Chapter Nineteen
AS FAR AS SUMMER COULD TELL, SOMETIME AROUND MIDNIGHT Bourbon Street turned into a total free-for-all—sweaty tourists packed in like a kitchen at a keg party, a different tune wafting from the door of each bar they passed. Yet Alice’s voice managed to rise above the din—the runaway trumpet in a jazz solo gone wrong.
“I know you think going to the police is pointless. So, what am I supposed to do, Tiernan? Nothing?”
It wasn’t the first time Summer had witnessed an Alice freak-out. There was the episode in sixth grade when Alice got assigned to do a presentation on the excretory system in front of the whole class, while Summer and Tiernan got to work together on a circulatory system diorama. There was the time she left her brand-new pink cleats at the Andover soccer field. And, of course, her swan song: the Winter Wonderland Dance. The main difference about tonight was that this time, Alice’s tantrum was fueled with rum.
“Just don’t be delusional.” Tiernan’s voice rose to meet Alice’s. “You think the New Orleans police don’t have anything better to do than to look for some girl’s purse?”
“Can you guys keep it down!” Summer yelled. Yes, she was shouting about shouting.
“Fine! If you guys don’t want to go with me, I’ll go by myself!” Alice marched off in a huff.
Tiernan grabbed Summer by the arm. “Come on, help me talk some sense into her.”
For some reason, Summer let herself get dragged along. The path of least resistance. Of course, there was an even easier option. She could leave. Just flag down a cab and go to the airport right now, before this night completely spiraled out of control. But she couldn’t walk away in the middle of this crisis.
Tiernan yanked Summer’s wrist, slamming her straight into two middle-aged guys in business suits.
“Yo, blondie,” one of them called out drunkenly.
She pulled herself loose from Tiernan’s grasp. “I can walk on my own, okay?”
“Well, hurry up. We don’t want to lose her.”
Summer’s head was throbbing, like she’d gone straight from buzzed to hungover.
“Alice!” Tiernan screamed blindly into the crowd. But Summer had several inches on her and she could see Alice’s frizzy mass of hair just fine, ten feet ahead.
“Calm down, she’s right up there.”
“You need to talk to her,” Tiernan said. “She’ll listen to you.”
Ah, yes. The same person who just let herself get peer-pressured into drinking four Hurricanes, the person who was gallivanting around in a strange city at two in the morning, the person too chicken to break the news that she was leaving in a few hours, was now the voice of maturity and reason.
“Alice!” Summer yelled when they were finally close enough. Shockingly, Alice stopped, moving over to the sidewalk where the flow of human traffic was slightly less intense.
“I think we should go back to the hotel room and talk,” Summer said. “We need to get out of here.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Alice pouted. “I want to find my purse.”
Summer stifled a sigh. “Your purse is gone. You just need to accept it.”
“I don’t need to accept anything!” Alice shot back. “I’m not like you, I don’t just drift along letting whatever happens happen. I make things happen for myself!”
Summer felt the blood rush to her cheeks. Here she was, trying to help, and once again Alice was treating her like a second-class citizen.
“Yeah, you do make things happen. Like this wonderful trip we’re on.” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Alice just stood there, her face cycling through emotions so fast it was hard for Summer to tell if Alice was about to slap her or burst into tears.
“Guys . . .” Tiernan tried to butt in, but Alice shouted over her.
“You chose to come on this trip! No one twisted your arm.”
“I did . . .” Summer swallowed hard. “And now . . . I’m choosing to leave it.”
And with that she turned and walked away. She didn’t need to deal with this. She hadn’t even wanted to go out tonight in the first place.
“Wait up.” Tiernan was right at her heels. “Where are you gonna go?”
Summer paused just long enough for Alice to catch up. “Home,” she said quietly. “Jace bought me a ticket. My flight leaves in a couple hours.”
Alice’s eyes had a million questions, but all she managed was a quiet “Oh.”
“So, how long have you known you were bailing?” Tiernan asked.
“Since yesterday, at the hotel. It’s not like I’m trying to ditch you guys. It’s just . . . Jace and I had plans to go the Vineyard together, and I thought they were canceled, but then . . .” Summer couldn’t think of the right way to sum up just what had happened between her and Jace. “Anyway, I’m gonna head back to the room to get my bags, if you want to come with.” She tried to sound casual, as if by ignoring the angry words she and Alice had exchanged, she could pretend it hadn’t happened.
“I brought a key,” Tiernan said, making eye contact.
Summer dug through her wallet and handed Alice a fifty. “Here’s some money for the ticket. When I get back home, I’ll send you a check for the rest if that’s okay with—”
“He’s cheating on you,” Alice said, her eyes locked on the bill in her hand.
Summer felt her body stiffen. For a second the world seemed to move in slow motion.
“He’s cheating on you,” Alice repeated, this time staring at her with such intensity, Summer actually stumbled back a step.
Tiernan’s gaze flew from Alice to Summer, then back again.
Summer opened her mouth to refute this claim. But when she went to speak, nothing came out. Her body seemed to know the truth before her brain did.
“With that sophomore girl, Debbie Davis—” Alice continued.
Tiernan held up her hand like a stop sign. “Alice, just—”
“Everyone knows they’ve been hooking up forever.”
Summer’s last phone call with Jace flashed through her mind, all of his texts. All the times he swore up and down “nothing happened” now made it seem so glaringly obvious that something had. And what about Melanie and Jocelyn and the rest of her friends? If everyone knew . . .
“You know, Alice . . .” Summer’s voice quavered. “. . . if I thought you were telling me this out of kindness, that would be one thing. But you’re not.”
The fear in Alice’s eyes made Summer’s voice grow stronger.
“I think the only reason you’re telling me this is to try to get me to stay on this stupid trip. And if you think, after all these years, that I’m still your little puppet, that you can control what I think and what I do, then you must be even drunker than I thought.”
Alice started to speak, but Summer didn’t let her. There were still so many things she wanted to say. Hurtful things.
“Maz was right. You’re obsessed with me—with us. But there is no ‘us.’”
Now there were tears in Alice’s eyes.
“You think the three of us could still be friends after what the two of you did to me? After what you’re still doing to me?” The words came out of her mouth like bullets.
“How naive are you, anyway? Wait—don’t answer that. I know exactly how naive you are. It’s late June, and you still think Brown is going to let you in.”
Summer shut her mouth so Alice could absorb the full impact of her words.
“That was low,” Tiernan whispered, almost to herself.
“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” Summer shot back. “Tiernan O’Leary, the paragon of truth and integrity herself.”
Then Summer turned and ran. She could feel her blood pulsing through every corner of her body as she threaded a path through the swell of people. It was the same feeling she’d had at the freshman winter dance when Alice had caused that ridiculous scene, while Tiernan, her other supposed “best friend,” just stood there doing nothing. Summer could still hear the sound of Alice screeching her name as she entered the gym—like she was happy she had the power to hurt Summer, to shame her, in front of the whole school.
Summer kept running even after she’d made it past the crowd. No more “drifting along” for her, no way. For once in her life, she was taking action, even if it just meant going home.
Back at the hotel, her bag was basically still packed, so all she needed to do was leave her key on the bed and hail a cab.
Twenty minutes later, her taxi pulled up to the curb at the New Orleans airport. It seemed almost too easy.
Even though Summer hadn’t traveled much, she’d always imagined airports were busy at all hours, like hospitals. But surprisingly, nearly all of the shops were dark, their metal chainlink gates shut. She had some time to kill before her flight boarded, so she wandered into the only open café she could find and bought an oversize chocolate chip muffin.
“You haddagit time in N’awlins?” the man at the counter asked, his Cajun accent so thick it took Summer a second to realize he was speaking English.
She nodded. “Mm-hmm.” Whatever. The truth was, she actually had been having fun in New Orleans. Up until Alice’s freak-out.
Summer took her thousand-calorie muffin and sat down among the other lost souls scattered about the café. In the corner, a TV hung from the ceiling playing CNN on mute. The closed captioning was on, full of typos and cut-off sentences, further confirming Summer’s theory that the world was conspiring to mangle the truth. Not one of her friends back home had had the guts to tell her about Jace and that girl. Not one of them.
Summer was angrier with her friends than she was with Jace himself. Everyone knows boyfriends cheat. But her girlfriends, they were supposed to have her back, no matter what. And yet, the only person who’d actually told her the truth was Alice.
Summer took a huge bite of the muffin, wincing from the crunch of the oversize sugar crystals against her teeth. She wished she could just sprawl out on the carpet and go to sleep, like those two backpackers she’d seen in the hallway. But she’d never been comfortable sleeping in public. Anyway, that’s what airplanes were for, weren’t they? She didn’t really know. The only other time she’d taken a plane was when her family had gone to Disney when she was ten. That was one good thing about this trip. At least she’d gotten out of Walford.
Summer pulled out her phone and composed a text to Jace. She’d be damned if she had to see his lying face waiting for her at the gate back in Boston.
“Won’t be there tomorrow. Think you know why.”
She pressed the send button and laughed out loud. Okay, so she was still a little tipsy. But who cared if all the random weirdos in here thought she was crazy. She felt crazy, being in an airport in the middle of the night all by herself. It was too bad she was only going home and not jetting off to someplace foreign and glamorous, like in the silly make-believe world she’d cooked up for herself as a kid.
Summer was the one who’d started their fantasies about the boys from Level3, the one who’d always begged them to play pretend. And to Alice and Tiernan’s credit, they’d always indulged her.
But the weird thing was, even now, at age eighteen, Summer still had just as many daydreams. Only, instead of imagining herself walking the red carpet at the MTV Awards as Mrs. Travis Wyland, she was strolling through Harvard Square, where her award-winning book of poems was featured in the window of the Grolier Poetry Shop. Probably just as unlikely as marrying a rock star, truth be told.
Summer opened her journal, flipping through the dozens of pages she’d filled in her four short days on this trip—proof that pain and suffering were a writer’s greatest source of inspiration. Her eyes went right to two lines:
You steal my joy,
And now you give it back to me.
She’d written that after her phone call with Jace—the first time he’d tried to woo her back. They were uninspired lines at best, but right now it wasn’t the poetry (or lack thereof) that jumped out at her. It was the way the words were phrased, as if Jace were actually capable of stealing her joy. As if she didn’t have anything to do with it.
After all, she wouldn’t even be in this position if she’d just dumped his sorry ass months ago, back when she realized she didn’t love him. But instead she’d let herself drift along, waiting for things to change, as if she had no control over it. As if waiting wasn’t a choice in and of itself.
In a way, Summer figured she should be thankful Jace had cheated on her, or knowing her, she probably would’ve ended up marrying the guy. Summer laughed out loud again, this time relishing the stares of the other customers.
She turned to a fresh page in her journal. For once in her life, she wanted to make a choice, even if it was the wrong one. At the top she wrote:
What do I want?
Back in her Pea Pod glory days, anything seemed possible. Alice and Tiernan never questioned her daydreams, no matter how wildly unrealistic they were. Maybe that was as good a place to start as any—to just own up to wanting all the crazy things she wanted, even if they never had a chance of coming true. In the left-hand margin Summer wrote the numbers one through ten.
1. To be able to eat whatever I want
without getting fat
2. To know what I want
Three through ten were blank. Summer stared at her list until sunlight started slanting through the airport’s glass doors, then she closed her journal and tossed it in her purse. She was going home. Not making a choice was kind of a choice, too, right?
But as she stood up to leave the café, an image on the television caught her eye. She didn’t need to read the horribly misspelled closed captioning to see that it was Level3. There was a “rdiocpntest in Huustn, TX.” At five thirty a.m. , people were already lined up around the block for a chance to compete for front row “tckeets to tonigh’sshiw.”
Seeing all those excited Level3 fans on TV made Summer realize just how bummed she really was to be missing the concert. She’d just been too consumed with Alice’s hysteria to realize it. Oh, well. It was too late now.
The line at security was long and Summer stood in the back reading a sign that informed her exactly how many ounces of liquid she could bring in her carry-on.
“You need to check your luggage with your airline first,” the man behind her said, pointing to her duffel bag. He looked like a frequent flyer, gray suit, laptop case, freshly shaven.
“Thanks,” Summer said, stepping out of the line and lugging her bag toward the ticketing desks. She glanced back at the man. She swore she’d seen him earlier that night on Bourbon Street, making drunken catcalls at girls half his age. Now he looked totally professional, chatting with a woman in a business suit, a completely different person than he’d been the night before.
Summer stepped onto a moving walkway to save her the trouble of hauling her bag the entire way. She stood to the right, letting the expert travelers zoom past her on the left with their little wheeled suitcases. Even the people who weren’t on the moving walkway seemed to be going faster than she was—the businessmen, the parents with their strollers and babies in backpacks, a rowdy group of middle school girls in matching red Riverdale Junior High Volleyball shirts.
The volleyball girls were way too loud for five in the morning—singing, shouting, busting the occasional dance move, the beads on their cornrows swinging to and fro, clattering in their hair. Even in identical outfits it was easy to pick out the leader of the girls. Her hair was the longest, the beads on the ends of her braids the most intricate. There was something about the way she strutted in her flip-flops that caught Summer’s eye. It was a walk of sheer confidence—like she didn’t need to look where she was going or think about her next step, knowing she had a buffer of friends to safely guide her wherever she was headed. She was the leader of the group, and yet, her hangers-on were the ones paving the way.
Summer was so entranced by these middle school girls she hadn’t noticed that her free ride on the walkway had come to an end until her right foot hit the metal ridge, sending her face-forward onto the scratchy blue carpet. Of course, the volleyball team exploded with laughter. Summer’s face flushed red, her chin raw from rug-burn. And yet she found herself laughing too—deep, forceful laughs so intense people inched away from her instead of stopping to ask if she was all right. Robert Frost chose the road less traveled. Summer Dalton chose a moving walkway. And this is where it landed her—flat on her face.
Summer pulled her journal from her bag, right there on the airport floor. Let the people step around her. She had something to add to her list and she needed to do it right now, before she changed her mind.
3. To see Level3 play tonight.
By the time Summer looked up, the volleyball girls had moved on. And on the flat-screen TV on the wall, in front of an outdoor stage in Houston, Texas, the sun was just beginning to rise.
“CHRISTMAS IN JULY”
THE VERY THING THAT I WANTED
WAS TO GET
EVERYTHING I WANTED
THEN IT ALL CAME TRUE
THAT’S WHEN I KNEW
SURPRISE, SURPRISE
—from Level3’s third CD, Natural Causes