Broken Hearts, Fences and Other Things to Mend (44 page)

Hallie was the neck tattoo girl? Hallie had been with Teddy this

whole time? I noticed that Teddy looked pale under his new tan,

absolutely terrifi ed, more so than when he’d had to face down

the bulldozer when he was trying to protect the habitat of the

Marsh Warbler. And fi nally, a month too late, I realized what was

going on.

“Teddy, did you— did you cheat on me?” Teddy opened his

mouth, but no words came out. “With
her
?”

Hallie looked away, like she was trying to give us our privacy,

but I could see her satisfi ed smile.

“I . . .” Teddy looked at Hallie a little helplessly, then back to

me. “I don’t think I would put it quite like that . . .”

“So that’s why you broke up with me.” Shock was fading away,

and I was starting to realize how angry I was. “Because of

Hallie.”

“I never wanted you to . . .” Teddy started. He took a step

closer to me, and I noticed that he was wearing the shirt I had

bought him for his birthday, the one I’d had to save up a month’s

worth of babysitting money for. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

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I just shook my head as I stared at him. “You didn’t want me

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to get hurt?” I repeated, incredulous. “You broke my
heart
. And

this whole time, I haven’t known why. I’ve been wondering what

I did wrong . . .”

“Nothing!” Teddy said quickly. “I just . . .” His voice trailed off

and we simply looked at each other for a long moment.

“Are those for me?” Hallie asked, coming to stand close by

Teddy’s side. Her voice, though light, had an edge to it.

“Yes,” Teddy said, and held out what had been behind his

back— a pair of heels. Very familiar hot- pink silk heels. “I thought

your feet might be cold.”

“You’re so sweet,” Hallie said, smiling at him. “I knew these

would go perfectly with my purse.” She leaned on his arm to step

into Gwyneth’s shoes.

I just stared at them, still not quite able to believe this was

happening. My heart was beating hard and I was having trouble

breathing properly. The part of me that could still comprehend

what was happening— a very small part— wondered if this was

what a panic attack felt like.

“Could you give us a minute, baby?” Hallie asked Teddy, rest-

ing her hand on his chest. “Gemma and I have some things to

wrap up.”

“Yes,” Teddy practically gasped, looking thrilled for an excuse

to leave. He headed up the beach, then stopped and looked back

at me. “Gemma, I . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You de-

served better than that.” He looked at me for a moment longer,

then turned away and walked up the beach.

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Hallie turned to me, a smile on her face. “So how are you lik-

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ing the party?” she asked.

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“You . . .” I started, then had to take a breath and gather my

thoughts. “You stole my boyfriend.”

“Of course I did,” Hallie said, like it was the most obvious

thing in the world. She took a step toward me. “I have been plan-

ning this for
years,
” she said, her voice low. “And I have been get-

ting you back all summer.”

“You . . . you have?” Suddenly, a summer’s worth of mishaps

fl ashed though my head. “You mean . . . the pool party and the

bathing suit . . . and the babysitting?”

“I told the girls to wreck as much as they could,” she said.

“Pity they just got to the one award.”

Things were starting to fall into place in the most horrible

way. “Oh my god,” I whispered. It was all starting to become clear,

like a fi lter had just been pulled off the summer and I was seeing

it for what it really was.

“And don’t forget the lobster,” Hallie said, smiling fondly at

the memory.

“The lobster?” I echoed. “But how did you . . .”

“It helps to make friends with waiters, no matter how boring

they are,” she said. “Tyler thinks we’re pals, and he was more

than happy to make sure you got the lobster that had been sit-

ting out in the sun for a few hours.”

I remembered then why he seemed so familiar— I’d seen him

talking to Hallie at the pool party. The one where she’d told me to

come in the wrong clothes, given me a self- destructing bathing

suit to wear, and then stolen my shoes. The summer— the truth

about it— was sliding sharply into focus. “But—”

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“Sometimes you made it really hard to keep believing your

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little scheme,” she said. “I mean, my god, you left a receipt with

your
name
on it with the bathing suit. How stupid did you think

I was?”

“This whole summer,” I said, my voice shaking, “this whole

time, you’ve been—”

“You were
horrible
to me,” Hallie said, taking a step closer to

me. Her cool, triumphant smile was gone, replaced by pure, raw

anger. “And it was all just a big joke to you, wasn’t it?”

“Of course not,” I said. I shook my head hard. “Hallie, no. I’ve

hated myself for doing it. I’ve always regretted what I did. And—”

“Yeah,” Hallie said with a hollow laugh. “Sure. That’s why you

made certain I got your notebook, fi lled with details about all

your plans. All the ways you were trying to hurt me. Including

notes on what wasn’t quite mean enough, and what you could do

better
. You sent me that so I could be sure to know just how much

you hated me.” Hallie’s voice broke on the last word, and she

looked away, bringing her hands to her face for a moment.

I swallowed hard. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” I said

quietly, after a moment. “That was an accident.”

Hallie turned back to me, and her bottom lip was trembling.

“But you did all those things, right? They weren’t all ‘accidents,’

were they?”

“No,” I admitted. “I did them. And I’ve always felt terrible about

it. But I have been trying, all summer, to make things right.”

Hallie just stared at me for a long moment. “You really expect

me to buy that?”

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“Yes,” I said, looking right at her, hoping, despite everything,

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that she would believe me. “It’s the truth.”

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She folded her arms across her chest. “Why I should believe

anything you say?”

“Because,” I said, and I could hear my voice rising. “You know

me.”

Hallie let out a short laugh. “Oh, do I?”

“Yes!” I almost yelled it, and I realized that, on top of every-

thing else, I was feeling betrayed. Everything that I’d thought

we’d been building this summer had been fake, and now it was

totally gone. “I thought we were friends.”

Hallie looked discomfi ted for a moment. “What, just because

we hung out and you got me in to see a band I like? We’re not

friends,
Gemma.”

“Well, obviously not, since you’ve been sabotaging me all sum-

mer.” Hallie shrugged, and suddenly I thought of someone who

had nothing to do with any of this— someone who was just collat-

eral damage. “What about Josh?” I asked.

Hallie fl inched, but when she spoke, her tone was tough,

challenging. “What about him?”

“You wanted to get revenge on me that badly? You were will-

ing to let him get hurt?”

“I . . .” Hallie started. She looked down and let out a long

breath, and when she spoke, it sounded like she was also trying

to convince herself. “I told you,” she said. “I tried to tell you not to

get involved with him. I was trying to keep him out of this.”

I thought about Josh’s heartbroken expression. I thought

about everything Hallie had put me through this summer, the

hoops she had watched me jump, knowing the truth the whole

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time. It was enough to make me feel nauseous. “I only told you I

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was Sophie,” I said, “because I wanted to make things up to you. I

was trying to do the right thing.”

“And you thought I was just going to forgive you?” Hallie asked.

“Did you really believe that it would be that easy?” She shook her

head, the speed of her words increasing as her voice started to

shake with fury. “You
ruined
my life. You almost wrecked my

family. Did you think I was going to let you get
away
with it? You

think I didn’t see through you the minute you stepped off that

train?”

She looked away, and when she turned back to me, her face

was composed again. “Go home, Gemma,” she said, biting off my

name. “Go on home to Connecticut. I won. This is over.”

She turned and walked away then, up the beach, not hurry-

ing, not once looking behind her.

I walked to the water’s edge, feeling the need to scream or

cry— maybe both.

It had all been for nothing. I had tried
so
hard to do the right

thing— and it had been used against me at every turn, and re-

sulted in nothing but heartbreak. Hallie had been willing to hurt

me, and Teddy, and her own brother, all to get revenge. There

was no point in even trying to make things right with someone

like that. I shouldn’t have wasted my time.

Overhead, the fi rst fi rework shot up into the sky and ex-

ploded, sending down a bright- red shower of sparks.

I took a deep breath and then let it out. Strangely, I no longer

felt like crying. I only felt the cool, hard certainty that I’d last felt

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when I was eleven. The clarity that comes from knowing who

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your enemy is.

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The last thing Hallie said to me was reverberating in my

head. And as I looked up into the sky that was bright with fi re-

works, I knew there was one thing she had been wrong about.

This wasn’t over.

It was just beginning.

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An excerpt of

REVENGE, ICE CREAM,

AND OTHER THINGS

BEST SERVED COLD

coming soon!

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