Page 73 of Saint Céline
I tapped the corner of the worksheet with one finger. “You can come with me.”
She looked up too quickly.
“To the party.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I know.”
Her face closed in that familiar way, the way it did when she wanted something badly enough to pretend she didn’t.
“I don’t care about Lila Hawthorne’s party,” she said.
“Good, because Lila Hawthorne’s parties are probably boring.”
“She has an indoor pool.”
“That sounds mildly less boring.”
“And her older brother got suspended last year for setting off fireworks on the lacrosse field.”
“That sounds fun,” I say.
Katherine gave me a flat look. “That sounds clinically stupid.”
I leaned across the table. “Come with me.”
She looked down at her notes. “I don’t think she invited me.”
“She won’t care.”
“She will.”
“She won’t if I say I want you there.”
Katherine’s expression shifted at that. She tried to hide it, but I saw the small, hungry flicker beneath her composure. It was the same expression she had the first time I waved at her from the kitchen window, the same startled relief of being chosen before she had to ask.
“You’d do that?” she asked quietly.
Something in my chest softened. “Of course.”
The answer came easily because I meant it.
That was the hard part to explain later, even to myself. I did love Katherine. I loved her in the library with her red pens and her terrifying science notes and her little frown whenever someone misused a word. I loved that she could tell when I lied badly and that she always carried extra pencils because she assumed the world was incompetent. I loved the way her whole face changed when she explained something she understood.
I just also wanted to be seen without her standing beside me.
Both things were true, and at fifteen, I did not know what to do with that much contradiction inside one friendship.
* * *
On Saturday evening, Katherine arrived at the cottage two hours before the party with a garment bag over one arm and a makeup pouch in her hand. My mother opened the door and immediately looked worried.
“Miss Montgomery, is everything all right?”
“Yes,” Katherine said, stepping inside with the seriousness of someone arriving for surgery. “Céline can’t wear what she planned.”
My mother looked at me.
