The restaurant is super crowded, but we get one of the best tables, right next to the big tanks of exotic fish that sit next to the windows. As usual my dad makes a bad joke about how much he loves see-food restaurants, and my mother tells him to stick to architecture and leave comedy to the professionals. At dinner my mom’s extra nice to me because she thinks I’m going through breakup trauma, and Izzy and I order half the menu and wind up full on edamame and shrimp shumai and tempura and seaweed salad before the meal even comes. My dad has two beers and gets tipsy and entertains us with stories about crazy clients, and my mom keeps telling me to order whatever I want, and Izzy puts a napkin over her head and pretends to be a pilgrim tasting California rolls for the first time.
Up until then it’s a good day—one of the best. Close to perfect, really, even though nothing special happened at all. I guess I’ve probably had a lot of days like this, but somehow they’re never the ones you remember. That seems wrong to me now. I think of lying in Ally’s house in the dark and wondering whether I’ve ever had a day worth reliving. It seems to me like living this one again and again wouldn’t be so bad, and I imagine that’s what I’ll do—just go on like this, over and over, until time winds completely down, until the universe stops.
Just before we get our dessert, a big group of freshmen and sophomores I recognize from Jefferson come filing in. A few of them are still wearing JV swim jackets. They must have had a late meet. They seem so young, hair scraped away from their faces, ponytails, no makeup—totally different from the way they look when they show up to our parties, when it looks like they’ve just spent an hour and a half getting freebies at the MAC counter. A couple of them catch me staring and drop their eyes.
“Green tea and red bean ice cream.” The waitress sets down a big bowl and four spoons in front of us. Izzy goes to town on the red bean.
My dad groans and puts a hand on his stomach. “I don’t know how you can still be hungry.”
“Growing girl.” Izzy opens her mouth, showing off the ice cream mushed on her tongue.
“Gross, Izzy.” I pick up my spoon and scoop a little bit from the green-tea side.
“Sykes! Hey! Sykes!”
I whip around at the sound of her name. One of the swim-team girls is half standing out of her chair, waving. I scan the restaurant, looking for Juliet, but there’s only one person at the door. She’s thin and pale and very blond, and she’s standing and shaking her shoulders to get the rain off her jacket. It takes me a second to recognize her, but as she turns a complete circle, looking for her friends, I do: the Cupid from math class—the angel who delivered my roses.
When she sees the rest of her teammates, she raises her hand briefly and gives a quick flutter of her fingers. Then she starts threading her way over to them, and as she moves past our table, I catch a glimpse of her neon-blue-and-orange swim jacket and it’s like the whole room goes still and only those five letters remain, lit up like signs.
SYKES.
Juliet’s little sister.
“Earth to Sammy.” Izzy is poking me with the butt end of her spoon. “Your ice cream’s getting melty.”
“Not hungry anymore.” I put my spoon down and push away from the table.
“Where are you going?” Mom reaches out and puts her hand on my wrist, but I barely feel it.
“Five minutes.” And then I’m walking over to the swim-team table, the whole time staring at the pale girl and her heart-shaped face. I can’t believe I didn’t see the resemblance before. They’ve got the same wide-spaced blue eyes, the same translucent skin and pale lips. Then again, until recently I’ve never really looked at Juliet, even though I must have seen her ten thousand times.
The swim-team girls have gotten their menus, and they’re laughing and swatting each other. I distinctly hear one of them say Rob’s name—probably saying how cute he looks in his lacrosse jersey (I should know; I used to say it all the time). I’ve never cared less about anything. When I’m about four feet away from the table one of them spots me and instantly the whole table goes silent. The girl who was talking about Rob goes the color of the menu she’s holding.
Little Sykes is squeezed in at the very end of the table. I walk directly up to her.
“Hey.” Now that I’m standing here I’m not exactly sure why I came over. The funniest part about it is that I’m the one who’s nervous. “What’s your name?”
“Um…did I do something?” Her voice is actually trembling. The rest of the girls aren’t helping. They’re looking at me like they expect at any second I’m going to lunge forward and swallow her head or something.
“No, no. I just…” I give her a small smile. Now that I see it, the resemblance between her and Juliet unnerves me. “You have an older sister, right?”
Her mouth tightens into a thin line, and her eyes go cloudy, like she’s putting up a wall. I don’t blame her. She probably thinks I’m going to pick on her for having a freak for a big sister. It must happen a lot.
But she tilts up her chin and stares at me straight in the eye. It kind of reminds me of something Izzy would do. Sam’s not going to school, and I’m not going either. “Yeah. Juliet Sykes.” Then she waits patiently, waits for me to start laughing.
Her eyes are so steady I look down. “Yeah. I, um, know Juliet.”
“You do?” She raises her eyebrows.
“Well, kind of.” All the girls are staring at me now. I have a feeling they’re having a hard time keeping their jaws from dropping open. “She’s—she’s kind of my lab partner.”