Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (3 page)

“So how'd the year at Whittier end up?” I asked as the song on the radio faded to an end.

Mona didn't answer right away. Instead she wiggled her flip-flop off her foot, drawing my attention to her matching French pedicure.

“Was it as bad as you expected?”

Mona shifted in her seat, tucking her bare foot under her leg and turning toward me. “It was tough, although it got better. But you know all that. I want to know about what went on here. Tell me about everyone.”

“Same old, same old. Brian and Alicia broke up about six times.” If Mona wasn't going to tell me about Boston, then I figured I may as well tell her about the island. I filled her in on the people she'd find most interesting. When I'd pretty much run through our entire junior class, I tried again. “So, really, what about your first year at Whittier?”

“I did end up meeting some girls who were fun to hang out with,” she owned up, almost as if she was confessing something she wished she didn't have to admit.

“Come on, tell me,” I urged, curious to hear about the girls Mona spent the past year with. “Who were they?”

Mona started rattling off the names of people I didn't know: Jilly, Devon, Abby, Emily, Samantha something.

“I bet they're going to miss you this summer.”

“Well, a bunch of them actually have houses here,” she added at the end, like the fact that her friends summered on the island was an afterthought.

“That's cool,” I told her, and hoped it sounded like I meant it. Because a part of me did. I hated listening to how unhappy Mona was in Boston those first few months, even if I liked hearing how much she missed me. There was no way I'd want Mona to be miserable and friendless in Boston. It wasn't as if I'd locked myself in a closet and swore off all social contact once Mona moved. I hung out with other friends. It's just that, by junior year, everyone had already chosen the groups they'd hang out with. It was a lot easier to find a boyfriend than a best friend, which was why I ended up spending most of my time with Robbie. I'd hate to think I was one of those girls who substituted her best friend with her boyfriend, but when your best friend isn't around, there aren't many choices. And the fact is, it's easier to find a boyfriend than trying to learn everything there is to know about someone else, or teaching them what you like and don't like and how you hate it when people don't wave thank you when you let them go first at a stop sign, even though it's your turn. Because that's what a best friend is, someone you don't have to explain yourself to, someone who just knows. Mona was the person who always knew without any explanation, and I was looking forward to having her all to myself again this summer.

I glanced over at Mona, the dark, smooth hair lying against her shoulders, the ends bending under ever so slightly. It was so obviously the work of a serious blow-out because nobody could get their hair that perfect on all sides, especially Mona,
who was a lefty and had significant issues wielding a brush with her right hand.

There was a time when we used to cut each other's hair, although I wouldn't say it was a good time hairwise for either of us. Mostly we just trimmed the ends with a pair of scissors we found in my mom's sewing basket. But one time, in seventh grade, Mona decided I needed bangs. And I decided she needed a short little pixie cut that was all the rage at the time. We got the sewing basket out and we did rock, paper, scissors to see who'd go first. I lost. In the five minutes that followed Mona discovered she would never have a future in the salon business, and I discovered a nasty cowlick that would seal my fate as someone who should never wear bangs.

I was about to remind Mona of that afternoon, about my blonde chunks of hair on the bathroom floor, some of the strands almost white from the sun, and how she'd stepped back to take a look at me, scissors still in hand, and declared, “It looks great, really, but I don't think I'm going to go for the pixie thing after all.”

Instead, I took it all in, Mona's perfect hair, the polished nails, the round diamond studs blinking at me from her earlobes, and I stopped, letting the song on the radio fill the silence instead.

“So what are your summer plans?” Mona asked when the song ended and a commercial came on.

“Well, I have a surprise for you.”

“What?”

I paused for dramatic effect. “I got us jobs at the Willow.”

I expected Mona to freak out. She'd always been a shrieker, like when Poppy planned a surprise party for her thirteenth birthday and Mona walked through her front door to discover
eleven girls jumping out from behind the furniture. But this time she didn't cover her mouth and yell, “Oh, my god!” Instead, she just sat there with a sort of half-smile on her lips, as if she didn't quite understand what I'd said. “What do you mean, you got us jobs?”

“I mean I did it. We'll be serving breakfast and helping out around the inn the rest of the time, doing whatever else it is you do at an inn. I start tomorrow, but Wendy said you could wait until the end of the week if you wanted to get settled in first.”

Still, no freaking out.

“This guy Lexi met knew somebody who knew Wendy, the new owner,” I explained, and still there wasn't a noise coming from my passenger seat. I knew my news wasn't the equivalent of a surprise party, but still, some reaction would have been nice. “Aren't you surprised? Isn't it going to be great?”

Mona picked at her thumbnail, scratching at the glossy top coat but not hard enough to actually remove any polish. “Yeah, I'm surprised. And yeah, it's great.” She let the last word linger, as if it was anything but great. As if there was more she wanted to say but didn't.

“And?”

This time Mona bought an extra ten seconds by clearing her throat. “And I think it's really sweet of you to have done that, but I wish you would have asked me.”

“Asking someone if they'd like your surprise kind of ruins the surprise, right?”

Mona smiled. “Right.”

“So what's the problem?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear and took a deep breath, stalling. And that's when I knew it wasn't going to be good.
“Well, I guess I wasn't really planning on getting a job this summer.”

“I know. I figured you wouldn't be able to look for anything from so far away, so I did it for you.”

Mona untucked the hair she'd just tucked behind her ear, pulling it forward until the perfectly round solitaire diamond was covered.

“I didn't mean that I couldn't look for a job, I meant that I wasn't planning on getting a job because I don't have to.” She spoke the words slowly, letting them sink in.

“So you're saying . . .?” I tried one more time, even though I knew exactly what she was saying. I just wanted to hear her say it without all the hair tucking and deep breaths and throat clearing.

“I guess I'm saying that even though I totally appreciate you thinking of me and all that, and I do, Kendra, really”—she reached over and squeezed my shoulder—“I don't think I'll be taking the job at the Willow.”

A new song came on the radio, its drumbeat pulsing in the silence, and Mona reached over and turned down the volume.

“But I still think it's very cool, and really great of you to do that for me. I'm sure you'll still have a blast.” She smiled but I could tell it was forced. You'd think after being my best friend for ten years, she wouldn't even try to fake it. “I'll even probably regret not taking it once I hear how much fun you're having.”

How much fun I'm having? Serving omelets and berry pancakes at eight o'clock in the morning? Was she kidding me? I wasn't letting her off that easy. And, unlike Mona, I didn't even try to fake it. “The fun part about it was that we'd be working together, Mona.”

“I know, but still.” Mona shifted in her seat, slipping her bare foot back into the flip-flop on the floor mat. “You understand, right?”

Yeah, I understood. When your mother marries Malcolm Keener III, you don't need a summer job. You don't need to get up at six o'clock in the morning five days a week and you certainly don't need to serve cheese omelets to a bunch of tourists who couldn't possibly fall asleep without lavender sachets on their pillows.

I hadn't forgotten that summer kids don't work. They get tans, hang out downtown, and buy stuff. I guess I'd just forgotten that now Mona was one of them.

It wasn't even the not-working part that bothered me so much. It was the fact that she would've been working with me and it didn't even make a difference to her. “Sure,” I told her, my voice frostier than I'd intended. “I get it.”

As I took a left onto Atlantic Drive, Malcolm's house came into view, its gray shingles offset by the brilliant white trim of the ocean-facing decks. Before I knew it was Malcolm's house, before he and Izzy even started dating, I always wondered what kind of people had summer homes four times larger than most people's year-round homes. Once I met Malcolm, I learned they were the type of people who could have whatever they wanted. Eventually I started thinking of it as Malcolm's house rather than an imposing estate with an amazing view, but I didn't know if I'd ever be able to think of it as Mona's home.

I turned my gaze on Mona, but instead of looking at her summer home she was chewing her lip and staring into her lap.

She wasn't going to take the job, but at least she didn't look
happy about it. And for whatever reason, seeing Mona feel so bad made me feel sort of bad, too.

Yeah, it sucked. And yes, there was no reason she couldn't work at the Willow if she really wanted to, but I guess I couldn't blame her. Given the option of hanging out or working, I'd probably make the same choice. Probably
everyone
would make the same choice.

Still, even if we wouldn't be working side by side, we had the whole summer together. I wasn't about to have the entire summer ruined in the first twenty minutes.

“So what do you want to do this afternoon?” I asked, the edge gone from my voice.

“Well,” Mona began, looking up at me as if to gauge whether I was really willing to forgive her so easily. “I sort of promised some friends I'd meet them at South Beach.”

“Oh.”

“You can come, if you want,” she offered. “But I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to hang out with a bunch of people you don't know.”

I assumed a bunch of people meant Jilly and Devon and the rest of the Whittier Academy crew.

“I'll go,” I told her.

“Really?” She seemed surprised.

“Really. I'd like to meet them.”

“Okay, then.” Mona brightened and for the first time since she ran toward me at the ferry I recognized the Mona I remembered. “Why don't you go home and grab your suit and meet us there. I'll have Zilda pack us some sandwiches for lunch.”

Last summer Mona would practically break out into a sweat when she'd find Zilda washing her bathing suit or waiting
on the patio with a pitcher of lemonade when we'd lay out by Malcolm's pool.
Don't you think it's creepy having somebody doing everything for you?
she'd asked me, and I'd sort of agreed, even though I couldn't even imagine being in that position. I guess Mona got over the creepiness factor.

“Sure,” I agreed, trying to sound enthusiastic.

“Great, to the left of the lifeguard's stand in an hour.”

And with that she jumped out of the car and ran up the front walk toward the door, the Louis Vuitton purse bouncing along behind her.

The house was empty when I got home, but I didn't expect anybody to be there. With the deli opening in exactly eleven days, my parents, Lexi, and Bart were at the store getting everything ready for the grand opening. July Fourth was two weeks away, and that meant it was crunch time. The contractor had finally finished the build-out, three weeks late, and last night Lexi couldn't stop talking about the new refrigerator and freezer the electrician was installing today (although they were refurbished, so they weren't really new). I couldn't muster her level of enthusiasm for a pair of stainless steel appliances, but I was thankful that everyone was back to talking again. After the inspector discovered some wiring wasn't up to code, and the contractor didn't show up to work the first week of March as scheduled, there wasn't a lot of chatty conversation going on in the house. By Memorial Day weekend our family dinners had become nearly silent, with only curt requests to pass the salt and pepper accompanying the sound of forks clanking on plates. I almost felt sorry for Bart. He was probably regretting the day he told Lexi he was more than willing to live with his in-laws if it meant saving
some money so they could eventually get a place of their own. When Lexi came up with the idea for the deli, it became the number one topic of conversation in our house, and saving for a place of their own became a distant second to saving for the deli. Lexi was way into the idea of the deli. And Bart was way into Lexi, although they'd only been married two years, so there was still time for that to change. Granted, they had the whole high school sweetheart thing going for them, but I was almost convinced that Lexi's obsession with opening the deli would do them in. Restaurant supply catalogs littered the house, the choice of which pickles to serve practically gave my father an ulcer, and we all got to count down to the grand opening every single day.

“What's that?” I'd asked, pointing to the 8½ x 11 piece of paper stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. On it, the number 49 was written in thick black marker. I recognized Lexi's bubbly handwriting.

“Forty-nine days until the deli opens,” she'd told me, and I was sure she could have recited the exact number of hours and minutes if I'd asked her.

When forty-nine days were up and the plumber was still waiting for the industrial-size steel sink Lexi had picked out of a restaurant-supply catalog, and the drywall was only halfway finished, I figured someone would remove the countdown from the front of the fridge so we didn't have a constant reminder that nothing was working out the way Lexi planned. But nobody did, so every night we'd sit down to dinner, a big, bubble number 1 written in bright red marker reminding us all that the great idea Lexi and Bart had had last December had turned into a fiasco.