Phoebe and I had been through it all together. Getting our periods. First crushes. My parents’ divorce. I spend a lot of time at her house after school. And since she was an only child, there was no one like Jeremy hanging around eating cheese or farting or something. I don’t know what I’d do without Phoebe. We had plans to always be friends, and if we could we would live on the same block so our kids could be friends, too. Lately we had talked about moving to New York City after college and sharing an apartment. We went to this store we liked called Seventh Scents and picked out which candles and incense we wanted to light in our windows. We would get a place in the West Village or Brooklyn and adopt some babies maybe from Romania or China and then we’d take care of them together and open a pottery studio or a wine shop.
“’lo?” Phoebe always started talking before she pressed the TALK button. Usually, it made me laugh, but today it just made me miss her more.
“Pheebs! It’s me!”
“Sam? Are you okay?”
“No!” I moaned.
“What’s going on?” I could just picture her, twirling a piece of hair around her pinky, the curl bouncing back into place.
“Everything!” That was the other great thing about Phoebe. She was a great listener. She didn’t try to solve anything or convince me that everything would be okay. She just waited for me to get it all out. I had already called her from the bathroom in the Mexican restaurant, Dad and Kathy’s, and the closet back at the baggage claim at the airport.
“My dad is inside with Kathy having sex, and Jeremy is picking his nose in front of the TV, and there are no kids here my age! It’s all old people!”
I wasn’t sure that was exactly true, but I tend to be dramatic.
“What happened to hitting the slopes and finding love in the mountains?”
“It was too late by the time we got here today. And I’m thinking I’m not even gonna go skiing tomorrow. I’m just gonna fall and make a —”
“Hey, Phoebe! Are you coming back in? We’re about to play Murder!” I could hear voices in the background, like someone had just opened a door.
“Be there in a sec!” called Phoebe.
“Where are you?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. She was over at Dave Murphy’s house. A bunch of us went over there on the weekends all the time. He had a really cool basement with a Ping-Pong table and a flat-screen TV, and his parents kinda pretended they didn’t know when we had wine coolers or beer. We all lived really close to each other so we could walk over or carpool. And we weren’t big drinkers, anyway. We mostly watched movies or sometimes we would play games. Murder was this game where everyone sat in a circle, and then one person had to guess who the murderer was. I know it sounds kind of childish, but it’s actually pretty smart because you get a chance to defend yourself and then people can challenge you. Like I said, we’re not the coolest crowd, but it’s fun.
I could hear Sara and Rachel, Dave and Ben. It sounded pretty crowded, actually. Maybe Dave’s older brother, Mark, had brought friends home from college. Lucky Phoebe. But the one voice I was listening for was, of course, Leo’s.
Leo. Leo Strumm. I knew it was just a play, but that kiss was really important to me. A little too important, I guess. Leo hung out at Dave Murphy’s sometimes, too. Leo was tall — 6'1¾"! (I asked) — and had deep, dark eyes, almost black. He played drums in a band called Lame Duck, and he chewed on his lip whenever he was lost in thought. And he always carried around a copy of Brave New World in his back pocket. Okay, yeah, I know that’s a little geeky, but to a nerd like me, that’s also kinda sexy. The only thing was, Leo barely talked. At least not to me. And I had tried, believe me. But every time I did, he looked overwhelmed. Once he even said, “Sam, aren’t you tired?” after I told him about my views on gun control. I told you I have an opinion on just about everything. Plus, my mom has always made sure Jeremy and I read the newspaper at least three times a week.
“Is it okay if you play next round, Phoebe?” I heard someone asking now.
“Yeah, sure!” said Phoebe.
“I’ll save you a seat!”
That voice was easy to recognize. It was Madalena, Rachel’s foreign exchange friend from Venice. She gave a whole new meaning to the word “sexy.” She was gorgeous, with long, wavy brown hair and these eyes that were every color of green mixed together. She wore European jeans and turtleneck sweaters that clung to her every curve. And she was curvy. There must be something in Italian water or something because sixteen is way different over there. Madalena was really sweet, too. Which sucked, because I couldn’t hate her. Even that one night …
It was at the cast party after Grapes. We were all at Dave’s, of course. And I was hoping to talk to Leo alone maybe. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but we had just shared saliva, so I had to make my move, right? Phoebe and I had rehearsed a couple of options, my favorite one being, “Hey, I think I left my dentures in your mouth. You mind if I look for them?” But I never had a chance to even get through “Hey.” As soon as we got to Dave’s, I watched Leo slink into a corner with Madalena where they stayed all night sipping wine coolers and talking into each other’s necks. I guess he did know how to string a sentence together after all. I was crushed. She wasn’t even in the play! How could he be so shallow as to fall for some smart, sophisticated, disturbingly beautiful young woman? Especially when I was offering him a lifetime of awkward conversations and inexperienced lips. And if he was nice to me, a game of Boggle. (Everybody’s got to be good at something.)
Ugh. That was not a pretty night. I had even put on a tight miniskirt and one of Phoebe’s baby tees, which I kept on tugging at to make sure my belly button didn’t show. I got kind of drunk on some red punch that tasted like cough syrup, and I announced to everyone that I was going to get an ear job so that someone would find me attractive. Then for the grand finale I threw up in Dave’s driveway. Good times, right?
After that, there was that month or so when Alan Neumar kept on waiting by my locker and asking if he could see my Chemistry homework. Alan was in the play, too — he was a migrant. Alan had saggy eyes like a basset hound’s, and I heard he couldn’t shower in the boys’ locker room because he had a contagious foot fungus. I don’t mean to be superficial, but those things aren’t exactly turn-ons. And he didn’t really talk either, except to tell me I had nice handwriting, but I had misspelled “alkaline.” Great.
“Sam? Are you there?” came Phoebe’s voice.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. What’d you say?”
“I said, what if you tried it out? I bet there’d be kids our age there.”
“Tried out what?”
“Skiing, dorko.”
“Yeah, I dunno. I’ll see how I feel. What else have you guys been doing?”
“You know. We ordered pizza, and some people were watching a movie that Mark and his friends made at school. It’s pretty funny. About frogs. And then some people went over to Bonnie Briar to go sledding. The rest of us are playing Murder. The usual.”
“That sounds awesome right now.” I sighed.
“Oh, come on, Sam. So, tell me about the inn. Is it pretty?” I knew she was working hard to cheer me up, so I tried to sound chipper.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You sharing a room with Jeremy?”
“Ew, no way.”
“Well, that’s good. What else?”
“Nothing. Tonight they’re having a slide show. Woo-hoo.”
“Well, why not curl up in front of the fire? Just relax. And then tomorrow you can hit the slopes and find some fun people to hang with. Remember — you’re on a mission,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, it’s just I —”
“Pheeb! Come on! We need you in here!”