Free The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson

after this. She would see Steve again in a year, if they both managed to get into Stanford.
    A
year
.
    It might as well have been that she’d see Steve on Mars once they both got into that new NASA program.
    When her mother excused herself, Nina leaned over the table.
    “So, what didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
    Glassy stares.
    “About what?” Avery asked.
    “This summer.”
    “What about it?”
    “Was there anything you didn’t tell me about?” Nina pressed. “Meet anybody?”
    “Nope,” Avery said. “It was a long, dry season.”
    “Mel? What are you holding out on me here?” Nina probed again.
    Mel had abandoned the mushroom and was absently playing with a drop of water that had beaded on the tablecloth. When Nina said her name, she suddenly stopped.
    “It was pretty boring,” she said with a shrug.
    “Oh.”
    It was hard for Nina to figure out where to go from there. Her summer had been anything but boring.
    As she gazed at them over the bread basket and the water glasses that the waiter was constantly refilling until they were impossible to pick up, Nina had a strange thought. Maybe Avery and Mel were resentful that she didn’t have to work, that her parents had flownher all the way across the country to go to a college program for the summer. This would never have even occurred to her before she met Steve, but now it seemed obvious. It was unfair that she didn’t have to spend every day waiting on tables—and it was even more unfair that she’d have an advantage getting into a good school just because her parents had money.
    It just brought her back to Steve. Steve had managed. He’d gotten a scholarship. It almost choked her up to think of how hard he worked, or how hard her friends worked, how hard her parents worked….
    She twisted her napkin into a knot under the table and tried to figure out if this wave of emotion was exhaustion or hormones.
    “I got to see Mel sing and dance,” Avery added. “We had lots of quality time.”
    These emotions had to be hormonal because they were shifting at every second. Now Nina was jealous. There were experiences Mel and Avery had had that she would never really get. And why? Because she was the spoiled one.
    “Sounds hilarious,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to add, so she passed out the dessert menus. They spent a few minutes trying to figure out if they were sharing two chocolate fondues, or if Nina and Mel were getting the lemon cake and Avery was getting the blondie sundae.
    “My ass is getting so wide,” Avery mumbled. “Two airplane tickets wide.”
    “No, it isn’t,” Mel said. She actually seemed distressed.
    “Yes, it is. I have to smoke more. Keep my appetite down.”
    Before Mel could answer back, Nina’s mom returned, and the subject of Avery’s smoking was dropped. Nina could tell, though, that Mel had been working on Avery all summer about mat. Both Nina and Mel hated this new habit of Avery’s, and Avery knew that. She’d probably said that deliberately just to get a rise out of both of them.
    They picked the separate desserts, and the conversation switched over to student council—to the meeting Nina had to be at in the morning, to the speech she had to give on the first day of school, to the multitude of projects she would have to run. None of these things could have interested Mel or Avery much. They weren’t interesting things unless you were the one doing them. But these were the kinds of things she was expected to talk about, and everyone listened. At least, they were quiet and they pretended to listen until the desserts came.
    “Did you have a good summer at the restaurant?” her mom asked.
    “It was educational,” Avery said, spearing the lemon slice in her iced tea with her straw and forcing it to the bottom of her glass. “I learned how they make those fried onion blossoms. If that shows up on the SAT, I’m totally ready. The math is going to be bad, but I’m going to
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