That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

at the office, and when the meal concluded, her mom didn’t ask Beatrice to play Scrabble with her, or at least sit in the den and watch TV. She just trudged off to her bedroom. Which gave Beatrice the perfect opportunity to color her hair, a silvery lavender that she was quite pleased with in the end.

On Monday morning, Beatrice was on her way to homeroom when Cade Langley called her name.

“I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t be tardy.” Beatrice had barely spoken to Cade since their trip to the Mütter Museum. After he’d brought her back to school she’d gone to English class and, from there, straight to the office, where the high-school dean asked where she’d been, then called her mom and dad. Since then, Cade and his friends had been ignoring her in the cafeteria, and Cade had barely even looked at her in class, or when they’d passed in the halls. And, of course, her parents had taken her phone away, so she had no way of getting in touch with him.

Cade took her hand and pulled her into a dark nook under the staircase. Beatrice could hear the pounding of feet overhead as kids made their way to class.

Beatrice waited. Cade didn’t say anything.

“Hey,” she said, “I really need to go to class.”

Cade reached into his backpack and pulled out a small, wrapped package, a light rectangle that felt like a book. “I got you a present.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Open it.”

Shrugging, she ripped the paper and saw a copy of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. “Ooh!” She already had a copy, but figured everyone could use a spare. Opening the book at random, she read, “M is for Maud who was swept out to sea. N is for Neville who died of ennui.” She closed it and looked up at Cade.

“Thank you,” she said. “What’s the occasion?”

Cade fidgeted, putting his hands in his pockets, then taking them out. His cheeks looked especially red, like he’d been running, or outside in the wind. “I thought you’d like it. It made me think of you.”

“Because it’s dark and weird?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay,” said Beatrice. “So what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You ignore me for a week, and then you give me a present. I’m confused.”

Cade made an agonized sound, and practically groaned the words, “I like you!” Then he grabbed his hair in both hands and pulled, as if the confession made his head hurt.

“I feel,” said Beatrice, “like I’m missing something here.”

Cade gave another pained noise. Without meeting her eyes, he said, “I need to tell you something, but you can’t be mad.”

Beatrice raised her eyebrows, up toward her newly purple bangs. “I can be anything I want. Remember?”

Cade squeezed his eyes shut. “Right,” he muttered. “Okay. So. Um. At first—when I asked you to sit with us at lunch—that was, uh, not entirely sincere.”

Beatrice waited.

“They dared me to do it,” Cade said, with his eyes still shut.

She wasn’t surprised. Still, she felt the icy, electric shock of shame crawl over her skin. “Who did?”

“Ian and Ezra. They thought it would be funny, because you’re…” He made a formless gesture with his hands, something that Beatrice guessed was meant to communicate weird or strange or even just purple hair.

“That’s why you asked me to go with you last week.” Beatrice felt like she was watching this happen to someone else, some other girl, the spunky heroine of the kind of movie her mother liked, who’d get her heart broken halfway through and find true love in the end.

“Yeah,” said Cade. He gave a noisy sigh. “They said they’d pay me a hundred bucks if I spent the day with you. And more, if we…” His voice trailed off. Which was a good thing. Beatrice was wearing her Doc Martens. If she decided to kick him, it would hurt. “But I like you.” Cade’s voice was pained, and when he opened his eyes and looked at her, his expression seemed sincere. He took her hand. “Can I call you?”

Beatrice gave him a long look. Then she pulled her hand away.

“How many other girls have you guys done this to?”

“What?”

“You and Ezra and Ian. Is this, like, a regular thing? Like, choose some weirdo and bet each other a hundred bucks to take her out, or kiss her?”

Cade squirmed and finally muttered, “We don’t do it a lot.”

“Why, though? Why would you do it at all?”

He wriggled around, tugging at his hair, looking like he was trying to climb out of his skin. Beatrice did not relent.

“Why would you hurt people who haven’t done anything to hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

Beatrice could feel herself getting angry, a heated flush rising from the pit of her stomach up over her chest and her neck. “Well. Thank you for the gift. Thank you for telling me the truth.” She turned on her heel. Cade grabbed her shoulder.

“Beatrice…”

“Just leave me alone, okay?” She found that she was almost crying, and it made her even more angry and ashamed. Angry at him, for what he’d done; ashamed of herself, for being susceptible to his charms.

“Wait!” Cade pulled her back into the alcove, looking a question into her eyes. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t pull away as he bent down and pressed his lips against hers. For a few seconds, just long enough to think What’s all the fuss about?, she felt nothing. Then he cupped the back of her neck, and her mouth opened, seemingly on its own. His tongue touched hers, then slid into her mouth, a shockingly intimate invasion. Beatrice’s arms found their way around his shoulders, and she found her hips tilting toward him like she’d been magnetized. Oh, she thought. Oh.

Cade let her go. His pupils looked very dark; his lips looked slightly swollen. “Sorry—I—was that okay?” His voice was hoarse, and when Beatrice thought, I made him sound that way, she felt pleasure wash through her.

She tried to sound nonchalant