The Summer I Turned Pretty

chapter one

We’d been driving for about seven thousand years. Or at least that’s how it felt. My brother, Steven, drove slower than our Granna. I sat next to him in the passenger seat with my feet up on the dashboard. Meanwhile, my mother was passed out in the backseat. Even when she slept, she looked alert, like at any second she could wake up and direct traffic.

Go faster, I urged Steven, poking him in the shoulder. Let’s pass that kid on the bike.

Steven shrugged me off. Never touch the driver, he said. And take your dirty feet off my dashboard.

I wiggled my toes back and forth. They looked pretty clean to me. It’s not your dashboard. It’s gonna be my car soon, you know.

If you ever get your license, he scoffed. People like you shouldn’t even be allowed to drive.

Hey, look, I said, pointing out the window. That guy in a wheelchair just lapped us!

Steven ignored me, and so I started to fiddle with the radio. One of my favorite things about going to the beach was the radio stations. I was as familiar with them as I was with the ones back home, and listening to Q94 made me just really know inside that I was there, at the beach.

I found my favorite station, the one that played everything from pop to oldies to hip-hop. Tom Petty was singing Free Fallin’. I sang right along with him. She’s a good girl, crazy ’bout Elvis. Loves horses and her boyfriend too.

Steven reached over to switch stations, and I slapped his hand away. Belly, your voice makes me want to run this car into the ocean. He pretended to swerve right.

I sang even louder, which woke up my mother, and she started to sing too. We both had terrible voices, and Steven shook his head in his disgusted Steven way. He hated being outnumbered. It was what bothered him most about our parents being divorced, being the lone guy, without our dad to take his side.

We drove through town slowly, and even though I’d just teased Steven about it, I didn’t really mind. I loved this drive, this moment. Seeing the town again, Jimmy’s Crab Shack, the Putt Putt, all the surf shops. It was like coming home after you’d been gone a long, long time. It held a million promises of summer and of what just might be.

As we got closer and closer to the house, I could feel that familiar flutter in my chest. We were almost there.

I rolled down the window and took it all in. The air tasted just the same, smelled just the same. The wind making my hair feel sticky, the salty sea breeze, all of it felt just right. Like it had been waiting for me to get there.

Steven elbowed me. Are you thinking about Conrad? he asked mockingly.

For once the answer was no. No, I snapped.

My mother stuck her head in between our two seats. Belly, do you still like Conrad? From the looks of things last summer, I thought there might be something between you and Jeremiah.

WHAT? You and Jeremiah? Steven looked sickened. What happened with you and Jeremiah?

Nothing, I told them both. I could feel the flush rising up from my chest. I wished I had a tan already to cover it up. Mom, just because two people are good friends, it doesn’t mean there’s anything going on. Please never bring that up again.

My mother leaned back into the backseat. Done, she said. Her voice had that note of finality that I knew Steven wouldn’t be able to break through.

Because he was Steven, he tried anyway. What happened with you and Jeremiah? You can’t say something like that and not explain.

Get over it, I told him. Telling Steven anything would only give him ammunition to make fun of me. And anyway, there was nothing to tell. There had never been anything to tell, not really.

Conrad and Jeremiah were Beck’s boys. Beck was Susannah Fisher, formerly Susannah Beck. My mother was the only one who called her Beck. They’d known each other since they were nine—blood sisters, they called each other. And they had the scars to prove it—identical marks on their wrists that looked like hearts.

Susannah told me that when I was born, she knew I was destined for one of her boys. She said it was fate. My mother, who didn’t normally go in for that kind of thing, said it would be perfect, as long as I’d had at least a few loves before I settled down. Actually, she said lovers, but that word made me cringe. Susannah put her hands on my cheeks and said, Belly, you have my unequivocal blessing. I’d hate to lose my boys to anyone else.

We’d been going to Susannah’s beach house in Cousins Beach every summer since I was a baby, since before I was born even. For me, Cousins was less about the town and more about the house. The house was my world. We had our own stretch of beach, all to ourselves. The summer house was made up of lots of things. The wraparound porch we used to run around on, jugs of sun tea, the swimming pool at night—but the boys, the boys most of all.

I always wondered what the boys looked like in December. I tried to picture them in cranberry-colored scarves and turtleneck sweaters, rosy-cheeked and standing beside a Christmas tree, but the image always seemed false. I did not know the winter Jeremiah or the winter Conrad, and I was jealous of everyone who did. I got flip-flops and sunburned noses and swim trunks and sand. But what about those New England girls who had snowball fights with them in the woods? The ones who snuggled up to them while they waited for the car to heat up, the ones they gave their coats to when it was chilly outside. Well, Jeremiah, maybe. Not Conrad. Conrad would never; it wasn’t his style. Either way, it didn’t seem fair.

I’d sit next to the radiator in history class and wonder what they were doing, if they were warming their feet along the bottom of a radiator somewhere too. Counting the days until summer again. For me, it was almost like winter didn’t count. Summer was what mattered. My whole life was measured in summers. Like I don’t really begin living until June, until I’m at that beach, in that house.

Conrad was the older one, by a year and a half. He was dark, dark, dark. Completely unattainable, unavailable. He had a smirky kind of mouth, and I always found myself staring at it. Smirky mouths make you want to kiss them, to smooth them out and kiss the smirkiness away. Or maybe not away… but you want to control it somehow. Make it yours. It was exactly what I wanted to do with Conrad. Make him mine.

Jeremiah, though—he was my friend. He was nice to me. He was the kind of boy who still hugged his mother, still wanted to hold her hand even when he was technically too old for it. He wasn’t embarrassed either. Jeremiah Fisher was too busy having fun to ever be embarrassed.

I bet Jeremiah was more popular than Conrad at school. I bet the girls liked him better. I bet that if it weren’t for football, Conrad wouldn’t be some big deal. He would just be quiet, moody Conrad, not a football god. And I liked that. I liked that Conrad preferred to be alone, playing his guitar. Like he was above all the stupid high school stuff. I liked to think that if Conrad went to my school, he wouldn’t play football, he’d be on the lit mag, and he’d notice someone like me.

When we finally pulled up to the house, Jeremiah and Conrad were sitting out on the front porch. I leaned over Steven and honked the horn twice, which in our summer language meant, Come help with the bags, stat.

Conrad was eighteen now. He’d just had a birthday. He was taller than last summer, if you can believe it. His hair was cut short around his ears and was as dark as ever. Unlike Jeremiah’s, whose hair had gotten longer, so he looked a little shaggy but in a good way—like a 1970s tennis player. When he was younger, it was curly yellow, almost platinum in the summer. Jeremiah hated his curls. For a while, Conrad had him convinced that crusts made your hair curly, so Jeremiah had stopped eating sandwich crusts, and Conrad would polish them off. As Jeremiah got older, though, his hair was less and less curly and more wavy. I missed his curls. Susannah called him her little angel, and he used to look like one, with his rosy cheeks and yellow curls. He still had the rosy cheeks.

Jeremiah made a megaphone with his hands and yelled, Steve-o!

I sat in the car and watched Steven amble up to them and hug the way guys do. The air smelled salty and wet, like it might rain seawater any second. I pretended to be tying the laces on my sneakers, but really I just wanted a moment to look at them, at the house for a little while, in private. The house was large and gray and white, and it looked like most every other house on the road, but better. It looked just the way I thought a beach house should look. It looked like home.

My mother got out of the car then too. Hey, boys. Where’s your mother? she called out.

Hey, Laurel. She’s taking a nap, Jeremiah called back. Usually she came flying out of the house the second our car pulled up.

My mother walked over to them in about three strides, and she hugged them both, tightly. My mother’s hug was as firm and solid as her handshake. She disappeared into the house with her sunglasses perched on the top of her head.

I got out of the car and slung my bag over my shoulder. They didn’t even notice me walk up at first. But then they did. They really did. Conrad gave me a quick glance-over the way boys do at the mall. He had never looked at me like that before in my whole life. Not once. I could feel my flush from the car return. Jeremiah, on the other hand, did a double take. He looked at me like he didn’t even recognize me. All of this happened in the span of about three seconds, but it felt much, much longer.

Conrad hugged me first, but a faraway kind of hug, careful not to get too close. He’d just gotten a haircut, and the skin around the nape of his neck looked pink and new, like a baby’s. He smelled like the ocean. He smelled like Conrad. I liked you better with glasses, he said, his lips close to my ear.

That stung. I shoved him away and said, Well, too bad. My contacts are here to stay.

He smiled at me, and that smile—he just gets in. His smile did it every time. I think you got a few new ones, he said, tapping me on the nose. He knew how self-conscious I was about my freckles and he still teased me every time.

Then Jeremiah grabbed me next, and he almost lifted me into the air. Belly Button’s all growed up, he crowed.

I laughed. Put me down, I told him. You smell like BO.

Jeremiah laughed loudly. Same old Belly, he said, but he was staring at me like he wasn’t quite sure who I was. He cocked his head and said, Something looks different about you, Belly.

I braced myself for the punch line. What? I got contacts. I wasn’t completely used to myself without glasses either. My best friend Taylor had been trying to convince me to get contacts since the sixth grade, and I’d finally listened.

He smiled. It’s not that. You just look different.

I went back to the car then, and the boys followed me. We unloaded the car quickly, and as soon as we were done, I picked up my suitcase and my book bag and headed straight for my old bedroom. My room was Susannah’s from when she was a child. It had faded calico wallpaper and a white bedroom set. There was a music box I loved. When you opened it, there was a twirling ballerina that danced to the theme song from Romeo and Juliet, the old-timey version. I kept my jewelry in it. Everything about my room was old and faded, but I loved that about it. It felt like there might be secrets in the walls, in the four-poster bed, especially in that music box.

Seeing Conrad again, having him look at me that way, I felt like I needed a second to breathe. I grabbed the stuffed polar bear on my dresser and hugged him close to my chest—his name was Junior Mint, Junior for short. I sat down with Junior on my twin bed. My heart was beating so loudly I could hear it. Everything was the same but not. They had looked at me like I was a real girl, not just somebody’s little sister.

chapter two

AGE 12

The first time I ever had my heart broken was at this house. I was twelve.

It was one of those really rare nights when the boys weren’t all together—Steven and Jeremiah went on an overnight fishing trip with some boys they’d met at the arcade. Conrad said he didn’t feel like going, and of course I wasn’t invited, so it was just me and him.

Well, not together, but in the same house.

I was reading a romance novel in my room with my feet on the wall when Conrad walked by. He stopped and said, Belly, what are you doing tonight?

I folded the cover of my book over quickly. Nothing, I said. I tried to keep my voice even, not too excited or eager. I had left my door open on purpose, hoping he’d stop by.

Want to go to the boardwalk with me? he asked. He sounded casual, almost too casual.

This was the moment I had been waiting for. This was it. I was finally old enough. Some part of me knew it too. I was ready. I glanced over at him, just as casual as he’d been. Maybe. I have been craving a caramel apple.

I’ll buy one for you, he offered. Just hurry up and put some clothes on and we’ll go. Our moms are going to the movies; they’ll drop us off on the way.

I sat up and said, Okay.

As soon as Conrad left, I closed my door and ran over to my mirror. I took my hair out of its braids and brushed it. It was long that summer, almost to my waist. Then I changed out of my bathing suit and put on white shorts and my favorite gray shirt. My dad said it matched my eyes. I smeared some strawberry frosting lip gloss on my lips and tucked the tube into my pocket, for later. In case I needed to reapply.

In the car Susannah kept smiling at me in the rearview mirror. I gave her a look like, Quit, please—but I wanted to smile back. Conrad wasn’t paying attention anyway. He was looking out the window the whole ride there.

Have fun, kids, said Susannah, winking at me as I closed my door.

Conrad bought me a caramel apple first. He bought himself a soda, but that was it—usually he ate at least an apple or two, or a funnel cake. He seemed nervous, which made me feel less nervous.

As we walked down the boardwalk, I let my arm hang loose—in case. But he didn’t reach for it. It was one of those perfect summer nights, the kind where there’s a cool breeze and not one drop of rain. There would be rain tomorrow, but that night there were cool breezes and that was it.

I said, Let’s sit down so I can eat my apple, so we did. We sat on a bench that faced the beach.

I bit into my apple, carefully; I was worried I might get caramel all stuck in my teeth, and then how would he kiss me?

He sipped his Coke noisily, and then glanced down at his watch. When you finish that, let’s go to the ringtoss.

He wanted to win me a stuffed animal! I already knew which one I’d pick too—the polar bear with wire-frame glasses and a scarf. I’d had my eye on it all summer. I could already picture myself showing it off to Taylor. Oh, that? Conrad Fisher won it for me.

I wolfed down the rest of my apple in about two bites. ’Kay, I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Let’s go.

Conrad walked straight over to the ringtoss, and I had to walk superquick to keep up. As usual, he wasn’t talking much, so I talked even more to make up for it. I think when we get back, my mom might finally get cable. Steven and my dad and I have been trying to convince her for forever. She claims to be so against TV, but then she watches movies on A&E, like, the whole time we’re here. It’s so hypocritical, I said, and my voice trailed off when I saw that Conrad wasn’t even listening. He was watching the girl who worked the ringtoss.

She looked about fourteen or fifteen. The first thing I noticed about her was her shorts. They were canary yellow, and they were really, really short. The exact same kind of shorts that the boys had made fun of me for wearing two days before. I felt so good about buying those shorts with Susannah, and then the boys had laughed at me for it. The shorts looked a whole lot better on her.

Her legs were skinny and freckled, and so were her arms. Everything about her was skinny, even her lips. Her hair was long and wavy. It was red, but it was so light it was almost peach. I think it might have been the prettiest hair I’d ever seen. She had it pulled over to the side, and it was so long that she had to keep flicking it away as she handed people rings.

Conrad had come to the boardwalk for her. He’d brought me because he hadn’t wanted to come alone and he hadn’t wanted Steven and Jeremiah to give him a hard time. That was it. That was the whole reason. I could see it all in the way he looked at her, the way he almost seemed to hold his breath.

Do you know her? I asked.

He looked startled, like he’d forgotten I was there. Her? No, not really.

I bit my lip. Well, do you want to?

Do I want to what? Conrad was confused, which was annoying.

Do you want to know her? I asked impatiently.

I guess.

I grabbed him by his shirt sleeve and walked right up to the booth. The girl smiled at us, and I smiled back, but it was just for show. I was playing a part. How many rings? she asked. She had braces, but on her they looked interesting, like teeth jewelry and not like orthodontics.

We’ll take three, I told her. I like your shorts.

Thanks, she said.

Conrad cleared his throat. They’re nice.

I thought you said they were too short when I wore the exact same pair two days ago. I turned to the girl and said, Conrad is so overprotective. Do you have a big brother?

She laughed. No. To Conrad she said, You think they’re too short?

He blushed. I’d never seen him blush before, not in the whole time I’d known him. I