Girlfriend Material (5 page)

I was more relieved than I care to admit that Sarah didn’t point over to my lounge chair and mime vomit-ing. This whole day was making me feel like I was going into junior high instead of junior year.

Okay, I had to stop. What did I care if stupid Sarah thought I was lame? I was only going to be here for at most two months, not the rest of my life. Starting tomorrow, I’d say I just wanted to hang out at the house. Was that such an awful way to spend the next eight weeks—sitting on Tina and Henry’s beautiful deck and admiring the body of water I now knew was the bay? I could write. I could read. Let Sarah have her car and her club all to herself.

There was the squeak of flesh on rubber as a girl sat down on the lounge chair next to mine. I noticed Sarah hadn’t left anything on the actual chair, just her bag at the foot of it. Should I say something about its being occupied? Clearly. But what was I supposed to say?
Excuse me, that’s my friend’s chair.
Hardly.
That chair belongs to a girl who hates me because I ruined her summer, which is
39
hilarious since I too am a victim of the world’s vagaries rather than an agent in this affair.
Seemed a bit too much information to give to a complete stranger.

“Um, someone’s sitting there,” I said.

The girl was pretty, but not quite as pretty as Sarah; she looked more like the pretty girls at my school than a super-model. Her hair was blond and straight and she had on a pair of jean shorts and a PrincetonT-shirt. She was eating a peach, and some of the juice dribbled down her chin.

“Yeah,” she said, swiping at the juice and wiping her hand on her shorts. “Sarah. I saw you guys come in. I’m Jenna.”

“Kate,” I said.

“I go to school with Sarah. You’re the girl who’s staying with her, right? You and your mom?”

What had Sarah told her friends about me?
You’re not going to believe the loser my mom’s saddled me with for the summer.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m the one.”

“I’ve been to Salt Lake. My family goes skiing at Deer Valley sometimes,” she said. Deer Valley is this really fancy ski resort that a lot of people from the East Coast and California ski at. When I ski with my friends, we usually go to Alta, which costs about half what Deer Valley costs. This may have something to do with the fact that at Alta they don’t have tissues for you on the lift lines or heated seats on the chair lifts.

“So,” she continued, “I’m sorry about your parents.”

“My what?” I said, confused.

“Your parents? I’m sorry about their getting divorced,” she explained.

“What?!” My screech could have cut glass. I cleared my throat and brought it down a notch. “Oh God, they’re not getting divorced. They’re just going through this
thing
they go through.” What had Sarah said to Jenna to give her the idea that my parents were getting divorced? Could Tina have said something to Sarah? In which case, had my mom said something to Tina? My stomach started to wind itself in a tight knot as I imagined their conversation:
I don’t want to say anything to Kate, but I’m going to ask Mark for a divorce.

I forced myself to take a deep breath. This was insane. My parents were
not
getting divorced. No doubt Sarah and Jenna were just confused because they were used to New York women whose lives were just a little too busy for them to solve their marital crises by taking monthlong cross-country vacations.

Jenna seemed to accept my response. “So,” she said, “how do you like Cape Cod?” As she asked, she waved at someone. I assumed it was Sarah and the girl she was talking to.

You mean aside from your rumor-mongering friend?
“It’s nice,” I said. “The air smells really clean.” I took a deep breath, not sure why I’d chosen to utter this particular observation.

“Oh, I know,” said Jenna. “I love how you can always smell the ocean here. We’ve been coming up every summer practically since I was born.”

We seemed to have exhausted our reservoir of small talk, so it was lucky that just then two guys emerged from the pool, dripping water, and stood at the foot of Jenna’s lounge chair. They didn’t spray us with water like the guys at my school would have, but I didn’t know if that was because there was something intrinsically civilized about East Coast guys or if it was just that they didn’t know who I was.

One of the guys was much hotter than the other. He looked as if maybe his great-great-great-grandparents had come over to this country on, like, the
Mayflower
, or as if he’d stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad: chiseled jaw, blond hair that was long but not too long, piercing blue eyes. If you opened up a magazine and saw a picture of him playing polo, with the words “All-American” printed underneath, you’d definitely buy whatever he was selling.

The other guy was less obviously cute. He had dark hair and a slightly big nose, and while the first guy’s body really did look like he played polo (in addition to working out ten times a week), the second guy’s was what Laura and I call soccer-player cute—you know, like,
I’m in good shape, but my life’s goals extend beyond the acquiring of six-pack abs.
Thinking about Laura reminded me of our phone call and that I was supposed to call her back, which, oddly enough, made me feel even lonelier than being surrounded by a group of total strangers did.

“Hey,” said Jenna, looking up at the guys. “If you want to play, we got an earlier court time.”

“Oh, great,” said the extremely cute guy. “Yeah, I definitely want to play.”

“Me too,” said the just-regular-cute guy. “But we need a fourth.” The extremely cute guy gestured at Sarah’s bag. “Where’s Sarah?”

Jenna turned to me, which meant the guys turned to me too. It felt weird to have so many pairs of eyes on me. “She’s over there.” I pointed across the pool to where Sarah was still talking with the towel girl.

“Who’s she talking to?” asked the extremely cute guy, squinting. “I don’t have my contacts in.”

“Victoria,” said Jenna.

“Oh, great,” said the extremely cute guy. “That’s just what I need.”

“Dude, you made your bed with that one,” said the just-regular-cute guy, laughing.

“Dude, you
lay down
in that bed,” said Jenna, also laughing.

The extremely cute guy shook his head and gave Jenna and the just-regular-cute guy the finger, but he was smiling a little too. “Screw all of you,” he said.

“Actually,” said Jenna, “we might be the only ones you
haven’t
screwed,” she said, and the three of them cracked up.

There’s nothing like an inside joke to make you feel like a total outsider. I tried pretending that instead of being a loser with nothing better to do than watch three strangers talk to each other, I was eavesdropping in order to take notes for my next novel—the story of a group of deeply disturbed New York City private school kids who realize how empty and meaningless their lives are when they meet an honest, kind girl from one of the Rocky Mountain states.

I was deep in my
Oprah
interview when Jenna said, “Guys, this is Kate; she’s staying with Sarah. Kate, this is Lawrence”—she pointed at the extremely cute guy— “and Adam.” She pointed at the just-regular-cute guy. “And we are quite rudely washing Lawrence’s
very
dirty linen in public.”

“Hey,
my
linen’s not what got dirty,” said Lawrence, and they all laughed again.

Lawrence held out his hand to shake mine. “Nice to meet you, Kate,” he said. I reached up and took his hand, trying to imagine a guy at my school shaking hands with anyone but a job interviewer. He had a good shake— firm but not like he was trying to show he was capable of breaking every bone in my body.

“Nice to meet you too,” I said. He flashed me a super-model smile. “Hey,” said Adam. “Where are you from?”

“Utah,” I said. Just naming my home state in front of all of these New Yorkers made me feel like a hick. I should have lied.
Oh, I pretty much split my time between Rome and LA. You know how it is.

“Cool, do you ski? My family rents a place out there every February.”

“Deer Valley?” I asked. I wondered if he and Jenna were related or something.

Adam laughed. “No,” he said. “Because, as you—a native—no doubt know, the skiing totally
sucks
at Deer Valley.”

“Watch it, Carpenter,” said Jenna, wagging her index finger at him.

“Sorry,” he said, still laughing. “I meant to say that Deer Valley’s
great
.” As soon as Jenna looked away, he shook his head at me and made a face, scissoring his hands in front of his chest and mouthing
It sucks
to me. I started to laugh, which made Jenna look over at Adam, who quickly made his face neutral.

“Yeah,” he continued as Jenna watched him. “I sure wish we skied Deer Valley. But we’re an Alta family.”

“You are?” I said, really surprised. “So are we. I mean, me and my friends. We ski Alta.”

“So you never know,” he said. “We might have skied together.”

“We might have.” I realized I was not only nodding my head but smiling at him. And was it my imagination, or had the day suddenly gotten a whole lot warmer?

“Well,” said Adam, “it’s nice to meet a fellow skiier.” He extended his hand. “You know, a
real
skiier.”

“I resent that,” said Jenna. “If my boyfriend were here, he’d kick your ass.”

I took Adam’s hand. “Yeah,” I said. As his fingers closed around mine, I felt a little pulse of something surge through my body. “It’s nice to meet you.”

I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to me that our eyes and our hands locked for a beat longer than necessary. “So what’s the deal?” asked Lawrence. “What time’s the court?”

Jenna looked at her watch. “It’s, like, now,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. You guys should go change.” She swung her legs over the side of the chair and stood up.

The three of them stood where they were for half a second or so, just long enough for me to imagine saying,
You know, guys, I play tennis!
They’d be amazed, then thrilled. I could see it now: I’d gather my stuff, and we’d all go off to the court. In my mind, the afternoon unfolded like a movie montage—Jenna and I having a friendly rally as the guys played a set or two. The four of us playing mixed doubles, Adam and I high-fiving as we beat Jenna and Lawrence. (Sarah arriving back to discover her abandoned bag on her abandoned lounge chair, then bursting into tears of loneliness and despair.) Just as I’d gotten to the part of the evening where Adam asked me to go for a walk under the stars and confessed his undying love for me, Jenna said, “Well, it was great meeting you, Kate. I’m sure we’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah,” said Lawrence. “Good to meet you.”

“I’m going to go get Sarah,” said Jenna.

“See you,” said Adam.

It was nothing short of a miracle that I managed not to blurt out,
When?! When will I see you?!

“Yeah,” I said. “See you.”

Once they’d left, I had nothing to do but go back to reading. I opened my mystery, but once again I found it hard to concentrate on Miss Marple’s adventures. Only this time it wasn’t because of Brad and Laura. Or Sarah. I put the Agatha Christie away and took out a pencil and my writer’s notebook, which Ms. Baker had told us we should always carry.
You think you’ll remember your ideas when you get home, but I guarantee that you won’t.

I flipped open the small pad and tapped my eraser against a blank page. The problem, I realized, was that I didn’t have an idea for a story so much as I’d had an idea for my life.
All of Kate’s dreams came true that summer when, shortly after she and Adam became a couple, Sarah had to return to New York for emergency surgery on the eardrums she had damaged by listening to excessively loud music as she drove.

Did I really need to write that one down? Somehow I had the feeling I wouldn’t forget it.

SARAH CAME BY TO GRAB HER BAG,
and that was the last I saw of her. I don’t know why mobsters bother to off people when it’s so easy to make someone
feel
like she doesn’t exist. I ended up getting a ride home with my mom and Tina and spending the evening discovering, alone in my room, who done it.

Nothing like life in the fast lane that is modern teenage life.

Sunday morning, when I got up and headed over to the main house to get breakfast, my mom and Tina were sitting outside. I honestly didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but before I could announce my presence on the bottom step leading up to the deck, I heard Tina say, “But is that any different from how it’s always been?”

“He’s just gotten so much worse,” said my mom.

“This is not what I signed on for when I got married.” The word
married
was hardly out of my mom’s mouth when Tina saw me standing there. “Morning, Kate,” Tina said a little too brightly.

“Oh, good morning, honey,” said my mom, turning around and smiling at me.

“Morning,” I said. I noticed there was a box of tissues on the table between them, but it didn’t look as if my mom had been crying. Maybe Tina just had hay fever or something.