Hallie Hath No Fury . . . (7 page)

“I'm so sorry about what happened,” he said. “That wasn't … I mean…”

“I guess I just thought you were different,” I said, keeping my voice soft and sad. “I … thought you liked me.”

“I do,” Teddy said quietly, and I could hear the anguish in his voice. “But I've never…” He let out a long sigh.

“So, your girlfriend,” I said, making sure my voice sounded shaky. “Um … how long have you guys been together?”

“We don't have to talk about that,” Teddy said, his voice guarded.

“I guess I'm just confused,” I said. “Because if you're super happy with her, why were you hanging out with me?”

“It's not that I'm not happy with Gemma,” Teddy said, and I instinctively gripped the phone harder when I heard her name. “I mean … I'm not sure I've ever thought about it like that.” Doubt was beginning to seep into his voice, and I could feel myself smile.

“I think you know when you're happy,” I said, keeping my voice small. “I knew I was happy when I was with you.”

“I was too,” Teddy said immediately. “But…” There was a long pause, and I waited it out, letting him put the pieces together for himself. “I mean…”

“Is it just habit?” I asked, and could hear that the confusion in my voice was actually genuine. It was one of the things I was still having trouble getting my head around—how Teddy and Gemma had gotten together, and then how they'd stayed together for so long. “If you guys have been together for a long time … I mean, maybe you've just grown apart?”

“We have been together for a long time,” Teddy said slowly, like he was still putting things together, repeating me unconsciously. “And maybe … we've grown apart.”

I let the silence between us stretch out, and then I said, keeping my voice soft, “I really liked you, Teddy. And I was hoping that we could actually be together. But I'm not going to be with someone who has a girlfriend. If your situation changes, give me a call. Otherwise…” I took a shaky breath that wasn't even acting. The thought that this really might be the last time I spoke to him was making it feel like someone was squeezing my heart. “Have a nice life, I guess.” I hung up then, feeling like I needed to leave him with this, not let him talk himself down to a less emotional place.

I set the phone aside, then went ahead and turned it off so I wouldn't be tempted to call him back, or to answer if he called me. I started pacing around my room, then stopped when I could feel myself getting more anxious because of it. I didn't know what would happen now. Had I pushed it too far? Would he actually go through with breaking up with Gemma?

I looked down and saw my hands were shaking. I folded them together, and realized all at once that I'd broken one of the biggest rules—I'd gotten myself into a situation I wasn't willing to walk away from.

*   *   *

I heard my phone chime with a text, and I was reaching for it before the sound had even finished. It had been a
week
of hearing nothing from Teddy, and I almost hadn't been able to take it. I'd had to stop myself, more times than I could count, from texting or calling him. I had been monitoring Teddy's and Gemma's Friendverse profiles carefully, along with Sophie's and some other Putnam High juniors and sophomores I'd befriended. I had a feeling that the second news got out, it would spread across the social networks like wildfire. A couple who had been together that long breaking up, especially when one of them was Teddy, was bound to make waves. But there had been nothing on his profile page or Gemma's, so I just had to assume that he'd decided to stay with her, and that I would never hear from him again. When the thought of this made me want to cry, I'd tell myself that it was because of the plan going awry.
That's
why I was upset. But even I no longer believed this anymore. It was because the thought of losing Teddy was so much more painful that I had imagined it would be.

I held my phone with shaking hands as I read the text from Teddy.

     
Teddy Callaway

     It's done. Meet at our tree?

 

I replied immediately, a smile spreading across my face.

Me

See you there in 2 hours?

xoxo

I hurried to my closet and started looking at options, not even trying to stop the smile that was taking over my face. Not only did I get to be with Teddy, but I'd just delivered the first blow to Gemma. I'd taken away the thing in her life that was most important to her. And best of all, she didn't even know why. I let myself picture it for a minute, Gemma sobbing, looking at pictures of her and Teddy, wondering what went wrong, never for a second dreaming I had anything to do with it.

I pulled a dress printed with tiny hearts out of the closet and held it up against me. I looked at my reflection and saw only triumph in my eyes. Everything that had been required to set this up was in place, and it had all been worth it.

Now, things could really begin.

CHAPTER 8

June

“So … I think that's the last box,” my mom said as she looked down at the last cardboard box with triumph. She looked across the kitchen at me and folded her arms. “How's your room? Unpacked?”

“More or less,” I said evasively as I crossed around the kitchen island behind her and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. We were back in the Hamptons, in the house my mother had spent all winter building and decorating.

As soon as she could afford it, we'd started coming back here for summers. I think it might have been a pride thing for my mom. She wanted to forget about the time she'd been kicked out of a tiny rental cabin and had to return to Brooklyn in disgrace. She'd rented a series of larger and larger houses until she bought the land, had the previous house torn down, and a new one built from scratch. It was big and beautiful, done in a modern style. Sometimes, when I woke up early, I would see my mother standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced our ocean view, a look of contentment on her face. It made me feel like I'd done the right thing, never telling her about Paul. Because if I had, I wasn't sure she would have ended up here. At least, that's what I told myself.

I pulled out my phone and looked at my texts, then my e-mails and calls, just to check. I knew that Teddy was now in Colombia, on his volunteering trip. He'd told me that he'd be in contact when he could, but that he didn't think he'd have phone service and that Internet would be sketchy, at best. But he'd promised to write me when he could. But since he'd just left last week, I had a feeling it would be a while before I started seeing any mail. But nevertheless, I'd been checking the mailbox obsessively.

I'd long since given up telling myself that this was just part of the plan, since it had become much more than that. I was falling hard for Teddy Callaway, and that was the truth of the matter. But with Teddy in Colombia and Gemma spiraling out in Putnam (her Friendverse updates had become
beyond
pathetic), I had at least a month to figure out my next move, which was something of a relief. The last few months had been really intense, and I was thinking that I could probably use a break.

“Well, just make sure that you're unpacked before tomorrow night,” my mother said as she crossed the kitchen to the huge silver fridge. “The Sullivans are coming for dinner, and I'm sure they're going to want the tour.”

“Sure,” I said absently, refreshing my e-mail once again, just in case Teddy might have contacted me in that two-minute window. Our social life in the Hamptons was very different than it had been that first summer, in which we'd mostly just hung out with Gemma and her father. Most of my mother's friends from New York came up here in the summers, and friends of mine from school did as well. So summers in the Hamptons were pretty much the same as the rest of the year in New York. Which wasn't a bad thing. It just meant there weren't all that many surprises—you knew pretty much by the beginning of June what your summer would look like and who you would hang out with. Which, I tried to tell myself, was actually a welcome change after the one summer of major surprises had upended my life.

My mother gave me a quick hug as she headed out of the kitchen, then stopped in the doorway and turned back to me. “Hon, would you go get your brother from his train? He gets in at 6:15. Bridgehampton station.”

For a second, I thought about protesting, but then just nodded. I wanted to get a coffee anyway, and this way I could kill two birds with one stone. “Sure,” I said with a shrug as my mom gave me a smile. “Why not?”

*   *   *

I pressed harder on the gas pedal as I steered the car toward the Bridgehampton train station. I had forgotten to factor in the Hamptons traffic, which somehow got worse every single year. It was 6:20 now, and I was just hoping that Josh was patiently waiting and hadn't called home to figure out why nobody had come by to pick him up. The last thing I needed was my mother knowing I was failing at the one thing she'd asked me to do today.

I screeched into the parking lot, the sound of my tires momentarily drowning out the sugary-sweet pop song I was blasting on the radio. I parked haphazardly, then turned off the car as I got out and peered toward the station.

Sure enough, I was late—the normal line of cars waiting to pick up passengers that appeared whenever a train came in was nowhere to be seen. I was the only car in the parking lot, and there were only two people on the platform—my brother and a girl who looked around his age. I shook my head as I looked at him, smiling at something she was saying. Josh had written me a two-line e-mail after his last terrible girlfriend had broken up with him, telling me that things were over, but that he didn't want to talk about it. Josh unfailingly had the
worst
taste in girls—he always went for the girl most likely to wreck his heart. It was getting really hard to see it keep happening. When we'd talked last week, I'd tried to tentatively broach the subject, and he'd told me firmly that he was done with girls for a while. But judging by the way he was looking now at the girl standing next to him, I had a feeling this plan had since been forgotten.

“Hey!” I called, waving. And then, because I knew it would annoy him, I yelled, “Joshie!” I saw him look over at me and nod, but it didn't look like he was finishing up the conversation and hustling over toward me. “Come on, loser!” I yelled, hoping an insult would get him to leave the girl who undoubtedly would break his heart all over again. I swear, it was like Josh had radar for them.

Watching my brother pick up his bag, but still make no movement to go, I started to walk toward him, figuring that the presence of his sister would both quash any romantic feelings that might be brewing and get Josh to finally leave. Since I was late enough picking him up, I didn't need my mother to start asking pesky questions about why we were so late for dinner.

I walked up the steps to the platform and caught a glimpse of the girl. She was looking down, but had red hair cut in a blunt, layered bob with bangs. My brother saw me and grinned, then gave me his usual hug—a bear hug that lifted me off my feet, and then dropped me when I was still a few inches off the ground. It was what he'd started doing when he got taller than me, and I had a feeling he did it just to rub this fact in. “Stop it,” I said as I steadied myself and gave him a whack on the arm for good measure. I looked at the girl, who met my eye, and felt my jaw fall open.

It was Gemma.

Gemma, with a new haircut and color, but Gemma. Here, in the Hamptons, talking to my brother.

I just blinked for a moment, trying to get my bearings. I had told Josh, when he'd asked what had happened with the Tuckers, only that Gemma had been really mean to me. I'd given him a few examples, but hadn't told him her motivating reasons why, or her role behind what had happened with our mom. It had just seemed easier not to. So he knew that I hated Gemma Tucker, and I had a feeling he felt the same way on my behalf. So why was he smiling at her?

I saw Gemma's eyes widen as she looked at me, and I knew she'd just recognized me as well. I was suddenly feeling unsteady on my feet. This was
not
the way the plan was supposed to go. I wasn't supposed to just run into her. I was supposed to have time to figure things out, to time things for their maximum impact potential.…

“This is Sophie…” my brother was saying, which snapped me back to the present moment. I just stared at him, bewildered. What was he talking about? Sophie was Gemma's best friend. And unless she'd acquired a cloak of invisibility, she was not currently standing on the platform with us.

“Curtis,” Gemma supplied, and I just looked at her.

Like an image coming into focus in a darkroom, I suddenly saw that she was holding a plastic latte cup from Stubbs with
Sophie
scrawled across the side in huge letters. She was playing with her
S
necklace, the one she always wore. I'd seen enough pictures of them to know Sophie always wore the
G.
Was Gemma … could she really be doing this? Had she seen me, panicked, and decided to go under her best friend's name? Did she really think I didn't recognize her?

A moment later, though, I remembered that I was not meant to have seen her since the day she drove away, five years ago. And she
did
look different than she had when she was a kid. There was a possibility that if I hadn't seen her this whole time, I might not have put it together. Especially if she was using a different name.

Just to test that this was actually happening, I repeated, “Sophie?” Gemma gave a tiny nod, but I could still see the fear in her eyes. She wasn't sure if I recognized her or not. And I suddenly realized that things could get interesting—
very
interesting—if I pretended I didn't. I wasn't sure what my plan was yet, but I needed to make a quick decision. “It's nice to meet you,” I said, giving her a big smile.