Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Wednesday, July 14Position: Aisle two at the Apothecary.Cover: Looking through after-sun creams. (I somehow got a sunburn on my right arm. It’s roughly the shape of Argentina. How did I miss that spot?)Observations:3:05 p.m.: Subject Mrs. Appleby and Subject Mrs. Graydon walk in together. They are each talking on their cell phone.Mrs. Graydon: No you may not drive down to Seaside Heights. (Pause.) I don’t care who else is going! I—Mrs. Appleby: . . . because it’s a cesspool. (Pause to roll eyes at Mrs. Appleby.) Chloe, I’ve told you a hundred times. If you’d like to go down to the Island, I will have Marissa go over and open up the house. (Pause.) Well that’s not my problem, now, is it?Mrs. Graydon: How many times do I have to tell you you’re grounded?Mrs. Appleby: . . . may not hang out on that boardwalk without adult supervision!They both snap their phones closed, huff identical sighs, then laugh.Mrs. Appleby: Kids. We had them why?Mrs. Graydon: I know! What were we thinking?Subject Mrs. Appleby and Subject Mrs. Graydon dissolve into giggles. (Personal Note: I’m going to go home and hug my mom now.)

“Hold it like this,” I instructed, showing Quinn the basic, and I thought obvious, positioning for her hands on the basketball. “You shoot with your right, but guide it with your left.”Quinn tucked her blond hair behind her ears, squinted from behind her designer sunglasses, and shot the ball. It arced perfectly, swiped against the underside of the basket, and slammed into the pole.“Ugh!” She slumped her whole body dramatically. “Why are we doing this? It’s, like, ten thousand degrees out here!”“Hey, you’re the one who said you wanted to hang out,” I said as I retrieved the ball.She trudged, arms hanging like a simian, to the metal bench at the edge of the bayside court. A few yards away was a sand-bottomed playground where a troop of toddlers shrieked and chased each other down slides, their parents reapplying sunscreen every so often and checking their BlackBerrys.“Yeah, but I thought we would go shopping or something,” Quinn said, checking her arms for sunburn. “Isn’t it, like, dangerous to exercise in weather like this?”I gave a sarcastic laugh and joined her on the bench, letting the ball slam against it with a clang. I took a long swig from my water bottle and dragged my arm across my lips. “If you wanna go home, go home. No one’s stopping you.”Quinn gave me an incredulous look, then shook her head. She pulled a bottle of water out of her Kate Spade bag and popped the top. “What happened to you?” she asked suddenly.The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “What do you mean what happened to me?”“You used to be semi-cool, but ever since we got down here, you’ve been acting like a complete bitch.” She sipped her water then closed the top. “No offense.”My already warm face burned. “None taken,” I said facetiously. I got up, dribbled toward the basket, and slammed the ball against the backboard. It didn’t go through the net.“You’ve really hurt my dad’s feelings, you know,” she said, undeterred. “Not to mention your mom’s.”“What do you know about my mom?” I demanded, whirling on her.Quinn blinked. For a second I thought she was going to back off, but instead she stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. “I know that she doesn’t get why you can be so mad at her, and not even the littlest bit pissed at your dad when he’s the one who left you guys,” she shouted. “Which I don’t get either, by the way. If my dad did that to me, I’d hate him.”I do hate him, I thought. Or I did. Do I still?“He’s my dad, okay? Wouldn’t you want your parents to get back together if you could?” I blurted.Quinn pressed her lips together. If I could have seen her eyes behind those ridiculously huge sunglasses, I was sure I would have seen tears. “That’s different.”“Why?” I asked.“Because my mom is dead, you idiot! She didn’t leave me by choice!”Now tears streamed down her face and I did feel like a total idiot. She was right, of course. The two situations weren’t comparable at all. I took a step toward her.“Quinn, I’m—”“You know what? Forget it.” She shakily shouldered her bag and turned away. “I don’t know why I even bothered.” Then she looked up at the parking lot. “Looks like you’ve got company anyway.”She jogged across the court to her bike and took off. I wanted to yell after her—to say something that would make her come back so I could apologize, but I couldn’t think of a thing. Then a car door popped and I glanced over at the lot. Shannen Moore was just unfolding her long legs from her mom’s car.Great. Just what I needed. More confrontation. Wasn’t this exactly the thing I wanted to avoid this summer?Shannen was dressed to play ball. Nike shorts, battered kicks, white T-shirt. Her long bangs were held back with a slim headband and the rest of her hair was pulled into a high ponytail. I was surprised to see her out of her usual uniform of a tank top and worn pajama pants. Since arriving at Gray’s house, Shannen had rarely been seen off the couch. Unless she was out secretly meeting with Charlie, she was watching reality TV. Everything from 16 and Pregnant to The Next Food Network Star to Dangerous Jobs. Her slovenly habit of leaving crinkled-up junk-food bags stuffed between couch cushions had sent Gray into an apoplectic fit last night. It was kind of funny to watch, actually.Shannen strode over to the court and tossed her keys on their lanyard in the grass. “You up for some one on one?” she asked me.“Why are you here?” I demanded.“Why are you being such a bitch?” she shot back.I choked a laugh. If one more person called me that . . . “You can’t be serious.”I slammed the ball into the ground so hard that she only had enough time to throw her arms up defensively before it hit her chest. I was still residually upset about the episode with Quinn, but I was even more pissed at Shannen. If she wanted to bury the hatchet, she’d picked a bad time to show up.“What the hell?”“Go away, Shannen.” I turned and grabbed my water bottle off the bench.“Will you just chill?” she said. “I know you hate me, but you don’t have to try to kill me.”She popped the ball off the ground with her toe and grabbed it out of the air.“It sucked, okay?” she said tersely. “What I did at my party. It sucked. I don’t know what I was thinking.”I almost choked on a mouthful of water. She started to dribble the ball from hand to hand in a perfect V, watching its rhythmic path.“That’s crap. I knew what I was thinking.” She shook her head at the basketball. “I thought I was losing Jake. I was trying to get rid of you.”I felt like an air-conditioning vent had just snapped on at full blast directly above my head. My skin tingled and my hair stood on end. There was a loud car horn and a bunch of male voices shouted in our direction. All I could make out were the words “hot” and “baby.”“I thought you and Jake were just friends,” I said, my mouth dry.“We are.” She stopped dribbling and crooked her arms behind her head, holding the ball against her neck. “We were. I don’t know. He might never talk to me again.”She hurtled the ball at me. I dropped my water bottle, which bounced on the grass and rolled under the bench, and caught the ball.“So, you wanted to be . . . with Jake.”“Kind of.” She hooked her thumbs into the back of her elastic waistband and looked out at the glittering water of the bay.“So you were torturing me because he wanted to be with me,” I said.“I guess.”“Are you kidding me?” I pulled the ball back with one hand and let it fly as hard as I possibly could, flinging it toward the backboard. It slammed against the metal with a resounding clang and bounced away. Shannen flinched. “Why didn’t you just tell me you liked him? Why can’t you ever just talk to anyone?”“I’m talking to you now!” she blurted.“Right. Like, a month too late!”I walked over to retrieve the ball, biting down on my bottom lip as I turned my back on her. I thought of that night, how I’d stood there in front of all those people after that video of my father had played. How I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach repeatedly. How alone and exposed I’d felt. Everyone seeing my family’s dirty laundry, our faults, our weaknesses, our secrets. All so she could have Jake.“You shouldn’t have attacked my family,” I said, my voice wet. I picked up the ball and pressed it between my palms as hard as I possibly could.“I know. I get it.”“No, you don’t get it,” I said, whirling on her. “When we were little, the pranks you used to pull . . . they were funny sometimes and we all went along with them because we all thought you were so cool. But somewhere in there, you started crossing the line. This kind of crap? It’s not funny. Do you even realize what you did to me? To my mom? Not to mention Chloe and Hammond and Jake and my dad and even Gray. I mean, what the hell were you thinking?”“I’m sorry! I don’t know!” She turned her palms up. “If it makes you feel any better, my mom’s making me go see some shrink about it. She thinks I’m deranged, apparently. Like staying with some asshole who treats you and your kids like shit for twenty years isn’t deranged. If only she would’ve—”“Shannen!” I shouted, cutting her off. Anger radiated off of me in tight, jagged waves. “This isn’t about you right now.”She scowled, but then sort of deflated. “I know. You’re right. I . . . I stepped over a line. I’m sorry.” She covered her face with both hands, ran them up into her hair, and took the headband off so that her bangs fell into her eyes. Then she tipped her head back and groaned at the sky. “God! I hate this. Look, according to my mom, we’re gonna be here the rest of the summer, so I just thought . . . if we could maybe call a truce . . .”I exhaled a laugh. I’d heard that one before. Shakily, I dribbled the ball toward the net and hit an easy layup. Considering how pissed off I was, I was shocked it went in, but pleased. Let her think this conversation wasn’t affecting me.“That’s not gonna happen.”Her face fell. She looked suddenly like her waify kindergarten self, standing outside the school waiting for her mother to pick her up—late, as always, because there was some issue with her father. “Okay. Well, I just want you to know that . . . if Jake comes down to visit you, I won’t bother you guys. I swear. I won’t even—”“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen either,” I said, shooting another basket.“Why not?”“Jake and I are not together,” I said blithely. I turned around and tried a hook shot, but it missed. “You can have him if you want him so badly. We’re done.”Shannen’s mouth screwed up on one side. A look I’d known since we were kids. A look that said, You’re a moron.“He doesn’t want me,” she said. “He wants you.”My heart flipped inside out, but I ignored it. I picked up the ball and tossed it at the net. “Then he shouldn’t have lied.”Shannen considered this. She sighed and sat down on the bench, her shoulders curled forward.“Is it just me, or does everything suck?” she said.I jogged for the ball and picked it up. All of a sudden, I felt the blistering heat. I walked slowly toward the bench and sat down on the end, ball between my feet, forearms on my thighs. Squinting against the sun, I looked at her over my shoulder.“It’s not just you.”