The sound of crashing waves—never really absent on By-the-Sea but only sometimes, for a few minutes, faded enough into the background that you didn’t really notice them—swelled up and momentarily overwhelmed the night. I ate the cake. Prue took another cookie.
Mary could fly. I wished I could stop time.
“I saw you talking to that girl,” Mary said later in the bathroom we shared, a long piece of floss woven through her fingers. It was past midnight, and it felt like I’d been up for a hundred years. I sat on the edge of the claw-foot bathtub and waited my turn at the sink.
“Prue. She seems nice.”
“Youli-i-i-ikeher,” Mary said. She lifted herself onto the vanity and sat facing me, not flossing with the floss, just playing with it.
“I only just met her.”
“You can like people you just met. You can even like people you haven’t even met yet. You can even like people—”
“Did you talk to her brother?”
“What, am I allowed? You told me he was a guest.Which, by the way, I thought was pretty rich since you flirted with Prue all night.”
“It was twenty minutes, it wasn’t all night, and I’ve come to accept the inevitability of you sleeping with Harrison this summer. Despite the fact that he’s a birdhead, which sort of goes against all laws of logic.”
“I dunno, his birdheadedness just somehow adds to his charm,” she said, winking. “Is Prue nice?”
“She seems nice.”
“How come she’s here? She’s not a birdhead too, is she? She doesn’t seem like a birdhead.”
“She’s just tagging along with her brother.”
“Poor girl. She probably has no friends.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“No judgment! Who needs friends?” She hopped off the vanity, threw the floss in the trash, and spread a line of toothpaste on her brush.
“You have friends, Mary.”
“I have you, Georgie. I don’t need anybody else.”
“Well, you won’t have me at college, so you’ll have to make some new friends.”
“Ugh. That sounds exhausting. They should assign you friends like they assign you a roommate. By the way, have you gotten yours yet? I’m with someone named Mildred Miller. That’s a truly unfortunate name. I hope she’s, like, unreal hot. For her sake, you know.”
“I wouldn’t lead with that in your introductions.”
“God, you think I’m such a jerk,” she said, rolling her eyes and brushing her teeth.
“I don’t think you’re a jerk.”
Mary spit, rinsed, and turned to look at me again. “Are you nervous?” she asked, suddenly serious.
I knew exactly what she was talking about, of course, and it wasn’t college. But I had no desire to get into it at the current moment. I gave a noncommittal shrug and pushed her out of the way so I could wash my face.
“I mean, I’d be nervous. If I were you. I’d be just a little nervous,” she continued, moving to the toilet, sitting down on the closed lid, and crossing her legs. “I’m not sayingyoushould be nervous, butIwould be nervous.”
“Can you shut up?”
“Do you not want to talk about it?”
“The queen of deduction.”
