Picture Perfect by Catherine Clark Page A

wasn’t yours when our parents marched up. My mother stared at me. “Ice cream? Honey, you’ll ruin your lunch.”
    “It’s not ice cream. It’s sherbet,” I said.
    “But we’re going to Awful Arthur’s. Home of the Happy Oyster,” she said.
    “Well, then. Forget this,” I said, tossing my nearly empty container into a trash can. “Not that I like oysters or have ever tried one or wanted to try one.”
    “Is it true what they say about oysters?” Spencer asked.
    “What?” My mother put her hand on her throat. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
    “They’re supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect,” said Spencer. “Do they?”
    Heather stared at him, then scrunched up her face. “You mean they make you afraid to leave the house?”
    “No, that’s agoraphobic,” Spencer said as we all laughed.
    “Let me get this straight. You got into Linden, and I didn’t,” Adam said to Heather. “Really?”
    “You know how they want a very diverse student body,” Heather said. “Well, I’m diverse.”
    “As diverse as they get,” Spencer muttered.
    “So what does it mean?” Heather asked.
    “It means we should be going,” my mother said as she opened the van’s side door. “Quickly. Climb in, everyone!”
    Spencer got into the van. “Heather, it means that eating oysters makes you have certain thoughts. About members of the opposite sex.”
    “ Really . Interesting,” she commented. “Maybe we should look into that.”
    I felt myself blushing at the very suggestion as I sat in the second row back.
    “Maybe you don’t need to, Heather,” Adam said, laughing as he dropped into the spot beside her.
    “Hey, I saw you checking out that girl in the gift shop—” Heather began.
    “Me? I was not.”
    “Yeah, she was too busy asking for my number,” said Spencer, tapping his cell phone in front of my face as if that proved anything.
    “Oh, right. You?” I scoffed.
    “Why not me?” he said. Our eyes met, and he—unlike me—didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. On the one hand, I was glad he’d forgotten our encounter—on the other hand, I hated that he had. Was he so arrogant that he’d just brushed aside the incident as a harmless crush? And how had I ever had a crush on him ?
    “Check it out.” Spencer started to show us a picture on his phone.
    “Who’s that?” I asked.
    “Oh. That’s my neighbor’s dog at home. She just had puppies, so…”
    We all laughed.
    “I knew you were making up that gift-shop girl story,” Adam said to him. “Since when has anyone ever asked for your number?”
    “All the time,” Spencer replied. “Constantly. Just like you’re constantly going out,” he said to me.
    Touché , I thought. “Yeah, well, you takereally bad pictures,” I said, looking at his phone. “Of cute puppies.”
    “It’s a phone,” he said, snapping it closed.
     
    After lunch, the four of us gathered on the beach outside the house. Adam hadn’t stopped trying to convince us to play a sport—any kind of sport, he pleaded desperately, as if he were suffering withdrawal being around us.
    “Two-on-two, come on,” he urged. “Just like beach volleyball in the Olympics.”
    “All right, fine,” Heather sighed. “But you’re being really obnoxious.”
    “And you’re bound to be disappointed because I’m not very good at this, okay? And by ‘not very good,’ I mean, the last time I played I was probably a foot shorter,” I said.
    “Come on, just try for fifteen minutes,” Adam said. “If you hate it, we’ll stop and…I don’t know. Play cards or something.”
    Spencer tossed the ball to me. “Look at it this way, Em. If the next-door Neanderthals can play it—”
    “You haven’t even talked to them,” I said.“How can you insult them?”
    “It’s easy. They’re a type.”
    “You’re a type. A really judgmental and rude type.” I tossed the ball into the air and took a whack with my fist. I ended up spiking the ball, and it slammed