Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Trust me, it’s better this way,” I said, suddenly feeling very shy. How is it possible to talk to someone on the phone for hours and hours, to even swim with this person, and then feel like you don’t know them?
“So this guy Kinsey, he’s kind of weird, but he’s a good person,” Cam told me as he backed out of the driveway. He was a good driver, careful.
Casually I asked, “Does he by any chance sell crystal meth?”
“Um, not that I know of,” he told me, smiling. His right cheek had a dimple in it that I hadn’t noticed the other night. It was nice.
I relaxed. Now that the crystal meth stuff was out of the way, there was only one more thing. I twisted the charm bracelet on my wrist over and over and said, “So, you know those guys I was with at the bonfire? Jeremiah and Conrad?”
“Your fake brothers?”
“Yeah. I think they might be stopping by the party too. They know, um, Kinsey,” I said.
“Oh, really?” he said. “Cool. Maybe they’ll see that I’m not some kind of creep.”
“They don’t think you’re a creep,” I told him. “Well, they kind of do, but they’d think any guy I talk to is a creep, so it’s nothing personal.”
“They must really care about you a lot to be so protective,” he said.
Did they?
“Um, not really. Well, Jeremiah does, but Conrad is all about duty. Or he used to be anyway. He should’ve been one of those samurais.” I glanced over at him. “I’m sorry. Is this boring?”
“No, keep talking,” Cam said. “How do you know about samurais?”
Tucking my legs under my butt, I said, “Ms. Baskerville’s global studies class in ninth grade. We did a whole unit on Japan and Bushido. I was, like, obsessed with the idea of seppuku.”
“My dad’s half-Japanese,” he said. “My grandmother lives there, so we go out and visit her once a year.”
“Wow.” I’d never been to Japan, or anywhere in Asia for that matter. My mother’s travels hadn’t taken her there yet either, though I knew she wanted to go. “Do you speak Japanese?”
“A little,” he said, rubbing the top of his head. “I get by okay.”
I whistled—my whistle was something I was proud of. My brother, Steven, had taught me. “So you speak English, French, and Japanese? That’s pretty amazing. You’re like some kind of genius, huh,” I teased.
“I speak Latin, too,” he reminded me, grinning.
“Latin’s not spoken. It’s a dead language,” I said, just to be contrary.
“It’s not dead. It’s in every Western language.” He sounded like my seventh-grade Latin teacher, Mr. Coney.
When we pulled up to this guy Kinsey’s house, I kind of didn’t want to get out of the car. I loved the feeling of talking and having somebody really listen to what I had to say. It was like a high or something. In this weird way, I felt powerful.
We parked in the cul-de-sac—there were a ton of cars. Some were halfway on the lawn. Cam walked quickly. His legs were so long that I had to hurry to keep up. “So how do you know this guy?” I asked him.
“He’s my supplier.” He laughed at the expression on my face. “You’re really gullible, Flavia. His parents have a boat. I’ve seen him down at the marina. He’s a nice guy.”
We walked right in without knocking. The music was so loud I could hear it from the driveway.
It was karaoke music—there was a girl singing “Like a Virgin” at the top of her lungs and rolling around on the ground, her mike getting twisted up in her jeans.
There were ten or so people in the living room, drinking beer and passing around a songbook.
“Sing ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ next,” some guy urged the girl on the floor.
A couple of guys I didn’t recognize were checking me out—I could feel their eyes on me, and I wondered if I really had worn too much makeup.
It was a new thing to have guys looking at me, much less asking me on dates.
It felt equal parts amazing and scary. I spotted the girl from the bonfire, the one who liked Cam.
She looked at us, and then she looked away, sneaking glances every once in a while.
I felt bad for her; I knew how that felt.
I also recognized our neighbor Jill, who spent weekends at Cousins—she waved at me, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen her outside of the neighborhood, our front yards.
She was sitting next to the guy from the video store, the one who worked on Tuesdays and wore his name tag upside down.
I’d never seen the lower half of his body before, he was always standing behind the counter.
And then there was the waitress Katie from Jimmy’s Crab Shack without her red-and-white striped uniform.
These were people I’d been seeing every summer for my whole life.
So this is where they’d been all this time.
Out, at parties, while I’d been left out, locked away in the summer house like Rapunzel, watching old movies with my mother and Susannah.
Cam seemed to know everybody. He said hi, shoulder-bumping guys and hugging girls. He introduced me. He called me his friend Flavia. “Meet my friend Flavia,” he said. “This is Kinsey. This is his house.”
“Hi, Kinsey,” I said.
Kinsey was sprawled out on the couch, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He had a scrawny bird chest. He didn’t look like a meth dealer. He looked like a paperboy.
He took a gulp of beer and said, “My name’s not really Kinsey. It’s Greg. Everybody just calls me Kinsey.”
“My name’s not really Flavia. It’s Belly. Only Cam calls me Flavia.”
Kinsey nodded like that actually made sense. “You guys want something to drink, there’s a cooler in the kitchen.”
Cam said, “Do you want something to drink?”
I wasn’t sure if I should say yes or not.
On the one hand, yeah, I kind of did. I never drank.
It would be, like, an experience. Further proof that this summer was special, important.
On the other hand, would he be grossed out by me if I did?
Would he judge me for it? I didn’t know what the straight edge rules were.
I decided against it. The last thing I needed was to smell like Clay had the other night. “I’ll have a Coke,” I told him.
Cam nodded, and I could tell he approved.
We headed over to the kitchen. As we walked, I heard little snatches of conversation—“I heard Kelly got a DUI and that’s why she isn’t here this summer.
” “I heard she got kicked out of school.” I wondered who Kelly was.
I wondered if I’d recognize her if I saw her.
It was all Steven and Jeremiah and Conrad’s fault—they never took me anywhere. That was why I didn’t know anybody.
All of the chairs in the kitchen had purses and jackets on them, so Cam moved over some empty beer bottles and made an empty space on the counter. I hopped up and sat on it.
“Do you know all these people?” I asked Cam.
“Not really,” he said. “I just wanted you to think I was cool.”
“I already do,” I said, and I blushed almost immediately.
He laughed like I had made a joke, which made me feel better. He opened up the cooler and pulled out a Coke. He opened it and handed it to me.
Cam said, “Just because I’m straight edge doesn’t mean you can’t drink. I mean, I’ll judge you for it, but you can still drink if you want to. That was a joke, by the way.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m good with this Coke.” Which was true.
I took a long sip of my Coke and burped. “Scuse me,” I said, unraveling one of my braids. They were already too tight, and my head felt sore.
“You burp, like, baby burps,” he said. “It’s kind of gross but also kind of cute.”
I unraveled the other braid and hit him on the shoulder. 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. And then he really was.
Out of nowhere, I heard Jeremiah’s signature yodel on the karaoke machine. I bit my lip. “They’re here,” I said.
“You want to go out and say hi?”
“Not really,” I said, but I hopped down from the counter.
We went back to the living room, and Jeremiah was center stage, falsetto and singing some song I’d never heard of.
The girls were laughing and watching him, all googly-eyed.
And Conrad, he was on the couch with a beer in his hand.
Red Sox girl was perched on the armrest next to him, leaning in close and letting her hair fall in his face like a curtain that encased the two of them.
I wondered if they’d picked her up, if he’d let her sit shotgun.
“He’s a good singer,” Cam said. Then he looked where I was looking and said, “Are he and Nicole together?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Who cares?”
Jeremiah spotted me then, as he bowed at the end of his song. “Belly! This next song goes out to you.” He pointed at Cam. “What’s your name?”
Cam cleared his throat. “Cam. Cameron.”
Jeremiah said right into the mike, “Your name is Cam Cameron? Damn, that sucks, dude.” Everyone laughed, especially Conrad, when just a second ago he’d looked so bored.
“It’s just Cam,” Cam said quietly. He looked at me then, and I was embarrassed. Not for him, but of him. I hated them for that.
It was like Conrad and Jeremiah had deemed him unworthy and so I had to too. It was funny how I’d felt so close to him just a few minutes before.
“Okay, Cam Cameron. This song goes out to you and our favorite little Belly Button. Hit it, ladies.” Some girl pushed the play button on the remote. “Summer lovin’, had me a blast…”
I wanted to kill him, but all I could do was shake my head at him and glare.
It wasn’t like I could grab the mike out of his hand in front of all these people.
Jeremiah just grinned at me and started to dance.
One of the girls sitting on the floor jumped up and started dancing with him.
She sang the Olivia Newton-John part, off-key.
Conrad watched in his amused, condescending way.
I heard someone say, “Who is that girl anyway?” She was looking right at me as she said it.