Page 49 of The Starfish Sisters

“All right, then.”

“Who wants lunch?” Suze says, picking up her phone. “My treat. Sub sandwiches? Salads? Tacos?”

“Sushi,” Jasmine cries.

“Guess again,” I say. “No sushi around here.”

“There’s a whole ocean right there!” Jasmine gestures to the water.

I shrug. “Still no sushi.” Joel has wandered into the room. “Let’s let Joel choose.”

“Choose?” he echoes. He looks at Suze, and I see that he’s as dazzled by her as he ever was. She swore they were friends, but he was madly in love. I tried so hard not to see it, but it was plain.

“Lunch,” she says, and there’s something in her face, too, when she looks at him. Something lost, something confident, something full of—what? Love, heat, lostness.

Which would be weird, since they were never together. Suze returned to live with Amma after the baby was born, but Joel never came back after his stint in juvie.

But that looks like more than old friends.Maybe, I think, looking from one to the other,I got it wrong. Did Suze lie to me? A whisper of heat licks along my lungs, breathes on the lingering rift between us. Has she been lying to me all this time?

I think of the letter in my drawer, lying unopened for decades. I’m also guilty.

“Subs, tacos, salads?” Suze repeats. Her voice is silky and warm. Calm.

Joel shakes himself ever so slightly, as if he’s been off in another world. “Nah, that’s all right. I want to see if I can dig up some diagrams from this era, and I can do that best from the office.”

“I have a computer,” she says, and points to a room down the hall.

The air fills with a musky blue atmosphere, so thick I could move it around with my hands. “No. Thanks, though. I’ll be back later,” he says.

I look at Suze, who is watching him go. She closes her eyes, steels herself. I realize I’ve seen her do this a thousand times—shake it off, like a dog coming out of a river.

She picks up her phone. “If no one else chooses, I’m going with pizza again. Better pick.”

“Subs!” Jasmine cries. “I want egg salad.”

“Yum.” Something compels me to reach for Suze. I wrap my fingers around her wrist for just a moment, thinking of all the questions I should have asked long before now. She allows it for a minute, then gives me a false little smile and moves away.

I suddenly remember Suze from the summer between tenth and eleventh grade. That terrible, wonderful summer.

In those days, she wore this expression for all kinds of reasons I didn’t understand until later.

THEN

NIGHTS INWHITESATIN

SUZE

We were all three freshman in high school. Phoebe and Joel never had any kind of girlfriend-boyfriend connection, or if so, it was only in Phoebe’s mind. It was sometimes annoying how she mooned around about him, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

By then, Joel and I had been best friends at school for nearly three years. We’d both made some other friends, but we mainly hung out with each other, stained early by the outsider label.

That day, it was raining when school let out. All the other kids had rides or got on the bus, but Joel and I were stuck walking. It was pouring, like twenty garden hoses were going overhead all at once. No umbrella would stand up to that.

So we tucked ourselves into an alcove in the library to wait it out. Carrels lined the space and a trio of hard chairs rested against the wall. We claimed them, facing the windows, and pulled out our books. He was a good student, really good in math, but mainly he loved to draw. Like Phoebe, which made me like him more. He drew wolves and whales, dolphins and starfish, all kinds of animals, all in pencil with intricate, layered detail. I had one of a cat on my wall, which he drew just for me, since I wanted a cat so bad and wasn’t allowed to have one.

The night before, my dad had whipped me again with a belt because I forgot to bring in the laundry off the line and it got wet. It wasn’t a long whipping, but it was hard core, and I had bruises on my lower back and thighs that meant I couldn’t change for gym. The chairs were too hard and I folded up my sweater to sit on, but I still couldn’t get comfortable. Tears stung my eyes, and I felt so angry that I thought I could literally blow up.

“You okay?” Joel asked.