“Oh, honey,” I said, and threw an arm around her. “It’s only March.” And heck, I didn’t know what I was doing, either. Who was I to comfort her?
“No,” she said. “I’m not going to get a job. It’s like college applications all over again.” I felt her shake underneath my arm. “Except this time, I don’t have my daddy to bail me out.” She expelled a pent-up breath. “God, I’m such a spoiled brat. I’ve been sailing by all these years, convinced that I’d proven myself. But it’s starting all over again. And I don’t even know if I want to be a consultant. But that’s what you do, you know?”
No, I didn’t know. “I’m not going to—”
“Amy, what am I going to do? I need to find a job.” She looked up, her eyes red. “I can’t spend the rest of my life living off my family. Just looking at Malcolm earlier—I envy him so much. He gave his family the finger, went off, did his own thing. And he made it work.”
“He’s working on a fishing boat,” I pointed out. I could hardly envision Clarissa with a chum bucket.
“He’s going to grad school!” she cried.
“You could go to grad school,” I said.
“And do what?” she said. “I can’t let it be an excuse, like everyone else does. A reason to put off the future for a few more years.”
I dropped my hand to my side. Was that what my applications were all about? Putting off the future? After all, it wasn’t like I saw myself in academia on a permanent basis. I wasn’t interested in becoming a professor.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She swallowed. “I shouldn’t have said a lot of the things I’ve been going on about. It’s just—you were right. I’m jealous. Jenny was such a mess last semester, and now she’s got it all together. Happy, and starting her little company, and in love—no, I don’t care what anyone else says, there is something going on with them. And you know what? I don’t really care. It’s just that I think about the things my dad said about us, about how we’d turn into a singles club or a soap opera, and I wonder…maybe he was right? And if he was right, then why did we bother fighting the patriarchs? If we hadn’t fought, maybe I wouldn’t be…” She trailed off, looked out into the woods.
I followed her gaze and saw Poe standing there, watching us. I waved at him and he waved back, then melted into the trees.
“And everyone keeps slamming Kadie,” she went on. “Like she’s this total worthless witch, and Demetria keeps acting like I’m just like her—”
“That’s not true!” I said. “You’re not like Kadie in any of the bad ways. Demetria’s just a little brash when she gets upset.”
“And I think, is that all I’m cut out for? Like Kadie? Just be a vicious, backstabbing, little society wife, and forget that I’ve got an Eli diploma in my closet? Like maybe that’s my unavoidable fate? Or just easy enough that there’s no point fighting it?”
And much as I hated to admit it, some of that rang true. This is the problem with being both really smart and a little screwed up. You’re able to concoct the most believable self-defeating positions.
“No,” Clarissa said, as if coming to a decision. “I don’t mean that. I just can’t help it—my dad’s voice echoing in my head all the time. I don’t want to be that person. But I’m not sure I’ve figured out an alternative. And I hate all you people who have.”
I sighed. Well, I hadn’t. “We’re not what your dad predicted we’d be, Clarissa.”
“No?” she said. “I am. I’m treating the girls here like I do my friends everywhere else. I’m jealous and competitive and awful.”
“You’re not awful,” I said, recalling how, even a year ago, I thought the exact opposite. “You’re ambitious—even if you don’t know what for—and that comes with a strong sense of competition. It doesn’t make you evil to think bad things about your friends from time to time.” At least, I hoped it didn’t, or someone should fit me for a black hat and a twirly mustache. I was regularly jealous of Lydia, and vice versa. But we loved each other, and we stood by each other when it counted.
“My dad didn’t do that. Not with the Diggers.”
“That’s crap,” I said. “Diggers are the same as everyone else. You don’t think they stab one another in the back? You don’t think they choose other concerns over this society? Kurt Gehry screwed P—Jamie over when he didn’t agree with him. The President tossed Gehry to the wolves last month. No matter what our oaths are, we’re not always going to be friends with someone just because they’re Diggers. And it’s not just this year, not just the addition of women. It’s all of us. Look at your dad and what he did to us.”
“Dad didn’t think we were Diggers.”
“He was wrong. He’s wrong now, too. We haven’t devolved into a dating club just because some of us have hooked up.” I put my hands on her shoulders and faced her. “You are going to figure out what you want to do. And when you do, I pity the people who get in your way.”
She smiled then, weakly, but still with a hint of the Cuthbert spark. “I’d better,” she said. “Because I don’t have any more Monets to give away.”
I chuckled at that, but was still worried. In this atmosphere of sharing, should I reveal my own secret?
“I wonder what Jamie was doing lurking around here,” she said. “You notice he’s always hanging around? I kind of got the idea on the beach earlier that Malcolm was trying to get away from him. Guess he finally wised up about that weirdo.”
Maybe not.
And I wondered if Clarissa was right in one respect—if Malcolm was trying to leave us alone with each other. Poe said he hadn’t told his friend about us, but that didn’t mean Malcolm couldn’t figure it out for himself. George had.
“Actually,” I said, and took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to meet with Jamie right about now. He’s helping me with swimming.” Okay, so not the whole truth.
Clarissa’s expression flashed from confused to polished almost instantaneously. “Really? That’s…nice. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah.” And we’ve been making out. Quite a lot, to be honest. And he’s a pretty good kisser. And funny, which you don’t realize at first, but yeah. Really funny. I think I’m starting to like him, Clarissa. Also a lot. So stop calling him a weirdo.
And yet, none of those things made it into verbalizations. I slipped my feet in and out of my borrowed flip-flops.
“Shouldn’t you go catch him?”
“Are we done talking?”
Clarissa tossed her hair back. “I’d say so. I’ve never been one for endless therapy sessions.” She squeezed my hand as I stood. “But thanks, Amy. It felt really good to get that off my chest.”
“I know the feeling,” I said. But the truth was, I only wanted to.
The afternoon passed quietly. Poe actually did take me for a swimming lesson—a real one, and for the most part, we kept our hands off each other. He taught me to blow bubbles, to float on my back, to tread water, and, finally, to do something incredibly scary called the dead man’s float.
“Breathe, Amy. When you breathe, you’re lighter than water,” he said as I spluttered to the surface again, saved from hysteria as much by Poe’s sure hands at my waist as by the fact that we were only chest-deep. “The reason this is good to learn is that it doesn’t take much energy to just float, unlike treading water. So if you ever fall off a boat again, you can do this for a lot longer.”
“Yeah, but I can’t hold my breath!” I said. “Just thinking about it freaks me out. Why can’t I float on my back instead?”
“Go ahead,” he said. I did, and promptly got a face full of water. “Oops, guess there was a wave.”