Free Summer Nights by Caroline B. Cooney Page A

and collapsed in his head like patterns in a kaleidoscope.
    He knew he was wrong and yet he knew he was right.
    “Emily,” he said thickly, “we have to talk.”
    Her pixie face was white and pinched in the shadows. “You mean you have to talk me into seeing things your way,” she said. She walked away from him.
    He didn’t follow her. If they couldn’t talk alone, they certainly couldn’t talk in front of all these people. Matt, who loved crowds and parties, felt swamped in voices and personalities. There were too many people; he could not distinguish them, he could not even care about them. All he wanted was for this not to be happening.
    Emily slipped into the press of kids. How involved with their own lives they were! They had their own problems and jobs and families and loves and hates—they neither knew nor cared about Emily’s. Nobody would notice that she and Matt were silent in the dark. Nobody would peer down at her left hand to see that her ring was gone. It was nobody’s responsibility to see that she had a good time at Anne’s party, and nobody would notice if she didn’t.
    If I want to talk this out, she thought, I have to grab a friend, haul her away, hand her the facts on a platter.
    But the only person she could really talk to was Matt himself.
    Why am I being so horrible to him? she thought. I rejoice for Anne going abroad. I rejoice for Kip getting in the school she worked so hard for. Why can’t I rejoice for Matt, because all his skills took him in the direction he’s best at?
    Matt’s perfectly right, it isn’t the end of the world; we can still be engaged, we can still get married someday.
    She walked up to the counters. The real food had not yet been brought out. There was still the chips, dips, vegetable sticks, crackers, cheese, and peanuts. Emily felt if she did not have solid food pretty soon she would faint. She took another soda. She had had so much carbonated junk tonight she was one big bubble.
    It’s because I am the one left behind, she thought. The person going has a destination. The person left just sits and mopes. There is nothing worse than being the one left behind.
    She heaved a huge, painful sigh.
    She would have to go over to Anne’s house tomorrow, after Anne had left for the airport. She would have to say to Mrs. Stephens, “Hi, my diamond ring is in your grass. I brought my brush and comb, do you mind if I comb your whole yard looking for it?”

Chapter 15
    N OT ONE GIRL ON board the Duet had ever enjoyed what Beth Rose Chapman was enjoying at that moment. Not even Anne, unarguably the most lovely girl who ever went to Westerly High. Not even Molly, who had gone out with an awful lot of boys. Not Kip, nor Emily, nor Susan, nor Lynda.
    For Beth Rose was surrounded by three boys.
    Gary, whom she had dated a year before, was definitely back and definitely interested.
    Blaze, whom she had picked up on the dock just that afternoon, was also present and interested.
    And Jere, whom they had written off as some employee carrying a camera, was inching forward, getting closer.
    And Beth, like any girl flirting with three boys who flirted with her first, was having the time of her life. The girls were angry and hurt. It was not fair that they should have none and Beth Rose three. They almost forgot their envy of Anne, as they stared at Beth.
    Beth was sitting on a bench, her knees crossed, and the soft cloth of her yellow dress flowing around her. On her right sat Gary, whom she was facing, and into whose eyes she laughed. Above her perched Blaze, sitting on the brass rail, elbow on knees and face in hands, so he was hunched right down between Beth and Gary. And sitting cross-legged at her left, sprawled on the glossy deck, was Jere.
    “It’s like she’s holding court,” said one girl.
    “Somebody go bother them with potato chips and celery sticks,” said another girl.
    “Somebody tell that band to start playing,” said a more intelligent one. “She can only dance