“I do!” Matt says. “All the time. But I can’t focus on it with this job. It’s too draining.”
“And your parents won’t make you get a job after this?”
“My art is my job,” Matt says, but he has started to look a little more uncertain. “I’ve already sold one piece. If I could just have the time to focus on it, I’d sell a lot more. They know that.”
“What about art school? There’s college for art.”
“Sellouts.”
“Okay, whatever,” Georgia mutters. She turns onto her stomach and closes her eyes, her position an echo of Serena’s. I feel suddenly guilty for agreeing with Matt about college. He’s an asshole—and delusional. He’s shown me pictures of his drawings on his phone, and they’re not that great. Awkward, the shading too heavy, the proportions off. They’re better than the paintings Georgia and her mom do at the Bev‘n’Brush, but not by that much. Besides, we’re different, I remind myself. I’m going to college someday. Just not now.
Jake texts me back, something about stocking a display of beer cans and trying to sneak one away. I respond, haha oh yeah? and set my phone on the ground. Its screen faces up and reflects the sun. It vibrates against the concrete. Jake has sent me another long text, and it trails off, a continuation of his beer story. He’s moved on so easily from the frustration I felt last night—maybe he didn’t even realize it was there.
When I look up, Matt is opening his mouth to speak again, and I know Georgia won’t have it. I flash a frown. It must be enough because he rolls his eyes and scoots over to join Toby, Dave, and Devin, whose conversation about video games is loud and generic enough to ignore like white noise. I rub Georgia’s shoulders, and she sighs contentedly.
“Fuck that guy,” I say.
“Seriously,” she says. “You have no desire to make your life better in any way, fine, but don’t take it out on me.” I press my fingertips into her shoulder blades.
“He’s probably jealous of the flowers from this morning,” I say. She laughs so suddenly that it shakes her entire body under my hands, and I smile.
I continue the back rub for long absentminded minutes until I look down and see that she has fallen asleep. Her light snores rustle the paper napkin trapped in front of her face.
“Georgia?”
“Huh?” she says with a tiny start, quickly relaxing back into the ground. She sighs. “Sorry, didn’t sleep well last night.”
“It’s okay. Sometimes I almost fall asleep standing up at the register.” I grab a half-slice of pizza from Georgia’s mostly empty box. “Didn’t you ever have a crush on a camp counselor like that kid does on you? Or a teacher’s assistant, or something like that?”
Georgia shrugs, an awkward movement from her prone position. “Nah. Not really. I’ve never had any really big crushes, actually. It seems so pointless.”
“Love isn’t pointless,” I say. Out loud, it sounds a lot more awkward than I meant it.
She makes a sound halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “Well, sure. But two ten-year-olds giving each other Valentine’s Day cards isn’t love. That’s…” She pauses. “Practice. For the future. And that’s okay for other people, I guess, but for me, when the right thing comes along, I’ll know.” She rolls over and squints up at the sun.
I set down my empty Tupperware and lie beside her. The sky is the color of bleached blue jeans. The heat has seeped all the way through me now, leaving no trace of the air conditioning that bit at my skin all morning. Sweat runs down the middle of my chest. “I never felt that way,” I say. “Every crush I had, I felt like it was real. I was wrong, I guess, but they were all important to me.”
Georgia shades her face with her hand, so she can open her eyes with a full blast of incredulity. “So you were one of those girls who started planning a wedding with every kid who teased you on the playground?”
“No!” She isn’t far off, but I won’t admit that. “It’s… I didn’t necessarily think it was going to last with every one of them. Or that it was a serious forever thing. Most of them didn’t even like me back. It’s more that—”
“You figured out what your first name would sound like with their last names, didn’t you?” she teases.
“Of course not.” I scowl at her. But yes, I did. In my head, I have all the versions of my future self, stacked up next to the little boys whose last names I would have taken: Caroline Hart, Caroline Gardner, Caroline Quinn, Caroline Brankowski, since I was little. And now, with Jake, Caroline Peterson. I’ve had crushes since I was tiny, and, late at night, before falling asleep, I’ve gotten married to every single one.
“I just felt things, and I figured if I felt them, they were real,” I try to conclude. Georgia doesn’t respond for a moment. I sneak a peek at her through the side of my sunglasses. Her eyes are closed, her face tilted up to the sun.
“Emotions aren’t always telling the truth,” she says. I don’t know how to respond to that. So I don’t.
I tug up my shirt so the sun can get onto my stomach, and I check my phone. I ask Jake to tell me more, and he does. Georgia and I lie in silence while the buzz of my phone punctuates the languorous warmth of lunchtime, until Toby yells, “Time’s up!” and everyone starts rising.
Georgia throws away the pizza boxes, jumping on tiptoe to shove them into the dumpster’s dirty window, and then she turns around and gives me a hug.
“I’m sorry to invalidate your feelings,” she says, so seriously that I can’t help but laugh.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Five-year-old Caroline is pissed, but sixteen-year-old Caroline thinks we’re good.”
“Good,” she says and smiles. Then she skips ahead to hold the door open for me and Serena, who is still pulling her T-shirt over her bikini. “Careful, Serena, soon my admirer might be after you.”
“Fuck you,” Serena says. She tucks her book under her arm as she walks away from us.
“See you later,” Georgia says at the end of the hall. When I walk back into the gift shop, Jenny isn’t there. It’s empty and cold.
* * *
Later that evening, I’m gathering my things, folding the aluminum foil over my new chocolate bar (this one has a picture of a butterfly), when Toby drops by. “Caroline! Caroline, Caroline, Caroline,” he says. He claps his hands and rubs them together, ambling toward the counter. “Ooh, chocolate,” he says and takes a huge bite. I watch him swallow half an hour’s pay.
“What can I do for you, Tobias?”
“Well, we here—the aquarium family—have not properly celebrated the Fourth of July together. So we are going bowling. And I would like you to join us, since you are at the very least a close cousin of the aquarium family—probably, maybe, a stepsister—at least a stepcousin, if nothing else—”
I throw a glitter pencil at his face. He dodges easily, grabs it off the ground, and puts it back in the container. “You should come. Jake’s coming.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Check your phone.”
Somehow I missed the text, but indeed, there it is: hey toby says your all doing bowling tonight, I’m down. I glance up again. Toby is finishing my chocolate bar, tossing the wrapper in the trash.
“You owe me eight dollars. That shit is expensive,” I say to him.
“I’ll buy you dinner tonight,” he says. I raise an eyebrow. “Okay, I’ll give Jake money to buy you dinner tonight,” he amends. I shake my head.
“You owe me eight dollars.”
Toby puts up his hands. “Whatever. Are you coming? We’re leaving now.”
I glance down as my phone buzzes, as if on command. A text from Jake.
meet you there?
yeah :)
Then I say to Toby, “Sure, just give me one second.”
He moonwalks into the entryway, where all the other counselors are drifting out, having changed out of their ubiquitous shirts.
Georgia is in the middle of an animated conversation with either Dave or Devin. Both average-looking, average-talking blonds; I think even their boss gets them confused.
I pick up my bag and knock on Jenny’s door. No response, as usual. I poke my head in.
“Jenny?” I say. Her eyes flick up to me, and she mutes her computer. “Is it okay if I head out a little early?”
“Okay.”
“You’ll close up? Do you need any help?”
“I’ve done it before. Think I can do it again.”
I close the door and exit the gift shop to the throng of people, which has now been entirely consumed by the spirited debate between Georgia and Dave/Devin. As if my arrival is the cue, the group starts moving out to the parking lot, where Toby opens the door to his car with a grand flourish.
“Let’s go,” he says, sweeping his hand toward the group. The guys pile in, some of them sitting on each other’s laps, and Georgia follows. Between the floor and the bench seat, all of them fit. Serena sits alone in the front passenger seat, sunglasses on and texting, and it occurs to me that she and Toby might be sleeping together again.
I hesitate for a moment, my hand on the door. My parents were always big on car safety: don’t text and drive, don’t drive drunk, everyone puts on their seat belt before you move the car, et cetera. And most of the five—no, six counting me—people in this truck are breaking the seat-belt rule. The arrangement is definitely not legal.
But what the hell. I get in anyway, squeezing next to Georgia, and close the door. Maybe Jake can take me home.
“Toby,” I say. I have to raise my voice to make myself heard over the arguing—something about if you could only have one of either cheese or oral sex for the rest of your life. “Where’s the bowling alley?”
“Mooresville,” he says cheerfully.
“Shit,” I mutter as the car squeals out of the lot.
Serena pulls down the mirror to check her makeup, smudging color across her lips, and someone behind me yells, “But if I had to give up cheddar cheese forever? No fucking way!” I settle into Georgia’s soft back, which is twisted to better position her for the discussion.
Mooresville is a solid forty-five minutes away, the next town over, known for its seediness. It’s not Murder Central or anything, but it’s the kind of place Mom always told me to avoid. I’ve never been there except to drive through. It apparently has a bowling alley, though, which our town does not, ever since Bonneville Lanes closed when I was twelve.
The alley in Mooresville is called StrikeBallz, and as we drive up, I see it is sandwiched between a liquor store and a dilapidated taxidermist’s office. There’s a grocery store and a few fast food restaurants across the street in a parking lot crowded with cars. But there are exactly zero vehicles in front of StrikeBallz. Except ours, which Toby now stops before yelling for everybody to get out.
We troop into the long, low building. The parking lot didn’t lie: no one is bowling. One bleary-eyed, middle-aged man stands behind the counter. He glances toward us, expressionless, and then returns his gaze to a TV playing a baseball game with grainy sound.
Matt reaches the counter. “We’re gonna need, let’s see, two rounds for now, and shoes for everyone,” he says, waving a hand to the group. “And…” He turns around. I can see his lips counting silently. “Eight Stellas. If we could just all split the bill evenly, that’d be great.”
“Is Stella a kind of bowling ball?” I ask Georgia quietly.
“No, Caroline,” she says, trying not to smile. “Stella is Stella Artois. Beer.”
“But I don’t have a fake,” I whisper frantically. I’m immediately convinced this guy will call the police, we’ll all be arrested, and I’ll spend the evening cold and alone in a jail cell in Mooresville, where my mother told me I was never supposed to go. Fuck Toby and fuck Georgia and fuck Jake, who isn’t even here yet, for convincing me to come on this stupid trip.
“Lemme see your IDs,” the guy says wearily. My hand trembles on the strap of my purse, and I look around to see what to do. No one else seems concerned, despite the fact that none of us are of legal drinking age. They get out their wallets and pull out their drivers’ licenses—I follow suit—but don’t offer them up. And it turns out, it doesn’t matter because the guy catches barely a glimpse at the laminated back of Matt’s card before he turns away, ambles down to a refrigerator, and pulls out eight brown bottles.
“Bottle opener’s over there,” he says, jerking his head to the right. “Tell me your shoe sizes. For the beer and the shoes and the two rounds it’s gonna be sixteen bucks apiece.”
I text Jake as the others crowd forward to grab the bottles and wrestle off the caps. “Size ten,” I hear Dave say as I type.
hey when’re you coming?
I don’t get a response, which is unsurprising since he’s probably driving. I fiddle with my phone and stare at the floor.
Someone bumps me from the right. I look up and see Georgia’s lopsided grin right before it disappears into her drink. She passes a bottle to me. We toast.
“You okay?” she says. “You look freaked out.”
“This place is just kind of…” I gaze at the near-empty parking lot. The sun makes heat waves over the cement. “I mean, it’s kind of scary, right?”
Georgia takes a long, thoughtful look around the building. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I used to. I was really skeptical the first time I came here with the counselors last year. But it’s not actually that bad. Everything’s just old and dirty.”
“Oh. Okay,” I say, a little awkwardly. I take a sip of the beer. It tastes rotten, but beer always does to me. “Wait,” I add, a thought occurring to me. “You were fifteen last year. How did you work at the aquarium?”
“I didn’t,” she says. “Matt goes to my school. We were kind of in the same group of friends last year. He’s a year older, so he worked here last summer, and I tagged along to a lot of his shit. I spent half of last summer at camp, but the other half, I was home, and my volunteering gig only took up twenty hours a week. We came here a bunch. Because as you know, there’s basically nothing to do where we live. But this is only the second time I’ve been so far this year. First time was right before JAC kicked off.”
“Huh.” We shuffle forward as Serena plucks her size five shoes off the counter. The guy spots Georgia and his forehead wrinkles.
“Don’t tell me. Seven?”
“Seven and a half. I grew.”
“Weird for a twenty-two-year-old girl.”
“I know. Bizarre, right?”
He glances at me as he drops a pair of dirty blue shoes onto the counter. “And your friend?”
“The same,” I say.
We take our shoes and sit on sticky benches behind one of the lanes. The air is dank and gray, and only the fluorescents in the right half of the building are lit, leaving us in uneasy shadow. As we tie our shoes, I seriously consider calling a cab. But then Jake walks in, flooding the room with harsh outdoor light, and makes a beeline straight for me. And I start feeling like things might be okay.
“Jake!” Toby exclaims. “Bro. Get your shoes. Here you go.” He passes Jake a Stella.
“Excellent,” Jake says. He jogs to the bar to open it and takes a sip. “’Sorry I’m late,” he says as he walks back over. “Got held up at the store. My bitch manager wanted me to stay late. I had to explain to her that wasn’t gonna happen.”
Georgia is sitting next to me, and it’s impossible to avoid seeing her roll her eyes. I feel the now-familiar mix of guilt and defensiveness that rises whenever Jake says something she doesn’t approve of. But before I can express it, Matt claps his hands.
“Okay!” he cries out. “It’s time. Let’s go. Everyone’s signed up as the first four letters of their name. Except Toby is BALL and Dave is DICK.”
Jake strolls over to me and wraps h
is warm arms around me from behind.
“Cay-roe,” he croons into my ear. “Sweet as Karo syrup.”
I snuggle back into him and smile. It’s not really that big of an issue, to call someone a bitch, I try to convince myself. Especially when she is one. I’ve met his manager, a forty-year-old woman named Candy who is the very opposite of sweet. She once told me to leave the store because I was holding up his line. Which I might have been, but she didn’t need to be an asshole about it.
Still, though, I’m pleasantly surprised when I turn a few minutes later to find Georgia looking relaxed. “So, Georgia, you’re GEOR there?”
“I like to pretend it stands for George Washington,” she says. “That’s who my parents named me after. Father of our country.”
“Wait,” Jake says, sitting up straight. “Are you serious?”
“Nah, my parents went to Savannah for a business trip one weekend and fucked like bunnies, and then my mom got pregnant and decided to keep me, shockingly. Thus Georgia.” Jake, having lost interest, looks down at his phone. “At the time it must have seemed very romantic,” Georgia finishes. She downs the last quarter of her beer and slams it on the table, jumping up. “Let’s fucking bowl!” she yells at Matt, echoing his enthusiasm.
He grins at her and passes her a flask he’s produced from one of the several pockets in his cargo shorts, and she downs a long swig before passing it back to him. I stare a little longer than I should. I’ve tasted hard liquor before, but never drank it so casually.
“That would’ve been cool if she were named after George Washington,” Jake says, tucking his phone in his pocket. He circles around to stare down the lane like it’s his sworn enemy.
“Caroline, Tobias, y’all ready?” Matt asks.
“We’re good,” I say, raising my bottle.
“Excellent,” Matt says. He is, of course, first up. He reels back, and I realize I have no idea what constitutes good bowling form.
I watch the lanes and the silhouettes of my friends against the lights. I try, at first, to figure out what the best technique is, but it’s impossible—they all look the same. I can’t focus on any of the shapes, so I zone out a little. I snap back awake when Jake comes toward me, grinning while the machine sets up the pins far behind him.
The Goodbye Summer Page 13
