and he felt almost human by noon, as he stretched out in the sun at the pool. He glanced over at Val, her lush figure poured into a bikini Faye didn't like her to wear when there was anyone else around, but with family it was all right. It was barely more than a piece of string, but Greg had to admit it looked great on her.
“Great party, wasn't it, Sis?”
“Yeah.” She opened an eye and looked at him. “You sure got drunk enough.”
He looked unconcerned. “Were Mom and Dad mad?”
“I think Mom would have been, but Dad kept telling her it was your graduation night.” She grinned. She had had quite a few beers too, and the music had been good. They had all danced a lot, before passing out.
“Just wait till it's your turn. You'll probably go nuts.”
“It's my turn next.” Except that she would have to share it with Van. That was the one thing she hated about being twins, you always had to share everything with someone else. And Faye had never understood that she wanted to be separate, to do things by herself, to have her own friends. She always treated them as though they were one, and Valerie had spent her whole life fighting that, making a point of how different they were, at all costs. And still nobody understood. It ruined everything. But not for much longer. Only two more years at home, and then she was moving out. Vanessa said she was going to college in the East, but she knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to take classes at acting school. Not UCLA drama school, the real thing, the kind working actors went to between jobs, and she was going to start looking for work. She'd get her own apartment. She wasn't going to waste her time going to college. Who needed that? She was going to be an actress, and a bigger one than her mother had ever been. She had set that goal for herself years before, and she had never swerved from that desire.
“What are you looking so uptight about?” Greg had been watching her as she thought, and she was wearing an ominous frown. She usually looked like that when she was plotting against some poor slob she had the hots for. But she only shook the long red hair back now, and shrugged. She hadn't told anyone what she was going to do. They would just give her a hard time. Greg would try and talk her into being a physical therapist, or an acrobat, or getting a dumb athletic scholarship somewhere, Vanessa would try and talk her into going to school in the East with her, Lionel would have some other dumb idea, like going to UCLA because he did. Mom would make speeches about education, Dad would tell her how bad makeup was for her skin, and Anne would look at her as though she were a freak. She knew all of them too well after sixteen years of living with them.
“I was just thinking about last night.” She lied and he lay back in the hot sun again.
“Yeah … it was the best.” It occurred to him then to ask what had happened to his date.
“Dad took her home. She almost threw up in his car.” Val grinned and he laughed.
“Christ, he didn't say a word.”
“Lucky it wasn't one of us, he'd have had a fit.” They both laughed and Anne wandered by on her way to the swing with a book.
Where you going, squirt?” Greg squinted at her in the sun, noticing what a trim figure she was getting in a bathing suit. Her waist seemed to be shrinking by the hour and he could have gotten both hands around it, and her breasts were almost as big as Val's. Their little sister was getting all grown up, but she wasn't the kind of kid you could say something about it to. She was the most restrained of all of them, and she never gave him the impression that she liked any of them much, except Lionel of course. It seemed to Greg that they had barely heard her speak since their older brother moved out. “Where you going, kid?” He repeated the question as she walked past them expressionlessly. She never had anything much to say to Greg. She had never liked sports and she always thought his girlfriends were dumb. And she had her worst