12

ACCORDING TO STORMY, THERE ARE two kinds of girls in this world. The kind who breaks
hearts and the kind who gets her heart broken. One guess as to which kind of girl Stormy is.
I’m sitting cross-legged on Stormy’s velvet fainting couch, going through a big shoe box of mostly
black-and-white photos. She’s agreed to join my scrapbooking class, and we’re getting a head start
organizing. I have several piles going. Stormy: the early years; her teenagehood; her first, second, and
fourth weddings—no pictures from her third wedding, because they eloped.
“I am a heartbreaker, but you, Lara Jean, are a girl who gets her heart broken.” She lifts her
eyebrows at me for emphasis. I think she forgot to pencil them in today.
I mull this over. I don’t want to be a girl who gets her heart broken, but I also don’t really want to
break boys’ hearts. “Stormy, did you have a lot of boyfriends in high school?”
“Oh, sure. Dozens. That’s how we did it in my day. Drive-in on Friday with Burt and cotillion
with Sam on Saturday. We kept our options open. A girl didn’t settle down unless she was supremely,
supremely sure.”
“Sure that she liked him?”
“Sure that she wanted to marry him. Otherwise what was the point in ending all the fun?”
I pick up a picture of Stormy in a sea-foam formal gown, strapless with a full skirt. She looks like
she could be Grace Kelly’s sneaky cousin, with her pale blond hair and the lift of her brow. There’s a
boy standing next to her, and he isn’t very tall or particularly handsome, but there’s something about
him. A glint in his eye. “Stormy, how old were you in this one?”
Stormy peers at it. “Sixteen or seventeen. About your age.”
“Who’s the boy?”
Stormy takes a closer look, her face wrinkling like a dried apricot. She taps her red fingernail on
the picture. “Walter! We all called him Walt. He was a real charmer.”
“Was he your boyfriend?”
“No, he was just a boy I saw from time to time.” She waggles her pale eyebrows at me. “We went
skinny-dipping out by the lake, and we got caught by the police. It was quite the scandale. I got to ride
home in a police car in nothing but a blanket.”
“And so... did people gossip about you?”
“Bien sûr.”
“I’ve had a little bit of a scandale of my own,” I say. Then I tell her about the hot tub, and the
video, and all the fallout. I have to explain to her what a meme is. She is delighted; she’s practically
vibrating from the salaciousness of it all.
“Excellent!” she crows. “I’m so relieved you have some bite to you. A girl with a reputation is so
much more interesting than a Goody Two-shoes.”
“Stormy, this is on the Internet. The Internet is forever. It’s not just gossip at school. And also, I
kind of am a Goody Two-shoes.”
“No, your sister Margaret’s the Goody Two-shoes.”
“Margot,” I correct.
“Well, she certainly seems like a Margaret. I mean, really, every Friday night at a nursing home!