“Ahhhhhhh,” Lena said as she waded in. It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to her surface without a deliberate effort. Even when she saw something genuinely funny on television, she never laughed out loud when she was alone.
She ducked all the way under the water and then came up again. She floated languidly with just her face above the surface. The sun warmed her cheeks and eyelids. She splashed a little, loving the swish of water over every part of her body.
This is the most perfect moment of my life, she decided. She felt like an ancient Greek goddess alone under the sky.
She let her arms float out to her sides, tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and just levitated, every muscle loose and soft. She would stay this way until the sun set, until it rose again, until August, until maybe forever. . . .
Every muscle in her body snapped to attention at the sound of rustling grass. In a fraction of an instant she found her feet on the pebbly bottom of the pond and stood.
She drew in a sharp breath. Someone was there. She saw the shadow of a figure obscured behind a tree. Was it a man? An animal? Were there vicious, man-eating animals on Santorini?
Her peace was broken, smashed to bits. She felt her heart nearly bouncing out of her chest.
Fear told her to sink her body back underwater, but a bigger fear told her to run away. She pulled herself out of the pond. The figure emerged.
It was Kostos.
She was staring directly at Kostos, and, far worse, Kostos was staring directly at her. She was so stunned, she took a moment to react.
“K-Kostos!” she shouted, her voice a ragged shriek. “What are you—what—”
“I'm sorry,” he said. He should have averted his eyes, but he didn't.
In three steps she'd reached her clothes. She snatched them and covered herself with the bundle. “Did you follow me?” she nearly screamed. “Have you been spying on me? How long were you here?”
“I'm sorry,” he said again, and muttered something in Greek. He turned around and walked away.
Still soaking wet, she yanked on her clothes haphazardly. In a storm of anger she threw her paint supplies into her backpack, probably smearing her painting. She strode across the meadow and toward the cliff, too mad to link her thoughts.
He'd been following her! And if he . . . Her pants were inside out. How dare he stare at her like that! She was going to . . .
She realized, by the time she neared the house, that her shirt was off-kilter by two buttons, and between pond water and sweat it was stuck to her body almost obscenely.
She banged into the house and threw her backpack on the ground. Grandma sped out of the kitchen and gasped at the sight of her.
“Lena, lamb, vhat happened to you?”
Grandma's face was full of worry, and that made Lena want to cry. Her chin quivered the way it used to when she was five.
“Vhat? Tell me?” Grandma asked, gazing at Lena's inside-out pants and misbuttoned shirt with wide, confused eyes.
Lena sputtered for words. She tried to harness one or two of her spinning thoughts. “K-Kostos is not a nice boy!” she finally burst out, full of shaky fury. Then she stomped up to her room.
Carmen watched Krista struggling with her homework at the kitchen table. She was taking summer school geometry to lighten her load for junior year. Carmen had the impression Krista wasn't going to be joining Mensa or anything.
“You ‘bout ready?” her dad called to her from his bedroom, where he was putting on his tennis clothes.
“Just about,” Carmen called back. She'd been ready for the last twenty minutes.
Krista was doing a lot of erasing. She kept blowing red eraser bits over her scarred paper. She was like a third grader. Carmen felt a pang of sympathy for her and then beat it back. Carmen couldn't help glancing at the problems on Krista's paper. She'd taken geometry in ninth grade, math geek that she was, and it was possibly her favorite class ever. Krista was stuck on a proof. Carmen could tell by just squinting across the table exactly how to do it in a minimum of steps. It was weird, her longing to do that proof. Her fingers were practically tingling for the pencil.
She could hear Lydia blabbing on the phone in the den in her wedding voice. It was the caterer, Carmen guessed, because Lydia kept mentioning “miniature soufflés.”
“All set?” her father asked, appearing at the kitchen door in his Williams T-shirt and his white tennis shorts.
Carmen got up, her heart lifting. This was the first thing she was doing with her father in the five long days she'd been there. She felt almost absurdly privileged to have him to herself.
She left the house with a sigh, sorry only to be leaving the geometry proof.
It wasn't until she was out the door that the thought occurred to her that if Krista weren't Krista, if she bore no relationship to Carmen's father, she would have asked Krista if she needed some help.
Dear Bee,
Skeletor came over again this afternoon. She's over here almost every hour that Paul is home. It's pretty sad that my only joy in life is tormenting that dumb girl. Today I put on a pair of boxers and a cut-off tank top and knocked on Paul's door and asked to borrow a nail clipper. It's clear that Paul completely hates me, though he never says anything, so it's hard to know. The idea that I would be attractive to Paul and a threat to his and Skeletor's happiness is preposterous. But she doesn't know that.
All love from your evil friend who has a tiny patch of heart left to miss her friends desperately,
Carmen
For some unaccountable reason, Bailey showed up at Wallman's the next day.
“What are you doing here?” Tibby asked, forgetting for a moment to be nice.
“I thought I'd give you another chance,” Bailey said. She was wearing cargo pants almost identical to the ones Tibby had worn the day before. She had on a hoodie sweatshirt and a trace of black eyeliner. It was obvious she was trying to look older.
“What do you mean?” Tibby asked dumbly, once again disturbing herself with her quick willingness to lie.
Bailey rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Another chance not to be an asshole.”
In spite of herself, Tibby's temper flared. “Who's the asshole here?” she snapped.
Bailey smiled. “Hey, listen, is that smock your kind of one-size-fits-all item?”
“Yeah, wanna borrow it?” Tibby asked, enjoying the playfulness on Bailey's face.
“Nah. It's butt ugly,” Bailey commented.
Tibby laughed. “It's two-ply. It's made of petroleum.”
“Nice. You need some help with that?” Bailey asked.
Tibby was stacking boxes of tampons. “Are you looking to get a job at Wallman's?”
“No. I just feel bad I wrecked that deodorant display.”
“Antiperspirant,” Tibby noted.
“Right,” Bailey said. She started stacking. “So, do you ever take the smock off? Or do you wear it around the clock?”
Tibby was annoyed. She couldn't take much more mocking about the smock. “Would you leave the smock alone?” she asked testily. She was tempted to bring up the needlepoint. Tibby's mother used to do needlepoint.
Bailey looked pleased. “For now.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Can I buy you some ice cream or something after your shift? You know, as thanks for not stealing all my money?”
Tibby didn't feel like hanging with a twelve-year-old. On the other hand, she didn't feel like she could say no. “Sure. I guess.”
“Great,” Bailey said. “What time?”