2. Naomi

CHAPTER 2

Naomi

" H ow are you going to go from this to living the broke student life next year?"

Water droplets splash against the surface of the mansion's pool as Shal sweeps her hand out in an arc to indicate the luxury that surrounds us.

"Ugh, don't remind me about student life," I say with a groan as I wiggle around in my donut-shaped pool floatie. The material makes a farting sound that Priya giggles at where she's sunbathing on a pool chair. "Don't remind me about anything to do with university."

Shal kicks her feet to steer her own floatie away from a collision with mine. "Fair enough. This is our last summer to be wild and free teenagers, after all."

I snort, and I hear Priya make a similar sound from over in her chair. Neither of us are what you'd call wild and free , especially compared to Shal.

I met Shal and Priya on the first day of first grade. As twins, they always stood out in classrooms. Being South Asian students in a mostly white school just added to the amount of stares and uncomfortable comments they received. Add in the fact that their mom dressed them identically until they were almost eight years old, and you've got yourself what Shal calls a recipe for a childhood identity crisis.

Priya and I were the ones drawn to each other from the start. We were both used to being labeled ‘shy kids' before kindergarten even started, and it didn't take long for us to earn a reputation as nerds too.

I doubt I would have become friends with someone like Shal if she weren't Priya's sister. Whereas Priya spent her childhood wishing all the attention would just go away, Shal decided she was going to put that attention to work. She was head girl in our last year of elementary school, MVP of the high school volleyball team for three years straight, and a frequent attendee of parties Priya and I probably would have skipped out on to study, even if we had been invited.

Our little trio was more of a thing when we were younger, but Shal still makes time to hang out with us, and I know Priya and I would have had way more of a hellish time in high school if it weren't for her influence on the popular crowd.

"Wild and free," I say in a dreamy voice as I tip my head back to stare up at the cloudless blue sky. "What must that be like?"

I can hear a grasshopper buzzing somewhere in the grass close by, the high-pitched whining ringing out above the sound of waves lapping at the side of the pool. The air smells like wet cement and chlorine.

"Oh, don't act like there's some law of the universe that means you two can't lighten up a little," Shal drawls. "I work hard in school too, and I still manage to have fun."

"Yeah, but fun has a different meaning for you," Priya counters.

Shal sits up straighter in her floatie, which causes the plastic to make the same farting sound mine did. She ignores the indignity and pushes her huge black sunglasses up onto her head so she can squint at Priya.

"What exactly are you planning on doing with your summer?" she asks, only pausing long enough to indicate the question was rhetorical. "Reading through all the university textbooks you've already bought and taking extra clarinet lessons to get ready for the university band. Come on, Pri. This is literally your last summer before we're, like, actually living in the adult world. There has to be something new you want to try out while you still can."

Priya is hunched forward in her chair now, a few strands of her thick, dark hair escaping from her ponytail to fall against the halter strap of her dark green bathing suit.

The amount of time I spent noticing how pretty Priya is was one of the tipping points that made me start Googling ‘Am I gay?' quizzes once we reached junior high. I even had a little crush on her at one point, but I think mostly I felt like I had to have a crush on someone to make being a lesbian a real thing.

By the time I was ready to start coming out in the tenth grade, I knew I only saw her as a friend, but the fact that I'd even considered her as anything else made me feel like some kind of gross predator. The guilt was so bad she ended up being the last person I came out to on my list of People Who Should Know when she should have been the first.

Internalized homophobia kind of sucks like that.

" This is new and fun, isn't it?" Priya demands. "We're swimming at a mansion . Why do I need to do anything more exciting than that?"

Shal gives her a deadpan stare. "Use that big brain of yours to think bigger."

Priya makes a face, and Shal retaliates by sending a splash of cold water over to douse her lap. Priya shrieks, and the two of them end up locked in a sibling battle that escalates to running laps around the grassy backyard while Shal snaps a wet towel at Priya's legs and threatens to whoop her ass.

I make an ungraceful exit from my donut floatie and stand on the cement pool deck with my arms crossed. I shout at them to be careful not to knock Peter and Sandy's statue collection over, but I still end up laughing as I watch Shal nearly trip over a hose the gardener left out.

In addition to the gardener, I will also be getting regular visits from the lawn mower guy, the pool cleaner guy, and the lady who clips the cats' nails. Thankfully, the cat nail lady is the only one I actually have to talk to.

Priya hunches over and wheezes that she can't breathe anymore. Shal delivers a triumphant whack of the towel to her butt and prances back over to me.

"What about you, Naomi?" she asks. "Are you going to disappoint me with your summer plans too?"

My summer plans consist of floating in the pool, finding the best reading spot in the house, and getting in my hours at the part-time data entry job I applied to for the summer because the ad said I could work from home.

"And don't say you think the pool should count too," Shal adds with a fake glower, like she just read my mind.

"Um…" I eye the towel still coiled in her hands as Priya comes over and makes a show out of groaning and rubbing her butt. "What about skinny dipping in the pool? Does that count?"

I was just looking for a way to make the pool sound interesting enough to avoid getting smacked by the towel, but Shal turns the sinful smirk that gets her invited to every party on me.

"Oooh, who knew little Naomi Waters is actually a hardcore exhibitionist?"

My cheeks heat up. "I am not an exhibitionist. This property has literally been landscaped for maximum privacy. I just think maybe it would feel, you know, liberating, or whatever."

Shal scoffs. "Sure. Okay. Liberating ."

Then she reaches up to cup her boobs and does a sensual swivel motion that somehow includes her hips and her chest.

Priya barks a laugh. "What are you even trying to do, you idiot?"

Shal keeps undulating as she walks over to pick up a dry towel and then leads the way back into the house. She makes a show out of tossing her damp hair around, and when she answers Priya, it's in a dramatic, husky voice.

"I'm being a liberated woman. It's not something you would understand."

Priya rolls her eyes as we step up onto the wide wooden deck that spans the back of the house. Of course, the deck also includes a barbeque station that looks like something out of a prime-time cooking show. A canvas awning blocks the sun and casts the expensive-looking patio furniture in cool shade.

We enter the house through the sliding glass door to the kitchen. The appliances are huge and made of gleaming stainless steel, set among navy blue cupboards and marbled grey countertops.

"Watch for the cats!" I call as I step inside.

In the day and a half I've been here, the cats haven't shown any interest in escaping the house, but Sandy made it sound like their flesh would burst into flames if even a single ray of direct sunlight touched their skin, so I've been extra careful.

Shal cranes her neck to glance around the kitchen after sliding the door closed behind me. "I don't see them anywhere. When do we get to meet them?"

"They're probably still asleep in the igloo."

Priya pauses in the middle of climbing onto one of the stools lining the island. "The…igloo? Does this house have its own igloo?"

"That's what Sandy calls their heated cat bed," I explain. "It kind of does look like an igloo."

Priya shakes her head. "This house just gets wilder by the minute. I can't believe it's just the two of them and their cats in this mansion. Did they have kids living here at some point?"

I walk over to the fridge to pull out the pitcher of homemade lemonade Sandy told me to finish and pour us all glasses as I answer.

"I don't know. They both had previous marriages, but it sounds like Sandy's sons were grown up by the time they bought this place. I saw some pictures of a girl too, but Sandy didn't say anything about her, so I guess she's Peter's daughter."

I'm glad I'm busy putting the pitcher back in the fridge when I say the last part; the truth is that I didn't just see some pictures of the girl.

I stared at them.

Hard.

For way too long.

Whoever she is, she's stunning. There's a graduation portrait of her in a black cap and gown next to similar photos of Sandy's sons on the living room mantle. She's got thick, dark brown hair, and her cheeks and nose are covered in a spray of freckles. Her eyes are a rich, deep brown, but what really kept me staring was the slight smile that barely lifts the corners of her mouth. Something about that shadow of a grin looks dangerous, like the snick of a lighter and the crackle of sparks in the dark.

"Um, hello? Earth to Naomi?"

I jump when Shal rattles her glass against the island. I realize I've been standing in front of the open fridge for so long it's now beeping at me to shut the door.

"Sorry." I set the pitcher on one of the shelves and swing the door shut. "The cold felt nice."

"So pizza sounds good for dinner?" Priya asks. "Then movie night to wrap up the day?"

"With wiiiine," Shal sing-songs.

Priya and I start to protest, but she cuts us off.

"You knew what you were getting into when you told us which bottles they said you could drink," she says, referring to the stop at the wine cellar during the tour I gave them this morning. "So either I'm drinking it, or we all are, but either way, I'm having wine tonight."

I've only had a glass and a half of wine, but that's more than I've ever consumed in a single sitting. The initial reaction of getting all giggly was familiar to me from a few chaste, parent-approved indulgences on Christmas and New Year's, but now my tongue feels thick in my mouth, and the whole world has gone soft and warm, like I've climbed inside a giant cat igloo.

A laugh bubbles out of me at the thought.

"This isn't even a funny part," Shal says with a snort from where she's sprawled out on a nest of couch cushions, pillows, and blankets she's made on the basement floor. Bijoux is nestled in beside her.

Aurora Rose is curled up into a ball on Priya's chest over on the other side of the massive couch we're sharing, both of them staring at the movie on the screen that takes up most of the wall across the room.

"I'm not laughing at that," I say, lifting a hand to point at where one of the goriest scenes in Jennifer's Body is being splattered across the screen. "I was just thinking how cool it would be to be in a giant cat igloo."

Priya giggles and kicks her feet like a little kid. Shal tips her head back and rolls her eyes.

"You two are officially lightweights."

"I'm not drunk . I barely had two glasses," Priya insists, but the hiccup that slips out of her mouth just proves Shal's point.

"Hey, I'm not judging. I'm the one who told you to live a little."

Priya juts her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. "How come only stuff like drinking counts as living?"

Shal shrugs. "Well, I didn't hear you offering any other ideas."

I glance back at the screen and realize we're missing one of my favourite parts of the movie, which just so happens to be my favourite film of all time. I may have guilt-tripped my friends into watching Jennifer's Body yet again when it showed up in the search suggestions, seeing as I'm their free ticket to a pool all summer.

I'm not even sure why it's my favourite movie; most of the other films I watch again and again are Jane Austen adaptations, but there's just something about the utter insanity of a bisexual demon cheerleader murdering her way through a small town's teenage boy population that makes for an even more effective escape from reality than swirling petticoats and maidens running through fields.

With thoughts of university still buzzing in my brain, I could use the escape more than ever.

"You guys, we're missing it!" I shriek, loud enough to make Bijoux's ears twitch.

Instead of showing Jennifer Check the respect she deserves, Shal reaches over to grab the remote off the couch and hits the pause button.

My jaw drops. "Did you just pause Jennifer's Body ?"

She waves me off. "You've seen this a million times. We're having an important conversation here. Pri, come on, give me something. Naomi already came up with skinny dipping."

Priya sighs and stares up at the ceiling for a moment. "Okay. Fine. If I had to pick something wild and free to do this summer, maybe I'd want to…to…go on a date."

Shal gasps, and Priya risks disturbing the cat on her chest to grab the nearest cushion and toss it at her sister's face.

Shal swats it away and shrieks, "My baby sister, a temptress in disguise!"

"Shut up!" Priya wails. "I knew you'd be a jerk about it. Also, I'm only younger by eleven minutes."

Aurora Rose decides this is officially no longer a safe space and climbs off Priya to join Bijoux in his blanket nest instead.

"I'm kidding," Shal huffs. "I'm actually so proud! A date is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. Keep going!"

"What, are you making a list?" Priya asks.

I start to think Shal might be feeling the wine more than she's letting on when her eyes do this weird glittering thing. She kicks away the blanket covering her legs and jumps to her feet.

"Now that is a good idea," she mutters before marching out of the room.

Priya and I sit there in silence for a couple minutes, straining our ears to catch the distant sound of Shal's footsteps.

"Uh…" I say once another minute ticks by. "Should we go find her?"

Priya shrugs. "She'll be fine."

We're quiet for a little longer before I slide further down the couch and prod her leg with my toes.

"So…you want to go on a date?"

She groans. "Don't tell me you're going to make fun of me too."

"Of course not! I just…didn't know. I mean, I knew you were curious about dating, but we've always thought of it as more of a for university thing."

She strokes her hand along the couch cushion, staring down at the fibers like they've suddenly become the most fascinating thing in the world.

"Well, it's almost time for university, and I just… I don't know if I want to be the same person there that I was in high school, you know?"

I feel like a rock drops to the bottom of my stomach. "Oh."

We might be going to different universities, but we'll both be staying in Ottawa. After spending first year living at home, we're planning on getting an apartment together. We've been talking about it since the ninth grade.

We never mentioned being different people in university. Of course, I expected us to change and grow and do all that other normal human development stuff, but still, I thought we'd be Priya and Naomi through all of it, the same way we've been Priya and Naomi since we were the weird girls who read The Chronicles of Narnia during recess.

"I just—"

She doesn't get a chance to finish her sentence; Shal storms back into the room, holding up a paper and pen like she's got Excalibur in one hand and the Holy Grail in the other.

"I found paper!" she shouts.

Priya and I blink at her.

"Uh…okay?" Priya says.

Shal drops her arms to her sides and gives us a look of the utmost disappointment. "For the list . We're making a summer bucket list!"

She beams like that should be a revelation, but I just blink at her some more while Priya wrinkles her nose.

"Ew. What are we? A pre-teen BFFs club? That is so cheesy."

"I don't care if it's cheesy. We're doing it," Shal says with a huff. "Plus, we're only putting cool things on here, so it won't be cheesy."

Shal is now a woman on a mission. She sets her supplies on one of the black metal side tables flanking the couch and then picks the whole table up to deposit it in front of the empty spot between me and Priya. There doesn't seem to be any stopping her, so the two of us just watch as she sits down and scrawls the words SUMMER BUCKET LIST across the top of the page.

"We'll put ten things," she narrates as she writes. "So we each get to pick three, and then there'll be a bonus tenth one we all have to agree on."

"Wait." Priya scooches in closer. "Is this, like, a shared bucket list? We're all supposed to do everything on it?"

"Duh," Shal says like it should be obvious. "Solidarity, sister. We don't have to do all of them all at the same time, but we do all have to do all of them."

My wine-addled brain spins a little as I try to process that sentence. Shal writes out the first two items on the list while we continue to watch:

1. Skinny dip in the mansion's pool.

2. Have a summer fling.

Priya starts to protest a single date escalating to a ‘summer fling,' but Shal shushes her and says it's her own turn now.

"Okay. Hmm. Something wild and free." She taps her chin for a few seconds, and then her eyes light up. "I know! I want to try smoking a joint."

"What? No!" Priya shrieks. "That's crazy."

Shal scoffs. "It's not even illegal."

"You have to be nineteen to buy it!" Priya insists.

Shal is already writing again. "And that's always seemed really arbitrary to me. I know plenty of people who can hook us up."

"It's dangerous!"

Shal turns to stare at Priya. "We can literally watch them walk into a dispensary and buy it for us—"

Priya starts to argue about it being illegal for someone else to buy us weed, but Shal cuts her off.

"And if you really don't want to do it, I'll scratch it out."

"But it's—oh. Really?"

Shal nods. "Uh-huh. I want you to live a little, but I'm not going to freaking force-feed you marijuana, Pri. I just thought it might be fun to try together. I've never done it."

Shal has had so many firsts without me and Priya that it adds a note of vulnerability to her voice when she admits this would be new for her too.

"Oh," Priya says.

‘Vulnerability' isn't a word I often associate with Shal, and I'm considering getting up from the couch to give them a private sister bonding moment when Shal turns her attention to me.

"What about you, Naomi? How do you feel about sampling the devil's herb?"

None of us can keep a straight face after she says that, and by the time we've stopped laughing, I find myself nodding even though just the thought of touching a joint—never mind actually smoking one—makes a jolt of nerves zing through my chest.

"As long as we know where it came from, I mean…okay. I'd take a hit."

The phrase ‘take a hit' sounds so unnatural coming out of my mouth we all have to stop and laugh again.

"This is so crazy," Priya wheezes after she's caught her breath.

I nod again. The air in the room feels charged with an electrifying sense of possibility, like Shal has somehow turned her pen into a magic wand that's inking destiny onto the page.

Either that, or I really am the world's biggest lightweight.

Whatever the reason for the sparks of potential skittering across my skin, I can't stop Shal's words from when we were out in the pool from echoing through my mind. This really is our last summer before adulthood kicks in. For the next two months, we'll be caught in this limbo of newfound power without the weight of all the responsibilities September has ready to dump on our heads.

There will never be another summer like this.

Maybe Shal is right. Maybe I should want more from this summer than long afternoons with my books and quiet nights alone in the house.

"I want to read something," I say before I have time to think about it. "Like, to an audience. Out loud. I want to get up on a stage and read something. Maybe I could pick one of my favourite poems or book passages or something."

I can almost feel the glare of a spotlight beating down on my face as I imagine standing with a piece of paper clutched between my fingers, a shadowy mass of people staring up at me as they wait to hear my voice.

Of course, that image is accompanied by a wave of nausea so intense I cross my arms and grip my forearms hard, pressing the tips of my nails into my skin until my head stops spinning.

Priya gawks at my suggestion, but Shal turns back to the list and starts writing down the fourth item.

"Okay, open mic night!" she says when she's done. "Let's keep this momentum going. It's your turn to pick something, Pri."

It takes a few minutes and a lot of prompting from Shal, but I see the moment when an idea slips into Priya's head. Her gaze shifts over to meet mine before darting away.

Something about her body language makes me feel like there's a fist squeezing around my heart.

"What is it?" I ask.

She gives a little shake of her head. "Nothing. It's stupid. It's just…I think it might be nice to make a new friend this summer. You know, like, if we each made a new friend to practice for university, or whatever."

She's still not looking at me. My throat goes dry.

Her voice is pitched high with nerves as she rushes to elaborate. "Not that we aren't going to be friends in university. Of course we will. We'll be best friends. It's just, we're not even going to the same school, and—"

"I get it." My words sound cold. I clear my throat and force my shoulders to lift in a casual shrug. "That makes sense."

That's the worst part. It does make sense—way more sense than the picture of university life I'd created in my head. When we talked about studying in each other's school libraries and finding all the optimal lunch spots halfway between Carleton and Ottawa U, I thought that's what most of our days would consist of, not just some of them.

I knew we'd find other people to sit beside in our lectures, just like we did for all the classes we didn't share in high school, but Priya sounds like she's looking for something different.

"It's not like that, Naomi." She reaches over to grab one of my arms. "I just—"

"It's okay." I hesitate for a moment, and then I place my hand on top of hers. "Shal, put it on the list."

The mood lightens a little after Shal decides the next item on the list should be attending an insane pool party and Priya practically jumps on her back to try yanking the pen out of her hands before she can write it down.

The next round of list items only takes a couple minutes. I say we should go on a road trip, and Priya says we should film ourselves doing a dance challenge we have to post online. Then Shal says we should all get tattoos.

"NO!" Priya shrieks. "I call veto!"

"What?" Shal taunts, wiggling her eyebrows. "Are you scared ?"

Priya tilts her chin up. "Actually, no. I'm just smart enough to realize that something I put on my body at eighteen years old probably isn't going to be something I want on my body for life."

"Yeah, that's what makes it risky," Shal shoots back, "and thus badass, and thus fun."

I can't help chuckling when Priya crosses her arms and asks how it's possible she and her twin share the same DNA.

"How about this?" I suggest. "We make the category body modifications in general. That way we can get piercings instead if we don't come up with any tattoo ideas."

Shal snaps her fingers. "Yes. I like it."

Priya still has her arms crossed. "You better be ready to face Ma's wrath if you get anything besides a nose piercing."

"There are other things I can get pierced that Ma will never see."

Priya's eye literally twitches as she processes what those options might be, but she lets Shal write the ninth item down on the list.

"One more to go," Shal says. "This is the grand finale we all have to agree on. Got anything to start us off?"

She turns an expectant look on us.

"Uh…have the best summer ever?" I joke.

Shal glares while Priya laughs with me.

"You two are idiots," Shal informs us.

"Well, what's even left?" I retort. "We've covered public nudity, drugs, and tattoos. What other wild and free summer girl activities are there? Breaking and entering? Grand theft auto?"

Priya and I keep laughing, but Shal ignores us and picks up her pen again.

"Hey, wait!" Priya protests when she notices Shal is writing something. "We're supposed to pick this one together ."

The pen goes still.

"I can cross it out if you want. I just…didn't want to say it out loud," Shal says in a quiet and very un-Shal-like voice, her chin tilted down and her hair falling forward to hide most of her face. "Just promise you won't laugh when you read it, okay?"

Priya and I exchange a look before we promise not to laugh and then peer over her shoulders as she peels her hand away from the paper.

"Fall in love," Priya murmurs.

Those three words are spelt out on the page in the same bold and steady handwriting as the rest of the list, but something about them looks softer, even timid.

"I said don't laugh," Shal says with a huff, even though Priya and I haven't made a sound.

I can name at least half a dozen people from school who fell in love with Shal in the past year alone, and even though she's gone on a couple dates with some of them, she always brushes them aside sooner than later. She always says she's got bigger things on the horizon than crushes and boys.

"It's not even that important," she adds, her voice brisk. "I just want to know if it's all bullshit or not. I mean, who even knows what falling in love means , anyway?"

She bends over the paper again and scrawls the words ‘whatever that means' at the end of the last sentence.

Priya and I share a look.

"I like it," Priya says.

I nod. "Me too."

Shal holds the paper up where we can all see it, and we take a moment to read over whatever the hell we've just committed ourselves to:

SUMMER BUCKET LIST

1. Skinny dip in the mansion's pool.

2. Have a summer fling.

3. Smoke a joint.

4. Perform at an open mic.

5. Make a new friend.

6. Attend an insane pool party.

7. Go on a road trip.

8. Post a dance challenge.

9. Get a tattoo or other body modification.

10. Fall in love (whatever that means).

I watch the paper shake a little in Shal's hands. We've gone so quiet I can hear the slight snores of the cats where they're still nestled in a pile of blankets on the floor.

"This is so cheesy," Priya mutters.

The silence of the basement makes her voice sound extra loud.

"Oh, it is, but…" Shal rests the paper on the table and then gets up to hunt around until she finds the nearly empty bottle of white wine and holds it up like she's making a toast. "There's no backing out now, bitches."