Here

she smiled at me, and I tried to return it, but I could practically

feel the confusion coming off Sophie in waves. “That’s my brother,

Josh, and that’s Reid Franklin.”

“Hi,” Sophie said. She gave Reid a double take, like she recog-

nized him, but then turned back to me, giving me the kind of

look a drowning person gives a lifeguard.

“And you are?” Hallie asked, smiling politely.

“Oh,” I jumped in. “Well, that’s my friend. That’s, um . . .”

“Gemma Tucker,” Sophie said, raising an eyebrow at me in

triumph, like she was glad she’d fi nally fi gured out what was

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going on.

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Oh. No.

It was like all the air had suddenly disappeared from the

driveway for a moment, and I swear even the cicadas, which had

been going full blast all night, stopped chirping for a minute. I

closed my eyes, wishing that I’d gotten to speak fi rst, or that So-

phie had used pretty much any other name in the whole entire

world.

“You’re Gemma Tucker,” Hallie repeated, her voice disbeliev-

ing. “Really.” She raised her eyebrows at Sophie, who was now

shooting me drowning looks again, like she knew she’d gotten

something wrong but had no idea what it was or how to fi x it.

“Yes?” Sophie said hesitantly, looking to me for confi rmation.

Hallie just stared at her hard, and the words I had been plan-

ning to say— about how she’d misspoke, that this was my friend

Emma
Tucker, that this was all just a crazy misunderstanding,

ha ha ha— died in my throat when I saw the way Hallie was look-

ing at Sophie, like she was adding things up. I suddenly remem-

bered the pictures of me and Sophie from when we were both

eleven, looking almost like identical twins, hard to tell apart

unless you knew for sure who was who. There was the bump on

her nose that I no longer had. Her hair was still dark brown, the

same shade it had been when we were both kids. The fact was,

Sophie looked more like me at eleven than I did now. And as I

took in what she was wearing— denim mini and tight striped

shirt— I noticed, for the fi rst time, that she was wearing her
G

necklace, the one that matched my
S
.

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It was completely believable that Sophie was me, all grown

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up. Which was, I realized, as I saw the look on Hallie’s face, a very

big problem.

“Gemma Tucker,” Hallie said, her voice now a whisper. She

was staring at Sophie like she was something out of her worst

nightmares come to life. “Oh my god.”

“Um,” Sophie said helplessly, looking to me for guidance.

“Um . . .”

Hallie turned to me, and I saw her face was fl ushed. “You’re

friends with Gemma Tucker?” she asked, her voice high and tight

with emotion.

“You see,” I said, wondering if there was any way I could still

walk us back from this. “The thing is . . .”

“Hal?” Josh asked, coming to stand next to his sister. He was

keeping a wary eye on Sophie, like he was worried she might

charge at Hallie any moment, or something. “You okay?”

“I can’t believe,” Hallie said, her voice shaking, “that you have

the nerve to come here. And then to pretend like you don’t know

me, like nothing happened, like you didn’t . . .” The rest of her

sentence was lost in a sob, and Hallie turned and ran for the door,

yanking it open and disappearing inside.

Sophie looked at me, more lost than ever, but I couldn’t do

anything more at the moment than give her a helpless shrug.

Josh started to head inside after his sister, then turned back

to me. “Sophie, I’m so sorry,” he said, his brow furrowed. “It’s . . .

she’s . . .” He looked at the real Sophie, shook his head, and

turned back to me. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? I’ll explain.”

I nodded dumbly, and he reached out and touched my shoul-

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der for a moment before he followed Hallie inside. Reid stared at

Sophie for a moment, like he was trying to place her, but then

turned and followed Josh inside, leaving Sophie and me alone

in the driveway.

“Okay,” Sophie said, turning to me. “What the hell is going

on?”

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“Let me get this straight,” Sophie said, sitting up in her

lounge chair and staring at me. “You’ve been pretending to

be me this whole time? And now I have to keep pretending to be

you?”

I took a bite of my sandwich and nodded miserably. “I’m

afraid so.” We were sitting out by Bruce’s pool, where we’d gone

after we’d essentially broken up the party.

I’d spent the trip home turning over and over what had hap-

pened in the driveway, and how Hallie’s expression had changed

when she’d heard my name. There was a piece of me that was

beyond grateful I hadn’t gone ahead and told her the truth in the

kitchen, if that was the way she reacted. But I also felt like I’d

lost the chance I’d been working for this whole summer— the

chance to get her to see me differently. Now, instead of realizing

that I was actually a good person, she just thought I was Sophie.

And if the way she reacted had been any sign, she still hated me—

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maybe now more than ever, since she thought I’d blithely turned

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up on her doorstep and then pretended not to remember her or

her brother.

These thoughts swirling in my head had made driving— let

alone driving a massive car while trying to explain a fairly convo-

luted situation— a challenge, and after I’d sideswiped a neigh-

bor’s hedge and then narrowly missed a mailbox, Sophie suggested

we wait to talk until I didn’t have to multitask. When we got to

Bruce’s, we decamped to the lounge chairs by the pool, but soon

felt that sustenance was required to keep going, and had raided

the fridge. Luckily, before they’d headed to L.A., Rosie made sure

the fridge was well stocked, and now I was eating a gourmet pa-

nini and Sophie had heated up some pad Thai.

“And now this Hallie girl hates me,” Sophie continued, set-

ting down her fork to keep track on her fi ngers, “because she

thinks I’m you. But she likes you, because she thinks you’re me.”

“Well,” I said, leaning back against my lounge chair and look-

ing up at the sky for a moment. I took a second’s worth of solace in

looking at the stars. I bet things were really peaceful up in space,

and very quiet, and nobody was pretending to be anyone else. “I’ve

pretty much just been me, just with your name. I haven’t been,

like, appropriating your personality or history or anything.”

“Is this why you wanted me to change my Friendverse pro-

fi le?” she asked. “And take down my picture?”

I nodded. “I did try and tell you,” I said. “But . . .”

Sophie nodded, and then looked away, her expression a little

guilty— just like I suspected mine was. It hadn’t escaped my no-

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which was pretty much the entire reason for the debacle that had

taken place in the driveway. If we’d both been able to fi nd the

time to talk, it might have been avoided. It wasn’t her fault, or

mine, but it made me feel like there was real distance between

us, for the fi rst time I could remember.

“I know,” she said, sliding the
G
on her necklace back and

forth. “I’ve been out of touch . . .”

“Me too,” I jumped in. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Sophie said. We sat in silence for a moment,

and then she asked, “So is the you- being- me plan working? How

have things been going out here?”

“Well,” I said, about to say that they’d been going great. But

then a montage of all the disasters and semidisasters of the

summer so far suddenly fl ashed before my eyes. Showing up in

formalwear to a pool party. The bathing- suit mishap and its

expensive replacement. Gwyneth’s stolen shoes. The babysitting

fi asco and Bruce’s destroyed award. The food poisoning. “They’ve

been better,” I admitted. “Things haven’t totally been going ac-

cording to plan.”

Sophie shot me a sympathetic look, then picked up her fork

again, but stopped with the noodles halfway to her mouth.

“Should I save some of this for your dad?” she asked.

“No need,” I said, but Sophie was already setting her plate

down.

“Is it even okay that I’m here?” she asked, sounding uneasy. “I

mean, I know you said I could visit, but I didn’t check before

coming . . .”

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“It’s so fi ne,” I assured her. “Really. It’s just me here. My dad

and Bruce and Bruce’s assistant are all in California. But they

wouldn’t have a problem even if they were here.”

“Oh, good,” Sophie said, letting out a breath and picking up

her plate again.