Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood 4)

If she knew that, she probably wouldn’t be standing on the ladder wearing the tool belt.

And now, six weeks after that, Carmen was doing the same thing, only it had lost its feeling of absurdity. She belonged there more than anywhere else. You could get used to almost anything.

And she did appreciate having something to do, someplace to go after dinner besides her dorm room. She appreciated that Julia was nice to her. Julia introduced her around. She made sure that if the cast and crew were going to get cappuccinos after rehearsal, Carmen came too. Carmen appreciated the hilariously mean impression of Lissa that Julia did to cheer her up when her roommate did something nasty.

In the theater group, which included many upperclassmen, Carmen felt like she was an add-on to Julia, a low-budget hanger-on friend. She had to remind people of her name too often. But still. It was better being out and about as a friend of Julia than eating candy in her room as a nobody.

Once in a while she felt sorry for herself. She felt like the prince in “The Prince and the Pauper,” being mistaken for someone unimportant. Do you even know who I am? she thought. Do you even know who my friends are?

But really, if someone called her bluff, what would she say? Maybe she could answer the second question, but not even she knew the answer to the first.

What are you getting out of this? she silently asked Julia, these weeks later, as she pinned Julia’s skirt for the third time and Julia gave her a squeeze of thanks. That was the part she couldn’t figure out.

When Julia came to her in April with brochures from the Village Summer Theater Festival in Vermont, Carmen was startled and, of course, grateful.

“These are full-scale productions with a lot of really well-known actors,” Julia said. “Do you want to do it? It’s mid-June through the second week in August. It’s hard to get in for acting, but they’re always looking for crew. It could be a great experience.”

Carmen was so pleased to be invited, she would have agreed for the sole reason that she’d been asked. Later she had to get her parents to agree to pay.

“Carmen, since when are you interested in theater?” her father had wanted to know when she called him to ask for the check. She’d reached him on his car phone on his way home from the office.

“Since, I don’t know…Since now.”

“Well, I guess you’ve always been dramatic,” he mused aloud.

“Thanks a lot, Dad.” This was the kind of stuff you had to put up with when you asked for money.

“I mean that in the best sense, Bun. I really do.”

“Right,” she said tightly.

“And I remember you as the fierce carrot in the salad in your first-grade play.”

“Tomato. Anyway, I’m not doing acting.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Behind-the-scenes stuff.”

“Behind-the-scenes stuff?” He acted like she’d said she was going to eat her own ears.

“Yeah.” She was starting to feel defensive.

“Carmen, sweetie, you’ve never done anything behind the scenes in your life.”

He was in quite the chatty humor, wasn’t he? she thought darkly.

“So maybe it’s about time,” she said.

She heard him turn off the car’s ignition. It was quiet. “Bun, if this is really what you want, then I am willing to pay for it,” he said.

It was easier when he was being annoying. When he was nice, she found she actually had to think.

Was it what she wanted? She thought of Julia. Or was Carmen just wanting to feel wanted?

She took stock of her options. Bee was going to Turkey, Tibby was taking classes in New York, and Lena would be in Providence. Her mother and David were ditching her apartment—her home—and fixing up a large suburban house on a street she had never even heard of.

“It’s really what I want,” she said.

Bridget stood in the bathroom looking for a toothbrush in the disorderly medicine cabinet, realizing just how long it had been since she’d spent a night at home.

It wasn’t the product of any design. It was just one thing and then another. Over Thanksgiving, she’d stayed up so late talking at Lena’s she’d just crashed on the couch. She’d been in New York over Christmas break, first with Eric uptown, then with Tibby downtown. She’d gone down to Alabama to visit Greta for spring break. She’d taken all-night buses the time she came home in February.

And now, on the eve of her trip to an excavation in a remote place halfway across the world, she was touching down at home.

She kept her eyes straight ahead in the hallway. She didn’t want to see how badly the carpet needed to be vacuumed. She wasn’t going to spend her short time here cleaning the stupid house.

In her room she sifted impatiently through her duffel bag again. She didn’t feel like putting any of her stuff on the shelves. She had piles of laundry, but she wouldn’t do it here. She kept her contact points minimal: her feet and whatever bit of floor space was required by the bottom of her bag. To sit or lie down extended that contact uncomfortably.

She remembered her seventh-grade camping trip, the ranger teaching them the principle of low-impact camping. “When you leave the wilderness, make it like you were never there.” That was how she lived in her own house. Low-impact living. She ate more, drank more, laughed more, breathed more, slept more at any of her friends’ houses than at her own.

She knocked on Perry’s door. She knocked again. She knew he was in there. Finally she pushed the door open. He was staring at his computer screen. He had big earphones on, that was why he hadn’t heard her.

What was it with her dad and her brother and their damned earphones? The house was as quiet as a crypt.

“Hey!” she said, about a foot from his ear. He looked up, disoriented. He took off his earphones. He wasn’t used to being disturbed.

He was deep into one of those online war games he’d been playing since the beginning of high school. He did not want to chat. He wanted to get back to his game.

“Do you have a spare toothbrush somewhere? I thought I packed mine, but I can’t find it.” She always felt bullish and noisy in this house.

“Sorry?”

“An extra toothbrush. Do you have one?”

He shook his head without thinking about it. “Uh-uh. Sorry.” He turned his eyes back to the screen.

Bridget stared at her brother. For some reason she thought of Eric, and with that thought came the dawning of a certain set of objective facts. Yes, her family was alienated. On their best days they were eccentric. They were not happy; they were not close. But still. Here she was standing in front of Perry, her own brother—her twin, for God’s sake—whom she had hardly seen this year.

She pushed a pile of techie magazines out of the way and hoisted herself onto his desk. She was going to talk with her brother. They hadn’t had a single real conversation since Christmas. Out of guilt alone, she would torture him.

“How’s school?”

He fumbled with something on the back of his monitor.

“What have you been taking this semester? Did you do the wildlife class?”

He continued to fumble. He looked at her once, wishfully.

“Hey, Perry?”

“Yeah. Oh, sorry,” he said. He left the computer alone. “I’ve actually been taking time off this semester.” He spoke to the arm of his chair.

“What?”

“Yeah. I haven’t been taking classes this semester.”

“Why not?”

His look was blank. He wasn’t used to having to answer questions. He wasn’t used to having to present his life or explain his decisions.

“What did Dad say?” she asked.

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“We didn’t really discuss it.”