Reunited (30 page)

It would be so easy to just let the angry feelings take over again, whereas letting go felt like a constant effort. More proof that doing the right thing isn’t always necessarily the easiest path.

“I know.” Alice nodded guiltily. “You didn’t deserve it.”

“You were hurt, and you lashed out,” Summer said. “But a lot of what you said was true. Just like it was true about Jace.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that—”

“Don’t be sorry.” Summer cut her off. “You told me. That’s the main thing.”

“Well, whatever either of you did or didn’t do, I think we can all agree that I’m the
real
a-hole here,” Tiernan said.

“That’s true.” Summer smirked. Then she gave Tiernan a playful elbow to the gut. “Come on, that was a joke.”

Tiernan forced a smile.

“What I’m trying to say is . . .” Summer took a deep breath. “No single one of us is completely innocent for what happened. And no one is completely to blame.”

“So, we all suck?” Tiernan asked.

“I think we’ve all been hurt.” Summer swallowed the rest of her drink as if washing down her words. “And I think it would probably take the rest of our lives to figure out all of the messed-up reasons we did what we did.”

Summer shivered from the chill of the ice-cold liquid in her stomach. It felt surreal admitting these things out loud. To be here, in Houston, Texas, rehashing the past with her ex-best friends, who, as it turned out, still happened to be two of the people who knew her the best—Alice, all wide-eyed and eager; Tiernan, who looked so uncomfortable talking about “feelings,” she probably would have jumped into her soda can if she fit.

They were both so different from her. And yet, Summer had spent the last four years hanging out with people who all looked alike and dressed alike and acted alike. But the only thing her Walford friends really seemed to have in common was the fact they were too afraid to actually be themselves.

“As mad as I am at you,” Summer said to Tiernan, “and I
am
still mad at you, I think it was very brave doing what you did out there.”

“Psh.” Tiernan shook her head. “I had to stop being a wuss sometime, didn’t I?” She lifted her soda and took a large swig.
“Just don’t tell my mom about it, or she might think I’ve actually learned some kind of ‘lesson.’”

“Oh, that would be tragic,” Alice joked.

Summer stared at Tiernan. She could relate to feeling scared. Maybe that was forgiveness, too. Understanding.

“Welcome back to the Level3 Super-Fan Challenge!” Kai’s voice blasted out of nowhere, stirring up a fluttery feeling in Summer’s heart.

She crossed her fingers and held her hand out in front of her. “We
have
this,” she whispered. “It’s our destiny.”

Tiernan and Alice crossed their fingers, too, holding them out so that all three of their hands touched.

“I know what
your
destiny is.” Tiernan shot Summer a knowing look. “Travis Wyland.”

“Maybe,” Summer said with a smile. The truth was, she kind of had a feeling about that, too.

Laura G. and Kai were still talking, their inane DJ blather echoing through the wings, but Summer couldn’t focus on their words.

“Okay, follow me.” The microphone guy swept in out of nowhere. He put his hand on Summer’s shoulder and gave her a forceful little shove. Behind his back, Tiernan leveled him with a death stare.

Then, just like that, she was back onstage with Alice and Tiernan, without even quite knowing how. Geoff, the clarinet guy, stood next to them.

“And, heeeeerre they aaaarre.” Kai’s voice blared full of phony enthusiasm. The audience burst into applause on cue. She heard someone scream “Pea Pod Experience!”

Summer felt woozy, as if her body were made of rubber—a combination of nervousness, lack of sleep, and the 250-milligram jolt of caffeine she’d had backstage.

“Okay, so let’s get down to business,” Kai said. “After careful review of the judges’ notes—”

“That would be
our
notes, Kai,” Laura pointed out.

“
The judges
—Laura G. and myself—have come to our decision.” Kai paused. “You ready to hear it, Houston?”

The audience’s howl sent a rush of blood to Summer’s head. With front row tickets, she’d finally be able to see Travis up close—to see what he looked like for real, as a human being, not the man-god she’d built him up to be in her mind. She could almost feel herself there, the stage lights spilling onto them as she screamed the lyrics to every song with Alice and Tiernan by her side.

“The winner is . . .” Kai made a drumroll noise with his lips. “Geoff Newman!”

The audience exploded, but Summer’s body fell so still, she wondered if she might have stopped breathing. She forced herself to look at Alice and Tiernan, then immediately regretted it. All she wanted to do was to get off this stage, to run back to the Pea Pod, and cry. Couldn’t these people give them a little privacy?

“Congratulations, Geoff!” Laura G. approached him. They shook hands. “But before I hand over your ticket, I want to tell our audience about the conversation you and I had backstage.”

Great
. While they were backstage having a heart-to-heart, Geoff had been schmoozing the judges.
Talk about unfair.
Summer gave Alice and Tiernan a not-so-subtle look of disbelief. Alice’s expression was blank, like a coma victim. Tiernan’s face was twisted into a scowl.

“Anyway,” Laura continued. “It would appear as if Geoff’s playing a solo number both on and offstage.”

“Tooting his own horn, so to speak,” Kai added. The sound effects guy played a clip of a woman moaning in ecstasy. The audience groaned.

“Ignore him, Geoff,” Laura scolded.

“Technically, the clarinet’s a wind instrument,” Geoff said, deadpan.

“Any-hoo,” Laura went on. “As everyone here knows, we have
four
tickets to give away to the very special one-night-only Level3 show tonight, and Geoff only needs
one
, so, I did the math . . .”

“Uh-oh, there’s math involved.” Kai made a snoring sound.

All at once, Summer’s breath came rushing back to her.

“Pea Pod Experience . . . turns out this might just be your lucky day after all. . . . You’re going to Level3 tonight!”

The next thing Summer knew, her arms were entangled with Alice’s and Tiernan’s, the three of them hopping around
the stage in a shrieking, crying clump, like a three-headed Miss America.

“Congratulations,” said a voice from outside their circle of chaos. Geoff the clarinetist eyed them warily.

“You too,” Summer called to Geoff, pulling herself free of the celebration. Alice and Tiernan collected themselves and added their compliments.

“So, I hope you don’t mind me tagging along for the limo ride,” he said apologetically. He didn’t seem embarrassed by going to the concert alone, just concerned with cramping their style.

The idea came to Summer all at once. But when she opened her mouth to run it by Alice and Tiernan, she could see they’d had the same thought. Of course, this sent them all into violent hysterics. Geoff looked even more awkward than before.

“If y-you’d rather I do something else,” he stammered, “I can—”

Summer kindly cut him off. “The limo’s all yours, Geoff,” she said, smiling. “My friends and I already have a ride.”

“ROLLER COASTER”

ON THE UP SIDE,

I’M UNDER

CONTROL.

THE FAMILIAR THRILL

OF KNOWING

WHAT COMES NEXT.

THOUGH IT OFFERS NO SURPRISES,

THE ANXIETY, IT RISES,

THE HIGHER UP WE GO,

TILL THERE’S NOWHERE LEFT TO GO

AND I JUST FALL,

I FALL, I FALL,

OH, OH

I JUST

FALL.

—from Level3’s self-titled first CD

IF ALICE DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, SHE WOULD HAVE SWORN THE PEA
Pod sailed out of Houston on a cloud. For the past two hours, the mood in the van had been giddy delirium, interrupted only by their own spontaneous screams. In the middle of a sentence, one of them would see a sign for Austin and remember where they were going, how they had won.

“You guys, we’re making great time.” Summer fiddled with Coach Quigley. “It’s only another hour till Austin.”

Tiernan leaned her head halfway out the window, even though she was driving.
“‘Don’t tell me I’m gonna be late,’”
she sang into the wind.
“‘Your p-p-parade will just have to wait!’”
A guy in a pickup blasted his horn as they whizzed past.

Driving into Houston, the flatness of the landscape had looked boring to Alice. Now the big Texas sky seemed wide open, full of possibility. She leaned down and rooted around for the Scotch tape in her craft box. Their map deserved a place on the wall, a permanent Pea Pod decoration. As she affixed her tape donuts to the back, she reread Tiernan’s note. It was her third time reading it, but it still brought tears to her eyes.

“Tiernan, this letter is brilliant,” Alice said. “It’s so convincing.”

“Whatever.” Tiernan kept her eyes on the road. “I think it had more to do with that dog taking a whiz on Kai’s leg.”

“No way,” Summer said. “It was all you, T-Bird.”

Tiernan shook her head. “It was all of us.”

Alice stuck the map in its designated spot, admiring her own handiwork on the collage for their final destination. Austin was the most straightforward of all the collages on the map—a photo of the band performing live, with cutouts of the three girls (age twelve) pressed up against the stage. Hours from now they’d be living this picture.

Looking at their smiling middle-school faces, Alice felt a pang of sadness for all the years of friendship they’d missed out on between then and now. There was so much catching up to do, so many blanks to be filled in. But for once she wasn’t in a hurry. They had the rest of their lives to catch up. They had five hours to get to a show that was only an hour away.

Tiernan pulled off the exit. “Sustenance,” she said, before Alice had the chance to ask.

It wasn’t until she walked into the Mexican joint and inhaled the sweet corn smell of homemade tortilla chips that Alice realized how ravenous she was.

“You have the tickets, right?” she asked, sitting down next to Tiernan.

“OMFG! Stop asking me that!” It was a kindhearted tirade. Tiernan shot Summer an exaggerated eye roll. Summer smiled back at her. Another one of their familiar dances.

“What? Do you want to see them?” Tiernan challenged her.

“No!” Summer and Alice both shouted. But it was too late, Tiernan had already pulled down her scoop-necked shirt, revealing the little white envelope tucked inside of her little black bra.

“I’ll come back,” the waiter said, tossing their basket of chips so fast, half of them scattered across the wooden table. He was a dark-haired boy, their age, with braces and a Spanish accent.

Before he was two steps away they burst into laughter. The tiny bowl of salsa lay capsized in the sea of chips, and Alice picked it up and placed it on the table.

She could live forever right here in this moment, laughing with Tiernan and Summer, double-dipping their corn chips. It was allowed.

Suddenly she was overcome with a longing to talk to MJ. She’d missed her during the trip, but never so much as right now. She wanted to share the good news about winning the tickets, to tell MJ how much she loved her. And after she was done talking to MJ, she wanted to call her parents, too. She wanted to share this feeling with everything and everyone—the bird sitting on that tree branch outside the window, the old man in the cowboy hat drinking alone at the bar. Heck, she’d probably even learn to love UVM once she gave it a chance.

She pulled her phone from her bag. Better just to text MJ, since it was likely to be two a.m. in China, tomorrow or yesterday—she was too tired to remember which. But when
she opened her phone, she saw that there was a text message waiting for her.

She didn’t realize she’d gasped until she noticed Tiernan and Summer staring.

“Quentin sent me another text,” she said, flinging the phone onto the table, like there was a chance it might detonate at any second.

“And you’re not going to open it?” Tiernan looked dubious.

“I can’t,” Alice moaned. “One of you has to do it.”

Summer pulled the phone toward her, sighing. “I may as well, seeing as how I
am
the resident expert on heartbreak around here.”

It took Summer so long to read the message, Alice half-wondered if Quentin had forwarded her a copy of
War and Peace
.