Thirty Sunsets (2 page)

Perhaps my slow slog through Loserville has only just begun.

two

“O-M-Geeee!” Shelley says in a singsong voice, nudging me aside as she plops next to me on the bench, her strawberry-blonde ponytail bouncing as she settles in. “Was Jake Bennett just talking to
you
?”

“Yeah, we’re engaged now.”

Shelley pokes me with her elbow. “Tell me what he said!”

I shut my book and sigh. “Am I, like, hideous?”

Shelley raises an eyebrow. “He told you that you’re hideous?”

I shrug. “He asked if Brian and Olivia are still together. But I think the unspoken upshot was, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re hideous.’”

“What
is
up with those two?” Shelley asks, biting into an apple. “I heard they didn’t even go to the prom.”

“Yeah, I alerted the media.”

Shelley eyes me warily. “Wanna hear the rumors?”

I roll my eyes. Brian and Olivia have garnered significantly more than their fifteen minutes of Peachfield High School fame since they started dating last summer. Their adorableness is apparently too precious to go unchronicled by the school wannabes, and the tongue-wagging went into overdrive when they blew off the prom. I’m starting to feel more like Brian’s publicist than his sister.

“You know I don’t do gossip,” I remind Shelley.

“Oh please.”

I wrinkle my nose at her. Shelley’s been by my side since third grade to blow holes in my above-it-all attitude. Only
she
knows that I crush on cute seniors and harbor secret cravings to be invited to lame proms featuring Eiffel Towers made of Popsicle sticks. She knows I’d rather be in the game than on the sidelines mocking those who have somehow learned how to successfully nail it. She knows it, but it’s our little secret. I love that about her.

“The
rumor
,” Shelley continues conspiratorially, “is that Brian still totally loves Olivia but can’t bear to watch her destroy herself with her bulimia, so, you know, he’s taking a break. The whole tough-love thing.”

I bristle. “Who says she’s bulimic?”

“Uh,
duh
,” Shelley says. “She barfs after lunch, like, every day. And have you noticed how skinny she’s gotten?”

My back stiffens. I’m not exactly president of the Olivia fan club, but that doesn’t mean I want people being snarky behind her back.

Shelley studies my scowl and says, “Whatevs.
You’re
the one who hates her for being your brother’s girlfriend.”

See, that’s the thing: I don’t hate her because she’s my brother’s girlfriend. How petty and neurotic and borderline creepy would
that
be? I hated her
before
she was my brother’s girlfriend, and for totally legitimate reasons. I still remember the day I walked into chorus practice in a romper and she curled a lip at me. I know, a romper, what was I thinking? But god, did that curled lip sear my soul. I’ve been shlumping around in sweats, jeans, and T-shirts ever since.

Then there was the time I saw Olivia at a football game with some pretty blonde who looked just like her. I asked if they were sisters, and both of their jaws dropped. When I walked away, I heard this crazed hyena laughter echoing through the bleachers. I found out afterward that the “sister” was Olivia’s mother. Hysterical, huh? It was such a thrill to know my idiocy made their day.

It’s that kind of thing that makes my stomach clench when Olivia crosses my path. Throw in the factoid that she derailed my brother’s college plans and I think I’ve got a pretty fair claim to an attitude. But I’m not the kind of petty, neurotic, borderline-creepy person who hates my brother’s girlfriends just on principle. Olivia earned it.

Still, I’m way too cool to let her know she gets under my skin. (My romper days are over.)

“Hey, are you coming to Bri’s graduation?” I ask, eager to change the subject. “Mom is having some people over to the house afterward.”

“Oooohh, is she making her gooey butter bars?” Shelley asks.

“I’ll put in your order.”

“I’m in. I’ve got to fill my quota before you abandon me this summer.”

I jab her lightly with my elbow. “You know you’re always welcome at our beach house.”

I wince at how pretentious I just sounded, and Shelley notices right away.

“Oh,
please
can I come to Spackle Beach?” she teases, pressing her palms in prayer position. “You’ll never even know I’m there; I’ll hole up in the east wing and have your butler bring me table scraps.”

I sputter with laughter. Yes, it sounds nauseatingly Kardashian-esque to lay claim to a “beach house,” but Shelley’s been there enough to know that it’s strictly no-frills. The butler, for instance, is only there on weekdays. (Just kidding. We don’t have a butler.)

And yes, it’s on an island (a huge draw for us residents of landlocked Peachfield, South Carolina, a boring orchard grove turned mill town turned computer-parts mecca housing all of forty thousand people), but that’s where the glamour begins and ends. The actual name of the island is Sparkle Beach; Brian and I renamed it as a shout-out to Mom’s badger-
like tenacity, which in this case worked to our advantage.
Dad usually lets Mom have her way, but he put his foot down when she decided that we needed a beach house. Too expensive, too impractical, too much of a flood risk, too indulgent (“Do you want our kids to be spoiled rotten?!?”)—he lobbed all of his most trusty artillery.

But Mom lobbed right back: it would be an investment. We’d never spend another dime on a hotel, cruise ship, or amusement park. Think of the tax breaks! The kids are only young once.

Dad probably would have stood his ground, but in addition to Mom’s arguments, her ace in the hole was having Brian and me jump up and down like banshees pleading her case. (We were happy to oblige.)

We finally wore Dad down, but with the caveat that we would not spend one more red cent on that &#*$ house than was absolutely necessary. We’d furnish it with our old tattered sofa and squeaky recliner; we’d decorate it with Brian’s and my crappy art projects; we’d eat peanut butter sandwiches morning, noon, and night.

“Fine, fine!” we’d all squealed, scooping each other off the floor in ecstasy.
Our own beach house!
I’d never felt so deliciously elite in my life.

Mom’s been a good sport about making good on her end of the bargain. When Brian knocked over a space heater and seared a hole in the house’s family room carpet, Mom tossed an area rug on top of it. When I splattered nail polish on the wall, she hung a mirror to cover it, even though it was way lower than the eye-level height she prefers. When the tattered sofa started literally bursting at the seams, she flung a slipcover over it.

So we dubbed it the Spackle Beach House. Looks great at a glance, but things get dicey if you dig just beneath the surface.

“
Come
,” I cajole Shelley.

“You’ll be there in June?”

“Right, the whole month. We’re leaving a couple of days after Bri’s graduation. We’ll even upgrade you to the
west
wing this summer, if you’d like.”

She gives an exaggerated pout. “I gotta work at my aunt’s office this summer.”

I squinch up my face disapprovingly. “The veterinarian?”

She huffs. “Yes, Forrest. I’ll be cleaning out litter boxes while you loll on the beach. Thanks for making sure we’re both abundantly clear on that point.”

I narrow my eyes at her playfully, then turn wistful. “At least we’ll be away from
her
for a while. Maybe I can make Brian come to his senses once he has a little distance from her. I mean,
Starrett Community College
? He’s planned on studying pre-med at Vanderbilt since he was, like, in the womb, then Olivia breezes into his life and it’s like, ‘Welding school, here I come.’”

The bell rings, and Shelley and I rise from the bench as other students start filing past us en route to their next class.

“I like welders,” she says cheerfully as she hoists her backpack onto her shoulders, tossing her apple core into a nearby trash can. “But not as much as I like gooey butter bars. Remind your mom: gooey butter bars.”

I tuck my Faulkner novel into my backpack.

“Right. Gooey butter bars.”

three

“The
crudités
, Forrest, the
crudités
.”

Mom’s voice is a whisper, but it’s a Significant Whisper, an I’m-asking-you-for-the-last-time-to-refill-the-gosh-darn-crudité-tray whisper.

Then she turns around and gives an exaggerated smile to Aunt Faye.

“More crudités, coming up!” she says brightly, and really, just how desperate is Aunt Faye (or anyone else, for that matter) for more crudités?

But I slog to the kitchen anyway. Mom’s type-A personality goes into overdrive when she’s playing hostess, and she’s been anal for a full two weeks about Brian’s graduation party.

Bri is walking out of the kitchen as I walk in, licking gooey butter bar icing from his fingers. He’s changed from his graduation garb into shorts and a T-shirt, but he’s wearing his honors tassel around his neck. I’d joked to him before the ceremony that I planned to count how many times Mom worked the fact that he’s an honors student into conversation throughout the evening, so he tugs on the tassel as an inside joke.

“
Fourteen
,” I mouth, but truly, she’s probably mentioned it twice that many times by now. I’ve stopped counting, because now I’m on crudité patrol.

I open the fridge and grab baggies of crisp baby carrots, cucumbers, celery sticks, and green peppers, then walk them back out to the buffet table. Mom gives me a wide-eyed look of alarm from across the room, as in
OMG, don’t you know you’re supposed to take the tray to the kitchen rather than the baggies to the buffet table?

I drop my jaw and arch my brows in mock horror, as in
OMG, Mom, how will I ever make this up to you?

Mom giggles into her fingertips in spite of herself, then resumes her conversation with Aunt Faye as I dump the veggies onto the tray.

As crazy as Mom drives me, I’m really happy to see her smile. She’s been hugely tense lately, and not just because she’s in hostess mode.

She’s even more anti-Olivia than I am, and it killed her when Brian blew off Vanderbilt. I was the one who broke the news to her. I’d watched him open his acceptance letter in the kitchen one day after school a few months earlier, read it like it was a credit card offer, then toss it into the garbage can along with the empty Snickers wrapper he was holding.

“What?” he’d asked blandly when he saw my expression.

“That was from Vandy, right?” I said.

He nodded
.

“Well? Did you get in?”

He shrugged. “Yeah … ”

I flung my hands in the air. “Then you’re going, idiot!”

Brian smiled indulgently, a dimple burrowing into his left cheek. “You can have my spot.”

I lurched toward him, grabbing his shoulders. “You are not blowing off college for her!”

The smile held steady, but his eyes turned slightly flinty. His message was clear:
I’m keeping my cool, Forrest, but drop it.

But I couldn’t drop it. It was one thing when he was just
intimating
a change in plans. It was another to toss his acceptance letter into the trash can, staining it with Snickers.

“For
her
?” I practically shrieked. “For that
bimbo
? Her own
mother
flaked out on her, Brian!”

And that’s when his gaze hardened. He shook his shoulders roughly to dislodge my hands. “Talk about her like that again,” he said steadily, “and we’re done.”

Then he turned and walked away.

I literally shivered. My knees buckled. My palm opened in front of me, a pathetic proffer to the gods to hand me a way to fix this.

Done
? Can a brother and sister be
done
? We hadn’t even talked like that when we were kids fighting over the Pogs in our Alpha-Bits.

But if I’d had any doubt before, I didn’t any more. He would choose her over me if he had to. Geez, he was choosing her over
college
, which was almost even worse. Brian had talked about medical school since he was in kindergarten. Sure, Mom had planted the seed, but it
took,
you know? He really is scary-good at math and science. He really does love examining every disgusting bug in the park. He grills our family doctor about the exact nature of whatever virus is making his ear ache. He was meant to be a doctor, and Vanderbilt had always been his dream.