Same Difference

SIOBHAN VIVIAN is the acclaimed author of The List, Not That Kind of Girl, and A Little Friendly Advice. She currently lives in Pittsburgh. You can find her at www.siobhanvivian.com.

For Nicky, xoxo

Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

June

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

July

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

August

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

September

Forty

Forty-One

Acknowledgements

Copyright

One

When I was a kid, I drew clouds that looked like the bodies of cartoon sheep. The sun was a perfect yellow circle. Birds flew in flocks of little black Vs. And I made sure there was always a rainbow.

It’s too bad the sky doesn’t actually look like that. In a way, the real thing is sort of a letdown.

“Emily?”

“Yeah?” I raise my head off my towel and squint away the sun. Meg is lying on her side, with dark oversized sunglasses perched on the top of her head. She’s staring at me. I give her a few seconds to say something, but her lips stay pressed together tight. “What is it?”

“I’m trying to imagine you with a mohawk,” she says, leaning forward.

I laugh. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She pauses to retie the plaid strings on her bikini bottom. “I bet mohawks are cool in art school. But I think you’d regret it. Maybe not right away, but definitely in September.” Meg reaches for the coconut oil and gives her flat stomach a spritz, then fires one at mine to be cute. “Just remember, it’s not like bangs or layers that you can hide underneath a headband until they grow out. There is no graceful way to grow out a mohawk.”

I rake my fingers through the knots in my damp hair. A few dark blond strands get left behind, swirled around my fingers. It took me practically all of junior year to grow my thin hair past my shoulders. “I’m not getting a mohawk,” I say, probably more serious than I need to be.

“Okay, okay.” She lets a giggle slip. “Could you imagine if you did, though? You’d be the talk of Cherry Grove.” Meg slides her sunglasses back in place and lies down. But she’s only still for a minute before she rolls around, tugging on the corners of her towel, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. “Tomorrow’s going to feel so weird without you here.”

There’s a bowl full of cut lemons between us on a green glass mosaic table. I fish around, find a juicy half, and give it a squeeze over my head. I’ve always wished my hair was striking platinum instead of dark honey, which is the most unexciting shade of blond, the one that some people even call brown. A bit of juice drips into my eyes and stings them like crazy. “You’ll have Rick,” I remind her. Though I doubt she’s forgotten.

“Rick’s not my best friend.” Meg stands up suddenly. Red stripes run across her back from the thick rubber strips of her lounge chair. She walks over to her pool, sits down at the edge, and dips her feet in the water.

“It’s not like I’m moving to Philadelphia,” I say. “It’s only three days a week, and I’ll be home by dinner if I catch the five-thirty train.”

She sighs. “Maybe I’ll get a job. Maybe Starbucks is hiring.”

We both know Meg isn’t going to get a summer job, so neither of us says anything. I let her sit with her back to me, kicking her legs through the water in slow motion. I get what she’s hinting at. Even though there’ve been lots of changes this year, and even though my summer art classes aren’t a big deal, the reality is that we’ve never spent a summer apart since becoming best friends and neighbors five years ago. Meg’s going to miss me.

I already miss her.

A cloud passes the sun and drops a cold shadow over the backyard. Meg takes off her sunglasses and tosses them onto her towel. “No use laying out now. Do you wanna walk to Starbucks?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

We throw clothes over our still-damp bathing suits and flip-flop down the stone path that leads from the backyard to the front of Meg’s house.

Meg and I live inside a gated community called Blossom Manor, which is made up of ten cul-de-sacs shaped like thermometers. Houses run up the sides in pairs, leading to the three biggest homes curved around the bulbous tip. That’s where we live, directly across from each other, in identical mansions.

The homes of Blossom Manor are all posh and stately, with thick green lawns stretching to the curbs. The streets are named after pretty flowers, like Petunia and Bluebell, and paved with rich red brick in zigzag patterns. The low-pitch hum of purring central air-conditioning units only makes the chirping birds sound sweeter.

I’m suddenly overcome with an achy, sentimental feeling. Cherry Grove, New Jersey, is practically perfect, especially in the summertime. It makes me wish that I was still a kid, when summers meant I played with Meg from morning until night, pool hopping until our skin was pruned and our lips were blue, eating nothing but hot dogs from backyard grills and bomb pops from the ice cream truck. There’s a weight in my stomach that doesn’t usually appear until August, right before school starts up. The sadness of summer coming to an end, even though mine only just started. That’s how things go when you get older, I guess. Summers matter less and less, until you turn into a grown-up and they disappear entirely.