It's Not Summer without You (9 page)

The prom committee had ordered one of those kits, those prom packages. It cost a ton of money; they’d fundraised all spring. There were all of these old movie posters on the walls, and a big blinking Hollywood sign. The dance floor was supposed to look like a movie set, with lights and a fake camera on a tripod. There was even a director’s chair off to the side.

We sat at a table with Taylor and Davis. With her four-and-a-half-inch stilettos, they were the same height.

Conrad hugged Taylor hello, but he didn’t make much of an effort to talk to her or to Davis. He was uncomfortable in his suit, just sitting there. When Davis opened up his jacket and showed off his silver flask to Conrad, I cringed. Maybe Conrad
was
too old for all this.

Then I saw Cory Wheeler out on the dance floor, in the center of a circle of people, including my brother and Claire. He was break dancing.

I leaned in close to Conrad and whispered, “That’s Cory.”

“Who’s Cory?” he said.

I couldn’t believe he didn’t remember. I just couldn’t believe it. I stared at him for a second, searching his face, and then I moved away from him. “Nobody,” I said.

After we’d been sitting there a few minutes, Taylor grabbed my hand and announced we were going to the bathroom. I was actually relieved.

In the bathroom, she reapplied her lip gloss and whispered to me, “Davis and I are going to his brother’s dorm room after the after-prom.”

“For what?” I said, rummaging around my little purse for my own lip gloss.

She handed me hers. “For, you know. To be
alone
.” Taylor widened her eyes for emphasis.

“Really? Wow,” I said slowly. “I didn’t know you liked him that much.”

“Well, you’ve been really busy with all your Conrad drama. Which, by the way, he looks hot, but why is he being so lame? Did you guys have a fight?”

“No . . .” I couldn’t look her in the eyes, so I just kept applying lip gloss.

“Belly, don’t take his shit. This is your prom night. I mean, he’s your boyfriend, right?” She fluffed out her hair, posing in the mirror and pouting her lips. “At least make him dance with you.”

When we got back to the table, Conrad and Davis were talking about the NCAA tournament, and I relaxed a little. Davis was a UConn fan, and Conrad liked UNC. Mr. Fisher’s best friend had been a walk-on for the team, and Conrad and Jeremiah were both huge fans. Conrad could talk about Carolina basketball forever.

A slow song came on then, and Taylor took Davis by the hand and they headed out to the dance floor. I watched them dance, her head on his shoulder, his hands on her hips. Pretty soon, Taylor wouldn’t be a virgin anymore. She always said she’d be first.

“Are you thirsty?” Conrad asked me.

“No,” I said. “Do you want to dance?”

He hesitated. “Do we have to?”

I tried to smile. “Come on, you’re the one who supposedly taught me how to slow dance.”

Conrad stood up and offered me his hand. “So let’s dance.”

I gave him my hand and followed him to the middle of the dance floor. We slow danced, and I was glad the music was loud so he couldn’t hear my heart beating.

“I’m glad you came,” I said, looking up at him.

“What?” he asked.

Louder, I said, “I said, I’m glad you came.”

“Me too.” His voice sounded odd; I remember that, the way his voice caught.

Even though he was standing right in front of me, his hands around my waist, mine around his neck, he had never felt so far away.

After, we sat back down at our table. He said, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

“Well, the after-prom doesn’t start till midnight,” I said, fiddling with my pearl necklace. I wound it around my fingers. I couldn’t look at him.

Conrad said, “No, I mean just you and me. Somewhere we can talk.”

All of a sudden, I felt dizzy. If Conrad wanted to go somewhere where we could be alone, where we could talk, it meant he wanted to break up with me. I knew it.

“Let’s not go anywhere, let’s just stay here for a while,” I said, and I tried hard not to sound desperate.

“All right,” he said.

So we sat there, watching everyone around us dance, their faces shiny, makeup running. I pulled the flower out of my hair and put it in my purse.

When we had been quiet awhile, I said, “Did your mom make you come?” It broke my heart to ask, but I had to know.

“No,” he said, but he waited too late to answer.

In the parking lot, it had started to drizzle. My hair, my hair that I had spent the whole afternoon curling, was already falling flat. We were walking to the car when Conrad said, “My head is killing me.”

I stopped walking. “Do you want me to go back inside and see if anybody has an aspirin?”

“No, that’s okay. You know what, I might head back to school. I have that exam on Monday and everything. Would it be all right if I didn’t go to the after-prom? I could still drop you off.” He didn’t meet my eyes when he spoke.

“I thought you were spending the night.”

Conrad fumbled with his car keys and mumbled, “I know, but I’m thinking now that I should get back. . . .” His voice trailed off.

“But I don’t want you to leave,” I said, and I hated the way I sounded like I was begging.

He jammed his hands inside his pants pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said.

We stood there in the parking lot, and I thought,
If we get inside his car, it’s all over. He’ll drop me off and then he’ll drive back to school and he’ll never come back. And that’ll be it.

“What happened?” I asked him, and I could feel the panic rising up in my chest. “Did I do something wrong?”

He looked away. “No. It’s not you. It has nothing to do with you.”

I grabbed his arm, and he flinched. “Will you please just talk to me? Will you tell me what’s going on?”

Conrad didn’t say anything. He was wishing he was already in his car, driving away. From me. I wanted to hit him.

I said, “Okay, fine, then. If you won’t say it, I will.”

“If I won’t say what?”

“That we’re over. That, whatever this is, it’s over. I mean, it is, right?” I was crying, and my nose was running, and it was all mixed up in the rain. I wiped my face with the back of my arm.

He hesitated. I saw him hesitate, weigh his words. “Belly—”

“Don’t,” I said, backing away from him. “Just don’t. Don’t say anything to me.”

“Just wait a minute,” he said. “Don’t leave it like this.”

“You’re the one leaving it like this,” I said. I started to walk away, as fast as my feet could go in those stupid heels.

“Wait!” he yelled.

I didn’t turn around, I walked faster. Then I heard him slam his fist on the hood of his car. I almost stopped.

Maybe I would have if he’d followed me. But he didn’t. He got in his car and he left, just like he said he would.

The next morning, Steven came to my room and sat at my desk. He’d just gotten home. He was still wearing his tux. “I’m asleep,” I told him, rolling over.

“No, you’re not.” He paused. “Conrad’s not worth it, okay?”

I knew what it cost him to say that to me, and I loved him for it. Steven was Conrad’s number one fan; he always had been. When Steven got up and left, I repeated it to myself.
He’s not worth it
.

When I came downstairs the next day around lunchtime, my mother said, “Are you all right?”

I sat down at the kitchen table and put my head down. The wood felt cool and smooth against my cheek. I looked up at her and said, “So I guess Steven blabbed.”

Carefully, she said, “Not exactly. I did ask him why Conrad didn’t stay the night like we planned.”

“We broke up,” I said. In a way, it was exciting to hear it said out loud, because if we were broken up, that meant that at one point, we had been together. We were real.

My mother sat down across from me. She sighed. “I was afraid this was going to happen.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s more complicated than just you and Conrad. There are more people involved than just the two of you.”

I wanted to scream at her, to tell her how insensitive, how cruel she was, and couldn’t she see my heart was literally breaking? But when I looked up at her face, I bit back the words and swallowed them down. She was right. There was more to worry about than just my stupid heart. There was Susannah to think of. She was going to be so disappointed. I hated to disappoint her.

“Don’t worry about Beck,” my mother told me, her voice gentle. “I’ll tell her. You want me to fix you something to eat?”

I said yes.

Later, in my room, alone again, I told myself it was better this way. That he’d been wanting to end things all along, so it was better that I said it first. I didn’t believe a word of it. If he’d called and asked for me back, if he’d showed up at the house with flowers or a stereo on his shoulders playing our song—did we even have a song? I didn’t know, but if he’d made even the tiniest gesture, I’d have taken him back, gladly. But Conrad didn’t call.

When I found out Susannah was worse, that she wasn’t going to get any better, I called, once. He didn’t pick up, and I didn’t leave a message. If he had picked up, if he’d called me back, I don’t know what I would have said.

And that was it. We were over.

chapter
thirteen
jeremiah

When my mom found out Conrad was taking Belly to prom, she freaked out. She was insanely happy. You’d have thought they were getting married or something. I hadn’t seen her happy like that in a long time, and part of me was glad that he could give her that. But mostly I was just jealous. My mom kept calling him at school, reminding him of things like to make sure he rented his tux in time. She said maybe he could borrow mine, and I said I doubted it would fit. She left it at that, which I was relieved about. I ended up going to some girl from Collegiate’s prom that night so he couldn’t have worn it anyway. The point is, even if he could have, I wouldn’t have wanted him to.

She made him promise that he’d be sweet to her, the perfect gentleman. She said, “Make it a night she’ll always remember.”

When I got home the afternoon after prom, Conrad’s car was in the driveway, which was weird. I’d thought he was staying at Laurel’s house and then going straight back to school. I stopped by his room, but he was asleep, and pretty soon after, I passed out too.

That night we ordered Chinese food that Mom said she was in the mood for, but when it came, she didn’t eat any.

We ate in the TV room, on the couch, something we never did before she got sick. “So?” she asked, looking at Conrad all eagerly. It was the most energetic I’d seen her all day.

He was shoving a spring roll down his throat, like he was in some big hurry. And he’d brought all this laundry home with him, like he expected Mom to do it. “So what?” he asked.

“So you made me wait all day to hear about the prom! I want to know everything!”

“‘Oh, that,’” he said. He had this embarrassed look on his face, and I knew he didn’t want to talk about it. I was sure he’d done something to screw it up.

“‘Oh, that,’” my mom teased. “Come on, Connie, give me some details. How did she look in her dress? Did you dance? I want to hear everything. I’m still waiting on Laurel to email me the pictures.”

“It was okay,” Conrad said.

“That’s it?” I said. I was annoyed with him that night, with everything about him. He’d gotten to take Belly to her prom and he acted like it was some big chore. If it had been me, I would have done it right.

Conrad ignored me. “She looked really pretty. She wore a purple dress.”

My mom nodded, smiling. “I know exactly the one. How’d the corsage look?”

He shifted in his seat. “It looked nice.”

“Did you end up getting the kind you pin on or the kind you wear on your wrist?”

“The kind you pin on,” he said.

“And did you dance?”

“Yeah, a lot,” he said. “We danced, like, every song.”

“What was the theme?”

“I don’t remember,” Conrad said, and when my mother looked disappointed he added, “I think it was A Night on the Continent. It was, like, a tour of Europe. They had a big Eiffel Tower with Christmas tree lights on it, and a London Bridge you could walk across. And a Leaning Tower of Pisa.”