I rolled my eyes. “Where else.”
“Why do you live in that dump?” He was swimming on his back looking up at the sky.
“I don’t know,” I struggled, shrugging my shoulders. “It’s cheap and close to school. The
house has tons of character, and my roommates are decent, for the most part. It’s a really
great place.”
He didn’t look convinced.
It wasn’t the first time that someone had criticized my choice of housing. I smiled to myself,
remembering the day Isabelle was in Callister for a charity benefit and decided to stop in for a
surprise visit. She stayed less than a minute, long enough to get gum on the heels of her Manolo
Blahniks.
“I guess I just like to keep my parents guessing,” I said aloud.
“Your parents don’t approve,” he summed up.
“Oh! They hate it!”
“You don’t get along with your parents.” I noticed that his questions had become statements
of fact.
“No, it’s not that I don’t get along with them, not really anyway. It’s more that they don’
t know me … or maybe it’s that I don’t know them, or that I don’t understand them. I’m not
sure … we’re very different.”
He looked perplexed.
I racked my brain, trying to find a way to explain something that I still hadn’t figured out.
“My parents like to focus on what I do or don’t do, like live in a bad neighborhood or go to a
bad school. Things like that are what they draw on to decide if I’m the daughter they can be
proud of. My brother Bill and I never seemed to make their cut.”
“When I was a kid,” I rambled on because he was staring at me, “I was in the car with my mom,
my dad, and my brother.” I left out that our nanny Maria was also in the car. “My dad stopped
at a gas station, and I begged my mom to let me get a soda, but she wouldn’t. Bill went inside
and stole one for me, but he got caught and the store clerk started going around from car to
car, dragging him by the shirt, asking if anyone knew him. My dad just drove away and left Bill
in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t send anyone for him for three days, after Bill had spent
a night in a jail cell, and been put in a group home by the police.” I left out that my parents
had sent one of the maids to get him. “Bill never even cried or said a word about it after he
got home.”
Cameron remained silent, looking at me.
Standing next to each other, half-clad in the shallow end of the pool, our bodies shimmering
with water, I suddenly felt that I needed to tell him something that I had never said out loud,
or to anyone else but myself.
“Bill died of a drug overdose when I was thirteen. I blamed my parents for this,” I blurted.
That was the whole truth—and a revelation to me as I said it.
Cameron hadn’t moved a muscle while I gabbed away.
I tried to wrap up my endless sob story. “Bill is buried in the same cemetery where …” I
glanced up through my eyelashes, “Well, you know which one. I guess that’s the real reason I
live in that dump, as you call it—it was the best place I could find, that I could afford, that
was close to school and Bill.”
Cameron stared at me so gravely that it was like he was staring right through me. I had given
him a whole lot more information than he’d probably wanted to hear. I didn’t know why I had
just told him all that, though I wished that I would have just stuck with “I don’t know” when
he had first asked me why I lived in a dump.
Cameron took his time. “I can see that your brother’s death was … difficult for you.”
“He was my best friend. Toward the end, I only saw him a few times a year. He changed so
quickly. Then he was gone.” I ducked my head underwater to hide any salty evidence that may
have been lining my cheeks and I swam away.
I could feel Cameron’s stare boring into the back of my neck while I swam around.
“Hey!” said a voice from above. Rocco was standing on the balcony of the main floor. From the
pillow indents still on his face, he had clearly just rolled out of bed. “Don’t move! I’m
going to grab my trunks!”
After he had dashed back into the house, I turned to Cameron.
“How old is your brother?”
“I think about sixteen. I don’t really know, he won’t tell me,” he said, smiling at last,
shaking his head in wonder. “Rocco and I didn’t grow up together. Hell, until about a year ago
when he knocked on my door, I didn’t even know that he existed … though I think he’s forgiven
me for that by now.”