I suppose I did know. He wanted to protect Jeremiah from the fact that his dad was an ass**le. But it wasn’t like Jeremiah didn’t already know who his dad was. It wasn’t like Jeremiah was some dumb kid without a clue. He had a right to know if the house was for sale.
I guessed Conrad read all of this on my face, because he said in that mocking, careless way of his, “So can you do that for me, Belly? Can you keep a secret from your BFF Jeremiah? I know you two don’t keep secrets from each other, but can you handle it just this once?”
When I glared at him, all ready to tell him what he could do with his secret, he said, “Please?” and his voice was pleading.
So I said, “All right. For now.”
“Thank you,” he said, and he brushed past me and headed upstairs. His bedroom door closed, and the air conditioning kicked on.
I stayed put.
It took a minute for everything to sink in. Conrad didn’t just run away to surf. He didn’t run away for the sake of running away. He came to save the house.
Chapter twenty-three
Later that afternoon Jeremiah and Conrad went surfing again. I thought maybe Conrad wanted to tell him about the house, just the two of them. And maybe Jeremiah wanted to try and talk to Conrad about school again, just the two of them. That was fine by me. I was content just watching.
I watched them from the porch. I sat in a deck chair with my towel wrapped tight around me. There was something so comforting and right about coming out of the pool wet and your mom putting a towel around your shoulders, like a cape. Even without a mother there to do it for you, it was good, cozy. Achingly familiar in a way that made me wish I was still eight. Eight was before death or divorce or heartbreak. Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders, Judy Blume, in bed by nine thirty.
I sat there thinking those melancholy kinds of thoughts for a long while. Someone was barbecuing; I could smell charcoal burning. I wondered if it was the Rubensteins, or maybe it was the Tolers. I wondered if they were grilling burgers, or steak. I realized I was hungry.
I wandered into the kitchen but I couldn’t find anything to eat. Just Conrad’s beer. Taylor told me once that beer was just like bread, all carbohydrates. I figured that even though I hated the taste of it, I might as well drink it if it’d fill me up.
So I took one and walked back outside with it. I sat back down on my deck chair and popped the top off the can. It snapped very satisfyingly. It was strange to be in this house alone. Not a bad feeling, just a different one. I’d been coming to this house my whole life and I could count on one hand the number of times I’d been alone in it. I felt older now. Which I suppose I was, but I guess I didn’t remember feeling old last summer.
I took a long sip of beer and I was glad Jeremiah and Conrad weren’t there to see me, because I made a terrible face and I knew they’d give me crap for it.
I was taking another sip when I heard someone clear his throat. I looked up and I nearly choked. It was Mr. Fisher.
“Hello, Belly,” he said. He was wearing a suit, like he’d come straight from work, which he probably had, even though it was a Saturday. And somehow his suit wasn’t even rumpled, even after a long drive.
“Hi, Mr. Fisher,” I said, and my voice came out all nervous and shaky.
My first thought was, We should have just forced Conrad into the car and made him go back to school and take his stupid tests . Giving him time was a huge mistake. I could see that now. I should have pushed Jeremiah into pushing Conrad.
Mr. Fisher raised an eyebrow at my beer and I realized I was still holding it, my fingers laced around it so tight they were numb. I set the beer on the ground, and my hair fell in my face, for which I was glad. It was a moment to hide, to figure out what to say next.
I did what I always did—I deferred to the boys. “Um, so, Conrad and Jeremiah aren’t here right now.” My mind was racing. They would be back any minute.
Mr. Fisher didn’t say anything, he just nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he walked up the porch steps and sat in the chair next to mine. He picked up my beer and took a long drink. “How’s Conrad?” he asked, setting the beer on his armrest.
“He’s good,” I said right away. And then I felt foolish, because he wasn’t good at all. His mother had just died. He’d run away from school. How could he be good? How could any of us? But I guess, in a sense, he was good, because he had purpose again. He had a reason. To live. He had a goal; he had an enemy. Those were good incentives. Even if the enemy was his father.
“I don’t know what that kid is thinking,” Mr. Fisher said, shaking his head.
What could I say to that? I never knew what Conrad was thinking. I was sure not many people did. Even still, I felt defensive of him. Protective.
Mr. Fisher and I sat in silence. Not companionable, easy silence, but stiff and awful. He never had anything to say to me, and I never knew what to say to him. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “How’s school?”
“It’s over,” I said, chewing on my bottom lip and feeling twelve. “Just finished. I’ll be a senior this fall.”
“Do you know where you want to go to college?”
“Not really.” The wrong answer, I knew, because college was one thing Mr. Fisher was interested in talking about. The right kind of college, I mean.
And then we were silent again.
This was also familiar. That feeling of dread, of impending doom. The feeling that I was In Trouble. That we all were.
Chapter twenty-four
Milk shakes. Milk shakes were Mr. Fisher’s thing. When Mr. Fisher came to the summer house, there were milk shakes all the time. He’d buy a Neapolitan carton of ice cream. Steven and Conrad were chocolate, Jeremiah was strawberry, and I liked a vanilla-chocolate mix, like those Frosties at Wendy’s. But thick-thick. Mr. Fisher’s milk shakes were better than Wendy’s. He had a fancy blender he liked to use, that none of us kids were supposed to mess with. Not that he said so, exactly, but we knew not to. And we never did. Until Jeremiah had the idea for Kool-Aid Slurpees.
There were no 7-Elevens in Cousins, and even though we had milk shakes, we sometimes yearned for Slurpees. When it was especially hot outside, one of us would say, “Man, I want a Slurpee,” and then all of us would be thinking about it all day. So when Jeremiah had this idea for Kool-Aid Slurpees, it was, like, kismet. He was nine and I was eight, and at the time it sounded like the greatest idea in the world, ever.