Isabella sat forward and rested her chin on her kneecap. “Sorry I didn’t say. I mean, I woulda said, but—” She licked her lips. “Sorry.”
A plume of warmth surged through my spine. “Don’t worry.”
The fountain bubbled. The silver fleck quivered under the line of her eyebrow.
“So did the doctor give you the OK for your motorcycle license?”
Isabella snorted. She kicked her heels against the fountain. “God, Briddie, it’s so boring being sick. I mean, I’m not really sick anymore. But still. I’m so bored waiting to get normal again. You know? Last summer I was practically a shut-in. I swear I’ll go crazy if I have to spend any more time indoors.”
“Could you at least read?” I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and let the sunlight beat against my eyelids. I hoped that was the right way to act. Taking it for granted instead of making sympathetic gurgles.
“Oh no. I didn’t even know where I was most of the time. I was like a rag doll.”
I opened my eyes and glanced at her.
She was staring at me with an odd flush in her cheeks, all the fidgeting abandoned. “My mom had to clean me. Even when I was well again. She had to wipe me.” She said it with a hardness in her expression, as if challenging me to console her.
I knew she was being real then. That we would be friends. Because there’s nothing glamorous about a mom lowering her teenage daughter into the tub.
“My mom can’t even wipe the kitchen clean,” I said.
Isabella tipped her head back and laughed.
The sound of her laughter filled my chest. I swallowed the guilty squirm for being cruel about Mama.
“Anyway.” She licked her lips. “Don’t tell, will you?”
I felt the frown on my face.
“It’s just, I don’t want the girls whispering and stuff,” she said, shifting on the edge of the basin.
“I won’t tell.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Isabella shuffled closer to me. “In that case,” she said, “I have a secret for you.”
“Oh?” My stomach lurched. It was a secret about when she had malaria, I was sure of it. Sophie LeBaron would be so jealous.
Isabella leaned toward me and pressed her hand to my ear. Her breath was hot and smelled of bubble gum, artificial and buttery. “You’re the prettiest girl in school,” she said.
I blinked.
She pulled back and, with a groan, jumped down from the basin.
Speckles of water from the fountain flicked against the back of my neck. What was the right thing to say? It was a lie. Not just a small, white lie either. It was a lie so untruthful it was almost insulting. Isabella took a long stride toward a crispy-looking leaf. Was it a test? Was I supposed to deny it? If I said thank you, would that make me bigheaded?
“Not after you moved here,” I heard myself saying instead.
Isabella stamped on the leaf and turned to me with a smile. “Briddie,” she said, “you’re ridiculous.” She held out her hand.
Pulse rushing into my temples, I stepped forward and took her hand in mine.
And there she was, holding my hand.
Isabella.
2.
June
On Monday morning I pushed Flora McDonald to the front of the line for Mass. All year I had found it distracting to sit behind Isabella, studying the line of her nose, searching out the tiny beauty spot behind her right ear. So when I nudged Flora into the first pew, I made a special effort to flutter my eyelashes during prayers. To smile at Flora with mischievous cheer, to show how much fun I was, how interesting. At the end of service I squeezed past Flora to stand behind Isabella, and before I knew what I was doing, I reached out and touched the back of her shoulder.
She turned and her eyes loosely focused on mine. “Oh, hi.”
My confidence faltered. “Um. Did you have a good weekend?”
Isabella shrugged. “Republican Club benefit.”
The Republican Club benefit was a lavish affair hosted by Mrs. Quincy, a widow with such celebrated Yankee pedigree that her skeleton was probably made from strips of the Mayflower. The attendees had to wear red masquerade masks, and there was a silent auction at midnight.
“Who won the boat?” I said. There was always a boat.
On the other side of Isabella, Sophie LeBaron turned and scrutinized me. “Were you there?”
I examined her. Was she being cruel, or was she really so dreamy she couldn’t remember the guest list? She began to chew absently on her lip, and I came down on the side of dreamy. “Not this year,” I said in the end.
We shuffled out of chapel and I fell into step beside Isabella. “Are you going to camp over vacation?” I crossed my fingers in my kilt pocket. If Isabella was staying in St. Cyrus, I would at least have a chance to court her friendship. Maybe she’d invite me to the country club. I’d have to buy a new bathing suit.
Isabella shook her head. “No, no camp for me.”
A rush of glitter soared through my body. “Really?”
“We’ll be in Bristol, at the summerhouse.”
And all my hopefulness shrank back. I pictured a whitewashed cottage, windows blown open onto hillocks of dune grass. In the distance, a Dalmatian running across yellow sand. “So you won’t be here?” I said, my voice dangerously close to breaking.
“No, Briddie, we’ll be in Bristol.” Isabella rolled her eyes. “Bristol, Rhode Island.”
On the other side of her, Sophie giggled. She pushed her arm through Isabella’s with such careless familiarity that I felt ashamed of my delusions of competing with her. Sophie LeBaron wasn’t the richest girl in our grade, but her particular kind of richness afforded her a flimsy glamour, like a gold butterscotch wrapper. Her house had a downstairs ballroom with special carpet laid in strips so their housemaids could roll it back for dancing. Her parents threw infamous parties: at Thanksgiving, Mrs. LeBaron hid an emerald ring inside a pecan pie for a guest to find. But the most anticipated event was their Labor Day fireworks display, which my parents were never invited to. Flora said Mr. and Mrs. LeBaron ordered coolers of lobster specially delivered from Maine. And a woman from the conservatoire played a harp in a ball gown. Sophie’s family was from Texas, and since she had been the “different” girl before Isabella enrolled, it was pure social economy they should be best friends.
Sophie began talking about a cousin with a boat, or a cousin’s cousin with two boats, and I fell halfway into a daydream where I took a bus to Rhode Island and strolled along a pier at sunset. Isabella would chance upon me as my hat blew into the water. Or maybe I’d be lounging on a candlelit patio, surrounded by amorphous, elegant friends.