Summary
Chapter 28 is another flashback scene to the summer that Taylor came to Cousins Beach. After that summer with Taylor, Belly reflects, their friendship changed: “[they] were still friends, but not best friends, not like [they] used to be." This change happened for two primary reasons, detailed in this chapter. First, in a game of truth or dare, Taylor dares Jeremiah to kiss someone in the room, and he kisses Belly—her first kiss. Taylor grows jealous and upset at Belly. Belly, meanwhile, feels used—she knows that Jeremiah has only kissed her (and thus “stolen” her first kiss) to make Taylor jealous. The second event is that Belly finds Taylor and her brother Steven on the beach kissing one morning.
The following chapter brings us back into the present—to Conrad coming home drunk late at 3 AM and blasting music, despite everyone else in the house being in bed already. Belly storms into Conrad's room, to tell him that his music has likely just woken up the whole house. Conrad responds with nonchalance. Belly segues to asking why he quit football, and in return, he asks why she quit dance in her tweens. She doesn't answer the question, but does joke that she could've been a good dancer by now if she hadn't quit. Conrad quickly grabs her by the waist and starts twirling her around, leaving Belly wondering why he is so sullen one moment, and so joyful the next.
Chapter 30 deals with a scene in which a younger Conrad teaches Belly how to do the shag—a dance move. Susannah is dancing with Jeremiah to the Boogie Beach Shag, and she calls Conrad to show Belly how to do the dance. In that moment, Belly is head-over-heels in love; she feels "dizzy. With pure, absolute joy.”
Chapter 31 abruptly transitions to a beach picnic date with Cam. The two eat and spend the rest of the day in the ocean and sand, and enjoy themselves. However, when Cam runs back to the house to get Belly some water, he ends up playing video games with Conrad and Jeremiah, leaving Belly alone on the beach for 45 minutes. Irritated and feeling left out, Belly lashes out at Cam. At the same time, she lets herself express irritation at Conrad for being so “hot and cold” all summer. In the next chapter, Cam comes over to the beach house again, and the two decide to go skinny dipping. However, at the last minute, Cam backs out, leaving Belly irritated.
In Chapters 33 to 35, Belly goes to see Jeremiah at his workplace, and the two discuss why Belly is going out with Cam—she explains that he’s not “a dick” like Conrad. That night, she has a mini-golf date planned with Conrad, but when she returns home, she promises to come home early in order to spend some quality time with Susannah and Laurel. However, delayed on the date, she returns home late to find the two older women already asleep.
Chapters 36 to 38 deal with Belly’s birthday. She considers inviting Cam over to celebrate, but doesn’t. To her surprise, Susannah has gifted her an expensive pearl necklace, and Jeremiah has bought her a charm to add to a charm bracelet that Susannah bought her years ago. Conrad, to Belly’s disappointment, claims that he forgot to get her anything, and excuses himself from the party early.
In Chapter 39, Belly and Cam are deciding on what movie to watch when Conrad and Nicole (the mean “Red Sox Girl”) ask to join. Surprised and unhappy to see Conrad with a girl she perceives to be mean, Belly acts coldly. The couples get into a petty argument about which movie to put on, with Conrad and Belly picking Titanic and Nicole and Cam siding together on Reservoir Dogs. In the middle of the movie, Conrad and Nicole head upstairs together, and Cam asks Belly if she would like to stay in touch after the summer ends, because he would like to. Though she’s unsure, she says yes.
Analysis
In this section of the novel, clear comparisons between Cam and Conrad are being made. Even their names, both beginning with C, suggest that the two are similar in some way, and they are—both are objects of Belly’s romantic interest.
Han suggests the comparison between Cam and Conrad even further by juxtaposing narratives of intimacy between Conrad and Belly with Cam and Belly: the author places these narratives in next to each other, forcing readers to abruptly transition from one shared moment of Belly’s with Conrad to another between her and Cam. These abrupt transitions force readers, as well as Belly herself, to evaluate her simultaneous romantic interests in both Cam and Conrad.
Concretely, Chapters 29 and 30 reveal the strong intimate feelings that Belly holds for Conrad: While he twirls her around his room in the middle of the night, Belly thinks to herself, “He made it so hard not to love him. When he was sweet like this, I remembered why I did. Used to love him, I mean.” Even so, she feels conflicted about her love for Conrad because of his hot-and-cold behavior.
In contrast, in the various date scenes between Belly and Cam, we see no hints of this deeper love, though Cam also doesn’t cause Belly to feel the turmoil she does around Conrad, who is moodier. Cam is “nice,” which she appreciates, but at the same time, he does various things that irritate and repel her—like leaving her alone on the beach for 45 minutes, eating her last fruit roll-up, backing out of skinny dipping, and asking permission before kissing her.
In fact, these comparisons make their way into Belly’s consciousness, as we see in her conversation with Jeremiah in Chapter 33: when asked about why she likes Cam, despite his being “vegetarian” and a “dork,” Belly responds that she appreciates that he’s “different” from Conrad—”he's not a dick like Conrad.”
Even so, however, and as we see in Chapter 39, though Cam is a nice boy, Belly and Conrad align fundamentally in their tastes in a way that she and Cam simply don’t, as exemplified by Conrad siding with Belly in picking Titanic, and Cam’s behavior often being misaligned with Belly’s understanding of how life should be.
