“That bitch.” Mags sits very straight and stiff. Rhiannon’s lucky she’s missing, because my sister’s mad enough to come down on her like a 185-pound landslide right now. “She’s embarrassed about punking out, so she trashes you.”
“And I heard her talking about me one time. Saying how easy I was.” I shrug. “So now you guys know.”
“I always wondered why you stopped being friends.” Nell jumps when Mags brings her heel down against the shingles. “Shhh!”
“Damn it, I never liked her.” Mags simmers for a few seconds, then says in a rough voice, “Sorry, Darce. Really. That sucks.”
“It’s done.” I tuck my chin into the collar of my fleece. My words speed up, because I want to get this out while I’ve still got Nell’s ear. “The point is, your dream guy is just a guy, and he can stomp all over your heart. But then you got to move on, because he’s sure not wasting any time worrying about you. You got to protect yourself, or somebody worse will come along and smell blood in the water and they’ll come at you, too, and it won’t ever end.” As I say it, it hits me, what Shea really did, on the Fourth and today. I reach for the bruises, stop, and force my hand back down. “You got to be smart. You know? Smart.”
Even in the dark, I know Nell’s eyes are wet, and she’s checking out her shoes. When it’s time to go inside, she climbs off the roof without saying good night, and I see her wipe her face with the back of her hand. Guess I hurt her. Good.
Maybe she learned something.
TWENTY-ONE
WE’RE DOWN TO the last hundred rows of the west field, but there’s plenty of work for everyone because lots of people ditched today. That happens at the end of harvest, but this time, it’s got less to do with running out of berries and more to do with Mr. Wardwell telling the locals where to stick it. Good thing he’s not running for dogcatcher.
Now that Shea’s off the board, Bankowski’s made it to first place. Nell sings “My Darling Clementine” while she rakes, and it’s nice, kind of, because it helps keep my mind off Shea. I’d like to think that he’d never show his face here after what he pulled, but yesterday he didn’t seem to care if he got caught, or what anybody thought of him. I remember Mom’s question: Is it over?
I practically jump out of my sneakers when Jesse comes up beside me at lunch. I swallow a dry lump of sandwich, my heart thumping. Mags and Nell get really interested in what they’re eating.
He hunkers beside me. He smells good, like sweat and outdoors. “You get my messages?”
I slap a horsefly.
“So, are you okay or what?”
“I’m good.” My voice is low as I pick at my sandwich. “You?”
His left eye is purple, burst vessels speckling the white, and there’s a scrape down his cheek that looks pretty nasty. “Been worse.”
I watched him for a few seconds earlier: he’s moving slowly today, biting his cheek as he rakes, like something hurts inside. Bruised ribs, maybe. He and Mason rake close together. Mason must’ve been in the middle this whole time, listening to Jesse and Shea both talk about me when the other one wasn’t around. He must’ve known something bad was going to go down sooner or later. I glance at the road again.
“You heard from him?” Jesse knows who I’m worrying about. “If he’s bothering you, tell me.”
“Come on. You went after Shea yesterday for you, not me.” Nell flinches at my tone, pulling her knees in, making herself small. “Shea busted my face. You liked my face better the way it was, so you hit him.” I breathe out slowly, letting the shocked silence settle over us. “I’m sorry you got hurt. But it wasn’t for me.”
He watches me for a long moment. “I was stupid about Shea. I’m sorry, okay. I didn’t see how things really were with you guys. But if you’re still mad about the raking thing . . . I mean, Shea’s done. Bob’s never gonna let him back into the barrens.”
“Yeah. But he never got nailed for it, either.” I squeeze my sandwich into a tinfoil ball and chuck it down. “He got away with it, ’cause nobody did anything.”
Jesse stays where he is, white-lipped and quiet. His hand grips his knee, and I can see the ground-in dirt around his thumbnail, the kind you need pumice soap to get out. “So that’s it, huh?”
I squint off. “Guess so.”
He stands. Then I feel his hand rest on the top of my head for just a second. His fingers slide away. “Take care of yourself, Darcy.”
“I will,” I say faintly, but he’s already gone.
It’s blue twilight when Libby and Nell get home from Bangor. I look out the living room window and watch Nell run across the grass, hugging a long garment bag to herself. Her face is lit up, hair bouncing around her shoulders as she hops over the first step and disappears into the trailer.
I guess Nell found it. The dress she’s going to wear.
“Show us.” Later, Mags flops onto her bed, giving Nell a look. “Come on, you’re really not going to show us?”
“No. It’ll ruin the specialness.” Nell works a sponge around in a little palette of green concealer.
“At least tell us what color it is.”
“It’s the one. That’s all you need to know.” Nell touches my shoulders and lifts my chin with her hand, our reflections moving together in Mags’s vanity mirror as she lightly dabs my forehead and nose, then uses a little brush to spread the concealer around my eyes, practicing to see if she can fix my face for the big night. I look like I did a face-plant in a bowl of pistachio pudding.
“You know about this stuff, right?” I watch Nell in the mirror as she starts smoothing her fingers over my skin. “’Cause, no offense, but this looks . . . kinda . . .”
“Green covers redness and blotchiness really well. Mrs. Hartwell told you it would work, didn’t she?” She’s so gentle that her fingertips feel like wings brushing over my face. “The heat from my skin helps blend it. Your fingers really are your best tools for applying almost any makeup.”
“Look out, Pauline’s School of Beauty,” Mags murmurs, smiling as she flips through one of her yearbooks.
“Next, we build with foundation.” Nell lays it on heavier than I ever do, but you really can’t see the green through it. I sit up a little more, watching.
Mags turns pages, then snorts. “I’m sorry, but what a moron.”
She’s stopped on a page of candid photos. Her thumb rests on a shot of Kenyon. He’s half-turned at a table in some classroom, wearing a ski cap and hoodie, eyes heavy-lidded, looking even more like Kat than usual. “He’s not a moron,” I say. “He’s just . . .” I don’t even know if we’re still friends, and here I am, sticking up for him. “He got scared and screwed up.”
“Holding on to that car for a year? That’s more than a screwup. How could he seriously not know that was the worst thing he could’ve done? He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t end up doing jail time.”
Nell steps back. “Done.”
I’m almost back to normal. If you really stare, you can see something isn’t quite right with my face, but I’ll be far enough away from the crowd on Saturday that nobody will be able to tell. “Wow. Thanks a lot, Nellie. That looks much better.”