Conrad cleared his throat. "We broke up," he said.
I almost gasped. My heart did a little ping. "Your mom is right, you are a heartbreaker." I meant it to come out as a joke, but the words rang in my head and in the air like some kind of declaration.
He flinched. "She dumped me," he said flatly.
I couldn't imagine anyone breaking up with Conrad. I wondered what she was like. Suddenly she was this compelling, actual person in my mind. "What was her name?"
"What does it matter?" he said, his voice rough. Then, "Aubrey. Her name is Aubrey."
"Why did she break up with you?" I couldn't help myself. I was too curious. Who was this girl? I pictured someone with pale white blond hair and turquoise eyes, someone with perfect cuticles and oval-shaped nails. I'd always had to keep mine short for piano, and then after I quit, I still kept them short, because I was used to them that way.
Conrad put down the guitar and stared off into space moodily. "She said I changed." "And did you?"
"I don't know. Everybody changes. You did." "How did I change?"
He shrugged and picked up his guitar again. "Like I said, everybody changes."
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Conrad started playing the guitar in middle school. I hated it when he played the guitar. He'd sit there, strumming, halfway paying attention, only halfway present. He'd hum to himself, and he was someplace else. We'd be watching TV, or playing cards, and he'd be strumming the guitar. Or he'd be in his room, practicing. For what, I didn't know. All I knew was that it took time away from us.
"Listen to this," he'd said once, stretching out his headphones so I had one and he had the other. Our heads touched. "Isn't it amazing?"
"It" was Pearl Jam. Conrad was as happy and enthralled as if he had discovered them himself. I'd never heard of them, but at that moment, it was the best song I'd ever heard. I went out and bought Ten and listened to it on repeat. When I listened to track five, "Black," it was like I was there, in that moment all over again.
After the summer was over, when I got back home, I went to the music store and bought the sheet music and learned to play it on the piano. I thought one day I could accompany Conrad and we could be, like, a band. Which was so stupid, the summer house didn't even have a piano. Susannah tried to get one for the summer house, so I could practice, but my mother wouldn't let her.
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chapter nine
At night when I couldn't sleep, I'd sneak downstairs and go for a swim in the pool. I'd start doing laps, and I'd keep going until I felt tired. When I went to bed, my muscles felt nice and sore but also shivery and relaxed. I loved bundling myself up after a swim in one of Susannah's cornflower blue bath sheets--I'd never even heard of bath sheets before Susannah. And then, tiptoeing back upstairs, falling asleep with my hair still wet. You sleep so well after you've been in the water. It's like no other feeling.
Two summers ago Susannah found me down there, and some nights she'd swim with me. I'd be underwater, doing my laps, and I'd feel her dive in and start to swim on the other side of the pool. We wouldn't talk; we'd just swim, but it was comforting to have her there. It was the only
37
time that summer that I ever saw her without her wig.
Back then, because of the chemo, Susannah wore her wig all the time. No one saw her without it, not even my mother. Susannah had had the prettiest hair. Long, caramel-colored, soft as cotton candy. Her wig didn't even compare, and it was real human hair and everything, the best money could buy. After the chemo, after her hair grew back, she kept it short, cut right below her chin. It was pretty, but it wasn't the same. Looking at her now, you'd never know who she used to be, with her hair long like a teenager, like mine.
That first night of the summer, I couldn't sleep. It always took me a night or two to get used to my bed again, even though I'd slept in it pretty much every summer of my life. I tossed and turned for a while, and then I couldn't stand it anymore. I put on my bathing suit, my old swim team one that barely fit anymore, with the gold stripes and the racerback. It was my first night swim of the summer.
When I swam alone at night, everything felt so much clearer. Listening to myself breathe in and out, it made me feel calm and steady and strong. Like I could swim forever.
I swam back and forth a few times, and on the fourth lap, I started to flip turn, but I kicked something solid. I came up for air and saw it was Conrad's leg. He was sitting on the edge of the pool with his feet dangling in.
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He'd been watching me that whole time. And he was smoking a cigarette.
I stayed underwater up to my chin--I was suddenly aware of how my bathing suit was too small for me now. There was no way I was getting out of the water with him still there.
"Since when did you start smoking?" I asked accusingly. "And what are you doing down here anyway?"
"Which do you want me to answer first?" He had that amused, condescending Conrad look on his face, the one that drove me crazy.
I swam over to the wall and rested my arms on the edge. "The second."
"I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk," he said, shrugging. He was lying. He'd only come outside to smoke.
"How did you know I was out here?" I demanded.
"You always swim out here at night, Belly. Come on." He took a drag of his cigarette.
He knew I swam at night? I'd thought it was my special secret, mine and Susannah's. I wondered how long he had known. I wondered if everyone knew. I didn't even know why it mattered, but it did. To me, it did. "Okay, fine. Then when did you start smoking?"
"I don't know. Last year, maybe." He was being vague on purpose. It was maddening.
"Well, you shouldn't. You should quit right now. Are you addicted?"
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He laughed. "No."
"Then quit. If you put your mind to it, I know you can." If he put his mind to it, I knew he could do anything.
"Maybe I don't want to."
"You should, Conrad. Smoking is so bad for you."
"What will you give me if I do?" he asked teasingly. He held the cigarette in the air, above his beer can.
The air felt different all of a sudden. It felt charged, electric, like I had been zapped by a thunderbolt. I let go of the edge and started to tread water, away from him. It felt like forever before I spoke. "Nothing," I said. "You should quit for yourself."
"You're right," he said, and the moment was over. He stood up and ground his cigarette out on the top of the can. "Good night, Belly. Don't stay out here too late .You never know what kind of monsters come out at night."
Everything felt normal again. I splashed water at his legs as he walked away. "Screw you," I said to his back. A long time ago Conrad and Jeremiah and Steven convinced me that there was a child killer on the loose, the kind who liked chubby little girls with brown hair and grayish-blue eyes.
"Wait! Are you quitting or not?" I yelled.
He didn't answer me. He just laughed. I could tell by the way his shoulders shook as he closed the gate.