All four parents stop. And look at me with blank faces.
Just as I’m about to tell them where to go, Kennedy starts to giggle beside me. It’s that forced kind of giggle—a signal to everyone else that a joke was told and they should laugh to be polite. And as long as you’re not her younger daughter, Mitzy Randolph is the epitome of politeness.
Same goes for my mother. “Brent, darling, take off those sunglasses. It’s rude to wear them at the table.”
I take them off and try to hide my eyes by looking down. My mother’s gasp is horrified, so that plan obviously tanked.
“My goodness, why are your eyes so red? Do you have an infection?”
Claire Randolph finally cracks a smile. I bet she enjoys watching worms squirm under a magnifying glass on a sunny day too.
“No, Mom, they’re not infected.”
“But they look terrible!” Her hand rests on my father’s forearm. “Donald, dear, perhaps we should have the doctor come look at Brent?”
“Allergies,” Kennedy pipes up—sounding like she just thought of it herself. “His eyes are red from allergies.”
“Brent doesn’t have any allergies.”
Kennedy smiles at my mother, and sounds so confident I’d believe her. “We all have allergies here. Something to do with the special species of trees in Connecticut. The pollen they . . . ejaculate.”
Ejaculate?
Then she sneezes for added effect.
It’s obvious Claire doesn’t buy it, but the rest of them swallow it like hundred-year-old scotch.
Then it only takes a few minutes before:
“Do make a salon appointment, Kennedy. I can see your split ends from here.”
I stand up so fast the glasses on the table rattle. “We’re going for a walk.”
My mother’s eyes are wide like an owl’s. “Why?”
Saying I’m on the verge of stuffing the tablecloth down her best friend’s throat probably won’t go over well. “I just spotted a . . . double-breasted blue robin down by the lake. They’re super rare. Kennedy and I need to study it for horticulture—”
“Horticulture’s plants,” Kennedy whispers frantically.
“—and winged wildlife class.”
I’m a lacrosse goalie—I’m all about the save.
And they go for it.
Five minutes later, Kennedy and I are walking on the bank of the lake outside. I pick up a rock and throw it hard into the water. “How do you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“Posture, Kennedy, split ends, Kennedy, fucking carbs, Kennedy . . . I wanted to jam my fork into my ear just so I wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore—and she wasn’t even talking about me!”
Kennedy smiles. And it’s not sad or fake or bitter at all. It’s just pretty. “She doesn’t mean those things the way they sound.”
“Then how the hell does she mean them?”
Kennedy shrugs a shoulder and tosses a rock of her own.
“She wants me to be happy. What she thinks happiness is. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t say anything at all. She’d just ignore me. And that would be worse.”
Our eyes hold for a few seconds and I realize how much I’ve missed this girl. It’s not manly to say—but it’s really fucking true. The people I spend my time with, talk to every day—they’re not real. They don’t look at things the way she does.
They don’t look at me the way she does. Even today, after all this time of not hanging out, we don’t miss a beat. Because she knows me, beginning to end. All the pieces, good and bad, that make me who I am.
And no one else makes me feel the way I feel, right now, looking back at her. The ache in my chest, the clench of my stomach, the thrumming of my pulse.
“I’m surprised you’re not having lunch with Cashmere’s family,” Kennedy says.
That makes my gut clench for a whole different reason.
Cashmere’s the hottest girl in school, and things started out wild between us. Fun. But in the year we’ve been dating . . . she’s changed. She’s become clingy and bossy at the same time. Miserably jealous and insecure. That’s another reason Kennedy and I haven’t really hung out lately—Cashmere’s not too keen on her.
“We broke up.”
Kennedy’s eyebrows rise. “Really? When? Why?”
And going by the happy spark in her eyes, it looks like the feeling is mutual.
“Yes. Yesterday. I’m not exactly sure why.”
“You’re not sure?”
“There was a lot of screaming; it was hard to make out the actual words. It’s somewhere between I’m suffocating her and I’m not giving her the attention she deserves.” Palms up, I shrug again.
Kennedy swallows as we walk along the water. “Wow. You, ah . . . you don’t seem too broken up about it.”
“I’m not.”
A light breeze blows and she pushes a loose strand of hair from her cheek. “Do you think—”
“Kennedy!” Mitzy Randolph calls from up the hill to where we stand. “Kennedy!”
Her voice reminds me of Auntie Em calling for Dorothy as the twister was coming in.
She gestures for us to come up and reluctantly, we do.
Mitzy talks with her hands as she explains to us both. “We’ve all had the grandest idea! The Remington Hotel is just a few miles away—they have the most fabulous bar and casino—very exclusive. So we’re all going to spend the night there and we’ll take you back to school tomorrow. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”