*
Before I go to bed, I open up that kit and take out the condoms and pack them deep in the bottom of my suitcase. Then I pick out my prettiest bra and underwear set, pale pink edged in electric blue lace, never been worn, and I pack that too. Just in case.
33
PETER’S AT MY HOUSE BRIGHT and early to pick me up. Everyone else is caravanning down together, but Peter wanted it to be just him and me in his two-seater. He’s in a good mood; he’s brought donuts for us like old times. He says they’re all for me, though. Ever since he came back from that training weekend with his lacrosse team, he’s been in fitness mode.
We’re moving stuff around in his car to make room for my suitcase when Kitty comes running out to say hi. She spots the bag of donuts resting on top of my bag and she snags one. Her mouth full, she says, “Peter, did Lara Jean tell you the news about Korea?”
“What news?” he says.
My head snaps up and I throw Kitty a look. “I was just about to. Peter, I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday. . . . My dad’s sending us to Korea for my graduation present.”
“Wow, that’s cool,” Peter says.
“Yeah, we’re going to see our relatives and do a tour around the country, too.”
“When?”
I glance over at him. “Next month.”
“For how long?” he asks.
“A month.”
He looks at me in dismay. “A month? That long?”
“I know.” We’re already in mid-June. Only two months of summer left from here and then he’ll still be here and I’ll be in Chapel Hill.
“A month,” he repeats. Before Peter, I wouldn’t have thought twice about going to Korea for a month. I would have rejoiced. And now . . . I’d never say so to Daddy or Margot or Kitty, but I don’t want to go. I just don’t. I do. But I don’t.
When we’re in the car, on our way, I say, “We’ll FaceTime every day. It’s a thirteen-hour time difference, so if I call you at night, it’ll be your morning.”
Peter looks gloomy. “We were gonna go to Bledell’s for his Fourth of July weekend, remember? His dad got a new boat. I was going to teach you how to wakeboard.”
“I know.”
“What am I going to do when you’re all the way over there? The summer’s going to suck. I wanted to take you to Pony Pasture.” Pony Pasture is a little park on the James River in Richmond; there are big stones you can lie out on, and you can float down the river on inner tubes. Peter’s gone before, with friends from school, but I never have.
“We can go when I come back,” I say, and he nods halfheartedly. “And I’ll bring back lots of presents. Face masks. Korean candy. A present a day!”
“Bring me back some tiger socks.”
“If they make them big enough,” I say, just to make a joke, just to make him smile. This week will have to be the most perfect, the best ever, to make up for the fact that I’ll be gone all summer.
Peter’s phone buzzes, and he ignores the call without looking to see who it is. A minute later it buzzes again, and Peter’s face goes tight.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“My dad,” he says shortly.
“I hope he’s calling to apologize and explain how he could miss his own son’s graduation.”
“I already know why. He told my mom Everett had an allergic reaction so they took him to urgent care.”
“Oh,” I say. “I guess that’s a pretty good excuse. Is Everett okay?”
“He’s fine. I don’t think he’s really even that allergic. When I eat strawberries, my tongue itches. Big deal.” With that, Peter turns on the music, and we don’t talk for a while.
*
The girls’ house is second row, with a view of the beach. It’s on stilts, like all the other houses in the second row. There are three levels, with the kitchen and living room on the bottom level, and the bedrooms on the top levels. Chris and I share a room with two beds on the top level. It’s like we are at the top of a lighthouse. The bedspreads are turquoise with seashells on them. Everything smells a little mildewy, but it’s not a bad house.
All of the girls in the house have taken up different roles, except for Chris, whose main role has been to sleep on the beach all day with a water bottle of beer. The first day she came back with her chest and face lobster red; the only unburned part of her was where her sunglasses were. She was embarrassed but she played it off, saying it’s her base tan for Costa Rica. Pammy is the den mom. She promised her parents she wouldn’t drink, so she’s taken it upon herself to check on the other girls and bring water and Advil to their beds in the morning. Kaila’s really good with a flatiron. She can even curl with it, something I’ve never managed to quite get the hang of. Harley’s good at coordinating and making plans with the other houses.
I’m the cook. When we first got to the house, we went out and did a big shopping trip and bought cold cuts, granola, dried pasta and jars of sauce, salsa, cereal. The one thing we didn’t buy was toilet paper, which we ran out of on the second day. Every time we leave the house to eat lunch or dinner out, one of us steals a wad of toilet paper from the restaurant bathroom. Why we don’t just go buy more, I don’t know, but it’s turned into kind of a game. Chris is the clear winner, because she managed to get an economy-size roll out of the dispenser, and she smuggled it out under her shirt.
The boys come over every day to freeload and also because their house is already filled with sand. We’ve nicknamed it the Sandcastle. Just sitting on their couch, it’s like getting a body scrub, and you stand up feeling exfoliated and not in a good way.