The Bermudez Triangle (8 page)

“What are your plans for after graduation?”

“I’m thinking about applying to music school.”

Mel raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t known that.

“That’s wonderful!” Mel’s mother said. “What would you do with that?” Jim asked in a clear “What? Don’t you like money?” voice.

“I could play professionally,” Avery said. “Or I could just become my parents’ worst nightmare and live at home until I’m thirty-five.”

Mel found this funny, but it ground conversation to a halt for a good minute or two.

“That’s a new ring, Mel,” her mother said, pointing to the silver band.

“Oh.” Mel looked down at her index finger. A bolt of panic shot through her. “It’s just from one of those people who sell stuff in the park in the summer. We just bought some when we were walking through.”

Why was she explaining so much? All she had to do was say “yes.” Instead she was giving the whole history of the ring. And why did she say “
we
?”

“I finished my hot dog,” Lyla cut in, even though a good third of it was still on her plate.

“Why don’t you try this seafood sausage that Dad made?” her mom offered. “It’s like hot dog but seafood.”

Lyla’s expression indicated that this was not going to happen.

“Lyla’s not a big seafood fan,” Mel’s mom explained to Avery.

“I guessed that,” Avery said. Mel finally found the courage to glance over, just as Avery was sliding her hand under the table, where her ring couldn’t be seen.

“I am so going to kill you,” Mel said when they were safely out of the development and driving up the road.

“What?” Avery said, feigning offense.

“You gave me two boyfriends.”

“
Potential interests
. Not boyfriends. I just gave you the greatest cover story in the history of the world.”

“Maybe I don’t want a cover story,” Mel said. She smiled, trying to make the remark seem lighthearted, but she studied Avery’s expression carefully. It didn’t change at all.

“So, listen,” Avery said. “Tomorrow …”

“Right.” Mel nodded, moving back into her seat. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. When Nina returned.

“We have to decide, Mel,” Avery said. “I don’t think it’s time to tell her.”

“When will it be time?”

“Not when she steps off a plane. We haven’t seen her since June.”

“So why don’t we get it out of the way?” Mel asked. “We can’t lie to her.”

“How do you think she’s going to feel?”

“Fine,” Mel said defensively. “Nina doesn’t have a problem with this stuff.”

“Nina doesn’t have a problem
hypothetically
. Nina doesn’t have a problem with
other people
.”

Mel bit down on her thumb for a minute.

They drove past school. The entire
tudents
part was gone and was replaced with a few hand-painted letters. It now read, WELCOME BACK ROBOTS.

“I have no idea who does that,” Avery said. “But whoever it is is my hero.”

Mel was still deep in thought. Avery glanced between her and the road.

“Mel?”

When she didn’t answer, Avery turned the car unexpectedly and drove down to the wooded entrance to the Yaddo Gardens. Yaddo was a writers’ colony—a big mansion surrounded by lots of ground that no one was allowed to go near unless they were invited. They let people come into a small part of the woods, though. It was a deeply secluded spot (when it wasn’t loaded with amateur artists) with a creek and a tiny waterfall. Since it was early evening, the sun was deeply golden and rich, and it filtered through the trees and bounced off the surface of the water. No one was around.

Avery pulled off to the side of the thin gravel road. She got out, walked around to Mel’s side, and opened Mel’s door. She reached in and took Mel’s legs, swinging them out, then sat on
the ground. She put Mel’s feet on her lap and kissed both of Mel’s bare knees, going back and forth between them.

“It’s not about us,” Avery said. “It’s completely about her. I mean, she has to leave this guy Steve, and then she’ll have all the council stuff to deal with. I just think it’s too much.”

Mel was in a haze from the knee thing and could barely concentrate on what they were even talking about. It left her mind almost completely when Avery got on her knees and came right up to her face, pressing her forehead against Mel’s.

“It’ll be better this way. Trust me.”

“I trust you.”

Avery’s lips were always slightly smoky, as was the upholstery of her car. It was a smell Mel reveled in as Avery leaned her back and they both stretched out across the front seat, their feet hanging free out of the open door. Somewhere in Mel’s head, she knew these were the last moments of having Avery completely to herself. Even though she wanted Nina back, she was going to miss this time when it was just the two of them. This day, with the sound of the water and the sunlight and the breeze blowing gently into the car—this wasn’t going to happen again. She knew she’d remember how Avery was laughing as she repeatedly bumped her head into the steering wheel (but she still stayed on that side to keep Mel from hitting her head—Avery was that kind of good girlfriend).

Tomorrow was still a long way away.

In Nina’s head
it was still only four in the afternoon, not seven, not time for dinner. It was already getting slightly dark out, and the dining room of the old Victorian hotel on Broadway was dim anyway—all candlelight and yellow wicker with black trim. A far cry from the dining hall, with the salad bar lettuce that was always just slightly frozen and the low-fat ranch that was usually contaminated with raspberry vinaigrette or peas or hard-boiled egg or whatever was positioned close by the dressings.

Beside her, Nina’s mom was delicately eating her very rare tuna. On the other side of the table Avery tore into her chicken and Mel pushed a large mushroom back and forth across her plate. Avery’s hair had grown a little—it hung about an inch below her earlobes now. Avery and Mel had almost nothing to say. In fact, only Nina and her mother were doing much talking. Nina heard herself say the words “so amazing” for what had to be the twenty-fifth time, and she had just finished up an extremely long and detailed description of her so amazing leadership class and her final project—a nine-month plan, totally overhauling the current student council activity program for the year.

She was only talking now to fill the void, to chase away the terrible
feeling that seized her whenever she remembered that she wasn’t going back to her building to see Steve after this. She would see Steve again in a year, if they both managed to get into Stanford.

A
year
.

It might as well have been that she’d see Steve on Mars once they both got into that new NASA program.

When her mother excused herself, Nina leaned over the table.

“So, what didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

Glassy stares.

“About what?” Avery asked.

“This summer.”

“What about it?”

“Was there anything you didn’t tell me about?” Nina pressed. “Meet anybody?”

“Nope,” Avery said. “It was a long, dry season.”

“Mel? What are you holding out on me here?” Nina probed again.

Mel had abandoned the mushroom and was absently playing with a drop of water that had beaded on the tablecloth. When Nina said her name, she suddenly stopped.

“It was pretty boring,” she said with a shrug.

“Oh.”

It was hard for Nina to figure out where to go from there. Her summer had been anything but boring.

As she gazed at them over the bread basket and the water glasses that the waiter was constantly refilling until they were impossible to pick up, Nina had a strange thought. Maybe Avery and Mel were resentful that she didn’t have to work, that her parents had flown
her all the way across the country to go to a college program for the summer. This would never have even occurred to her before she met Steve, but now it seemed obvious. It was unfair that she didn’t have to spend every day waiting on tables—and it was even more unfair that she’d have an advantage getting into a good school just because her parents had money.

It just brought her back to Steve. Steve had managed. He’d gotten a scholarship. It almost choked her up to think of how hard he worked, or how hard her friends worked, how hard her parents worked….

She twisted her napkin into a knot under the table and tried to figure out if this wave of emotion was exhaustion or hormones.

“I got to see Mel sing and dance,” Avery added. “We had lots of quality time.”

These emotions had to be hormonal because they were shifting at every second. Now Nina was jealous. There were experiences Mel and Avery had had that she would never really get. And why? Because she was the spoiled one.

“Sounds hilarious,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to add, so she passed out the dessert menus. They spent a few minutes trying to figure out if they were sharing two chocolate fondues, or if Nina and Mel were getting the lemon cake and Avery was getting the blondie sundae.

“My ass is getting so wide,” Avery mumbled. “Two airplane tickets wide.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mel said. She actually seemed distressed.

“Yes, it is. I have to smoke more. Keep my appetite down.”

Before Mel could answer back, Nina’s mom returned, and the subject of Avery’s smoking was dropped. Nina could tell, though, that Mel had been working on Avery all summer about mat. Both Nina and Mel hated this new habit of Avery’s, and Avery knew that. She’d probably said that deliberately just to get a rise out of both of them.

They picked the separate desserts, and the conversation switched over to student council—to the meeting Nina had to be at in the morning, to the speech she had to give on the first day of school, to the multitude of projects she would have to run. None of these things could have interested Mel or Avery much. They weren’t interesting things unless you were the one doing them. But these were the kinds of things she was expected to talk about, and everyone listened. At least, they were quiet and they pretended to listen until the desserts came.

“Did you have a good summer at the restaurant?” her mom asked.

“It was educational,” Avery said, spearing the lemon slice in her iced tea with her straw and forcing it to the bottom of her glass. “I learned how they make those fried onion blossoms. If that shows up on the SAT, I’m totally ready. The math is going to be bad, but I’m going to
nail
the appetizer section.”

“Good to see nothing’s changed,” Nina’s mom said with a laugh. Her mom always laughed at Avery’s little comments. Avery had always been Avery—a little cranky, observant, wry. Avery was like that when she was
eight
, giving running monologues, entertaining the grown-ups. Mel had always been the sweet, shy one everyone said was cute. And Nina was the laugher, the talker, the planner. The loudest voice.

So why didn’t she feel like it was the same? Why did she feel like she wasn’t even here, like this wasn’t her life?

Because she had a
life
with Steve. They had lived together, and done routine things together. They saw each other first thing in the morning in the hallway. (Sometimes they had their first kiss before Nina even had a chance to brush her teeth.) They’d meet up after Nina had her run and Steve had his morning ride, and they’d go to breakfast and microeconomics together. They sat side by side in class, and when it was over, they figured out when they would meet for dinner, since they had different afternoon schedules.

In the evening, they’d spend way too long at the dining hall with the other people from their floor. Steve would always watch Nina’s big plastic cup, jumping up to refill it with water or diet soda whenever it got low. Someone would point this out and make a remark about it. These ranged from the nice comments about being the perfect couple, to the not entirely joking remarks about Steve being whipped, usually from one of the guys. (But he
wasn’t
whipped. He was just unbelievably attentive. He was the best kind of abnormal, and those guys just didn’t know how to take that. She always blew these remarks off, but they bothered her. She didn’t like the idea that anyone thought she was ordering Steve around.)

Her soda was low now. And as obsessed as their waiter was with refilling their water, he didn’t take the same interest in the other glasses.

Right about now, just as it was starting to get dark, they’d usually be having their nightly discussion about whose room they were going to work in. This depended on whether Steve’s roommate
Mike or Strange Ashley were around. Sometimes they’d walk into town, to the place that sold both the regular and the soy ice cream, or they’d end up out in the hall, playing textbook hockey (a sport that was developed early on). Then there were the few, amazing nights when Ashley was gone and Steve had stayed with her….

It was too much to think about. Nina stared at the lemon cake that had just been stuck in front of her and tried to look interested in Avery’s story of how she’d managed to convince a couple of her customers that nachos were a genuine Irish food developed during the potato famine.

Everything was the same for Mel and Avery. They’d stayed here. They’d keep working during school, just switching their hours around. Nina was not the same, and she didn’t know how to explain that Steve affected every part of her day, and that now she was away from him, she wasn’t actually sure if she could breathe.

She took a moment and forced a deep, even breath from her abdomen. It didn’t help. She took another.

“You in labor?” Avery asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Nina’s mom paused with a spoonful of sorbet halfway to her mouth, obviously trying to figure out if jokes about pregnancy were funny or not.

“I’m just so happy to see you,” Nina said, steadying herself and forcing a wry smile. “I can barely breathe.”

“Yeah,” Avery replied. “I have that effect.”