Chapter One
I'm the only one basically ignoring the sailboat stocked with Cute Guys straight out of central casting.
It figures. I haven't been on the same page as my friends since just before the start of middle school. I don't know exactly how things got so different. Not different in some edgy, gritty, I'm-a-rebel way. More of a Yes, I'm a dork way. Which makes it all the more amazing that while other friendships crashed and burned all around us, the four of us have managed to stay Best Friends Forever. Luckily, because in a group I can hide from my own I will never get life figured out fears.
Thing is, do my Best Friends Forever still really like me? Or is there just some leftover loyalty going on? You know, the way I keep Sammie, my matted, scruffy teddy bear. I guess Sammie "should really be thrown out" (according to Mom), because he is a total mess. But he was always there for me when I was little. I mean, the reason he's so matted and scruffy is because I spent the vast majority of my formative years either drowning him with my tears or practically asphyxiating him with my hugs (not that he actually could breathe, but you know what I mean).
Anyway. My Best Friends Forever and I are all first-borns. We all live on Chittenden Street, which has the most architectural diversity in Franklin, Oregon. Students from the School of Architecture at the university come to study it, because even though there are different styles of houses from different eras it all works together. Just as Randi, Tanya, Nina and I used to. (Dad calls us the Vowel Sisters, because, you know, our first names all end in vowels.) For a while now I've felt as if maybe I need remodeling, updating, or maybe a bunch of architecture students writing a thesis about me on how to fit in anymore.
For one thing, Nina, Randi and Tanya love reality shows. I, however, have no patience for the phony drama on those programs. There's more than enough real-life drama. (Okay, so mine is mostly internal and self-inflicted, but still.)
Then there's the whole Looks thing. I was just as cute as any of them up until, you guessed it, middle school. Then my jaw got a little too square and my nose got a little too pointy and suddenly I was off center from being cute (Tanya Moreau), pretty (Randi Volmer) or beautiful (Nina Olsen). I'm not even interesting-looking enough to qualify as exotic or mysterious.
I no longer bring up the stuff I still think is fun. Horses or bike riding, for instance. Nina, Randi and Tanya went straight from that sort of thing to hair, makeup, clothes and guys. Not that I'm totally not interested, more that I never seem to get any of the first three right, which leaves me feeling less than comfortable around the opposite gender—as Mom insists on putting it. "Sex is what people do," she says, "gender is who they are". Whatever. Sometimes I still ride my bike. It's not so much fun by myself, though.
Then there's the fact I always think summer's never going to fade. Until, of course, it does.
Like now—Labor Day. Boats, swimmers and splashing kids churn the surface of PineCrestLake. People soaking up the last rays of summer litter the grassy area of the park like refuse from the overflowing trashcans. Cute Guys in the sailboat circle like sharks on the trail of hemoglobin.
Nina, Randi, Tanya and I stretch out on our towels on the thin strip of rough, pebbly grit that doesn't quite make it as a beach, but which I like to pretend is the white sand of Hawaii (not that I've ever been there). Did I mention that given a twelve-week stretch of warm, sunny school-free days I can imagine I live in a tropical dream world? While I'm pretending summer is going to go on forever, Nina, Randi and Tanya are talking about Wednesday, The First Day of High School, which they've been looking forward to and I've been (silently) dreading all summer.
