Trick of Light (The Sutton Book Club 2) by Katie Winters

Author:Katie Winters [Winters, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

1997

Bethany’s classmates at Nantucket High called her “intense” both to her face and behind her back. She knew, behind her back, that they weren’t very kind. They asked each other why Bethany Sutton had to make them feel “so bad” about their grades and extracurriculars—why she thought she was so much better than them. But Bethany couldn’t care less. Bethany was on the road to a different life. She would be a doctor someday—and genuinely help people in need. She wouldn’t let anything like what happened to Joel happen to anyone else if she could help it. That meant acing every test, learning everything about the elements on the periodic table, and not drinking at parties on the weekend. It meant acting “old” at seventeen.

The fact that Bethany Sutton’s boyfriend was Rod Mathers confused almost everyone on Nantucket Island. Rod was a handsome and charming athlete with enough swagger to date the prettiest cheerleaders. Since the age of thirteen or fourteen, he’d walked across the island like he owned the place, certain of his footing. Why, then, did he spend so much time with that “mysterious and angry” Sutton girl? The one with brains?

Bethany knew better than to ask Rod to his face. She knew better than to question the thrumming love between them, the ache in her stomach when they spent time apart. She knew that, eventually, Rod would realize he could do better, that he would fall for the to-die-for cheerleader or Marcy Tailor, the cutest actress in the theater production of Grease.

Like all other islander couples, Rod and Bethany had met at the age of four or five. Their first meeting was no longer clear. Probably, they’d stumbled around together on a kindergarten playground, shared Play-Doh, or gotten into a fight about something on the storytelling rug. Bethany’s first real memory of Rod was in the second grade, when he’d given her a Disney princess-themed pencil from his pack and told her to only use it to write her most secret thoughts. Back then, Bethany had come to terms with the “secret life” within her own head—one that other people weren’t privy to. Rod seemed to understand that, too. He seemed to have one of his own.

They were friends first. They paired up in classes and read together after school. Esme and Rod’s mother, Gina, liked each other and frequently met up for coffee and playdates, joking about their children’s “budding love.” Neither of them actually believed in it, Bethany knew. They couldn’t know that Bethany had already imagined her and Rod’s wedding along a seaside cliff. They couldn’t know that, by age ten, Rod had already asked her to marry him.

At twelve, they shared their first kiss. It was strange and exhilarating and also terrible. It made both of them question what the big deal was about. “I thought it was something else,” Bethany explained to Rebecca that night, whispering on Rebecca’s bed. “But it’s just weird.” Rebecca urged her to keep trying. “You’ll get the hang of it.

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