They didn't hear me walk up. But then I said, loudly, "Wow, so first Conrad, then Jeremiah, and now my brother."
She turned around, surprised, and Steven looked surprised too. "Belly--," she started.
"Shut up." I looked at my brother then, and he squirmed. "You're a hypocrite. You don't even like her! You said she bleached out all her brain cells with her Sun-In!"
He cleared his throat. "I never said that," he said, glancing back and forth between Taylor and me. Her eyes had welled up, and she was wiping her left eye with the back of her sweatshirt sleeve. Steven's sweatshirt sleeve. I was too angry to cry.
"I'm telling Jeremiah."
"Belly, just freakin' calm down. You're too old for your temper tantrums," Steven said, shaking his head in his brotherly way.
The words came out of me, hot and fast and sure. "Go to hell." I had never talked like that to my brother before. I don't think I'd ever talked like that to anyone before. Steven blinked.
That's when I started to walk away, and Taylor chased after me. She had to run to catch up, that's how fast I was walking. I guess anger gives you speed.
"Belly, I'm so sorry," she began. "I was going to tell you. Things just happened really fast."
I stopped walking and spun around. "When? When did they happen? Because from what I saw, things were happening so fast with Jeremy, not with my older brother."
She shrugged helplessly, which only made me madder. Poor helpless little Taylor. "I've always had a crush on Steven. You know that, Belly."
"Actually, I didn't. Thanks for telling me."
"When he liked me back, it was like, I couldn't believe it. I didn't think."
"That's the thing. He doesn't like you. He's just using you because you're around," I said. I knew it was cruel, but I also knew it was true. Then I walked into the house and left her standing outside.
She chased after me and grabbed my arm, but I shrugged her off.
"Please don't be mad, Belly. I want things to stay the same with us forever," Taylor said, brown eyes brimming with tears. What she really meant was, I want you to stay the same forever while I grow bigger br**sts and quit violin and kiss your brother.
"Things can't stay the same forever," I said. I was saying it to hurt her because I knew it would.
"Don't be mad at me, okay, Belly?" she pleaded. Taylor hated it when people were mad at her.
"I'm not mad at you," I said. "I just don't think we really know each other anymore."
"Don't say that, Belly."
"I'm only saying it because it's true."
She said, "I'm sorry, okay?"
I looked away for a second. "You promised you'd be nice to him."
"Who? Steven?" Taylor looked genuinely confused. "No. Jeremiah. You said you'd be nice."
She waved her hand in the air. "Oh, he doesn't care."
"Yeah, he does. It's just that you don't know him." Like I do, I wanted to add. "I didn't think you'd ever act so--so ..." I searched for the perfect word, to cut her the way she'd cut me. "Slutty."
"I'm not a slut," she said in a tiny voice.
So this was my power over her, my supposed innocence over her supposed sluttiness. It was all such BS. I would've traded my spot for hers in a second.
Later, Jeremiah asked me if I wanted to play spit. We hadn't played once all summer. It used to be our thing, our tradition. I was grateful to have it back. Even if it was a consolation prize.
He dealt me my hand, and we began to play, but both of us were just going through the motions. We had other things on our minds. I thought that we had this unspoken agreement not to talk about her, that maybe he didn't even know what had happened, but then he said, "I wish you never brought her."
"Me too."
"It's better when it's just us," he said, shuffling his stack.
"Yeah," I agreed.
After she left, after that summer, things were the same and they weren't. She and I were still friends, but not best friends, not like we used to be. But we were still friends.
She'd known me my whole life. It's hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.
Steven went right back to ignoring Taylor and obsessing over Claire Cho. We just pretended like none of it had ever happened. But it did.
Chapter twenty - nine
I heard him come home. I think the whole house must have--except for Jeremiah, who could sleep through a tidal wave. Conrad made his way up the stairs, tripping and cursing, and then he shut his door and turned on his stereo, loud. It was three in the morning.
I lay in bed for about three seconds before I leapt up and ran down the hallway to his room. I knocked, twice, but the music was so loud I doubted he could hear anything. I opened the door. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, taking his shoes off. He looked up and saw me standing there. "Didn't your mom teach you to knock?" he asked, getting up and turning down the stereo.
"I did, but your music was so loud you couldn't hear me. You probably woke up the whole house, Conrad." I
stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I hadn't been in his room in a long time. It was the same as I remembered, perfectly neat. Jeremiah's looked like hurricane season, but not Conrad's. In Conrad's room there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. His pencil drawings, still tacked onto the bulletin board, his model cars still lined up on the dresser. It was comforting to see that at least that was still the same.
His hair was messed up, like someone had been running their hands through it. Probably Red Sox girl. "Are you going to tell on me, Belly? Are you still a tattletale?"
I ignored him and walked over to his desk. Hanging right above it there was a framed picture of him in his football uniform, the football tucked under his arm. "Why'd you quit, anyway?"
"It wasn't fun anymore."
"I thought you loved it."
"No, it was my dad who loved it," he said.
"It seemed like you did too." In the picture he looked tough, but I could tell he was trying not to smile.
"Why'd you quit dance?"
I turned around and looked at him. He was unbuttoning his work shirt, a white button-down, and he had on a T-shirt underneath.
"You remember that?"
"You used to dance all around the house like a little gnome."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Gnomes don't dance. I was a ballerina, for your information."
He smirked. "So why'd you quit, then?"