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  “Anyway, it’s really pretty, isn’t it?”

  Sadie takes the shell and admires it in the light. “Thanks, Lo.” And her grin is brighter than the moon overhead. It might even be brighter than all those fireworks she set off earlier.

  And that makes me happier than any A on a test ever could.

  Becca

  Daily Love Horoscope for Scorpio:

  Venus is rising. It’s the perfect day to go flirt with a cute stranger.

  As soon as I’m old enough, I’m totes packing up and moving somewhere like Savannah, because this Southern belle look is soooo completely me. I twist my neck so I can watch myself sway from behind in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door. Omigosh, why did petticoats ever go out of style? I mean, okay, fine, they’re not the most comfortable things to wear in the middle of, like, the single most humid June on record, but they swish when I walk.

  SWISH. When I walk.

  I reallllly need to put this dress back in my closet so it doesn’t get ruined before next week’s party because Sadie would KILL me after she was up first thing this morning talking the janitor into opening the school so we could borrow the costumes from Little Women. With a few tweaks they’re perfect Southern belle dresses. Okay, off it goes. But maybe just one or two more swishes first. Swish. Swish. Swish. Last one, I swear. Swish.

  Except . . . this dress would give me the perfect excuse to find the cute boy from the Visitor’s Center social the other night and position myself right in front of him before murmuring, “I do declare, I’m feeling right faint in this heat.” And then I can swoon directly into his arms and he’ll realize he’s been looking for a girlfriend like me his whole life and he’ll have to revive me to tell me just that.

  So romantic.

  And just like that, I think of a possible song. I always get this buzz when I hit on an idea I’m excited about, and it’s like it hums through me as I grab my spiral notebook from under my pillow and flip past the giant PRIVATE on the cover. I turn sheets until I find a blank one and scribble “plantation,” “petticoat dress,” and “love like ours never goes out of fashion” to jog my memory when I have time to work on it later, maybe with my guitar. I snap the notebook closed, but then find the page again quickly when a lyric comes to me out of the blue. I write,

  When I doubt,

  You surprise me.

  When I faint,

  You revive me.

  I promise, promise, promise myself I’ll go back to that page later. But I have my fingers crossed just in case that whole Pinocchio thing is true. My nose is totes my best feature and I don’t need it growing all long on me. Eww.

  Anyway, it’s not like I don’t want to go back to it. I want to go back to all my pages of scribbles and turn them into something amazing. Something you could hear on the radio and just have to hum along to.

  I jam my notebook under the pillow as hard as I can.

  Because the problem is that all those song lyrics are about L-O-V-E. And I . . . don’t know anything about that. My English teacher said the very best writers always write what they know and write from the heart. Um, hello? My heart is twelve. I barely know my times tables inside and out.

  But having a boyfriend, a boyfriend who adores me and inspires me and makes me feel all the feels, would solve that. That’s why I need one. My friends think I just want a boyfriend to be cool (and also plus because I might have a reputation for being a teeny-tiny bit boy-crazy ever since first grade, when Christopher Paulson picked me to march next to him in the kazoo band in the Fourth of July parade), but really I have REASONS. I just haven’t been able to bring myself to tell them those reasons.

  Which is admittedly weird. One, because I truly, positively, absolutely know Sades, Vi, and Lo would have my back and most likely even think songwriting is really cool and completely perfect for me. Two, because I’m like the least shy person I know when it comes to pretty much everything else. Mama says I’m “deliciously flamboyant”; Daddy says I’m “responsible for all the antacids I take.” (Which he always says with a smile, so I know he doesn’t actually mean that. Probably.)

  But my songs are different. They’re just so personal on this, like, really deep level that makes me weirdly shy about them. It would be completely squicky-feeling to let anyone read my lyrics. Omigosh, I would die!

  Okay, so that just got real. Time to shake it off. I slide from my bed and kind of can’t help pausing in front of the mirror again to admire the dress. So faint-worthy. I wonder what smelling salts smell like. The salt I use on my corn on the cob doesn’t really have an odor, but all the girls wearing swishy dresses in old movies are always getting revived from their fainting spells by smelling salts. Weird. Probably Cute Boy doesn’t walk around with salt in his pocket. Then again, I’ll never know if I don’t give him the chance.

  Sending a silent promise to Sadie that I’ll be extra careful in the dress, I bounce down the steps.

  “Rebecca Elise Elldridge. What are you wearing?”

  I skid to a stop with one hand on the front door. Drat. I was two seconds from freedom.

  “Daddy, it’s a dress, of course.”

  “I can see that it’s a dress, Rebecca, but what I would like to know is why you are planning to wear a dress like that out and about?”

  “I just . . .” I wonder if Mama ever swooned in Daddy’s arms. Ew. Gross. I really, really will not discuss swooning with my father.

  “I don’t expect this will be the last time we have this conversation,” Daddy says, dropping his voice before mumbling, “Lord knows it isn’t the first.” Then his voice gets all normal again. “Your mother and I are the first people most visitors encounter when they get here. We’re the face of this town. The business owners on the chamber of commerce count on us to make them look good. As our daughter, the same goes for you, young lady. Now march.”

  He extends his arm and points my way back up the steps.

  Le sigh.

  I spin in place and lift my chin as I pass him, making sure to put some extra stomp in my step as I navigate the stairs and head back to my room. I toss the swishy dress on my gingham bedspread and switch to a pair of yellow twill shorts and a magenta cami.

  “Bye, Daddy.” I wave as I glide downstairs. He nods his approval and heads back to his home office while I close the door behind me, race down the stairs, and cross under the house to the storage room. I roll my bike out and pedal toward the beach at top speed, almost like I’m on a mission.

  Okay, I’m totally on a mission.

  Technically, it’s to get supplies so the girls and I can fold tea-party fans and cut out tea-party doilies at the Purple People Eater tonight, but that’s not my main goal for today. Nope. Today is the day I scope out Hottie McHottington, the new boy in town. Fresh blood is hard to come by when you live in a beach town that is less like a dot on a map and more like the fleck of pepper that fell onto it. Granted, we get the summer tourist crowds, but they’re usually weekly renters, and who wants a boyfriend who’ll be packing up his boogie board by noontime Saturday? No thanks. I need a real relationship that will help my songs feel more . . . authentic. It totally works for Taylor Swift.

  I pedal harder to work out my frustration. Operation Get a Boyfriend, which was supposed to be Mission Complete by now, is in danger of becoming Mission Impossible if I don’t step it up, and fast.

  It’s possible Cute Boy is a weekly too, but he seemed pretty chummy with Mrs. O’Malley, and even though the weeklies are always venturing into the Visitor’s Center for restaurant reservations or to rent a fishing boat, I’m pretty positive I’ve never seen one at a business chamber social.

  So this leaves me with a mystery to solve. The Mystery of the Mystery Guy. I’m like Nancy Drew. Or Encyclopedia Brown. Or maybe even Dora the Explorer without a backpack singing to me. I’m like Daphne from Scooby— Oh, wait. Um, I think that’s him walking on the road to the beach up ahead. Okay, so that wasn’t the world’s best detective work, but hey, it’s all
about the results, not the procedure, right?

  I slow my bike so I can observe from behind. Hmm. Definitely looks like the same messy-in-a-boy-band-way hair, not messy in an I-don’t-own-a-comb-way hair. It’s the exact coppery brown color with little streaks of blond I drooled over at the Visitor’s Center. I could definitely write a lyric or two about that hair.

  And his eyes! He’s facing away from me, so I can’t tell if they’re the piercing blue I remember. It feels like mere days ago that we were locking gazes across the racks of brochures for hot-air balloon rides and water parks. Okay, so it was mere days ago. Or, well, yesterday.

  Anyway, I don’t need to see his baby blues, because the fact that he’s wearing the same orange T-shirt he had on last night is probably evidence enough. How many other middle-school-aged guys in town could possibly have a T-shirt with MRS. POPPOT’S SCHOOL OF DRAMA. STOP “ACTING” LIKE IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU! stamped across the back? I’m pretty sure Dora could crack this case even without Backpack’s help.

  I pedal slowly behind him as I collect more data. Bare feet, but picking his way along the sandy side of the road, so probably not used to walking without shoes. Definitely not a local. Towel, rolled up and slung around his neck. Striped board shorts.

  I use my thumb to pull back the tab on the little bell attached to my handlebars as soon as we’ve both crossed Coastline Drive and passed the pavilion. When it brrring-brrrings, Mystery Boy jumps a little and scoots toward the edge of the boardwalk leading to the beach, but he doesn’t turn around. How are we supposed to have our Meet Cute like in the movies if he won’t even turn around? Rude.

  Well, a girl has to make a memorable first impression, right? So I do the only thing I can think of.

  I crash into him.

  I mean, I slow down as much as possible so I don’t actually hurt him or anything, but I guess getting tapped from behind by a beach cruiser when you aren’t expecting it is kind of enough to knock someone off his feet. I’m so surprised at his yelp that I’m thrown off balance too, and I go tumbling over the handlebars and land beside him in the marshy grass lining the boardwalk. Whoops.

  His lips form a shocked O shape. But all I can focus on are those blue, blue eyes. Seriously, they are like something out of . . . out of . . . whatever’s really, really, really blue. Just picture that.

  “Sorry!” I say, when I tear my eyes away from all that epic blueness.

  “ ‘Sorry’? ‘Sorry’ is all you can say? You ran me over!”

  Oh. My. Gosh. He. Has. An. Accent.

  British, I think. Or Irish, maybe? Is there anything more swoon-worthy ever? I am so working this into the song about us. I wonder if he would read the phone book to me. Probably not the best time to ask him, because he looks a little, um, perturbed. Is that a word? I think it is. I’ll have to ask Lauren.

  I stand up, brushing sand from my knees. “Well, it was an accident. Geez. Anyway, hey! I’m Becca!” I stick my hand out but he ignores it.

  “Do you always meet lads by running them over?” he asks.

  I mean, no, but it’s not the worst idea ever.

  I give him my sweetest smile. “I didn’t run you over. I bumped into you . . . with my bike. Totally different. Anyway, like I said, it was an accident.”

  He still looks super annoyed as he grabs his towel from the ground and loops it back around his neck. He uses one end of the terry cloth to swipe sand from the top of his sunscreen bottle, which is how I really, really know he’s not from around here. Any local could tell you that getting sand off an opened sunscreen bottle is a lost cause.

  “So, um, I saw you at the Visitor’s Center the other night. Are you Mrs. O’Malley’s grandson or something?”

  “Or something,” he answers, now brushing sand from his elbow.

  Geez. He’s really annoyed. If it weren’t for those blue (cobalt? Is that a thing?) eyes and that accent, I might give up on this one. Maybe I’ll learn all about L-O-V-E from a book instead. I point to his T-shirt.

  “Drama camp, huh? Are you an actor?”

  He heaves a (very dramatic, one might say) sigh and his eyebrows smoosh down. “Trying to be. I’m supposed to be at camp right now working on my craft. But me mum and da had to run some research trip and they deposited me here with me great-aunt.”

  Accent. Accent! Wait, whoops. I was so busy listening to the way he formed his words that I didn’t actually hear them. Something about aunts and research.

  “That’s nice,” I say with a ginormous smile.

  He cocks his head and looks at me sort of funny, then gives a little shake and turns back to the beach. “Thanks again for running me over,” he calls over his shoulder.

  Whoa. He did not just turn his back on me, did he? I stand with my jaw dropped open for a second, watching him start up the boardwalk.

  This is so not over.

  Vi

  HOMEMADE PITA CHIPS

  Ingredients:

  3 pieces of pita bread

  4 tbsp olive oil

  1 clove of garlic, smashed

  salt and pepper, to taste

  Preheat over to 375 degrees. Cut pitas into 8 wedges each and place on a baking sheet. Brush each wedge with olive oil and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 12–15 minutes.

  **If Lauren is around, double this recipe.

  **Don’t eat these before talking to Linney, or she’ll sniff the air and act like she’s allergic to garlic. She’s probably a vampire.

  An army of plastic bride and groom cake toppers grin at me, like they know I have zero idea what I’m doing.

  Okay, not zero idea. I mean, I know I’m ordering a cake, and I have a whole list of pictures and instructions from Sadie to go along with it. But this place is So Not Vi. It’s all pastel and frou-frou, and it smells like a hundred Pixy Stix exploded inside. This whole party is So Not Vi, so it’s not like that should be a surprise. And I have to put myself into one of those prissy, fluffy costume dresses. If I get stuck with the pink one that looks like wearable cotton candy, I will NOT be happy. I’d do anything to help Sadie, but that’s really asking too much.

  I shiver in the AC—it’s turned up so high that I’m really thankful I have contacts now instead of glasses that would fog up the second I stepped back outside—and glance down the length of the glass display case. Mrs. Marks, the owner of Marks Makes Cakes, is still busy with the same woman.

  “Violet?” A sniffy little voice says from behind me.

  I know that voice. And it makes me want to roll my eyes and run away at the same time. Only two people call me Violet—my meemaw and Linney Marks.

  “You’re dripping all over the floor.” Linney points at the pink linoleum, which is dotted with drops of water.

  As she slips behind the display case, I twist my ponytail up. Totally wrong choice, because even more salty ocean water squeezes onto the floor. I really should cut my hair. A cute little bob or pixie style would be way more practical for swimming and volleyball. But I kind of secretly think that long hair is prettier.

  Not that I’d admit that to anyone.

  “Um, sorry. I was swimming and then I had to come here and . . .” Yeah. Not sure why I’m trying to explain myself.

  Linney’s just standing there in her dry yellow sundress and dry highlighted hair, eying my drippy ponytail and soaked-through T-shirt and running shorts like I’ve committed crimes against fashion. Maybe I should’ve gone home and changed instead of pulling my clothes over my swimsuit. That’s something Becca would know to do. She’s always trying to lend me dresses or curl my hair or attack me with some piece of makeup.

  But at least Becca’s nice about it. Linney—not so much. In fourth grade, I invited a bunch of girls in our class over for a sleepover. I’d never thought it was weird to live in Sandpiper Pines Mobile Home Park. I mean, Dad and I had always lived there, and Mom too, before she left to “follow her dreams” in California. Whatever that means. But I barely remember her.

  Anyway, the second Linney’s mo
m dropped her off in front of our trailer, everything changed between us. She frowned at the rust spots outside that Dad kept meaning to sand off and repaint but never could because he worked so much. She perched on the kitchen chair inside like it might swallow her whole. And she refused to eat any of the spaghetti and homemade marinara sauce I’d cooked. (That was some good marinara too. I’d just figured out that if you add sugar to it, it totally changes the way the sauce tastes.)

  Dad’s always worked so much that he only ever had time to make mac and cheese from a box. That got really old after a while, so I taught myself how to cook. And it turned out that I really liked it. Cooking is like doing the best science experiment ever, or maybe a puzzle that has no right or wrong answer.

  So, the next week at school after my party, Linney told everyone how I was “poor” and how sad it was that I had to live in an ugly trailer and maybe that’s why I always wore running shorts and tanks. Which is so not true—that last part, anyway. The rest of it . . . I’m not so sure. I thought she might let up once Dad and I moved into Meemaw’s nice beach house a couple of months ago, but she hasn’t.

  “So . . . why are you here? Isn’t there some kind of game or meet or something you should be at?” Linney’s not even looking at me. She’s too busy rearranging the Bridal Battalion in the light-up display case.

  I take a deep breath. I have to deal with Linney. For Sadie. When Linney made fun of my greenish-tinged pool hair last winter, Sadie accidentally-on-purpose knocked green paint onto Linney’s brand-new jeans during art class. Best day ever.

  “I need to order a cake from your mom,” I finally say.

  “I can take your order.” Linney shuts the door to the case and opens a binder. “What flavor?” From somewhere behind the display case, she plucks a pink pen topped with—what else?—a cake.

  “Linney?” Mrs. Marks has waved the other customer out the door. “I can take over.”

  “No, Mom,” Linney barks. “I’ve got it.”

  Mrs. Marks scurries away toward the kitchen in the back.