The Spring Girls

Meg approached us and stood next to me, her game face in full effect. Grown-ups were good at game faces. When Shia saw her, her expression said she couldn’t have been happier to see him.

“Meg!” Shia smiled at her, but it was faker than Meg’s glue-on eyelashes, which fluttered and fell onto her cheeks when she closed her eyes. A girl at her work did them for her every week and she loved them. When everyone around me started getting them, I considered letting Meg’s old boss at the makeup store do them for me, but then I watched a YouTube video and decided my eyesight was more important. I’m not willing to sacrifice that much for beauty . . .

Not yet, at least. I was still in high school. I hadn’t even grown into my skin yet. Well, that’s what the internet said, so I thought it had better be true. I was still staring at Meg’s eyelashes when she finally responded to him.

“Shia.” She paused, then upped the wattage on her smile. “Hi.” Meg matched Shia’s fake grin and doubled it, unleashing the biggest, brightest glowy-eyed smile I had ever seen across my sister’s face. “How are you? How’s life? Where are you living now? Canada?”

He laughed and licked his full top lip. His lips were the kind boys don’t usually have; they were pouty and perfectly bowed. Meg always obsessed over her lips, complaining how thin they were. She used to tell us how she wanted Amy’s blond hair and my big lips. I wondered if all pretty girls picked apart their looks like Meg did. It seemed like such a waste, to have it and still find things wrong. I grew up hating my lips, especially when I was young and the kids in my grade who hated themselves would tease me, puckering their lips and calling me “fish face.” Oh, how much I hated middle school.

“No.” He laughed. It wasn’t real, I thought. “Actually, I’m going to DC for two weeks, then to stay with a friend outside of Atlanta. How’s life here in Fort Cyprus? The same”—he paused and his eyes darkened—“I assume? Doesn’t seem like much has changed around here.”

Meg’s Barbie smile faltered for a split second, and Shia leaned toward Meg and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes, looking into mine, rolled into the back of her head, but when Shia’s eyes met hers, she composed herself and returned to her smiling demeanor. She was good at being comfortable in every situation—or at least appearing so.

She was so good at being a woman, I thought.

“Everything is great here. John’s coming back from West Point in a few weeks. He finished top in his class, isn’t that great?” Meg waved her hand around and didn’t look at Shia’s face.

I watched his hard expression crumble like dead flower petals. I felt like I was missing something, but I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to find out what. Boys and girls dancing around things wasn’t something I wanted to know about yet.

“I know. I talked to him a few weeks back,” Shia said.

Meg’s shoulder’s stiffened. What kind of game were these two playing? I didn’t know, but it seemed exhausting. I hoped when I started dating, I wouldn’t fall into that.

“Is that so?”

“Yep” was all Shia said, and then he told us both how great it was to catch up.

Meg turned away from him and didn’t watch him walk away like I did.

“He’s such an asshole,” Meg huffed. She grabbed a roll of wrapping paper and slapped it against the table. “He thinks he’s so much better than everyone.” Meg’s hands were slightly shaky, but I pretended that I didn’t notice. “I don’t give a shit what he’s doing. John will be home soon anyway.”

“And John coming home will change things how?” I asked, wanting her to share her secrets with me, but also knowing that she would expect a secret back. That’s how Meg was, and I sort of liked the give-and-take of it.

Meg just sighed, looped her arm through mine, and walked me away from my station at the holiday party. We pushed past Lydia Waller and her boyfriend, Joeb Waller (they weren’t related, but sharing the same name was still weird), who were holding hands.

“When they get to the pole, who do you think will let go first?” Meg whispered into my ear.

“Neither.” I laughed, and we watched them move around the support pole instead of separating their hands. Joeb looked like someone who would have sweaty hands, and Lydia looked like someone who liked it.

I turned back to my sister, and she squeezed my arm tighter. “I can’t believe he’s here out of all places to be. He’s here.”

“He’s from here and his parents are still here,” I muttered. It wasn’t such a surprise to me.

Meg was frustrated and flustered, and it was an odd but slightly fascinating thing to watch my elegant sister, who never so much as has chipped nail polish, be so turned around by someone. I could feel the tension radiating off her; who knew Shia King had so much power?

“How am I supposed to work at the King house if he’s there? It was bad enough to see pictures of him hanging on the walls of the house. None of them was recent, so it was kind of easy to pretend the light-eyed, beautiful brown-skinned boy wasn’t Shia, but still I hoped he wasn’t planning on staying long.

“Oh, Jo, how lucky you are,” Meg’s dramatic voice told me. She didn’t elaborate on why I was lucky, and I didn’t ask her to.

Then she shot me a defensive glare. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Damn my face for being so transparent. I needed to work on that before pursuing my dream career as a journalist. I needed a game face.

I shrugged my shoulders at my sister, and a soulful, smooth voice singing “Hello” took over the radio. I thought I had heard this song more than any other song in my life, aside from that Black Eyed Peas song that played every other second of my entire seventh-grade year. I looked over to the makeshift DJ table in the corner and saw Beth standing behind it. She was always where the music was.

“I just don’t get what’s going on with Shia? I thought you guys couldn’t stand to be in the same room as each other? Now you’re standing here acting like you were his first wife or something?”

“Nice way to put it.” Meg’s eyes rolled back. She was the best at this.

“I’m just saying.” I wanted to sound mature enough to get an actual answer.

“What do you know about boys, Josephine?”

“Not much.”

I knew about boys from the internet, but not real-life boys. I wondered how different they could possibly be. Boys on the internet seemed better than the game masters Meg got mixed up with.

“You have so much to learn.” Meg wrapped her arm tight around me. I let her. “Remember when I was dating River and we always fought, then made up, fought, then made up? Like that time when he kissed Shelly Hunchberg?”

I nodded. I hated Meg’s ex-boyfriend River Barkley. He was the worst. I remember when we were in Texas and Meg put an entire bottle of Tabasco into her ex–best friend’s Starbucks cup, and everyone laughed when she threw up all over the gym floor.

“Well, Shia is like River, but much worse. He is the definition of a snake,” Meg warned me. She even included a little hisssss.

I couldn’t help but look around for him, and when I found him, he was hugging Meredith and his entire face was lit into

a smile.

“Worse than River? Yikes.” I looked away from Shia.

“So much worse than River,” Meg groaned, and we kept walking. “Do you like anyone, Jo?”

I shrugged. “Not really. No.”

It was weird to talk about boys with Meg. Sometimes she would get in a mood where she would talk about boys with me, but she didn’t usually ask me anything. She talked and I listened.

“Anyone at all?” she gently prodded.

“No. Now tell me what happened between you and Shia? Did you guys sleep together or something?”

The words felt weird coming out of my mouth. Meg divulged things here and there, but I was ready for more. I was trying to land in the sweet space between little sister who she trusts and mature sister who she can share her relationship secrets with. It was a thrilling yet dangerous shift, and I felt it inside me as it was happening. I felt my doll’s bows being traded in for a padded bra, and my crayons upgrading to tampons.

“Yes. But more than that. He made me think—” Meg cut off her own sentence, and I felt disappointment creeping in. I was almost seventeen and ready to hear whatever she was going to say.

I tried not to picture Shia and Meg having sex, but it was nearly impossible.

I followed Meg’s eyes and saw Shia standing just a few feet away. A group of girls from my grade were huddled around him like little old ladies admiring a newborn.

Meg huffed. “Ugh, I need to find out how long he’s going to be here.”

“Don’t let him get to you, Meg. John will be back soon.”

I liked John Brooke. He was a short man with cropped red hair and a gentle smile. He was infatuated with Meg; she reminded us every day how much he missed her and how hard it was for him to be away from her.

Meg’s eyes opened wide, and for a second I thought she had already forgotten that John existed.

But then she took a heavy breath and exhaled. “You’re right, Jo. John will be back and Shia will go away. It’s been so long since Shia and I were a thing anyway, why should I even care?”