lake, to remind herself, she told me, that she could make her own decisions.
I knew that if Sara’s parents were splitting up, she would talk about it all the time. Share every detail freely, at least with me, but probably with half the other kids at the lake too. She’d talk about cleaning out her closet to put the house on the market, her dad’s new apartment in town above the bakery. She’d tell me all about the greeting card with a blurry picture of a couple holding hands she found stuffed in her father’s nightstand. Sara would’ve opened the card, shoved it in her dad’s face and asked for an explanation.
Early in the summer Sara asked me why my dad hadn’t come up for the weekend. I told her he was working a lot, trying to get promoted. When he still wasn’t there at the 4th of July, she asked me again what was up.
I shrugged. It was a rainy morning and we were lying side by side on her bed, waiting for our favorite songs to come on the radio so that we could record them onto a blank tape.
“C’mon, Rachel, do you really think I don’t know?”
“Know what?” I blew a bubble with my Hubba Bubba and let it snap against my lips, as if to underline my nonchalance. The gum had lost its taste, but the smell of grape rushed toward my nose when it popped.