Where the Stars Still Shine(17)

They all start clapping, except for the little girl, who puts her hands over her ears and sticks her tongue out at me. I try to feel as if I’m part of this, but they’re all strangers. Some of the elderly women begin to converge, but my grandmother fends them off as if she’s my personal bodyguard.

“Let the poor girl breathe,” she scolds, as if she didn’t just squeeze the wind out of me herself. Behind me Greg snickers and she shoots him a stern look, which makes me smile.

Georgia keeps her arm wrapped firmly around my waist as she introduces me to more aunts, uncles, and cousins than I’ll ever be able to remember. Some of the old ones have accents so thick they sound as if they arrived from Greece this morning. They touch my face with papery fingers. Verifying I’m really me, maybe? I’m not sure. It creeps me out, but I don’t say anything. I smile and nod and say “thank you” a lot.

“Ma.” Greg comes up with Kat at his side. I’m glad to see both of them. “Maybe it’s time to give Callie a break.”

“You’re right,” Georgia says. “And I should check on the dolmades. Ekaterina, you have such a pretty face. Why do you cover it up with so much makeup?”

Kat rolls her eyes, but before she can say anything, my grandmother is pushing her way through the crowd to the kitchen. My cousin links her arm through mine, and I let her lead me out the front door to sit on the porch.

“I am so hungover.” She drops onto the wooden swing, making the chain shake. “Did you get in trouble?”

“I’m grounded for a week.”

“Ouch.” She winces. “I’m sorry. My mom didn’t say anything so I assume Greg didn’t tell her.”

“He was thinking about it,” I say. “But I talked him out of it.”

“You are the best. I owe you.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “So what happened with Connor? He came back to the party looking kind of freaked out.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Her eyes narrow. “He told Nick the same thing. Did you—?”

“No.”

She pushes off with her foot, making the porch swing sway. “Then it can’t be that bad, can it?”

Fresh embarrassment blooms on my face. “I thought we were, so, um—I took off my shirt.”

“Seriously?” She stops the swing with both feet. “Wow. No wonder he freaked. I mean, I’m a little surprised he didn’t rally in the face of”—Kat gestures toward my chest—“those, but I think he wanted to ask you out on a date first, not go straight to hooking up.”

It never occurred to me. Not once. “Oh.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No.”

“Wait. You’ve never had a boyfriend? You?”

“No.” When you don’t stay in any one place very long, there’s not much opportunity to be someone’s girlfriend. Also, not much opportunity to meet the kind of guy who wants you for anything more than sex. “I’ve only …” I trail off, but Kat picks up on what I don’t say.

“Whoa.” She sounds surprised, and I envy having the kind of na?veté that assumes if you’ve never really dated, you might still be a virgin. If I had grown up here, I might be. Or at least I wouldn’t have lost my innocence when I was eight years old. “Well.” She starts the swing again. “I think you should try again with Connor. We could double-date.”

“Maybe.” Connor will be a great catch for someone, but I’m pretty sure it’s not me. I don’t know how to be that kind of girl. He’s sweet, though. Cute.

We sit a minute and Kat starts giggling. “I wish I could have seen Connor’s face when you took off your shirt. I don’t think he’s met real live boobs before.”

“Well, he has now.”

She’s cracking up laughing when Georgia comes out onto the porch. “There you are, girls. Callista, the dolmades are ready. Come in. Try them.”

She hustles me away from Kat to the dining room, where the table is laden with a variety of Greek foods, as well as ordinary holiday fare, like turkey, cornbread stuffing, and mashed potatoes.

“Dolmades”—Georgia says, scooping an enormous portion of little green bundles onto a plate—are rice and meat wrapped in grape leaves. When you were a baby, I would feed you this and you would open your mouth the way a new bird does, wanting always more, more, more.”

As if I’m still that baby, she severs off a piece with a fork and brings it to my mouth for a bite. The rice tastes like rice, but the flavor of the leaves is minty and sour at the same time. It’s unpleasant, and I chew quickly to rid myself of the taste. I try not to let her see that I don’t care for her dolmades, but disappointment settles in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and I feel as if I’ve failed some secret granddaughter test.

Grandchild, daughter, friend, a girl a normal boy would date—a growing list of people I don’t know how to be.

“Ah, well.” She smiles and she hands me a fresh plate. “We can’t stay babies forever, can we?”

I fill my plate mostly with foods I can identify and grab a can of Coke from an ice-filled plastic tub in the kitchen. As I make my way through the living room toward the porch, I hear someone say “Veronica.” In a short hallway that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom, two older women—not as old as Georgia, but definitely a lot older than Greg—huddle, talking softly about my mother. I linger close to the doorway so I can hear what they’re saying.