bad in the bones -conrad fisher

ch. 1

Two months ago, I was throwing t-shirts across my bedroom, tears streaming down my face, screaming at the love of my life. Josh was leaning against my closed door, his arms crossed over his chest and his head hanging low. "I just think we should see other people," he said to me. See other people. Ha. What a freaking cop-out.
    "Just tell me you don't love me," I yelled at him. I threw his ACDC shirt that found its home inside of me closet. It was one of those mass-produced t-shirts from Target. I bet he had never even heard an ACDC song before. He was fake like that, it was one of his least desirable traits.
    "I do love you, but we're about to go to college and I think we need to, I don't know, spread out wings." I scoffed and slammed the closet door shut, the framed photos of us I had hanging on the wall shook from the pressure. I grabbed it, looking down at our smiling faces and I threw it in the trash. "Seriously?"
    "Yeah," I said. "Seriously."
    Josh didn't stay long after that, probably would rather be seeing other people than being screamed at by his girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, of three years. We spent all of high school together but somehow, college was just too much. I think he just didn't want to go to Columbia together like we planned and never applied like he told me and needed a cheap excuse to get out of it.
    I went to prom stag and alone with only my best friend, Mallory, on my arm but she had her own date. Lucy. Lucy was the picture-perfect girlfriend. I bet she wouldn't lie to Mallory or break up with her a few weeks before prom and graduation and the end of their high school experience. I bet Lucy would have at least waited until after. Not that I wanted Mallory to be dumped. I was bitter, sure, but she was still my best friend.
    Graduation didn't treat me much better, either. My mom didn't even bother to show up which would probably bother any normal kid but I was used to my mom never being home. At least this time, she was away at work with an actual excuse. I hated that I watched Josh shift in his seat down the row from me. I hate that my heart still fluttered when I watched him walk the stage and flip over his tassel and smile at the camera and I hated that I wanted to see his parents photo dump of the day. He had good parents. Solid ones that showed up.
    My aunt Laurel showed up, though. Mostly because Steven was graduating, too, but I like to think she wanted to watch me walk the stage as well. She clapped really loud and stood up and hooted and hollered and I couldn't help but laugh at her and my younger cousin, Belly. They made me feel happy and whole and complete. I didn't even glance in Josh's direction.
    The four of us went to get ice cream after, Steven and I in our caps and gown and Belly in her little summery dress and Laurel, always too dressed up for the occasion. "We did it," Steven sighed as he sat down next to me at a little table outside of the ice cream shop. "Thank god." I laughed and we cheered our spoons together and dug into our ice cream. That was when Laurel asked me to join them on their annual summer trip to Cousins beach right smack dab in the middle of Cape Cod.
    "Your mother will be gone most of the summer anyway, and we don't want you to be alone," Laurel said, reaching out and grabbing my hand over the table. I knew she meant well but what was I? A pity case now that I was dumped, borrowed, and bruised? If Josh never left, I bet she wouldn't be asking me this. "Come with us, it'll be fun. It's Steven's and Conrad's last summer before they go off to college, too. What do you say?"
    I looked over at Belly. My Belly. While Mallory was my best friend, Belly was like my sister. My mom was always the bad sister. The flaky sister. The one that left her kid alone all weekend while she ran off with her new boytoy of the month. She wasn't always that way, though. My parents got divorced when I was a freshman in high school and I hadn't seen my dad since. I was too young to be let in on what was a disaster of a marriage, but judging by my mom's early mid-life crisis, it was probably bad. They got married too young. Had me too young. Maybe if me and Josh stayed together, I'd have ended up like her, too.
    I spent a lot of time with Belly growing up. Even though she was a year younger than me, it never felt like she was that much younger. There were moments, like when I got my period and her eyes widened when I told her. I ended up having to confide in Aunt Laurel because Belly got queasy at the thought of blood but at least I was able to give her a tampon when she got hers in the middle of gym class in the 6th grade.
    Her face lit up while Laurel waited for my answer. Steven shrugged, not really caring too much if I said yes or no. I think secretly he wanted me to agree because he caught my eye at the last second and gave me a micro-nod that maybe no one else would have noticed.
    "Yeah, yeah. Let's do it," I finally conceded. Belly clapped and hugged me over the table. My tassels dipped into my hot fudge and I laughed as Belly profusely apologized, handing me napkins to wipe it off. "It's fine, Bells. Not like I'm ever gonna wear it again."
    She turned red and looked back in her ice cream and Laurel squeezed my hand once again. "We leave next week, okay? I'll pick you up."
    That's how I ended up here, in the Conklin's station wagon, listening to Belly's music and bad signing and holding on for dear life as Steven drives. "I can't believe you let him drive," I whisper to Laurel as we sit in the backseat. She laughs and waves me off.
    "Belly turn that down," she tells her daughter. "We're almost at the gas station." Belly does as her mom says and Steven listens to her directions on how to get to the gas station. Belly explained to me earlier that every year they stop at this same gas station, stock up on snacks for the last half hour of the drive and get all the essentials that you can't get in the small, fancy town of Cousins. "Cousins is for the rich," she said to me.
The first person I meet in Cousin's is a gas station employee who looks far too old to be working at a gas station and certainly not rich. He checks out Belly and I as we grab our Diet Coke and Cheetos, his eyebrows churning up in interest.
He looks like he belongs in the city, not the beaches of Cape Cod. Maybe he's a summer kid, like the rest of them. Neither my mom nor Laurel grew up particularly wealthy. My mom got lucky marrying my dad, who was a coding genius and got a fantastic job right out of college and was able to provide anything and everything we needed or the first fifteen years of my life. When Mom realized the marriage was going down the toilet, she got her own job that took up too much of her time and when she finally had enough saved, we left. The Conklins weren't Cape Cod rich, either, Laurel just got lucky by finding her person in Susannah Fisher who was Cape Cod rich.
Belly looks like she recognizes him maybe just a little and says, "he lives a few houses down from Susannah's. The boys hang out with him every once in a while."
I eye him up from the chip isle as he counted money behind the register. I guess he wasn't that ugly but he surely wasn't my type. My type was tall boys with floppy hair and terrible personalities. Apparently. "Are you guys friends?" I ask her. She shakes her head and looks at me with disgust, her nose crinkled up so far her blackheads were popping out. I laugh.
"No. Maybe Jeremiah and Conrad consider him a friend but he's always been kind of weird around me," she says. "I never really fully fit in with the boys, especially not now that they're older."
Her life in Cousins has always been something Belly kept mostly to herself. She tells me stories here and there and I hear from her a couple of times over the summer but other than that, it was strictly for her and the boys. Just the way she liked it. I feel guilty for crashing their party but how can I say no when Belly was looking at me with all that hope.
"Well, he's eyeing you up now," I tell her. She glances over at the boy behind the counter and blushes a little. "Is that a little red I see, Conklin?"
"No," she insists, shaking her head as she grabs a bag of Cheetos. "Let's go."
We walk up to the counter and set all our stuff down. The boy's name tag reads Jumper. That's a stupid name. He smiles at us and says, "Belly, you're back." It was a statement, not a question. Belly's back. The world is right.
She nods and he looks over at me. "That's my cousin, YN." Belly tells him as she fiddles with her fingers, eager for him to get the transaction over with.
"You guys should come to my bonfire tonight. You know the one, Belly. The first of the season." He looks at her and she looks down at the counter and I interject.
"We'll be there." Her head shoots up to look at me just as Laurel comes up behind us. She grabs Belly's ponytail and twirls it around her finger as she deposits a mound of snacks on the counter. Chips. Soda. Candy. "Did you pay?" She asks, looking at the counter. We shake our heads and Jumper starts scanning. Everyone is quiet while Laurel is around.
When we go to leave, he says, "see you guys later."
"What's later?" Laurel asks once we're outside.
"Nothing," Belly tells her quickly. Quick enough to dismiss her but not quick enough to make her less curious. Laurel doesn't say anything, though.
She hands us the snacks she bought and tells us she's going to run to the bathroom and once we're alone I tell her, "yes, yes, oh my god, yes we should go" but she keeps waving me off because Isobel Conklin is not a partier.
She is a quiet, keeps to herself, too scared of her own body, heart, and soul, kind of girl. She is my opposite and that's why I love her.
She is the good to my wickedness, the sunshine to my rainy day, the angel sitting on my shoulder. She's all the things that my mother hoped I would be and all the things she resents that I am not.
She sits in the front seat and I sit in the back while we wait for her brother.. She pulls down the visor and looks at herself in the mirror. I lean forward and say, "you okay?"
"Yeah," she nods. "Nobody has hit on me before like that."
"What do you mean? You're hot."
"I guess he's never hit on me like that before," she clarifies. He meaning Jumper. "Not that I want him to."
"Because you're waiting for Conrad Fisher, right?" I laugh as she blushes again. I grab the band that's holding her ponytail in place and pull it out of her hair, letting her long brown hair cascade her shoulders. I shake it out for her and then say, "you'll get him this year."
Anyone that knows Belly Conklin knows that Conrad Fisher is the man of her dreams. I've never met him, but Belly talks about him like he's the sun. Like he created the entire solar system just for her to look at. It made me want to know him. I wanted someone to create a solar system for me, too. Josh never created anything for me, let alone the entire universe.
Once Steven gets in the car, he starts driving again. Belly and I sing at the top of our lungs to the bad radio tunes. Steven can't turn the radio down quiet enough. The quieter it goes, the louder we get. Laurel just laughs next to me in the back and I use my Coke bottle as a microphone, handing it over to her to sing. She just laughs harder and shakes her head so I take it back.
It feels like only minutes until we're at the ocean. I can smell it through the window and taste it in the air. I hope that it'll be enough to drown out all my darkness.