Free Other Words for Love by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal Page B

WINS while the driver sped through Manhattan, past skyscrapers and traffic lights in a swoosh of red and yellow and green.
    Soon we were in Brooklyn and I saw different things—unassuming houses, Saint Anne on our lawn. The wind was so fierce that she and little Mary looked like they were huddling to stay warm.
    Mom was in an apron on our steps. The front door was open behind her and I smelled our dinner from the sidewalk as the sedan drove off. I walked toward her, sure she was annoyed that I was late and that I hadn’t bothered to call. Her expression was a combination of ticked off and puzzled, and she was looking down the street at the sedan, its scarlet brake lights glowing in the dark.
    “What the hell is this?” she asked.
    I assumed she was wondering why I’d been driven home by a chauffeur as if I was some kind of socialite, but I was thinking of other things. I was thinking of a dilapidated row house on West Twenty-third Street and a bright apartment on East Seventy-eighth, and Delsin Ellis with the Shawnee blood and the scar on his lip. I had no idea how to answer Mom’s question because I couldn’t explain any of it.

seven
    Summer didn’t eat lunch with me the next day. She was supposed to—I went to the cafeteria carrying a paper bag that Mom had stuffed with ham on rye and a Hostess cupcake—but Summer immediately said something about her friend who lived in an apartment nearby. She whispered that every so often they’d sneak over there and order a pizza even though leaving campus during school hours was a blatant violation of Hollister rules.
    “Do you want to come?” she asked, chomping on a square of Bubble Yum.
    I looked over her shoulder at a group of girls who belonged in a Bloomingdale’s catalog. They were standing in the doorway with Louis Vuitton purses dangling from their wrists. And they were authentic Louis Vuitton—not the fake kind with the upside-down L and V that foreign guys sell in dark alleys.
    I glanced back at Summer—at her indigo eye shadow, her lips that were wet from pearly peach gloss. She wore a tight angora skirt set with high-heeled boots that made her as tall as me, and a long strand of silver beads was looped around her neck three times.
    “No,” I said.
    Her brow furrowed. “Why not?”
    Your friends scare me, I thought. I don’t know enough about designer shoes and dating rituals to fit in. But I couldn’t admit all that, so I just shrugged.
    “Ari,” she said. “I really want you to come with us. I can’t leave you by yourself.”
    “It’s okay. I’ll probably find Leigh around here someplace.”
    “Leigh?” Summer said. “She’s a weirdo and a drunk driver.”
    “Summer,” I said, and my voice held the scolding tone that usually comes from teachers and parents. “You shouldn’t talk about people like that. Or spread rumors about them.”
    Her eyes widened as if I’d just shouted “Summer Simon swallows.” “Yeah, I know,” she said, and I ate my sandwich alone after she was gone because Leigh never showed up.
    I didn’t see her until last period, which made me wonder if she slept all afternoon like Rachel and just strolled in for art because it was the only class that didn’t cause yawning fits.
    “Want to go to MoMA after school?” she said.
    She was wearing her Converses again, with the SUNY Oswego shirt underneath a blazer that didn’t match. And I did want to go to MoMA, but Summer wasn’t happy when I told her about it later that afternoon.
    “We’re supposed to ride home on the train together,” she said, and she was right, so I compromised. I invited her to MoMA, where she and Leigh and I looked at Picasso and at melting clocks in the Dalí exhibit.
    “This is idiotic,” Summer said. She’d never been an art fan.
    “I think it’s amazing,” Leigh answered, which Summer repeated in a sarcastic tone later when she and I were inside a subway car speeding toward Brooklyn.
    “She’s strange,” Summer said, examining