You're Invited (14 page)

I hope. Even though we managed to save this party—barely—an extra person would've been really nice. Plus it's just not the same without Lauren. It's like a cake with a slice missing. RSVP was
supposed
to bring us all closer, not drive a wedge between us. Instead, Lauren isn't part of it at all, I'm more annoyed than ever at my mom, and now Vi is mad at
me
. Remind me which part of this is fun?

Becca tugs on my sleeve. “Hey, check it out!”

She grins and points to Linney, who is making her Sour Patch Kids face again, surrounded by girls holding fistfuls of Spanish moss.

We creep closer, in time to hear Anna Wright ask, “Can you just show me how you did that draping with it? I want to look
exactly
as good as you made Vi look.”

Becca and I stuff our hands in our mouths to keep from laughing.

Okay, so maybe there are one or two things about this that are fun.

Bring your own canine pal and join Joe and his owner, Mr. Charles Vernon, for barks and bites on

Saturday, July 18, at one o'clock

Sandpiper Active Senior Living's Party Room

1101 Rosalinde Street

No gifts, please

Leashes will be provided for doggy strolls outside

Party hosted by Mrs. Geraldine “Bubby” Simmons

RSVP to Sadie Pleffer, (910) 555-0110 or [email protected]

entrepreneur
noun

one who manages or organizes a business

Use in a sentence:

RSVP is a great opportunity to become an entrepreneur—for people who don't already have ten other things to do in one day.

H
ey, baby / I want to take you on a rocket ship to the sky /
So we can have a little talk, eye to eye. . . .

Bubby. She made me change her ringtone to this new Harry Hart song because she thinks he's “all that and a bag of chips.” Never mind that having a talk eye to eye doesn't make any sense at all.

The song plays again. It's eight p.m., and I've spent all day dodging calls and texts from my friends, bugging me to join them at Linney's. Then Becca sent me this
picture of Vi looking like . . . well, not Vi, and I haven't heard anything else. I guess they gave up.

I kind of wish I knew how the party turned out.

Harry Hart starts singing again. To make him shut up, I answer the phone.

Bubby doesn't even say hi. She just jumps right in. “Lo baby, you need to loosen up. I read on the Tweeter that some kids are having a par-tay tonight at the cove. I RSVP'd you. Do you think they'd care if I showed up too? I'd wear my clubbing clothes. And I could oil up ol' Wanda and ride there in style.”

I cringe just a little. Wanda is Bubby's fancy new electric old-people scooter, and is short for “wanda around.” As in, wander around the mall. Or middle-school parties. The funniest thing about Wanda is that Bubby doesn't even need it. She lives at Sandpiper Beach
Active
Senior Living for a reason. She just likes a “fine set of wheels,” she told me when she bought it.

“Bubby, I can't go to a party tonight. I have SAT class in the morning. And it's Twitter, by the way, not Tweeter.”

“I know we talked at Bunco today about all of your
responsibilities
.” Bubby says “responsibilities” like it's some kind of bad word. “But instead of hanging with a bunch of oldsters like my friends, you should totes be
throwing these parties with your girls. Did I tell you that my BFF died last week?”

“What? Bubby, why didn't you say anything?” I picture Bubby alone in her apartment, crying about her friend. I can barely stand my friends planning parties without me, never mind not being here at all. I feel awful for her.

“It's okay, Lo. We were friends in school, but then she moved to Wisconsin and I didn't talk to her again until I found her on the Tweeter last month. Then she died.”

“So you're telling me I need to join RSVP before my friends move away and die?”

“Looky here. Before long, you and the girls will be too busy going to work and having your own kids. And then you'll think back to how it was when you were twelve. All of these parties, and the beach, and the cute boys! You'll remember all this great stuff and it'll give you all the feels. But only if you get in on the action! Who knows, you might even go to Atlantic City and flirt with some nice boys on leave and stay up till dawn talking about how amazeballs the future'll be.”

Okay, I know she's not talking about me with that last part. Bubby's
actually quiet for a moment and I'm pretty sure I hear her sniffling through the phone. Maybe that friend meant more to her than she let on.

“Bubby?” I say quietly. “Are you all right?”

She clears her throat. “Couldn't be better. Now promise me you'll join your girls and live it up?”

“I'll think about it. I promise.” And that's all I can do.

• • •

I thought about what Bubby said until I fell asleep last night. It was the first thing that popped into my head this morning even though I had to do a practice math test at SAT class. And I'm still thinking about it as I comb the beach for shells with Vi. To be honest, I really, really want to be part of RSVP. I always have, but I still can't figure out how to make it fit in with everything else I have to do this summer.

“Got it!” Vi sprints through the surf, holding up her prize. Or my prize, really, since she hands it to me. A gorgeous, perfectly formed tiny conch shell.

“How did you spot this?” I ask as I examine the beautiful spiraled shell. Whole conch shells are super rare here, since the ocean gets really rough and tends to break them before they reach shore. I've only ever found a few, and all of those near where Sadie lives, in a
protected little cove at the south end of the island.

But never here, in one of the busiest parts of the beach, pretty much right in front of Vi's grandmother's house.

Vi shrugs, like it's no big deal that she found this amazing, rare shell. “It rolled across my foot.”

I peer at the sand, looking for more shells. The tide's going out, which is the best time for shell-collecting. It's nice having Vi scoping the sand right next to me. I feel like I've barely seen my friends this week. They were so busy with Linney's party, and I . . . wasn't. Busy with the party, that is. I don't dare tell Vi I'm trying to figure out if I can join or not. She'll tell Sadie and Becca, and then they'll never let up on me till I give in.

“So?” Vi says.

“Soooo . . . ?” I'd love to find another conch, but I suppose I should count myself lucky to have gotten one today. Not that luck has anything to do with it. Luck is something that people make up to explain coincidences. And the probability that another coincidence involving me and a conch shell will happen is pretty low.

“Lauren! Did you hear anything I said?”

I look up. Vi's standing in front of me, hands on her hips.

Then I feel like a huge jerk, because Vi had an awful time at Linney's party yesterday. That's probably what she was talking about. I think. “But it sounds like you had the last say at the end,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes. “I guess. I mean, it was nice seeing Linney all ticked off, but the way Lance and the other guys kept acting was just plain weird. Though Becca was kind of amazing—”

I almost drop my conch shell. “Wait. Did you just say you
liked
Becca's makeover?”

Her face goes red. “Maybe. Just a little. But it's not like I have time to do that stuff every time I go out the way she does. And I'd look pretty silly showing up to swim or play volleyball with a head full of curls and glimmery lip gloss.” Then she shakes her head. “You're totally distracting me. That's not what we were talking about.”

Shoot. I know what Vi's going to say next. I look past her at the tall redbrick lighthouse that's been on Sandpiper Beach since June 30, 1857. People used to live in the little house attached to it, to take care of the lighthouse and keep the light going, but now it's all automated and no one lives there. Sometimes I think it would be fun to move into the cute matching redbrick
house, but then again, the place is probably full of ghosts and I know—

“Laur-
EN
. You're not paying attention at all. Quit stalling and answer, already.” Vi's twisting that ponytail again and squinting at me in the bright sun.

“I don't know,” I say. And that's the truth. When I came over earlier, Vi laid yesterday's whole awful party down on me. How Linney wanted her to model the dress, and how neither Sadie nor Becca listened to her when she said she didn't want to. And—worst of all—how she thinks it wouldn't have happened the way it did if I'd been there.

Then I got
another
of Becca's texts. This one said,
U know u want 2 be / Part of RSVP / Laugh with yr friends / Have fun once again.
She's been on a rhyming streak all day. And, if that wasn't enough, Sadie called to ask my opinion on whether going to Party Me Hearties on the mainland is more cost-effective than using the little stationery store on the island.

It's like they know I'm super confused and maybe even
thisclose
to joining. I wonder if Bubby ratted me out.

“ ‘I don't know' isn't an answer,” Vi says.

I turn the conch shell over and over in my hand. “But I don't. I think you're right. Becca's too into Ryan
to notice anything else, and Sadie's too preoccupied with making the business work. But if I'd been there, we could've figured out what Linney was up to before she even asked you to model that dress.”

“It was two against one.” Vi kicks a pile of seaweed with her bare toes, which completely freaks out one of the adorable little sandpipers in front of us. The tiny bird goes running so fast, his legs look like the Road Runner's from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. “With you there, I'd at least have had a fighting chance. So now you're going to join, right? Sadie and Becca really want you, too.” She looks at me with this hopeful gleam in her eyes.

“I don't know . . . Honestly, I want to. I think it would be fun, and I'm all about helping you and the other girls, but, Vi . . . I just have so much else going on!” Not to mention it's already the second week of July and I've barely touched my summer reading list.

“You wouldn't even have to be the treasurer or anything! I'll keep doing that. All you have to do is show up at the parties,” Vi says. She folds her hands like she's praying. “Please? Pretty please?”

“That's not really fair, though. If I joined, I'd feel bad if I didn't help with getting decorations or something.” I
want to say “YES!” so badly, but that wouldn't be right. If I joined, I'd need to haul my own anchor, as Dad likes to say.