Bethany’s pleasant haze has turned heavy. Her body sags in the camping chair and it seems possible that she won’t get up again today. She hears her name being called and listens vaguely to this, thinks what a funny thing a name is.
“Bethany,” she hears again, more distinctly. “Bethany Duffy.” She looks up to find three boys standing beneath the canopy. She knows that she knows them, but it takes a moment to fish their names out. Noah Warren, of course—what is he doing here? And the Hatfield brothers. Kurt. And the younger one—Jason? Martin? All three of them look too clean, too fresh for this place. She smiles.
“Hey, do your parents know you guys are here?”
Noah laughs, then Bethany. Noah’s mother, too, would keel over dead if she knew. She is one of those exasperatingly buoyant women in town who volunteer for everything, cheer at every sports game, and behave as if no world exists outside Old Cranbury. The persistence of her budgetary dreams is one of the reasons Bethany’s father finally quit the school board.
“I’m at their house,” Noah says, nodding to the Hatfield brothers.
“We’re at his house,” adds the younger Hatfield. Mason, that’s his name.
The older one, Kurt, is staring at Rebekah. “You’re Rebekah Foster, right? You went to OCHS.”
Rebekah gives him a queenly smile. “I graduated three years ago.”
“I thought so. I remember you.”
“Hey, fellows.” Rufus comes over with a bunch of folding chairs and hands them out. “Have yourselves a seat. Chill with us for a while.”
There is no space in the circle’s perimeter for them, so they awkwardly open the chairs where they stand, in the middle of the tent.
“I thought I saw you from across the campground,” Noah is saying, “but Kurt said I was imagining it.”
Kurt is still looking intently at Rebekah, as if trying to decipher something. He is dressed for a sailboat, in khaki shorts and navy polo shirt.
“You’re at college in California now, right?” he asks.
“Very good,” Rebekah says.
“I’m going to Dickinson in a couple of weeks. In Pennsylvania.”
“Well, that will be different.”
Kurt smiles despite this teasing, which Bethany can tell has already bled into scorn.
“He’s just here to pick up girls,” his younger brother pipes in.
“And what’s wrong with that?” Kurt smiles at Rebekah, then at Bethany.
“Plenty of those out there,” Rebekah says, motioning beyond the tent.
Bethany feels the urge to kick her friend. She normally would have little use for these boys, but she likes having them here now.
“Are you guys thinking about college yet?” Bethany asks Noah and Mason in a kind, sisterly tone.
The boys look at each other.
“I don’t know,” Noah says. “I’ll probably go to college eventually, but I want to travel first. For at least a year. Maybe go around the world, like, backpacking. It feels so claustrophobic in Old Cranbury, you know? I feel like I’ve been cooped up my whole life. Even this”—he sits forward and flaps his hands outward—“it’s so homogenous. Have you noticed that it’s all white kids?”
“No, it isn’t,” Rebekah snaps.
“Yes, it is,” Noah says. “Look around. People think this is such a wonderful melting pot or something, such a representation of our generation. That’s why I wanted to come. I mean, it’s fun and everything, but it’s not, like, earth-shattering.”
“Well, no one’s gladder to be here than I am,” Rebekah says, putting her hands to her heart.
Bethany meets her friend’s eyes and smiles back. She knows that, at home with her fanatic parents, Rebekah would be churning butter or helping her mother weave yarn into the household loom.
“So, where do you want to travel?” Bethany presses on.
“India. Bangladesh. Then further east, I guess. Maybe China and Russia.”
“I’m sure your mom loves that plan.”
Noah rolls his eyes cheerfully. “I haven’t exactly mentioned it. But soon it won’t matter. I’ll be eighteen and I’ll just go.” He pats his friend on the knee. “Mason here has ideas, too.”
Mason is a good-looking boy, well built. He peers downward and shifts in his seat.
“Hey, do you guys have beer?” Kurt inquires, looking around.
Rebekah scowls. “You have to go to the beer tents and buy whatever cat piss they’re selling.”
Kurt shifts his gaze one last time between Rebekah and Bethany, then pushes himself up from the chair. “All right.” The younger boys don’t move for a moment, then reluctantly go after him.