That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (read more books .txt) 📕

stairs, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt illustrated with a raccoon and the legend TRASH PANDA, Daisy made herself smile pleasantly.

“I made you tofu.”

“Why?” Beatrice glared at the caramelized squares as if they had insulted her.

“Never mind,” Daisy murmured, imagining she could hear her husband’s thoughts: Why do you keep making her tofu if it’s just going to end up in the trash? She served her husband and her daughter pork roast, and used the spatula to put the tofu on her plate. Bea ignored the salad, and Hal took all the crispiest bits of the potatoes. When dinner was over, Hal said, “Delicious, dear,” and drifted away to his office. Beatrice, meanwhile, just vanished, as if she’d been raptured, leaving Daisy to clear the table, wipe down the counters, put away the leftovers, do the dishes, and sweep the kitchen floor. She found herself whistling while she did it, scraping table scraps into the trash can and sweeping the floor, wondering if Hannah Magee was somewhere, looking down on her; if Hannah knew that she’d made a new friend.

13 Beatrice

C block was just getting out when a guy suddenly appeared at Beatrice’s side as she walked out into the hallway.

“Hey!” he said, with a smile that showed his teeth. “You’re new!”

“I am.” If Beatrice wasn’t mistaken, he was one of the guys who’d been snickering at her clothes the week before.

“I’m Cade Langley.”

“Ugh, why?” she said, before she could stop herself, if she’d cared to try.

At first, Cade looked confused. Then he laughed. He was wearing pressed khakis, a blue sweater, boat shoes, and that big, toothy smile, and he had the kind of skin that seemed permanently flushed, in an outdoorsy, windburned way. Beatrice herself was wearing a black lace skirt, a black jersey top, and a black lace-up faux leather bustier that she’d pulled on after her mom had dropped her off, and she thought she could feel the boy looking her over, checking her out.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked as they made the turn into the cafeteria. She could see Doff, waving from a table in the corner. For the past week, Beatrice had been sitting with Doff and her friends. There was Mina, president of the Speculative Fiction Club, in a truly spectacular pair of rainbow leg warmers. Beside her, Austen, who ran the school’s gay/straight alliance, wore a jacket covered from lapel to hem with pins that bore slogans or advertised affiliations or, in one case, said WORLD’S BEST MOM. The misfit toys, they called themselves, and Beatrice had fit right in, had known she was at home the first lunch period she’d spent with them.

Cade appeared taken aback by Beatrice’s directness. He was probably used to girls falling all over themselves if he even looked their way, she thought. “I wanted to see if you wanted to sit with us at lunch.” He nodded toward a table filled with boys dressed just like him, and girls in jeans and fancy boots and cashmere sweaters. Probably the stuff Beatrice’s mother wished that she’d wear.

Beatrice looked over at Doff, who was staring, with her mouth slightly open. When Beatrice widened her eyes, hoping her expression communicated the question, Doff gave her a big thumbs-up and a nod so enthusiastic Beatrice worried about her vertebrae.

Shrugging, Beatrice pulled out a chair at Cade’s table, where she was introduced to Donovan, Ian, Ezra, and Finn, and Lila, Lily, and Julia. Ezra was Black, and Julia was Korean, but if you only looked at clothing and attitudes, the kids at the table could have been siblings, all of them from the same rich family, the girls with the same hairstyle and makeup, the boys with the same clothes. This was the school’s top social tier, the kids who terrorized the underclassmen and could ruin their classmates with a single word on Snapchat or a lone Finstagram post.

Beatrice felt uneasy as Cade, with a flourish, pulled out a chair at the round table, then took the seat beside her. Beatrice opened her zippered lunch case and removed the elements of her meal: sliced peppers and carrots, water crackers, and a small container of hummus. She didn’t think much of her mom these days; she thought that she was timid and uninteresting, but still, Beatrice had to admit that her mom could tear it up in the kitchen.

The other kids eyed her lunch with interest, especially when she pulled out a wedge of banana bread. The boys were all eating pizza, the girls picked at salads, and Cade, who’d bought a cheeseburger from the hot food line.

Beatrice ate quietly, listening as Lila, or possibly Lily, described a party she’d attended the previous weekend. “It was MacKenna Kelso’s house, and she said only seniors were invited, except some idiot freshpeople must’ve snuck in through the garage.”

“No bueno,” said Ezra, uncapping an energy drink.

“So one of them, this girl named Sharzad, like, climbed on the Ping-Pong table,” Lila/Lily continued, “and it collapsed underneath her. So Sharzad goes, like, crashing to the ground, and then MacKenna sees them, and she’s like, ‘What are you assholes doing here?’ So they start running, and half the boys go racing after them. It was epic.” Lila/Lily smirked, ate a forkful of salad, and turned to Beatrice.

“You went to boarding school, right?” She waited for Beatrice’s nod, then looked Beatrice’s outfit over with a slow up and down. “Did they have a dress code there?”

“You just had to dress neatly. No crop tops, no shirts with political slogans. Other than that, you could wear what you wanted.”

“Lucky,” the other girl said with a sigh. “God, I’d give anything if I didn’t have to live with my parents.” She leaned closer to Beatrice, her blue eyes wide. “Could you like, do anything? Stay up all night? Have parties?”

“Um, we had dorm supervisors. So no, not really. I mean, kids did sneak out sometimes…”

Lily/Lila sighed, as if Beatrice was