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Susannah told me that when I was born, she knew I was destined for one of her boys. She said it was fate.
I always wondered what the boys looked like in December.
Conrad was the older one, by a year and a half. He was dark, dark, dark. Completely unattainable, unavailable. He had a smirky kind of mouth, and I always found myself staring at it. Smirky mouths make you want to kiss them, to smooth them out and kiss the smirkiness away. Or maybe not away… but you want to control it somehow. Make it yours. It was exactly what I wanted to do with Conrad. Make him mine. Jeremiah, though—he was my friend. He was nice to me. He was the kind of boy who still hugged his mother, still wanted to hold her hand even when he was technically too old for it. He wasn’t
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They didn’t even notice me walk up at first. But then they did. They really did. Conrad gave me a quick glance-over the way boys do at the mall. He had never looked at me like that before in my whole life. Not once.
He smiled. “It’s not that. You just look different.”
Seeing Conrad again, having him look at me that way, I felt like I needed a second to breathe. I grabbed the stuffed polar bear on my dresser and hugged him close to my chest—his name was Junior Mint, Junior for short. I sat down with Junior on my twin bed. My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it. Everything was the same but not. They had looked at me like I was a real girl, not just somebody’s little sister.
I already knew which one I’d pick too—the polar bear with wire-frame glasses and a scarf. I’d had my eye on it all summer. I could already picture myself showing it off to Taylor. Oh, that? Conrad Fisher won it for me.
I named him Junior Mint, and I left him where he belonged, at the summer house.
I hated it. Even though it was one of the only times I was included in their fun, I hated being the brunt of it. It made me feel utterly powerless, and it was a reminder that I was an outsider, too weak to fight them, all because I was a girl. Somebody’s little sister.
There was this weird stillness between us all of a sudden. He still held on to my foot, and I was trying to stay afloat. For a second I wished Jeremiah and Steven were still there. I didn’t know why.
“Belly, tell us about all the hot friends you’re gonna set me up with,” Jeremiah said. “Didn’t we already try that once?” I said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about Taylor Jewel already.”
On the way out Jeremiah turned around and danced a quick jig for me, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed. Over his shoulder Conrad said, “Good night, Belly.” And that was it. I was in love.
We’d be watching TV, or playing cards, and he’d be strumming the guitar. Or he’d be in his room, practicing. For what, I didn’t know. All I knew was that it took time away from us.
I didn’t call him. I put the phone back in its cradle. He should be the one calling me; not the other way around. He was the father; I was just the kid. And anyway, dads didn’t belong in the summer house. Not my father and not Mr. Fisher. Sure, they’d come to visit, but it wasn’t their place. They didn’t belong to it. Not the way we all did, the mothers and us kids.
“But why does she have to change her name at all?” Jeremiah wondered.
Conrad worshipped him. His dad was his hero. For a long time, anyway. Longer than most people.
I wished I could do that for Jeremiah. I knew it would make him feel better, but I couldn’t. Instead, I reached over and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t let go either. This was the moment when we became true, real friends.
Jeremiah Fisher wants to kiss me. Which, was crazy. This was Jeremiah. He’d never looked at me like that, and as for me, Conrad was the one I liked, even when he was moody and inaccessible the way he was now. It had always been Conrad. I’d never seriously considered Jeremiah, not with Conrad standing there. And of course Jeremiah had never looked at me that way before either. I was his pal. His movie-watching partner, the girl he shared a bathroom with, shared secrets with. I wasn’t the girl he kissed.
Taylor was always the pretty one, the one the boys looked at for that extra beat. I was the funny one,
When she joined the Spanish club, she insisted I join too, even though I didn’t take Spanish. “For when we go to Cabo after graduation,” she said.
She let out an impatient breath of air. “Belly, you’ve got to pick one. You can’t have them both.”
“It’s my dad’s nickname for me from when I was little. He thought Isabel was too long a name,” I explained. “Everyone just still calls me that. It’s dumb.” He ignored the last part and said, “Why not Izzy, then? Or Belle?” “I don’t know. It’s partly because Jelly Bellys are my favorite, and my dad and I used to play this game. He’d ask me what kind of mood I was in, but I would answer him in Jelly Belly flavors. Like plum if I was in a good mood…”
Was it possible they didn’t want me with Cam? Because they, like, had feelings for me? Could that even be? I doubted it. I was like a little sister to them. Only, I wasn’t.
In my head I heard Conrad go, Ooh, you’re hitting him now. Way to flirt, Belly, way to flirt. Even when he wasn’t there, he was there.
not like with Conrad.
Her favorites were peonies.
She kept them in hurricane glasses.
When you walk on the beach at night, you can say things you can’t say in real life. In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.
It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.
but every time I thought I was sure about him, Conrad would look at me a certain way, or twirl me, or call me Bells, and it all went to crap.
“I get next game,” I said. I wondered if this was the way old crushes died, with a whimper, slowly, and then, just like that—gone.
Jeremiah was a good friend. He’d
This was Jeremiah. My buddy, my best pal. Practically my brother. The hugeness of it all made it hard to breathe. I could barely look at him. Because I didn’t. I didn’t see him that way. There was only one person. For me that person was Conrad.
No secrets, remember?” No secrets was something Jeremiah and I had been saying for pretty much forever.
Conrad got up early to make a special belated Father’s Day breakfast, only Mr. Fisher hadn’t been able to come down the night before. He wasn’t there the next morning the way he was supposed to be. Conrad cooked anyway, and he was thirteen and a terrible cook, but we all ate it. Watching him serving rubbery eggs and pretending not to be sad, I thought to myself, I will love this boy forever.
I felt that old lurch, that gravitational pull, that desire to inhabit him—like wherever he was in this world, I would know where to find him, and I would do it. I would find him and take him home. I would take care of him,
The old pull, the tide drawing me back in. I kept getting caught in this current—first love, I mean. First love kept making me come back to this, to him. He still took my breath away, just being near him. I had been lying to myself the night before, thinking I was free, thinking I had let him go. It didn’t matter what he said or did, I’d never let him go.
Maybe I would get married, maybe I would have a family, but it wouldn’t matter, because a piece of my heart, the piece where summer lived, would always be Conrad’s.
