Girlfriend Material Read online

  As we sat on the deck eating brie-and-pesto sandwiches, I could tell that Sarah and her friends weren’t going to be the only bright spot in my summer after all. Tina and Henry asked me tons of questions about myself, and when I mentioned that back in Salt Lake I’d been playing a lot of tennis because of wanting to be in good shape for the team in September, Tina said she was sure I wouldn’t have a problem finding a regular game with someone. She said tennis is practically the official past-time of Dryer’s Cove.

  “And you had to give up your writing class,” Tina said. “That was such a nice thing for you to do for your mom.” She smiled at me and reached across the table for the hand that wasn’t holding my sandwich. Then she gave it a little squeeze.

  “Um …” I said. The combination of the beautiful house and view and Tina and Henry’s enthusiasm for our visit and the delicious sandwiches was making me a little embarrassed about how ungracefully I’d behaved since my mom announced the change in my summer agenda. I wished Sarah would arrive so we could flee her parents and their guilt-inducing sympathy.

  As if in answer to my silent plea, a car pulled into the driveway with a band I didn’t recognize booming on the stereo.

  Tina rolled her eyes, I guess at the volume. “That’s Sarah,” she said. “She worked a little later than usual today.”

  I was really surprised that a girl like Sarah, who went to a fancy Manhattan private school and had old-family money and a summer house, would have to have a summer job, but then Henry explained, “She’s interning at the Dryer’s Cove historical society. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Oh yes,” said Tina, smiling at me. “She’s really excited about your being here.”

  “Me too,” I said, glad that Sarah felt the same way about seeing me as I felt about seeing her.

  As soon as Sarah appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, I knew I’d been right about my chic summer with New Yorkers. She had on a pale green T-shirt dress that clung to her (perfect) curves. It was the kind of dress you’d see an A-list Hollywood starlet relaxing in while she takes the kids for a stroll on her private island off the coast of Tahiti.

  For a second I was surprised by how different she looked. She was a lot taller than I was, and her hair wasn’t curly anymore; it fell in soft waves down to her shoulders. “Hey,” I said. “Hey,” she said, her back to me as she slid the door closed.

  I don’t know if it was her being so pretty or just the fact that I hadn’t seen her in a decade, but I suddenly felt awkward. Was it okay to hug her hello?

  My mom clearly wasn’t having the inner dialogue I was. She pushed her chair away from the table and crossed the deck to where Sarah was standing. “Sarah, you’ve gotten so big,” she said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen you!”

  “Hi, Jane,” said Sarah. She didn’t hug my mom back so much as she briefly draped her arms around her. “Sweetheart,” said my mom, turning around to face me, “don’t you have that present for Sarah?”

  For the first time since she’d arrived, Sarah actually made eye contact with me. I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. It was hard to qualify the look she gave me, but something about it made me feel less like an old friend and more like a stain she’d discovered on an expensive item of clothing.

  There was a beat of silence, and I realized everyone was looking at me. “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I do. But it’s, um, packed.”

  Sarah, who hadn’t seemed excited by the announcement that I had a gift for her, wasn’t exactly devastated by the news that it was currently inaccessible.

  “It’s a shirt, just like Katie’s,” said my mom, forgetting, in her enthusiasm, not to use the nickname that made me sound like the six-year-old I’d been the last time Sarah and I shared a roof. “She thought you’d like something truly Utah!”

  Now everyone was looking at my University of Utah shirt as if they expected it to do something emblematic of my home state (like maybe take a second wife or something).

  Okay, for the record, when I’d bought Sarah a replica of the red T-shirt I was wearing, I hadn’t gotten it for her because I thought it was truly Utah. I just figured, I don’t know, it’s a shirt I’ve had for a long time and it’s faded in this fairly cool way, and I thought maybe Sarah might like to have a nice soft faded T-shirt, and why was this suddenly such a BIG FRIGGIN’ DEAL?!

  Incredibly enough, my mother was still talking. “Katie wears her shirt all the time. You’ll be two peas in a pod, right?”

  Sarah didn’t say anything. Was it possible she just thought my mom’s question was a rhetorical one?

  “Honey, you’re not working tomorrow, are you?” asked Tina quickly.

  “Why?” asked Sarah. The way she glanced briefly at me before looking at Tina made me feel self-conscious about my ponytail. Not that my hair exactly frames my face the way Sarah’s blond tresses do, but at least when it’s not up in a lumpy ponytail it doesn’t make my head look like a mishapen bowling ball.

  “I thought you could take Kate to the club, introduce her to everyone.”

  “It’s supposed to rain,” said Sarah. “Again.”

  “I heard it’s supposed to clear,” said Tina.

  Okay, maybe I’d been misreading Sarah’s behavior up until now, but I was most definitely not imagining how firmly Tina was talking to her daughter. If Sarah was, in fact, “so excited” to have me on Cape Cod, why was Tina talking to her as if money was going to be changing hands over me sometime before July Fourth. Let’s cut to the chase, Mom. What’s my being nice to this girl with the tragic hair and total lack of fashion sense worth to you?

  “Well,” said Tina, when Sarah didn’t respond, “you two can go if it’s nice out.” It seemed to me I could actually see Tina clenching her jaw.

  Sarah glanced up at the sky, where swirling clouds massed in the distance. A betting person might have been willing to play the odds that tomorrow would bring rain.

  “Sure,” said Sarah. “If it’s nice out.” She gave a little wave, like we were saying good-bye instead of hello. “It’s good to see you again.” Then she turned to go inside.

  “I’ve got to shower.”

  “If you’re going to the movies with your friends,” said her mom, “I’m sure Kate would love to join you.”

  Sarah pivoted in my direction slowly, not saying anything.

  In the back of my mind I could still conjure up the picture of me and Sarah in her convertible, sun-kissed and tired from our day at the beach together. For a second it hung there, a perfect soap bubble suspended in thin air.

  And then it popped.

  It was kind of miraculous that I didn’t start bawling right on the spot. Did she have to make it so humiliatingly obvious that not only did she have no interest in our being friends, she didn’t even want to go to the movies with me? I mean, you don’t have to talk to someone if you go to the movies together. You can just, like, sit there, staring at the screen and eating your popcorn. You don’t even have to acknowledge the person.

  Actually, Sarah was doing a pretty good job of not acknowledging my presence even as she was supposedly issuing me an invitation. She just stood there staring at a point slightly beyond my shoulder. For about half a second I thought I’d wait her out, force her to speak first, but never had it been clearer to me that I was outmatched. My words tumbled out almost faster than my tongue could form them.

  “Actually, I want to unpack,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  “No problem,” said Sarah. Nobody pointed out that there hadn’t actually been an offer, and she walked back across the deck and slid open the glass door to the kitchen.

  “Well,” said Henry. He and Tina exchanged a quick look, and I saw him shake his head slightly. I hoped it was the kind of head shake a dad gives right before he grounds his daughter for the entire summer, not the kind he gives before resigning himself to some kind of girls will be girls philosophy.

  “Well,” Tina repeated, “why don’t I
show you the guesthouse?”

  “That would be great!” said my mom, practically pirouetting with enthusiasm. “Last time I was here it was still the garage.”

  The garage? The garage?!

  The path wound around the side of the house past a small fenced-in herb garden. The building Tina was leading us to was, in fact, the building I’d pegged as the garage—for good reason. It was roughly the width of two cars, and it had garage doors on it (though, now that I looked more closely, I realized they were made of frosted glass, not metal, as I’d originally thought). The flame of optimism that had been burning in me as I imagined my chic summer of love was officially snuffed out. It had been but a flicker of its former self after my meeting with Sarah. No way could it blaze bright in the face of the announcement that I’d be spending my summer sleeping in a garage.

  But when Tina led us through a small side door, the garage we entered was nothing like our garage at home, with its outgrown bicycles and newspapers to be recycled.

  The space inside was basically one big room with a couple of pale sofas and some comfortable-looking armchairs. There were bookshelves here too, though they seemed a little more organized than the others, like they were more for show than for use. The floor was blue tile, and there were large, brightly colored throw rugs everywhere. Just like at the main house, sliding-glass doors led to a deck overlooking the water.

  Even though it was clearly a beautiful room, I couldn’t help noticing that there were no beds in it.

  “Both of these sofas open up,” Tina said, as if she were reading my mind. “And there’s a bathroom through that door right there.” She pointed across the room. “I’m afraid there’s not a lot of privacy, but you’ll probably be in the main house most of the time anyway.”

  “Of course,” said my mom. “It’s beautiful.” She looked at me, and I nodded. Now didn’t seem like the right time to say I wouldn’t have minded sleeping in an actual garage if it had meant I could have a door between me and my mother for the summer.

  “I’m going to leave you to relax,” said Tina, “and we’ll do a late barbecue so you can get some rest before dinner. Or we could go out if you prefer.”

  “Either sounds good,” said my mom. I nodded again, too sad and tired to think of any other response, and Tina hugged us both before leaving.

  This time I was the one who almost started sobbing on her shoulder. “I’m so thrilled you’re here,” she said just before she shut the door. “So are we,” said my mom.

  Sarah wasn’t at dinner, so it was just me and the grown-ups. If I hadn’t felt lame enough when Sarah dissed me earlier, I did now. My mood wasn’t exactly lifted by the fact that after dinner, when my mom and I went back to the guesthouse, she couldn’t stop going on and on about me and Sarah.

  “You two were inseparable when they came to Utah. But inseparable. You followed her everywhere.”

  She was digging through her suitcase while I made up one of the sofa beds. How ironic that my mother, as it turned out, had had her finger on the pulse of my relationship with Sarah. I’d thought we’d been friends, but apparently I’d just spent that week following her around like the loser I apparently still was. “I just know you’re going to love being together again,” she said. Her eyes were half closed, as if the idea of my friendship with Sarah put her into some kind of joyous trance.

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.” For the millionth time I wished I was on Cape Cod with my dad and not my mom. My dad would never push me to be friends with someone who clearly despised me.

  I left my mother to her reverie and headed outside, hitting Laura’s number on speed dial even before my foot touched the wood of the deck. Hey, it’s Laura. You know what to do. It was just a recording, but the sound of her voice made me feel like I wasn’t completely alone in the universe.

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s nine o’clock … No, wait it’s …” Was it one hour or two hours earlier in Salt Lake City? “Well, it’s nine o’clock here, and I think I’m spending the summer with the hugest bitch in the universe. Seriously, I might have to nominate her for The Guinness Book of Records or something. Call me.”

  Just a few hours ago, visions of best friends and beach barbecues and a summer romance had danced in my head.

  Now I was living alone in a garage with my mother and her verbal diarrhea.

  I hung up and plopped down into an Adirondack chair, still amazed by the speed at which my summer had gone from dream to nightmare.

  WHEN I WOKE UP at seven thirty the next morning, I knew it didn’t matter if the Cape Cod–Salt Lake City time difference was one hour or two—no way was Laura awake at the crack of dawn on a Saturday. I rolled over and punched my pillows into a comfortable position. But even though I closed my eyes and tried counting backward from a hundred, when I got to one I was still wide awake. Not to mention starving. I looked over at the other sofa bed, where my mom was curled up on her side, fast asleep. I knew the second she woke up she’d start talking again, and I was so not up to hearing her continue to wax joyful at the prospect of Sarah and me becoming BFF by the Fourth of July. As stealthily as I could, I slipped into some clothes, grabbed my phone and a book off the shelf, and headed over to the main house.

  It felt intrusive to slide open the door of a (relative) stranger’s house and let myself in without announcing my arrival, but I didn’t think Henry, Tina, or Sarah would appreciate my hollering Hello! at the top of my lungs when the silence that greeted me seemed like a pretty clear indication they were all still asleep. Even stranger was rooting around in their kitchen looking for breakfast stuff—I usually woke up before Laura, so I was always making myself breakfast at her house, but her kitchen and ours were the only ones I was used to rummaging through. It felt a little like snooping to be opening drawers and cabinets, even though Tina had kept telling me to make myself at home. I made a bagel with cream cheese and hustled out to the deck as quickly as if I’d been robbing the place.

  Outside, I felt much more relaxed. It was really beautiful with the ocean so calm and the sun so bright but not hot at all. In Salt Lake in summer, you can definitely feel the heat by early morning.

  I’d brought my cell phone out with me, and I called my dad. He’s always up by, like, five a.m., even on the weekends, so I knew I wouldn’t be waking him.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?”

  “Okay,” I said. Keeping my voice to a whisper, I told him how Sarah was about as psyched to see me as you’d be to see a staph infection.

  He laughed. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, picking at the edge of my thumbnail and peeling off a moon-shaped sliver. “Maybe you should just come and collect us now.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said. “You should take advantage of this time. Relax. Enjoy!”

  “I guess,” I said, wondering what, exactly, I was supposed to be enjoying.

  “Listen, baby, I gotta run. I’ve got a tennis game.”

  “Sure,” I said, restraining myself from reminding my dad of all the tennis I wasn’t playing due to my being exiled. “Have a good game.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart. Be good to your mom, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, even though I was pretty sure we didn’t see my mom the same way, what with his having chosen to marry her and all.

  I hung up wondering how he expected me to act. Whenever Meg and my mom were together, my mom always seemed to have a nice time. It was like the two of them had this whole secret language or something. My mom and I, on the other hand, were clearly in need of one of those simultaneous translators the UN employs.

  My dad telling me to enjoy myself reminded me of the last scene in The Sun Also Rises. Lady Brett and Jake, who’s madly in love with her but who she’s only kind of in love with, are in a taxi together in Madrid. Her latest love affair has just ended, and she says, Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damn good time together. And he says, Isn’t it pretty to think so?
I wished I’d just said that to my dad. Oh, Kate, you should just relax and enjoy yourself!

  Isn’t it pretty to think so, Dad?

  I opened the book I’d taken from the guesthouse, an Agatha Christie mystery. It was so easy to slip into the world of village life in England that when the sliding door to the kitchen opened, I was a little surprised to raise my head and see I was actually on a deck overlooking a beach in America. I turned around, hoping to see Tina or Henry or even my mom. But of course it was Sarah.

  “Hi,” I said, folding the book over my index finger.

  “Oh, hi,” she said.

  Sarah hesitated for a second, like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to sit with me, then pulled out a chair two away from the one I was sitting in.

  Neither of us said anything for a minute. When I couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I said, “I can’t believe how calm the ocean is.”

  Sarah glanced at where I was looking, then said, “It’s the bay.”

  “What?” I asked, even though I: A) heard her, and B) know what a bay is.

  “It’s the bay,” she repeated. “The ocean’s on the other side of the Cape.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Gotcha.” Gotcha. I sounded like somebody’s mom. Worse, I sounded like somebody’s dad.

  Okay, this had to stop. I might have lost our silent battle of wills over the movie yesterday, but I didn’t have to yap away like some demented terrier. I opened my book again and sat staring at it, totally self-conscious, reading and rereading the same paragraph until the door slid open again and this time Tina came out. I turned to face her, dropping the Christie onto the table with relief.

  “Good morning,” Tina sang. She put her hands on Sarah’s shoulders and kissed her on the top of the head. “Hey,” said Sarah. Looking at them, I couldn’t help sensing that despite their subtle bickering (clearly caused by the arrival of yours truly on their doorstep), they were a mother and daughter who liked spending time together, like they would have been totally cool with a cross-country trip that ended with their sharing a garage for the summer. I tried to imagine my mom standing with her hands on my shoulders. If she did, she’d probably only be doing it while she suggested I change something about myself, or tried to get me interested in some totally boring project of her own. Since you’re just sitting here, why don’t we do something about what a mess your room is? Or I know it’s July, but while we’re both here with nothing to do, wouldn’t now be a good time to talk about this year’s Christmas photo? I mean, how are you supposed to get close to a person like that?