Suzanne's eyes brightened. "To the Baines Bash? It's a Labor Day tradition!" She sounded relieved to be talking about a party.
Ivy knew that the last month had been hard on Suzanne. She'd been so jealous of the attention Gregory paid Ivy that she'd stopped speaking to her oldest friend. Later, when Gregory told Suzanne that Ivy had tried to commit suicide, she blamed herself for turning her back. But Ivy knew that she herself was partly to blame for the rift. She'd gotten too close to Gregory. In the three weeks since the incident at the train station, Gregory had cooled toward Ivy, treating her more like a sister man a girl he was romantically interested in. Suzanne had reached out to Ivy again, and Ivy was glad for the change in both of them.
"We've been going to the Baines Bash since we were kids," Beth told Ivy.
"Everybody in Stone hill has."
"Except me," Ivy pointed out.
"And Will. He moved here last winter, like you," Beth said. "I told him about the party, and he's coming."
"Is he?" Ivy had noticed that Beth and Will were hanging around together more and more. "He's a nice guy."
"Real nice," Beth said enthusiastically.
They studied each other for a moment. Were Beth and Will getting to be more than friends? Ivy wondered. After writing all those romantic stories, maybe Beth had finally fallen. It wouldn't be hard to do: A lot of girls had crushes on Will. Ivy herself found that whenever she looked into his dark brown eyes- She caught herself and quickly shoved aside that thought. She would never let herself fall in love again.
The girls pushed through the school doors, and Suzanne led them on a roundabout route to their cars that conveniently ran past the field where the football team was practicing.
"I have to get a team program," Suzanne said after several minutes of watching. "What if I start drooling over number forty-nine and discover he's just a sophomore?"
"A hunk's a hunk," Beth replied philosophically. "And older women with younger guys are in."
"Don't tell Gregory I'm looking," Suzanne said in a stage whisper as they moved on toward their cars.
"Isn't looking allowed?" Beth asked innocently.
"On second thought, tell him, tell him!" Suzanne said, flinging her arms out dramatically. "Let him know, Ivy, I'm out and looking."
Ivy just smiled. From the beginning, Suzanne and Gregory had played mind games with each other.
"I mean, why should I tie myself down to one guy?" Suzanne continued.
Ivy knew this was just an act. Suzanne had been obsessed with Gregory since March and wanted desperately to tie him down to her.
"I'm going to start at the Baines Bash." She unlocked her car door.
"That's where a lot of school romances have started, you know."
"How many are you planning for yourself?" Ivy teased.
"Six."
"Great," Beth said. "That's six more heartbreaks for me to write about."
"I'd settle for five romances," Suzanne added, giving Ivy a sly look, "if you'll take the other one and stop thinking about Tristan."
Ivy didn't reply.
Suzanne got in her car, closed the door, and reached across to unlock the passenger-side door. But before Ivy could open it, Beth caught her hand.
She spoke quickly, quietly: "You can't forget, Ivy. Not yet. It would be dangerous to forget."
In the back of her mind, Ivy felt that prickling feeling again.
Then Beth yanked open her own car door, hopped in, and drove away fast.
Suzanne glanced in the rearview mirror, frowning. "I don't know what's gotten into that girl. Lately she's been hopping around like a scared rabbit. What did she just say to you?"
Ivy shrugged. "Just gave me a little advice."
"Don't tell me-she got another one of her premonitions."
Ivy remained silent.
Suzanne laughed. "You've got to admit, Ivy, Beth's flaky. I never take her 'advice' seriously. You shouldn't, either."
"I haven't so far," Ivy said. And both times, she thought, I've been sorry I didn't.
"Yo! Romeo! Where art thou? Rooo-me-ooo," Lacey called.
Tristan, who had been following Ivy down the wide center stair of the Baines home, stopped at the landing and stuck his head out an open window.
Lacey smiled up at him from the middle of a flower bed, the only piece of Andrew Baines's property that hadn't been overrun by the hundreds of guests with their picnic blankets and baskets. A Caribbean steel band was warming up on the patio. Paper lanterns hung from the pines around the tennis court; beneath them tables were laid out with refreshments.
Long before Tristan met Ivy, long before Andrew surprised everyone by marrying Maggie, Tristan had come to this annual party. He remembered how huge the white clapboard home had seemed to him as a little boy, with its east and west wings and double chimneys and rows of heavy black shutters-like a house that would be pictured in his mother's New England calendar.
"Ditch the chick, Romeo," Lacey called up to him. "You're missing a great party. Especially under some of the bushes."
Even now, after two and a half months of being an angel, Tristan's first instinct was to quiet her. But no one else could hear them, except when Lacey chose to project her voice, a power he hadn't yet mastered.
He gave her a lopsided smile, then withdrew from the window. At the same moment that Tristan turned back toward the stairs, Ivy stopped and turned toward the window.
Instantly he began hoping. She senses something, he thought.
But Ivy looked right through him, then without hesitation moved past him.
She leaned upon the sill of the window, gazing wistfully at the scene before her. Tristan stood beside her and watched as torches were lit, flaring up suddenly in the summer twilight.
Ivy turned her head, and Tristan did, too, following her gaze to Will, who was standing at the edge of the crowd, surveying it. Suddenly Will looked up, meeting Ivy's eyes. Tristan knew what Will saw: brilliant green eyes and a tumbleweed of blond hair falling over her shoulders.
Ivy looked down at Will for what seemed like forever, then stepped back abruptly, her hands going up to her cheeks. Tristan pulled back just as fast. Take a picture, Will, it lasts longer, he thought, then quickly descended the steps.
Lacey was waiting on the patio, amusing herself by hitting the drummer's cymbal every time he turned his back. Of course, the drummer didn't see her, not even the purple shimmer that some believers glimpsed.
She winked at Tristan.