Truth or Dare (5 page)

“Yep,” I said. I suddenly had this vision of my aunt snatching the letters, and I didn't want to explain the “U R NEXT” business. So I decided to distract her. “You know the mom of one of them. Valerie Franco?”

She grunted. “Yeah, Val. I remember her. Loudmouth. Big boobs.”

“Aunt Shelby!”

“Well, she had 'em in high school for four years. It wasn't exactly a secret.”

“She's an amazing cook,” I said, struggling with some mozzarella. “She's helped us so much since the Accident.”

Aunt Shelby made a face. “Back then she was a classic Mean Girl. What's her daughter like?”

“Abi? She's sort of our leader.”

Aunt Shelby made another face.

“And she's really generous,” I added. “She cares about her friends more than anything.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me about your other friends.”

“Well,” I said, thinking. “Julianna—we call her Jules—is really sweet. She has an older sister who gives her clothes
and stuff, so she's into fashion. Makayla's an incredible swimmer, and she plays the flute, and I think she's going to be president one day. Marley's an amazing artist.”

“Sounds like a great bunch.” Aunt Shelby pushed Brunhilda off her lap. “And which one are you?”

“Me?”

“In the group. What's
your
identity?”

I thought for a few seconds. Maybe it sounds weird, but I'd never thought of myself as the X in the group, or the Y person. “I'm the nice one, I guess.”

Aunt Shelby studied me. “What does
that
mean, exactly?” she asked sharply.

“I'm the one everybody trusts with secrets. I'm a good listener. I stop fights. And I never fight with anyone.”

“Huh,” Aunt Shelby said, as if she'd never heard the concept of “nice” before. “So why aren't you with these friends for the summer, if you never fight?”

I shook my head. I knew this was my chance to tell my aunt everything—about camp, and undressing in the cabin, and how Abi just got her “pd,” leaving only Marley and me. But right then I couldn't.

So I said, “It's a little complicated.”

“In other words, you're fighting.” She picked up a stringy piece of mozzarella with her fingers, watched it stretch, then ate it.

“We aren't,” I protested. “My friends are all awesome. I don't know what I'd do without them.”

“Yeah? Well, if that's true, you're lucky. I know
I
didn't feel that way when
I
was twelve. And you're making friends here on the beach?”

I sipped some water. “I'm mostly collecting shells and stuff. And reading.”

“All day? No social interaction
at all
?”

The truth was:
Yes, Aunt Shelby. If you don't count Tanner and the Two Bikinis, I'm having
no
social interaction
at all. But if I told her that, she'd probably force me to come back to the store to witness her selling powdered unicorn horns, or whatever stuff she kept in those lined-up jars.

“Well, I met a boy,” I admitted. “Once. He isn't a friend or anything—”

Her eyes widened. “Yeah? What's his name?”

“I don't remember. Tanner, I think.”

“Oh, sure, Tanner Clayborne. Nice kid. He'll be a freshman at the local high school. His mom's a steady customer.”

“Of yours?”

“Don't look so shocked, Lia. There are plenty of women around here who rely on my expertise. And in fact, Caroline Clayborne's become a good friend.” Aunt Shelby stood up from the table to put her plate in the sink. “But I've been wondering something, niecelet. If you're at the
beach every day, how come I never see you washing out any bathing suits?”

I felt my cheeks burn. “I just wear regular clothes to the beach.”

“You mean those jeans? You didn't bring any suits from home?”

“No, I did, but they're all . . .” I couldn't finish the sentence. The problem wasn't the suits. It was how I looked in them. How I felt in them.

I chewed my thumb cuticle.

“Hey,” Aunt Shelby said brightly, in a “girl talk” sort of voice. “Would you like to go shopping together? Not even just for bathing suits. For things maybe your dad doesn't know how to buy you. Like the right kind of underwear.”

“I don't need any new underwear.”

“Sure you do! And I know this great place two towns over, Winnie's Intimates. Winnie's actually a customer of mine, and also a close friend. She has a schnauzer.”

Oh sure, I'll buy a bra from her, since she has a schnauzer.

“No, thank you,” I said. I sipped some water.

“Why not? You mean you don't need to because you're boobless?”

I almost spat out the water.

“Aw, come on,” Aunt Shelby said. “So you're a little behind in that department. Big deal. It's nothing but genetics,
anyway! Your mom and I were both boobless until seventh grade. And you're going into seventh this year, am I right?”

I nodded.

“Then you'll definitely need back-to-school bras. It'll be fun! We could make an outing of it—first Winnie's, then lunch at Lulu's Lobster Shack.”

“Aunt Shelby,” I said firmly. “That sounds very nice, but I can just go bra shopping with my friends. At the mall. Val takes us all the time.”

It was the truth, too. Val did drive us to the mall, like, once a month, sometimes specifically to go to Shy Violet's, a store that sold all kinds of underwear things. But I never went on those days—I couldn't imagine actually
buying
anything in there. Besides, I didn't want to undress in front of my friends.

I could tell Aunt Shelby felt disappointed that I'd turned her down, and for a second I felt sorry. But the thought of bra shopping with her was horrific. She'd probably discuss my boobless chest with Winnie right in front of me. In front of the schnauzer, too. It would be worse than a camp cabin.

Although hearing that Mom was flat at my age—that felt nice to know somehow. It made me feel closer to her, in a funny sort of way.

But at the same time, when I got into bed that night, it made me miss her even more.

EVERY SUMMER GOES TOO FAST, in my opinion. Even the kind of sticky summer where the weekdays and weekends basically just melt together.

But one weekend stood out, the time Dad and Nate drove up for a visit, and we ate crabs and corn on the cob and I introduced them to all the cats. Nate wasn't too interested, but Dad's favorite was Escobar; when he crumpled a wad of paper and threw it across the living room, Escobar fetched it for him over and over.

Before they drove back to Maplebrook, they pulled me aside.

“So how's it going up here?” Dad asked quietly.

“Okay,” I said.

Nate poked me. “She's not making you eat toenail fungus?”

“Oh, we eat it all the time,” I answered. “Fungus fondue. Fungus upside-down cake. Fungus à la mode.”

My brother grinned. “Fungus pizza. Deep-fried fungus with fungus gravy.”

“Fungus sorbet. General Tso's toenail fungus.”

“All right, you two,” Dad said, smiling a little. “But seriously, Lee-lee, if you want to come home—”

For a second I thought about it. But none of my friends would be home for weeks, and Maine wasn't terrible. I loved all the cats. Aunt Shelby was Aunt Shelby—but sometimes she could be fun. And there were times when her eyes lit up and her voice crackled in the middle of a sentence; that's when she reminded me of Mom.

“No, I'm fine,” I insisted. “Really, Dad.”

Another weekend Aunt Shelby took me on a seal-sighting boat, which I loved. We also went bicycling a couple of times with her “man friend,” Todd, and picked blueberries along the side of the road.

During the week I mostly read Book Two of HiberNation
and hung out with the cats, or I walked on the beach and collected shells and sea glass. I thought I saw Tanner once or twice from a distance, and I definitely saw Orange Bikini a few times. But she pretended not to recognize me when I said hello to her at the snack bar, so I decided she was a snot. And anyway, she was in high school.

A few times a youngish red-haired woman wearing a UMass tee started a conversation with me as I searched for seashells. She told me her name was Yazmin and that she was studying marine biology in college. But she didn't want to talk about the beach, or the seals, or the shells, or even the sea glass I'd slipped into my jeans pocket. Instead she asked me about my book, my friends at home, who I was hanging out with in Benchley.

I thought it was a little odd but not creepy. Even so, I tried to keep away from her as much as I could. There weren't a whole lot of other people on the beach, so the ones who showed up every day, like Yazmin, were hard to avoid.

It was an okay summer, really. But I was lonely, and also a teeny bit bored.

Although three major things happened. The first was that Aunt Shelby took me bra shopping. Or to be precise: She
tricked
me into going, since she knew exactly how I felt on that subject.

One Sunday morning in early August she announced
that she “needed blueberry pancakes”—not any kind, but the specific ones they made at the Hummingbird Café two towns over, in Wheatly. And she insisted I needed some too, even though I'd already had waffles for breakfast.

We drove there in the pickup truck. Just as we were pulling into the small parking lot behind the Hummingbird Café, a woman with a small gray dog came running over to us, waving. Her hair was puffy in an eighties sort of way, and she wore a leopard-print top with a too-deep V-neck.

“Perfect timing,” she told Aunt Shelby. “I was just taking Mothball out to do his business.”

“No rush. This is Lia.” Aunt Shelby turned to me, smiling. “Lia, this is Winnie, my friend who owns the bra store.”

“I sell
intimates,
not just bras,” Winnie corrected her. “Panties, shapewear, slips, camis, hosiery—”

A truck roared by, and now she was shouting.

“—and I'm having my big August sale now, so everything is forty percent off. So that's perfect timing too!”

She was beaming at me. So was Aunt Shelby.

I stared at them both.

“Wait,” I said. “I thought—”

“And afterward we can go have pancakes.” Aunt Shelby patted my knee. “Winnie isn't usually open on Sundays. She's doing it as a special favor. Isn't that sweet of her?”

I refused to answer.

We waited for Mothball to finish his “business,” and then Winnie led us around the corner to her store. I was furious at my aunt for tricking me like this, but at least we'd be the only customers, I told myself. At least my humiliation would be semiprivate.

“All right, then, chickpea,” Winnie said, waving me over to a three-way mirror. “Don't look so scared. I don't bite. Tape measure time!”

“Can I please use the bathroom first?” I begged.

“Sixty seconds,” Aunt Shelby replied, pointing to her watch. “Hurry.”

I don't know how long I was in there, but I took longer than sixty seconds, on purpose. When I came out, I could hear Shelby saying the words “cell phone” and “imbecile.” As soon as they noticed me, they flashed big fake grins.

“And here she is, Princess Lia,” Winnie exclaimed.

“You mean Leia, if that's a Star Wars reference,” I muttered.

“Oh? It's spelled different?” Before I could answer, Winnie wound the tape measure around my chest. “Because I'm hopeless at spelling. Fortunately, in my line of work, I need just a few—stand still, chickpea—letters:
A
,
B
,
C
,
D
. Although one day last month a new customer walked in, and I swear, Shel, she was a size G. I had to place an
extra-special
order.” Winnie scribbled something on a
Post-it. “You're like a skinny little bird, aren't you, Lia?”

“She eats like a horse,” Aunt Shelby said, as if I weren't standing right there.

“And I
do
eat like a bird, and just
look
at me!” Winnie giggled. “Why don't you take the fitting room, Lia, and get yourself undressed. I'll be just a mo.”

“Mo?” I said innocently. “What's a mo?”

Aunt Shelby gave me a warning eyebrow.

I went into the fitting room, a small curtained closet that smelled like leftover perfume. Why was it suddenly so important to Aunt Shelby that I get a bra? Had something happened this summer? I mean, to me?

I took off all my clothes, examining myself in the full-length mirror.

The answer was: No.

I was still as flat as a board. No waist. No hips. I was a straight line from my head to my toes. You could use me as a yardstick. Or a flagpole.

Also, I was still completely hairless on my legs. Under my navel. Under my arms. I guess you could call me bald, except for my head.