The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page B

“No.”
    She shook me again. “If I needed a kidney transplant, would you donate one of yours?”
    “Nicki, it’s three in the—”
    “Would you?”
    “I’ll give you a kidney first thing in the morning if you’ll please just let me go back to sleep.”
    There was silence until 3:02. Then Nicki asked, “Do you think there are alligators in the pond?”
    I flicked on the light and glared at my sister, a hundred and five pounds of distilled pain in the ass in a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top with “Where’s the Beef?” emblazoned across the chest. “Nicki, we’re on the second floor.”
    “Oh.”
    I turned off the light, flopped down hard on the bed, whichcreaked in protest, and shut my eyes. I’d finally managed to drift off when Nicki whispered, “I’m failing everything.”
    I sat up in the darkness with my heart pounding, thinking that I might still be asleep, that this might be the continuation of a bad dream. “What?”
    “It doesn’t matter. Dad never sent the tuition for the next semester. I’m going to have to leave anyhow.”
    I flicked the light on again. “Turn it off!” Nicki snarled, and rolled over so that I was talking to her back. Her boxers and tank top were striped with light and shadow from Nanna’s plastic blinds, and her head was tucked into her chest like a turtle’s.
    “Nicki, have you talked to anyone? Does Mom know?” I winced, imagining how our mother was going to react to this news, now that she’d finally started getting herself together. She’d planned a vacation, and even if it was only to her mother’s house, and Nanna had probably paid for our plane tickets, that counted for something. “You can apply for a loan, you know, or maybe emergency financial aid.”
    “I’m dropping out,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t even like it there.”
    “Nicki . . .”
    “Forget it,” she said, and reached across me to turn off the light.
    “You can’t just drop out of college.”
    “Yes, I can.” Her bony shoulder blades pulled together. “Not everyone needs to go to college. Not everyone’s like you.” She yanked the covers up to her chin. “Can you bring me a snack, please?” All those years of training had conditioned me well. I got out of bed, padded to the kitchen, located crackers and juice, a glass and a napkin. By the time I got back to the guest room, Nicki was sleeping. I set her snack on the table, pulled the blankets up to her chin, and eased into bed beside her.
    •   •   •
    When we woke up at eight in the morning, Nicki was raring to go, as if our late-night conversation had never even happened. She yanked the covers off me and hooted at my drab cotton nightshirt until I grabbed my swimsuit and slunk off to the bathroom. “How’s your kidney?” I inquired on the way.
    “Much better, thanks,” she replied. She’d turned her back to me and was wriggling into the scraps of screaming yellow spandex that constituted her bikini. “In fact, I think I am well enough to take some sun.”
    Nanna dropped us off at the beach at ten, along with an ancient red-and-white Thermos full of ice water, a beach blanket, and a bottle of sunblock. “Be good,” she said, as we stood on the sidewalk in flea-market sunglasses and flip-flops, and sun hats that had once been my grandfather’s. As soon as Nanna’s Cadillac pulled away from the curb, Nicki shucked off her tight pink tank top and stalked along the sand in cutoff shorts and her bikini top, basking in the sun and the admiring glances as she looked for the perfect spot. Laden with the blanket and the Thermos, my bag and my sister’s, I struggled to keep up. “How about here?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the scant shade of a palm tree.
    Nicki nixed it. “We have to find interesting people.”
    I put down the bags and wiped my face. “Why?”
    She stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “So we can eavesdrop, of course.” After ten minutes, she found three bathers who