“Except for prom,” I returned, smiling for the camera. “Dancing with you would’ve been fun.”
Beck’s hand pressed firmer against the small of my back. He lowered his head toward me, words nearly lost in the breeze. “There’s still a club over in Bayview, right? We should go sometime.”
My wide grin popped out, imagining it. “Deal.”
“Smile!” Dad called, watching us through his phone screen.
As Jamie stepped up to take solo shots with Mom and Dad, my gaze caught across the grass. Lydia was there with her mother, and Mrs. Johnson was taking a selfie of them in front of the Cardale Preparatory sign.
I passed my bouquet to Beck. “I’ll be right back,” I told him, slipping through the crowd. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I couldn’t get the way Lydia’s face had fallen yesterday out of my mind. They didn’t notice me until I was right beside them. “Want me to take your picture?” I asked, already stretching a hand out for Mrs. Johnson’s camera.
Lydia’s expression was stiff. “No, that’s?—”
“That’d be great, Eleanor!” Mrs. Johnson passed her phone over and then grabbed her daughter’s arm, hauling her close. “Come on, Lyd, we need one good photo of us.”
To Lydia’s credit, she smiled brightly for the photo for her mother, and I made sure it was a perfect picture. No sun glare, no one was blinking. Mrs. Johnson’s eyes were a little bloodshot, but her smile was sure, as was her arm on Lydia’s shoulder.
When I passed the phone back, Mrs. Johnson waved at me. “Now your turn, you two,” she insisted, getting her phone ready. “Big smiles!”
Lydia held still as I wrapped my arm through hers, leaning my head like we were close friends. Her perfume was sweet, a little overpowering, but it suited her.
“Mrs. Johnson, my mom’s over there if you wanted to go say hi,” I told her when we straightened from the photo, pointing in their direction. “I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
I actually wasn’t sure if that’d be the case or not, and I hadn’t totally been sure Mrs. Johnson would’ve wanted to see Mom anyway, but she still nodded. “Oh, yes, it’d be polite!” she mused, starting off in that direction.
Lydia stared after her mother, but didn’t move to follow. Her jaw was set. She knew what was coming before I even opened my mouth.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I began, tucking my hair behind my ear. “About everything with Carter.”
“You should’ve told me you didn’t like him romantically,” she muttered, still not looking at me. The tips of her cheeks were pink. “You should’ve told me you two were just friends.”
“If I had, would you have stopped wanting him too?”
Lydia’s mouth dropped open, as if she was about to fire off a response, but then she stopped. Snapped her mouth closed. Huffed through her nose.
I thought about the way she’d looked last night, when Carter had told his mother that he hadn’t wanted to date her or me or anyone. Embarrassment had been there, and hurt, and disappointment, all on display for me to see. “I’m sorry. It was mean to hold it over you like that.” I drew in another breath. “And I never meant to make you feel badabout yourself, Lydia. I never meant to make you feel less than. Because you’re not.”
Through it all, I’d thought Lydia had been the one actively trying to be better than me, but it was all because she thought I’d been the one trying to make her feel beneath me. The day she’d come to my house, carrying a burnt pie and threats, had been her way of sticking up for herself. Her way of standing up straight. Her own version ofP-E-R-F-E-C-T.
“Everybody loves you,” she said, and finally turned to me. Her blue eyes were shimmering. “I thought if maybe I acted like you, people would love me too.”
“People will either like you or they won’t, but you always need to be yourself.” I patted her shoulder somewhat awkwardly, but still smiled. “I’d like to get to know her.”
For the first time, the smile Lydia gave me was genuine. It was small, and shadowed by a redness in her eyes, but it was there. Worlds different from the phony one she usually gave me, this one transformed her face. I’d been going through a lot of firsts lately, and now it was the first time in my life I gotten close to Lydia without having any negative feelings. The first time I felt like I was truly seeing her, truly understanding her.
“I’d always worried…” Lydia began, but then trailed off, clearing her throat. “My mom was out smoking the night of the rosebush fire. She used to throw her cigarettes in the bushes. She said she found you two in the garden, but I’d… always worried that…”
“It was me,” I told her plainly. “It was always my fault. Not Beck’s, and not your mother’s.”
I could see Lydia bite into her cheek, and I wondered if my words were a weight off her shoulders, or harder for her to swallow. Even if her mother had thrown a cigarette into the rosebush, I’d still lit it on fire. I’d already let one person carry the blame when he shouldn’t have—I wouldn’t let Lydia carry it now.
“You should come to my party tonight,” Lydia said, discreetly touching her eyes. “I’ve invited, like, our entire graduating class. You should come, too.”
“I’m sure Daisy will drag me along.” I glanced over toward my group, most half-hidden by my fellow graduates milling about and snapping photos, but through the thick of them, my eyes caught Beck’s. He was watching Lydia and I with a calm expression, and when our gazes locked, he smiled at me. “I have to ask. Did you poison that pie?”
“No.” Lydia barked out a surprised laugh. “But I did burn it on purpose.”
And now I laughed. Another first for us.
