"This time I'll reach her!" Tristan said. "I have to warn Ivy, I have to tell her that the crash wasn't" an accident. Lacey, help me out! You know this angel stuff doesn't come naturally to me."
"You can say that again," Lacey replied, leaning back against Tristan's tombstone.
"Then you'll come with me?"
Lacey checked her nails, long purple nails that wouldn't chip or break any more than Tristan's thick brown hair would grow again. At last she said, "I guess I can squeeze in a pool party for an hour. But listen, Tristan, don't expect me to be a perfect, angelic guest."
Ivy stood at the edge of the pool, her skin prickling from the cold water that occasionally splashed her.
Two girls brushed past her, chased by a guy with a water gun. The three of them tumbled into the pool together, leaving Ivy drenched by a shower of icy drops. If this had been the year before, she would have been trembling, trembling and praying to her water angel. But angels weren't real. Ivy knew that now.
The previous winter, when she had dangled from a diving board high above the school pool, frozen with a fear she had known since childhood, she had prayed to her water angel. But it was Tristan who had saved her.
He had taught her to swim. Though her teeth had chattered that first day and the next and the next, she had loved the feel of the water when he pulled her through it. She had loved him, even when he argued that angels weren't real.
Tristan had been right. And now Tristan was gone, along with her belief in angels.
"Going for a swim?"
Ivy turned quickly and saw her own sun-tanned face and tumbleweed of gold hair reflected in Eric Ghent's sunglasses. His wet hair was slicked back, almost transparent against his head.
"I'm sorry we don't have a high dive," Eric said.
She ignored the little jab. "It's a beautiful pool anyway."
"It's pretty shallow at this end," he said, pulling off his sunglasses, letting them dangle froro their cord against his bony chest. Eric's eyes were light blue, and his lashes were so pale he looked as if he didn't have any.
"I can swim — either end," Ivy told him.
"Really." One side of Eric's mouth curled up. "Let me know when you're ready," he told her, then walked away to talk to his other guests.
Ivy hadn't expected Eric to be any nicer than that. Though he had invited her and her two closest friends to his midsummer pool party, they weren't members of Stonehill's fast crowd. Ivy was sure that Beth, Suzanne, and she were there only at the request of Eric's best friend and Ivy's stepbrother, Gregory.
She gazed across the pool at a line of sun-bathers, searching for her friends. In the midst of a dozen oiled bodies and bleached heads sat Beth, wearing a huge hat and something resembling a muumuu.
She was talking a mile a minute to Will O'Leary, another one of Gregory's friends. Somehow Beth Van Dyke, who had never even dreamed of being cool, and Will, who was thought to be ultracool, had become friends.
The girls around them were arranging themselves to show the sun — or Will — their best angle, but Will didn't notice. He was nodding encouragingly to Beth, who was probably telling him her newest idea for a short story. Ivy wondered if, in his quiet way. Will enjoyed Beth's writings — poems and stories, and, once for history class, a biography of Mary, Queen of Scots — which somehow always turned into steamy bare-every-emotion tales of romance. The thought made Ivy smile.
Will glanced across the pool just then and caught the smile. For a moment his face seemed alight.
Perhaps it was only the flicker of sun Hashing off the water, but Ivy took a self-conscious step back. Just as quickly, he turned his face into the shade of Beth's hat.
As Ivy stepped back she felt the bare skin of a cool, hard chest. The person did not move out of the way, but rather lowered his face over her shoulder, brushing her ear with his mouth.
"I think you have an admirer," said Gregory.
Ivy did not move away from him. She had gotten used to her stepbrother, his tendency to lean too close, his way of showing up behind her unexpectedly. "An admirer? Who?"
Gregory's gray eyes laughed down at her. He was dark-haired, tall and slender, with a deep tan from spending hours a day playing tennis.
In the last month, he and Ivy had spent a lot of time together, though back in April she would never have believed it possible. Then, all chat she and Gregory had in common was shock at their parents' decision to marry, and anger at and distrust of each other. At seventeen. Ivy was earning her own money and looking after her kid brother. Gregory was racing around the Connecticut countryside in his BMW with a fast, rich crowd who scorned anyone who didn't have what they did.
But all that seemed unimportant now that he and Ivy had shared a lot more — the suicide of Gregory's mother and Tristan's death. When two people live in the same house. Ivy discovered, they share some of their deepest feelings, and, surprisingly enough, she had come to trust Gregory with hers. He was there for her when she missed Tristan the most.
"An admirer," Ivy repeated, smiling. "Sounds to me like you've been reading Beth's romances." She moved away from the pool, and Gregory moved with her like a shadow. Quickly Ivy scanned the patio area for her oldest and best friend, Suzanne Goldstein. For Suzanne's sake, Ivy wished Gregory would not stand so close. She wished he wouldn't whisper to her as if they shared some secret.
Suzanne had been pursuing Gregory since the winter, and Gregory had encouraged the chase. Suzanne said they were officially dating now; Gregory smiled and admitted to nothing. Just as Ivy laid a light hand on Gregory to push him back a little, a glass door slid open and Suzanne emerged from the pool house. She paused for a moment, as if taking in the scene — the long sapphire oval of the pool, the marble sculptures, the terraces of flowers.
The pause conveniently gave all the guys a chance to look at her. With her shimmering mane of black hair and a tiny bikini that seemed more like jewelry than clothing, she outshone all the other girls, including the ones who had been longtime members of Eric and Gregory's crowd.
"If anyone has admirers," Ivy said, "it's Suzanne. And if you're smart, you'll get over there before twenty other guys line up."
Gregory just laughed and brushed back a tangle of golden hair from Ivy's cheek. He knew, of course, that Suzanne was watching. Both Gregory and Suzanne were into playing games, and Ivy was often caught in the middle.
Suzanne moved with catlike grace, reaching them quickly, yet never appearing to move faster than a leisurely stroll.
"Great suit!" she greeted Ivy. Ivy blinked, then stared down at her one-piece in surprise. Suzanne had been with her when she bought the suit and had urged her to find something that plunged even further.
But of course this was just a setup to turn Gregory's attention to Suzanne's… jewelry.
"It really looks terrific on you. Ivy."
"That's what I told her," Gregory said in an overly warm voice.
He had never said a thing about Ivy's suit. His white lie was intended to make Suzanne jealous. Ivy flashed him a look and he laughed.
"Did you bring any sunblock?" Suzanne asked. "I can't believe I forgot mine."
Ivy couldn't believe it, either. Suzanne had been working that line since they were twelve and vacationing at the Goldsteins' beach house.
"I know my back is going to fry," Suzanne said.
Ivy reached for her bag, which was on a nearby chair. She knew that Suzanne could stretch out on a sheet of foil at high noon and still never bum. "Here. Keep it. I've got plenty."
Then she placed the tube in Gregory's hands. She started off, but Gregory caught her by the arm. "How about you?" he asked, his voice low and intimate.
"How about me what?" "Don't you need some lotion?" he asked. "Nope. I'm fine."