“Umm, you know. I think I heard on the radio just now that it’s raining on the mainland. I bet everyone at school thought the party was canceled,” he said. His cheeks were burning up.
I looked at him gratefully. “That’s got to be it, Mom.” And then my eyes went to the box in his hand. I’d noticed it the second he’d come out of his mom’s car. A small white box tied with pink ribbon. It had to be for me.
“Here,” he said, shoving it toward me. “Happy Birthday.”
I started opening it right in front of him. I couldn’t wait. He watched me, peering over my shoulder instead of eating his hot dog.
He’d bought me a necklace, an enamel daisy with a yellow center and white petals. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I almost couldn’t get it on, because my hands were shaking so bad. Mom had to help me with the clasp.
He looked nervous. “Is it okay?”
“I love it,” I told him.
* * *
Despite everything that happened after, he was good to me that day. On that day, when I needed him the most, Reeve was my friend.
The necklace is shiny, not a bit of tarnish, even after all these years. As sad as it is, wearing it again makes me happy. As happy as I was when Reeve gave it to me on my twelfth birthday, once upon a time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
LILLIA
RENNIE AND I ARE GETTING READY FOR THE DANCE AT my house. It’s our tradition. My mom always lets us take over her and my dad’s bedroom. When she helped design our house, she made sure to give herself a huge master bathroom and an attached dressing area with a three-way mirror. She also had the electrician set up a bunch of different lighting settings—daytime, office, night—so we can make sure our hair and makeup look perfect.
My mom has tons and tons of amazing clothes, Chanel and Dior and vintage Halston. Floor-length off-the-shoulder gowns, silky blouses that tie at the neck, tweed suits. Definitely not anything I’d ever wear to school, but my mom says she’s putting a padlock on the door once I turn twenty.
It’s stuffy in the room, with the blow-dryers and the curling irons heating up, so I go open the sliding glass door to the balcony. My mom and Ms. Holtz are on the patio below, having a glass of white wine, watching the sky turn pink as the sun sets over the water. Ms. Holtz lights up a cigarette. We don’t have any ashtrays, so my mom takes a tea light out of a glass candle holder she had sent from Italy, and lets Ms. Holtz use that. Ms. Holtz and my mom are definitely friendly, but I wouldn’t call them friends, exactly.
“Lillia!” Nadia calls out from the bathroom. “Can you please, please, please do my eyes?”
Nadia’s nervous because she has a date. A sophomore named James Melnic asked her. He’s short, but he seems nice enough. I asked Alex because he knows him from football, and he said he’s a good guy. I’m still going to keep my eye on them.
I tell Nadia to sit up on the counter. Then I do her eyes like mine with black eyeliner, but I make the line a bit thinner, since she’s only a freshman. I also use some lilac shadow on her, because her dress is a light, almost silvery purple. It looks like it’s made up of one piece of ribbon, wrapped tight around her like a bandage.
“What about lipstick?” Nadia says as I give her a bit of blush.
“Just do gloss,” I tell her. Nadia pouts. “Lipstick will be too much,” I say, annoyed
She looks at my face. “What about the one you’re wearing?”
I bought a pale pink one, special for my dress. “Too much,” I repeat.
“Lil’s right, Nadia,” Rennie calls out from the dressing room. “You don’t want to look like a hooker.”
“Fine,” Nadia sighs, not entirely convinced, and she disappears into her bedroom.
I take a last look at my hair. I swept the front part across my forehead and twisted it into a low side bun. A few pieces feel loose, so I tuck in a couple more hair pins and spray everything down with hair spray. A touch of that pink lipstick, pink cheek, and black eyeliner. It’s a pale girly look, to compliment the starkness of my black dress, and to match the heels I bought in the palest shade of pink. I’ve been wearing them around the house in thick socks ever since I got them, in the hopes that I’ll break them in.
Rennie is fretting in front of the three-way mirror. She looks great in her sequined dress, which she paired with a sparkly cuff bracelet that my mom lent her, and a bright red lip. Her hair isn’t done, though. Rennie keeps piling it on top of her head, and then letting it go, so it falls around her shoulders.
“Ren, we’d better get going,” I say. Everyone is meeting at Ashlin’s house for pictures.
“Shit,” she says. “I can’t decide if I should do up or down.” She’s nervous and blotchy. She lifts her arms up and fans her armpits. “Help me, Lil. Which do you think Reeve will like best?”
“Come here.”
Rennie flops into one of my mom’s stuffed chairs. I stand behind her and curl the ends of her hair with the big barrel curling iron. I want to ask her about Reeve, what she did or didn’t do with him after I left Ash’s, but I don’t. I just pin back the sides. “Pretty.”
Rennie gets up and looks at herself in the mirror. I’m standing behind her, looking too. I think it looks great with the dress, that there’s a touch of softness to counteract her sparkle and glitz. For a second I’m afraid she doesn’t like what I’ve done. But then I realize she’s not even looking at herself. She’s looking at me, my reflection behind her.
“Lil?” she says, spinning around to face me.
“What?” I say nervously.
Rennie leans forward and hugs me tightly. Then she peels herself away, looks me in the face, and says, “I feel like my whole life would have been different if we hadn’t become friends.” Her eyes glitter with tears.
“Ren,” I say, and then I can barely swallow, knowing what’s going to happen to her tonight. I tell myself Rennie will be a better person after this is over. It’ll be like how things went with Alex. We’ll all come out better on the other side.
The doorbell rings. Nadia screams for me to come downstairs. Rennie and I grab our shoes and our clutch purses and go see what’s up. Nadia’s taking a white box from the hands of a delivery man while Mom signs his clipboard.
“Hmm,” Mom says, and then turns and gives a secret smile to Ms. Holtz. “What could that be?”