firmly grasped in Andrew’s. Her footsteps squeak away down the hallway and I nod my head to the patio.
“Let’s go,” I whisper.
We stop on the first floor near Mom and Dad’s room. In the living room, I know there are pictures of Scarlett and me on the fireplace mantle so I need to get him onto the porch and out the door before he has time to really see them and recognize her face. I grab Andrew’s hand once we get to the living room and pull him out to the patio.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he says. And with one more kiss, he’s down the patio steps, his feet pad on the path and after a few moments, there’s the purr of his motorboat.
He drives a bit out from the dock. From up here in the living room, we’re high enough up that I can see the harbor. He’s out of my inlet before the sun is fully over the horizon.
TWENTY-EIGHT
LOVE.
Neuroscientists have scanned the human brain in an attempt to understand love and its chemical origin.
Nothing is conclusive.
I know I love Andrew. That is irrefutable. I don’t need to peruse pie charts to accurately deduce if I love him or not.
A few days later, after a breakfast of waffles, I gather up all of Scarlett’s clothes from my bedroom floor. She’ll be home in two days. Forty-eight hours.
I hug her clothes to my chest and head to the laundry room. They smell like coconut oil and suntan lotion. I pass Mom on my way. She writes in a calendar book and I hope it’s for an interview.
I toss in the darks. I pull out the short-shorts from the party the night Curtis yanked at me and the T-shirt from the dune buggy ride. I hold up the blue sundress from the night of the comet and I’m not exactly sure I would even want to wear this anymore. The dress is the same. The fabric and the color is too. It’s not . . . it’s not . . . me. I think it’s more girly than I would like to wear. It’s more Scarlett. I want to wear clothes that are down to earth. Natural. I would never have known that before the Scarlett Experiment. Maybe Tucker was right. Maybe I had to do the Scarlett Experiment so I could change.
The dress dangles in my hand. The cold water fills the machine and I am about to wash away the sand, the sweat, and the stardust overhead. Once I am done, I will put away all of her clothes and pretend that I never paraded around pretending to be someone I am not. One thing is for sure: I am wearing that cocktail dress Saturday night. I haven’t forgotten how I felt when I put it on or that it represents the new me.
I also haven’t forgotten that I still need to tell Andrew.
I drop the dress into the washer. It’s okay. Andrew loves me. Me. The girl he thinks is funny, and smart. The girl who helped him see that he does have a future of his own making.
“Gran mixes her lights and darks too,” Mom says from the laundry room doorway. “You two are too much alike,” she says with a little shake of her head.
Maybe Mom does see me. Just a little. Even if she can’t see who I am, Mom gets something right.
“Smart, smart, smart. You and your Gran.” She steps away.
Mom and Dad love me. I know this, they tell me all the time. But they don’t see me. Not really. I watch her from the laundry room doorway. She passes the maid, who is scrubbing the kitchen, and the cook, who is prepping for dinner.
I want to stop Mom and tell her about Andrew. Tell her that someone loves me. Loves me for my brain, books, mathematical equations, and so much more.
She calls to me from down the hall, “Beanie, give Dad your essay tonight so he can proof it before Scarlett comes home.”
I grip the doorway—hard.
“If I had to smell pee one more time, I swear,” Scarlett says when she comes out of the terminal at the Hyannis airport. I didn’t want to go, but somehow here I am. “NYC in the summer is pee and garbage.”
She hugs Mom and when she sees me, she gives me a one-armed hug.
“You’re tan,” she says, disguising her jealousy. She takes out her cell phone.
“I’ve been on the beach a lot,” I say.
I grab one