“What are you doing?” Jeremiah asked me.
“Just wait,” I said, my back to them. I turned on the TV and popped in the video.
On the screen, there was Conrad, age twelve. With braces and bad skin. He was lying on a beach blanket, scowling. He wouldn’t let anybody take a picture of him that summer.
Mr. Fisher was behind the camera, as always, saying, “Come on. Say ‘Happy Fourth of July,’ Connie.”
Jeremiah and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. Conrad glared at us. He made a move for the remote, but Jeremiah got to it first. He held it above his head, laughing breathlessly. The two of them started wrestling around, and then they stopped.
The camera had focused in on Susannah, wearing her big beach hat and a long white shirt over her bathing suit.
“Suze, honey, how do you feel today, on our nation’s birthday?”
She rolled her eyes. “Give it a rest, Adam. Go videotape the kids.” And then from under her hat, she smiled—that slow, deep-down smile. It was the smile of a woman who really and truly loved the person holding the video camera.
Conrad stopped fighting for the remote and he watched for a moment, then he said, “Turn it off.”
Jeremiah said, “Come on, man. Let’s just watch.”
Conrad didn’t say anything but he didn’t stop watching either.
And then the camera was on me, and Jeremiah was laughing again. Conrad too. This was what I was waiting for. I knew it would get a laugh.
Me, wearing huge glasses and a rainbow striped tankini, my round stomach popping over the bottoms like a four-year-old’s. I was screaming at the top of my lungs, running away from Steven and Jeremiah. They were chasing me with what they claimed was a jellyfish, but what I later found out was a clump of seaweed.
Jeremiah’s hair was white-blond in the sunlight, and he looked exactly the way I remembered.
“Bells, you look like a beach ball,” he said, gasping with laughter.
I laughed too, a little. “Watch it,” I said. “That summer was really great. All our summers here were really . . . great.”
Great didn’t even begin to describe them.
Silently, Conrad got up and then he came back with the tequila. He poured us each some, and this time mine wasn’t watered down.
We all took a shot together, and when I gulped mine down it burned so bad tears streamed down my face. Conrad and Jeremiah started cracking up again. “Suck on the lime,” Conrad told me, so I did.
Soon I felt warm and lazy and great. I lay down on the floor with my hair fanned out and I stared up at the ceiling and watched the fan turn round and round.
When Conrad got up and went to the bathroom, Jeremiah rolled over to his side. “Hey, Belly,” he said. “Truth or dare.”
“Don’t be dumb,” I said.
“Oh, come on. Play with me, Bells. Please?”
I rolled my eyes and sat up. “Dare.”
His eyes had that trickster’s glint. I hadn’t seen that look in his eyes since before Susannah got sick again. “I dare you to kiss me, old-school style. I’ve learned a lot since the last time.”
I laughed. Whatever I had been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that.
Jeremiah tilted his face up at me and I laughed again. I leaned forward, pulled his chin toward me, and kissed him on the cheek with a loud smack.
“Aw, man!” he protested. “That’s not a real kiss.”
“You didn’t specify,” I said, and my face felt hot.
“Come on, Bells,” he said. “That’s not how we kissed that other time.”
Conrad came back into the room then, wiping his hands on his jeans. He said, “What are you talking about, Jere? Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
I looked at Jeremiah, whose cheeks were flaming. “You have a girlfriend?” I heard the accusation in my voice and I hated it. It wasn’t like Jeremiah owed me anything. It wasn’t like he belonged to me. But he always let me feel like he did.
All this time together, and he never once mentioned that he had a girlfriend. I couldn’t believe it. I guessed I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, and the thought made me sad.
“We broke up. She’s going to school at Tulane, and I’m staying around here. We decided there’s no point in staying together.” He glared at Conrad and then glanced back at me. “And we’ve always been off and on. She’s crazy.”
I hated the idea of him with some crazy girl, some girl who he liked enough to go back to over and over. “Well, what’s her name?” I asked.
He hesitated. “Mara,” he said at last.
The alcohol in me gave me the courage to say, “Do you love her?”
This time he didn’t hesitate. “No,” he said.
I picked at a pizza crust and said, “Okay, my turn. Conrad, truth or dare?”
He was lying on the couch facedown. “Never said I was playing.”
“Chicken,” Jeremiah and I said together.
“Jinx,” we said at the same time.
“You guys are two-year-olds,” Conrad muttered.
Jeremiah got up and started doing his chicken dance. “Bock bock bock bock.”
“Truth or dare,” I repeated.
Conrad groaned. “Truth.”
I was so pleased Conrad was playing with us, I couldn’t think of anything good to ask. I mean, there were a million and one things I wanted to ask him. I wanted to ask him what had happened to us, if he’d ever liked me, if any of it had been real. But I couldn’t ask those things. Even through my tequila haze, I knew that much.
Instead, I asked, “Remember that summer you liked that girl who worked at the boardwalk? Angie?”
“No,” he said, but I knew he was lying. “What about her?”
“Did you ever hook up with her?”
Conrad finally lifted his head up from the couch. “No,” he said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I tried, once. But she socked me in the head and said she wasn’t that kind of girl. I think she was a Jehovah’s Witness or something.”
Jeremiah and I busted up laughing. Jeremiah was laughing so hard, he doubled over and fell to his knees. “Oh, man,” he gasped. “That’s awesome.”
And it was. I knew it was only because he’d had about a case of beer, but Conrad loosening up, telling us things—it felt awesome. Like a miracle.
Conrad propped himself up on his elbow. “Okay. My turn.”