Queen of Diamonds

1 Day Until The Sorting

My mother sinks the knife into the cake. The outside is beautiful iced vanilla, but the inside is strawberry, two layers with jelly in the middle. I grin and look at my dad, who is holding my polaroid camera. If there's any day I want pictures of, it's today. My 15th birthday. Well, technically, tomorrow is my 15th birthday, but since I'm going to be leaving for the Government offices at 7 am, we had my party today.  A bunch of my friends from school are already in the back yard, splashing in my pool and eating the barbecue that Chris's dad, Geoff, is cooking up. My mom hands me a slice of cake, and I grin, pulling Felicity, the nearest person to me, closer for another picture. We both laugh, then take our cake to meed Gracie out by the pool. Everyone is having the time of their lives, and I couldn't be happier that such a wonderful party is happening because of me. Watermelon shaped pool floats drift across the surface, and Alexa, my little sister, is on the diving board, about to do a backflip. 

"Hey, Nova!" someone calls, and I turn around. It's Sammie, one of the girls that I've gone to summer camp with since I was just a baby. I have so many pictures of her kayaking in the big lake out back, covered in shaving cream from one of our cabin pranks, singing around the campfire, sneaking through the woods to the boys cabin, and eating dinner in the mess hall. The thought of camp hits me with a pang. I hope I can still go next year. I hope I'll still be a Diamond. 
"What's up, Sammie?" I ask, setting my cake down. 
"C'mon girl, we want a picture!" she says. I notice the rest of my camp friends sitting by the side of the pool, dipping their legs in and laughing. Lulu has a polaroid camera around her neck, and she waves at me. Rather than walking the long way to the pool, I shed my white coverup, revealing the pink polka dot bikini I've been waiting all winter to wear, and dive into the pool, resurfacing on the other side. My girls pull me out, and they get Alexa to take photos for us. One for me, of course, but one for a few other girls in the group. I wipe my hand on a nearby towel and take my photo inside. I already have a pile stacking up from today. I grin at my dad as I set it down, and he snaps one last picture of me, dripping pool water onto the kitchen tiles. I laugh. 

After a few minutes, I realize I haven't seen Chris for a while. I towel off and head out back, through the gate around our back yard and into the dark green forest behind my house. I never used to be allowed back here when I was a kid, but me and my sister would stand at the fence and throw corn over the top of the gate for the deer. But now I'm almost 15, and I can go wherever I want. I lock the gate behind me, so Alexa or (god forbid) Timmy doesn't follow, and start following the little path to the tree house. The tree house is just a few yards from my house, but the forest is so dense you can barely see it. My dad built it when my sister was just a baby, but after she left no one used it, and Alexa and Timmy were still a little too young to be running off all on their own, so it became me and Chris's spot. We never did much besides just talk in there, but I have such good memories of sitting up there, my head in his lap, talking about nothing at all. It seemed so unimportant at the time, but now I would give anything to have just a month more of talking and sitting so close to him that the atoms in our bodies shook. 

I grab the wobbly ladder rung and haul myself up, stepping my foot into a V branch and wrapping my arms around the trunk of the tree. We used to have a full ladder, but it's almost all fell off over the years. I pull myself into the little wooden room. Chris is exactly where I thought he was gonna be, sitting in the corner of the treehouse, smiling at the photo album we keep in here. I told him he could keep it, since I already had copies of most of the photos anyways. He might be crying, but it's so hard to tell. He looks up when I come in. 
"Hey, baby," he says, holding his arms out to me. I crawl into his lap happily. We really did outgrow this treehouse a long time ago, but we keep coming back to it anyways. I lean into Chris and smile, trying to memorize the smell of his cologne. It's a mix of wood pine and shaving cream, and it sends me back to late night dinner dates, movie theaters in the summer, and high school football games. "How do you feel?" he asks. 
"I don't know," I say, shaking my head. 
"I know, baby." He pauses for a second, staring at the heart shaped leaves falling down outside. He runs his hand though my honey colored curls. "I'm gonna miss you," Chris finally says, and his voice shakes. 
"I'm gonna miss you too," I say. And it's the only thing that I can say right now. It's the only thing I can make myself say. I can even muster an argument about how I'm probably going to be a Diamond again after the Sorting. Even that feels frivolous. 
"I brought you something. I got you an actual gift, too, but I didn't want to give you this in front of everyone." He reaches behind his back and pulls out his football uniform from Freshman year, when he was on the B team. He's bulked up since then , and definitely wouldn't fit in it anymore, but I still remember that our first official date was a picnic right after a game, and I was still in my cheerleading outfit. And he was wearing this jersey. I take it gingerly in my hands and hold it to my chest. It smells like him. I smile at Chris, and he kisses me on the forehead. 
"Let's go back to the party," he says.