“Sounds great,” I said, forcing myself to smile.
I stared at the massive Craftsman-style building, all exposed beams and geometric windows that overlooked the ocean. Now the whole cocktail attire thing made sense. My grandparents weren’t trying to make “dinner as a family” feel special. We’d gotten dressed up because there was literally a dress code.
“Some of our friends will be here tonight,” Eleanor said, studying me with a frown. She reached forward and smoothed back a loose wisp of my hair. “And some of their grandchildren. We thought it might be nice for you to make friends before school starts.”
Oh god.
She went on, saying how important it was to start off on the right foot and know the right people, and I had this horrible flash of a country club version of Tara Angel sneering down her nose at my Forever 21 flats.
“What if they don’t like me?” I asked weakly.
“What’s not to like?” my grandmother retorted as though the notion was ridiculous.
I’d given my grandparents the impression that I had plenty of friends back home. I didn’t want them to think I was weird, or that my mom had failed to equip me socially or whatever. Old people never get how brutal high school can be, how a screencap or a bathroom emergency or a vindictive friend can cause someone’s permanent undoing.
“Don’t worry, sweet pea,” my grandfather said. “I’m sure you’ll be just as popular here as you were at your old school.”
I nearly choked. At least before I’d been invisible. Now I was a new student, and people paid attention to those. What’s her deal, they’d wonder. And then they’d find out: I was the sad new girl with the dead mom. Or earthquake girl, which was even worse.
But I had a plan. A foolproof way to get through the next two years: I’d do what had worked before. I’d sign up for yearbook, sit at their lunch table, and volunteer to photograph events so it looked like I had a social life. I didn’t need to make friends, I just needed to not make enemies.
Which meant that, whoever it was my grandparents wanted me to meet tonight, all I had to do was not make them hate me.
And so I took a steadying breath and followed my grandparents through a lobby and onto an oceanfront patio.
Waiters in bow ties stood at drink stations, mixing cocktails and pouring wine. Passed hors d’oeuvres were being served. Music played, soft and inoffensive. A silent auction was set up along the back wall, where you could bid on spa packages and ski retreats. We’d had a silent auction at my high school to raise money—my mom had donated a haircut, and the woman who’d won it had angrily demanded her money back when she realized my mom wasn’t a dog groomer. We’d laughed about it for days.
This was another new thing: the discovery that all of our inside jokes were buried along with her.
My grandfather disappeared instantly into a clutch of older gentlemen, who were recapping some golf game. Eleanor steered me toward a woman with short gray hair and a prominent gold cross necklace, who introduced herself as Joan, from the book club. Her nose was sort of melted, and her skin was strangely tight, and she could have been anywhere from fifty-five to seventy.
“Please tell me you’ll be at the next meeting,” Joan said, giving my grandmother a double air kiss.
“I’ll be there,” my grandmother promised.
“Thank god.” Joan dropped her voice to a whisper. “I need a buffer. Annette won’t stop going on about her kitchen renovation, and there’s only so many times you can look at photos of marble slabs without going crazy.”
My grandmother snorted.
“And this must be Sasha,” Joan said, swiveling in my direction. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like”—Don’t say it, I thought—“Audrey Hepburn?”
“Never,” I said, flattered, even though I didn’t see it at all.
“The spitting image,” she promised.
She switched gears, asking me about school. They were standard questions, easy conversational volleys that I tried to return to my grandmother’s satisfaction.
“Hold on, that’s my grandson,” said Joan, waving over a tall, impossibly handsome blond boy. Water polo, I guessed. With a side of homecoming king. “Cole, come here! I want you to meet Sasha.”
“Hey,” he said, running his hand through his hair before offering it as an afterthought. “What’s up?”
Did every teenage boy shake hands in this place? It was even weirder than using a shower squeegee. I clasped his hand briefly, mumbling a hello.
He was even better-looking up close, all broad shoulders and broader grin. His eyes were green, and his eyebrows thick and brooding. His hair magically stayed where he’d finger-combed it, a perfect golden swoop.
I pictured his yearbook caption easily: Most Likely to Succeed. He was the kind of boy who expected the whole world to fall willingly into his lap. And the kind of boy who definitely didn’t talk to awkward, invisible girls like me.
And yet my grandmother was expecting it. Oh god, was Cole who she pictured I’d have as a friend? The idea was so absurd I almost laughed.
“Sasha will be starting at Baycrest this year,” Joan said.
“Dope. So you’re a freshman?” he asked.
I knew I looked young for my age—the perks of being five-one—but still. My cheeks went pink.
“A junior,” I mumbled.
“Whoa, really?” Cole grinned. “Same.”
“I’ll be seventeen in November,” I said, in case he thought I was still fourteen, but really, really smart.
“Mine’s January third,” Cole said mournfully. “Doesn’t it suck having a birthday around the holidays?”
“Totally,” I said, relieved he wanted to talk about something so normal. “It’s like I’m being greedy, wanting presents early.”
“At least having to celebrate yours doesn’t interrupt your family’s annual ski trip.”
“God, how horrible,” I said, deadpan. “What do they do, stick a candle in a mug of hot chocolate?”
“Shhh! Don’t give anyone ideas,” Cole said.
His eyes lit up when he smiled, shining bright and clear as stained glass. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a conversation like this with a boy. Certainly never with a boy who was so attractive. Which had somehow brought down my guard. All of the clever remarks I kept locked inside my head were spilling out unprompted, and to my total surprise, they were working.
But it was probably only going well because I was an unknown quantity. He’d learn soon enough that I wasn’t worth paying attention to. Sasha Bloom, a disappointing mystery. That’s what he’d think, if he bothered to think of me at all.
Our grandmothers had drifted away, and I wondered why Cole was still here with me.
“I like your dress,” he said, filling the pause.
“Thanks, it’s my mom’s.” The words were out of my mouth before I could think twice, and I instantly regretted them.
“Are your parents here somewhere?” he asked pleasantly, twisting around, as though he expected a smiling mom and dad to materialize out of ocean air and insist on shaking his hand.
“Um,” I said. I still wasn’t used to this. To the screeching halt, followed by the swift calculation of whether to tell him the truth or spare him the awkwardness. I went with the truth. “Actually, my mom died.”