And when the ticket taker walked away, Nina turned toward me and smiled. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, El, this summer we are from France.”
And I just nodded and grinned right back, because this was turning out even better than I could have hoped. I remember leaning back with my knees against the back of the seat in front of me, looking out the window at the power lines and trees whizzing by, sucking the last bits of Sprite off the ice cubes in my plastic cup, giddy with anticipation of what was ahead. I felt like I’d won a fabulous prize in a contest I hadn’t even known I’d entered—without Nina’s friends around, I had been promoted to the number one spot. I wasn’t just her little sister anymore, I was half of Team Nina, which was just about the best thing a person could ever hope for.
The first four days were perfect. In the mornings we went to the beach, with a bag of books and Nina’s iPod, and lay out on our towels and talked in our accents and discussed the details of our made-up French lives: We were the daughters of French aristocrats and we lived in a French mansion and had a pet dog named Bijoux. Every so often, while we were walking on the beach Nina would just call out, “Bijoux? Come heeeere Bijoux? Where are you, mon cherie!?!” as though Bijoux was missing and we were out looking for her. At some point every day we’d go swimming and at some point after that we’d eat lunch and take a walk on the boardwalk and then maybe play Skee-Ball or something, then eat dinner. Our aunt let us do pretty much whatever we wanted, so long as we stayed together and were home by nine. Every day felt so magical and amazing and unreal in its preciousness. I must have somehow known it couldn’t really last.
On the fifth day Nina met Nick. I knew from the first moment he came up to us, tall and lanky in low-hanging surf shorts, bearing two “lemonade Popsicles,” that he was going to ruin the rest of my summer. I wanted him to go away. I wanted to tell him that really lemonade was our least favorite flavor of Popsicle. And if he knew anything, he would have known that most reasonable people like cherry the best and then grape and then orange, in that order. I also wanted to mention that, by the way, when lemonade is made into a Popsicle, you’re just supposed to call it a lemon Popsicle, you don’t need to say the “ade” part. But Nina just accepted the Popsicles with a flirty smirk and a coy merci. And in that moment something shifted. Up until then I’d thought the accents were about me and Nina having a joke together, but as it turned out, I was very wrong. I was welcome to participate in the joke, but it was her joke. Not mine. And watching Nina “ex-Q-zeh mwa see voo play” with Nick gave me that sudden sickening feeling that comes along with the dawning of some obvious but unfortunate realization—my sister was a person even when I wasn’t with her. And most of what she did in the world had nothing to do with me.
After that, Nina and I had a new routine: We’d get up, pack our bag, and go to the beach, and then I’d spend the rest of the day all by myself under the umbrella, with the books and her iPod, while she went off with Nick and his group of surfer friends. I was always invited along, but I never went. They were only asking because they felt obligated, which made sense since they were all sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen and I was only twelve.
At night Nina and I would lie in our beds in the room we were sharing, with the window opened and the warm salt air blowing in past the blue and white striped curtains. “Isn’t it wonderful here?” she’d say. “Don’t you just want to stay here forever?” But she was talking to herself then, not to me.
And that is how the summer passed.
The night before we were set to leave, we packed our stuff and went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke to the sound of Nina sneaking out. I still remember what she looked like climbing through the bedroom window in a white sundress, running across the lawn, her sun-bleached hair flying behind her as she went. I got up then, stood there at the window waving, but she never looked back to see.
She returned sometime before dawn that morning, and cried quietly into her pillow. Somehow I knew I was supposed to pretend to be asleep.
Twelve
It’s an hour later, and we’re in the car, zooming west. I turn toward Sean, I still can’t quite believe we’re really doing this. “And you’re sure?” I say. “I mean, you’re sure you don’t mind doing all this driving and everything?”