“Hey,” I said, keeping my voice down as I glanced up and saw the light on in Mira’s room. I didn’t know if she was sleeping. “What are you doing?”
She stretched back, resting on her palms. It was a nice night, good for sitting out in the grass. “Killing time,” she said. “I’ve been displaced, you know.” And she nodded over her shoulder toward the little white house. She seemed to be in a better mood.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” I stepped over the row of small hedges lining the driveway to join her. She had her head tilted back, eyes closed.
I could hear music, faintly, coming from the little house. Celine Dion.
“I hate this song.” Isabel took a big swig off her beer.
I didn’t say anything.
“What time is it?” she asked, opening her eyes and sitting up straight.
I glanced at my watch. “Ten-fifteen.”
She nodded. “Four hours and fifteen minutes late,” she said in a loud voice. “And counting”
The music stopped, then started again. It was the same song, from the beginning. I could see Morgan moving around inside the little house. There was a bouquet of flowers on the trunk that served as a coffee table, and it looked like all the CDs had been straightened and stacked. She seemed to still be working on it, picking things up and moving them from one side of the room to the other. Every time she passed the door she leaned into the glass, peering out toward the dark road.
“He’s not coming,” Isabel called out.
Morgan opened the door and stuck her head out. “I heard that,” she said. Then she shut the door.
“Good,” Isabel replied quietly. Morgan moved the vase of flowers to the other side of the coffee table.
Behind the house, there was a crackling noise, and a flash of light over the water. I could hear someone laughing, far off.
“It’s not the Fourth of July yet, idiots,” Isabel said. “It’s tomorrow.”
I looked up at Mira’s house. Cat Norman was sitting in her window. Mira was on her bed, in her kimono, hands in her lap. Her hair was down and she was barefoot. Just staring.
I wondered if she could see us.
“It’s not that I don’t want Morgan to be happy,” Isabel said, as another set of fireworks went off in the distance. “Because I do. But he doesn’t make her happy.”
“She loves him,” I pointed out.
“She doesn’t know any better.” She finished her beer, depositing it in the six-pack behind her.
Morgan sat down on the couch. She moved the flowers again.
“He’s the only one who’s ever told her she was beautiful,” Isabel said. “And she’s afraid she’ll never hear it from anyone else.”
Upstairs, Mira had gotten off the bed and walked toward the window, leaning over Cat Norman.
I reached up to brush my hair out of my eyes and realized I still had on Norman’s sunglasses. When I took them off the moon seemed even brighter.
“Those are nice,” Isabel said.
“Thanks.”
“Norman must like you.”
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “He just found them at some flea market.”
“I don’t mean he likes you,” she said, drawing the word out. “He’s just very picky about people.” She reached around for another beer. “You should be flattered.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.” Now I wished I’d taken the ride, or thanked him more.
Isabel popped the top off the bottle, running her finger around the neck. “Who was that girl, yesterday?” she asked. “The one who said those things about you.”
I looked up at Mira’s room. She’d moved back to the end of the bed and had Cat Norman in her arms. As she petted him his tail twitched back and forth, back and forth.
“Just this girl from school.”
“She thought she knew you pretty well.”
“She hates me,” I said.
“Why?”
I looked down at the grass, brushing my fingers across it. I could feel her waiting for me to answer. “I don’t know.”
“Must be a reason.”
“No,” I said. “There isn’t.” She might have wanted more, but that was all she was getting, for now.
She sighed. “High school sucks,” she said finally. “It gets better.”
I looked at her: perfect figure, perfect hair, gorgeous and self-confident. If I looked like Isabel, no one could touch me. “Yeah, right,” I said. “Like you know about that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Girls like you,” I said, “don’t even know how bad it is.”
“Girls like me,” she repeated. And she kind of half smiled, as if I’d said something funny. “What kind of girl am I, Colie?’
I shook my head. In the little house, Morgan sat down on the couch again. Morgan would understand this. She’d been like me, once, I knew it.
“Tell me,” Isabel said, leaning closer. “Go ahead.”
“A pretty one. Smart,” I said. “Popular. You were probably even a cheerleader, for God’s sake.” I felt stupid now, but it was too late to stop. “You were the kind of girl that never knew what it was like to have someone treat you the way that girl treated me. You have no idea.”
She watched me as I said this, her face smooth and calm. I could see her in high school, with a boyfriend in a varsity jacket, wearing little skirts that swirled around her perfect legs. I could see her at the prom, with a tiara and an armful of flowers. And I could see her in the gym locker room, taunting a girl who was fat and dorky with no friends. A girl like me.
“You’re wrong,” she said quietly, leaning back again.
“Yeah, right,” I said. She could have been Caroline Dawes then, for all the anger I felt simmering in me. “Then what were you?”
“I was afraid,” she said. And she turned her head away, looking back at the bright lights of the little house. “Just like you.”
We sat there for a moment, watching Morgan move through the living room.
“It’s so, so stupid,” she added softly, “what we do to ourselves because we’re afraid. It’s so stupid.” And she kept her head turned, as if I wasn’t even there.