Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (11 page)

It was sad that what you once thought were marvels on the screen were really manipulations. What you thought was art was just some gimmicky formula.

Bridget discussed it with Diana at night after the campers were in bed. They sat on the edge of the lake, tossing rocks into the still water. Bridget outlined her strategy, which was pretty simple. She’d just avoid Eric. She would stay away from him and throw herself into other things—her team, her training, hanging with Diana, and making new friends. And besides, she got three weekends off, and so would Eric. Chances were, they’d be off on different weekends. It didn’t need to matter so much that she and Eric were working at the same camp. It was a big camp.

At a prebreakfast meeting the next morning, the directors gave out assignments to the staff. Besides coaching, they each were assigned partners with whom they would preside over afternoon activities and chaperone certain meals, evening events, and special weekend trips.

It was long and somewhat boring and Bridget tuned it out, surreptitiously glancing at more of the pictures Diana had brought—more Michael, her roommates, her soccer team at Cornell—until she heard her name called.

“Vreeland, Bridget. Rafting and kayaking. Two-thirty to five weekdays. And you’ve got Wednesday breakfast, Monday lunch, Thursday dinner, and Sunday night moonlight swim. Weekend trips TBA,” Joe Warshaw read out.

She shrugged happily. It sounded fun. She didn’t know the first thing about rafting or kayaking, but she was a quick learner. And she, more than anyone, loved swimming at night under the stars. Joe was flipping pages on his clipboard. “Vreeland, Bridget, you’ll partner with…” He was scanning for a name. “Richman, Eric.” Joe didn’t even look up when he read it. He went on to the next assignment.

Bridget hoped she was hallucinating. Diana cast her a panicked look. If Bridget was hallucinating, then so was Diana.

It was so outrageous Bridget almost wanted to laugh. Was this somebody’s idea of a joke? Had somebody from Baja phoned ahead to say that Bridget and Eric shared by far the most wrenching history, so be sure to put them together?

She looked up and Eric caught her eye. She was frowning.

“You can change it,” Diana said under her breath. “Talk to Joe after. He likes you. He’ll change it.”

Bridget marched over to Joe after. “Hey. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

The kitchen staff was beginning to set up for breakfast.

“Can I, uh, change partners? Would that be all right?”

“If you give me a good reason.” He seemed to anticipate what she was going to say, because he started back in before she could open her mouth. “And I mean a medical or professional reason. I don’t mean a personal reason. I don’t accept personal reasons.”

“Oh.” She racked her brain for something that sounded medical or professional. Oozing sores? Would those help? Contagious foot fungus? Multiple personalities? She could make a case for that last one.

“Good. Stick with your partner. Everybody always wants to change at first.” He piled up his papers and stood to leave. “You’ll do fine.”

God is subtle. But not malicious.
—Albert Einstein

T
he ferocity was back on Valia’s face, and it was more ferocious than ever. They were due in the hospital again, this time for the double whammy of blood testing for Valia’s kidneys
and
physical therapy for her knee. She’d refused to get into the car with Carmen, on account of Carmen’s allegedly holding the steering wheel wrong. So Carmen was steering Valia down the sidewalk in her wheelchair, much like a mother pushing the stroller of a very grumpy baby.

Ashes to ashes, diapers to diapers, strollers to strollers, gums to gums
, Carmen mused as she pushed Valia along. Who said she hadn’t gotten a babysitting job this summer?

There was a reason she was breezing along the two-plus miles to the hospital in the very teeth of the mid-July heat, but she did not yet know his name. And anyway, how much better it was to be outside, sharing Valia with the universe rather than having her in a small dark room, all to herself.

With one hand on the wheelchair, Carmen opened her phone with the other hand and pushed the Lena button.

“Hi,” Carmen said when Lena answered. “Are you done work?”

“I have lunch and dinner shifts,” Lena said. “I’m on break.”

“Oh. Listen—”

Carmen broke off, because Valia had snapped her head around and was scowling, the lines around her mouth deepening. “I don’t vant to hear you talk on the phone,” Valia declared. “And how you can push with vun hand?”

“You have to go,” Lena said knowingly, sympathetically.

“Oh, yes.” Carmen snapped the phone shut. Ferocity was etching lines on her face too. One of the advantages of a baby over Valia, say, was that not only were babies considerably cuter but also they couldn’t talk.

Carmen pushed the last mile with a clenched jaw. At the hospital she went first to the kidney floor, number eight. As Valia barked at other, non-Carmen people who were trying miserably to help her, Carmen got to roam around in the hallway. In forty minutes she saw many faces pass, but not the one she wanted to see.

It wasn’t until they reached the knee floor, number three, and Carmen had been prowling that hallway for twenty minutes that she saw the guy whom she did not yet hate poke his head around the corner. When he saw her, the rest of his body came too.

“Hey!” he said, striding toward her and smiling. God, he could wear a pair of jeans. Had he grown even better-looking in the days since she had seen him?

“Hey!” she said back. Her stomach reacted forcefully to the sight of him.

“I realized I forgot to ask you your name last time,” he said. “I’ve been wondering for a week.”

“Did you come up with any ideas?” Carmen asked.

He thought. “Um…Florence?”

She shook her head.

“Rapunzel?”

“Nope.”

“Angela?”

She squinched up her nose in displeasure. She had a very fat second cousin named Angela.

“Okay, what?” he asked.

“Carmen.”

“Oh. Hmmm. Carmen. Okay.” He tilted his head, fitting her to her name.

“What about you?”

“My name is Win.” He said it sort of loud, as though he were expecting an argument.

Carmen narrowed her eyes. “Win?…As opposed to lose?”

“Win as opposed to…” He had a slightly pained look on his face. “Winthrop.”

“Winthrop?” She smiled. Had she known him long enough to tease him?

“I know.” He winced. “It’s a family name. I hated it from the beginning, but I didn’t learn to talk till I was two, and by that time it had stuck.”

She laughed. “Why
do
we let other people name us?”

“Yeah,” he said indignantly. “Why? Somebody should change that.”

“I remember that skier in the Olympics,” Carmen recalled. “Her parents let her name herself and I’m pretty sure she chose Peekaboo.”

He nodded sagely. “Well, yeah, there is that.”

She smiled.
Win.
Huh. Win, Win, Win, Win. She didn’t mind at all.

“How’s your…” He pointed to her arm.

Not coincidentally, she was wearing her most flattering sleeveless shirt, which offered a long view of her tanned, curvy upper arm. Both of her arms, actually.

“It’s fine. Practically all better.”

“Good.”

“How’s Valia doing? Ligament, right? Anterior cruciate?”

She nodded happily. Carmen’s main problem with guys was that she had nothing to say to them. She loved the fact that she and Win (Win, Win, Win) had all these things to talk about even though they didn’t know each other.

“Carmen? Caaaaarmen?”

It was the sound that chilled her blood, that dried her bones and made her lunch crawl back up her throat. Carmen tried to keep her face bright. “That would be Valia. She needs me. I better go.”

“She doesn’t sound happy,” Win observed.

“Well…” Carmen bit her lip. She didn’t want to vent her suffering to Win. It just seemed wrong here. “Valia’s had a rough time.” She dropped her voice to a low volume. “She lost her husband less than a year ago, and she had to move here from the beautiful island in Greece where she was born and spent her entire life and…” Carmen felt genuinely sad for Valia as she described it. “She’s just really…sad.”

Win looked solemn. “That does sound rough.”

“Yeah. I better go,” Carmen said. She wasn’t sure she could endure the Valia wail another time.

“She’s lucky about one thing, though,” Win called after her.

Carmen turned her head as she walked away, feeling her long hair swing over her shoulder like a girl in a movie.

“What’s that?”

“She has you.”

Lena felt too fragile to go back to drawing class for a few days. She knew her father would be watching her closely now. She waited until she felt strong enough for a confrontation before she dared to go back.

She asked Annik if they could talk during the long break, and Annik agreed. This time Lena led the way to the courtyard. Annik had been so pleased when Lena had first told her about RISD. Annik rattled on about all the teachers she knew there. Now, with the change in plans, Lena felt like she had to tell her that, too.

“So he says I can’t go. They won’t pay for it,” Lena explained numbly.

Annik’s mouth narrowed. Her dark eyes widened within their frames of reddish eyelashes. She seemed to hold back. She probably knew it didn’t help to trash a person’s parent, no matter what he’d done. “He says you can’t go or he won’t pay for it?” she asked finally, flatly.

“I guess both. I can’t go if they don’t pay.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Lena shrugged. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You should. People go to art school who don’t have any money. There are two ways. I’m guessing that you wouldn’t qualify for financial aid?”

Lena shook her head. They lived in a big, nice house with a pool. Her father was a successful lawyer. Her mother had a good income.

“Then you’ll have to win a merit scholarship,” Annik said.

“How do you do that?” Lena was afraid to be hopeful.

“I could call my friend—” Annik stopped herself. She put her hands together.

Lena counted Annik’s rings, nine altogether.

“If I were you,” Annik went on, changing course, “I’d go on the Web site or call them up and find out. And if they tell you no, then ask some more questions until you get somebody to tell you yes.”

Lena looked doubtful. “I’m not really good at that kind of thing.”

Annik looked impatient. Not mad or dismissive, but definitely impatient. “Do you want to go to art school or stay home?”

“I want to go to art school. I can’t stay home.”

“Then figure out how to do it.” Annik put her hand, briefly, on Lena’s elbow. “Lena, I think you could do something good. I think you have talent, possibly a lot of it, and I don’t say that lightly. I want you try. I can see it’s what you love. But I can’t fight for you. You have to fight for yourself.”

“I do?”

Annik gave Lena an encouraging half smile. “You do. You’ve got to take up some space, girl.”

So the first strategy wasn’t going to work. Not only was Bridget not going to avoid Eric, she was going to see him constantly. Somebody up there was having a sick laugh at her expense.

Bridget took a long run on her break after lunch and tried to formulate plan B.

She and Eric weren’t going to be strangers, so they were going to have to be friends. She could do that. She could treat him like a regular guy. Couldn’t she?

She could try to forget that he was her first and her only. She could put aside the disastrous effect their brief fling had on her life. She could ignore—she could try really hard to ignore—the mighty attraction she felt to him. She could make herself accept that he did not feel that same attraction for her.

Bridget was breathing hard now, running up a steep hill, curving round and round. The forest cosseted her on either side.

The truth was, she had never felt so overwhelmingly drawn to anyone. In the two years since they’d seen each other, she had questioned this particular magnetism Eric had for her. Was it real? Or was she so caught up in a mania of her own making that summer in Baja that she had imagined it?

Seeing him again this summer answered her question. It was real. She responded to him the same way, even though she was different.

What was it about Eric? He was handsome and talented, yeah. But lots of guys were. She had adored Billy Klein back in Alabama the summer before, and she had even felt attracted to him, but it wasn’t like this. What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.

Bridget reached the top of the little mountain. Suddenly the trees fell away, and she could see furrowed hills and steamy valleys on and on. The camp, in which all of this agitation was contained, was small and circular. From this height, it was small enough to put her arms around.

Bridget knew what to do. She couldn’t control her basic response to Eric. But she could control her behavior. She had been tough and single-minded then, and she was now, too. Just as she’d found a way to seduce him back then, she could find a way not to do it now.

She had a weekend at home coming up. She would pull herself together. And when she got back to camp, she would contain herself: She wouldn’t flirt, she wouldn’t tempt, she wouldn’t pine, she wouldn’t grieve. She wouldn’t even yearn. Well, maybe she’d yearn a little, but she’d keep it to herself.

She began the run downhill, fast and just a little bit out of control.

Yes, they would be friends. They would be pals. He would never know what she really felt.

It was going to be a very long summer.

Can I buy you a drink, or should I just give you the money?
—Failed pickup artist

“C
ome on, Tibby! We’re going!”

Tibby was standing in the front door of her house, watching Bee jump up and down on the lawn and shout at her. Her yellow head radiated light in the darkness.