The Best Possible Answer(28)

Sammie, who spent the entire three hours sunbathing on the side of the pool, shakes her head no.

“Why didn’t you get in, Sammie?” Mila asks.

“Yeah,” Evan says. “Why didn’t you get in, Sammie?” He’s teasing her, and though I’m sure she likes the attention, I can tell she’s embarrassed to give the real reason: She’s dressed for Evan, and if she were to swim, her hair and makeup would get messed up.

She shrugs. “Just didn’t feel like it.”

“So no one’s going to go back in with me?”

“Well, I just clocked out and was about to do my laps,” Evan says. “I can skip a few and swim with you. Want to play Marco Polo?”

“Yes!” Mila perks up.

Evan looks at me. “Is that okay?”

“Sure.”

And then he starts staring at me, at my eyes—like he won’t look away. “What?” I ask.

“You have extremely large pupils,” he says.

“Um, okay…,” I mumble, not knowing what else to say to such a bizarre statement.

“I mean, I don’t mean to stare, but scientifically speaking, it means that you are an attractive person.”

“What?” I can feel the blood rush to my cheeks from embarrassment.

“Men are attracted to large pupils,” he says. “It’s been studied. I learned about it in psych this year. From Professor Cox, of course. Women in Italy used to use a plant called belladonna to dilate their pupils to attract men. You wouldn’t even need it. You have this natural ability to do so.”

“To attract men?” I spurt out with a laugh.

“Yes,” he says, smiling. “To attract men.”

At first, I smile back at him, but then it hits me that this is a weird, private thing he’s saying and we have a weird, public audience of both my little sister, who’s grinning romantically at us, and Sammie, who’s giving me a sharp look of death.

Great.

Mila breaks the awkward silence between us by pulling on Evan’s arm. “Are we going in or what?”

That breaks Evan’s stare. He claps his hands and jumps up. “Let’s do it!”

Mila throws off her towel and starts to run to the pool until Evan calls out his “No running” warning in his official lifeguard tone, and she slows to a run-walk.

This leaves Sammie and me alone, and me worried about what she’s going to say.

“Look, Sammie, I’m sorry. I have no idea what that was about.”

But Sammie’s not angry anymore. Instead, her shoulders are slumped, her head in her hands. “Forget it, Vivi,” she says. “It’s done. I’m over it. He’s into you. No bikini is going to change that.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

She looks up at me. “Um, your pupils are so large that they attract men? I think we do know for sure.” She stands up and wraps a towel around her waist. “No hard feelings or anything, but I’ve got to go.”

“Come on, Sammie—”

“You don’t have to run after me. And I’m not mad. I just need to be alone, okay?”

“Okay,” I say. “Hang out tonight maybe?”

“Maybe,” she says, and then she grabs her bag from the office locker and leaves.

Evan and Mila are in the pool, racing from one end to the other. He’s letting her win, and she’s howling with delight. I want to rush after Sammie, but I promised I wouldn’t. I hate this. I hate it that she likes him and that he maybe, probably likes me and that I don’t have any idea what I feel about him. Let me rephrase. What I hate the most is that I probably do like him, but I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to hurt Sammie, but even more, I don’t want to trust anyone else. I don’t want to feel attraction or liking or anything that could possibly lead to love.

And I hate that. I hate the fact that I can’t let myself feel.

And then what I do feel is that rush of dizziness wash over me, and my heart starts to pound in my throat. It’s the anxiety, the panic, flooding over me. I know this. This, at least, is familiar. I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. I close my eyes and try to breathe.

I lie like this for a while, trying to just focus on breathing in and breathing out. The sounds of the pool are around me—most of the families are gone already, but there are a few kids running and splashing, the chatter of their parents, and Mila’s laughter, distant but most familiar.

I actually breathe and calm myself down enough that I start to fall asleep. I let the exhaustion wash over me. I let my body relax. I let myself drift. And I’m on that far edge of sleep when I’m startled awake by screaming—Mila’s screams, Evan’s screams, the guards, the families, all screaming around me.

I open my eyes and find that everyone is not only screaming; they’re running, too, out of the pool, toward the umbrellas. They’re running and ducking and pointing at the sky.

“Run, Viviana!” Mila’s screaming at me from an umbrella near the edge of the pool.

I look up and see what look like bright orange-red grenades falling from the sky.

“It’s the Nut!” Mila yells. “He’s throwing tomatoes!”

“Come here!” Evan screams at me. “Before you get hit! Fast! Run!”