I'm speechless until the bell rings moments later, prompting me to ramble about getting to homeroom on time.
By third period, H has had enough of my self-consciousness and shoves me into a stall in the girls' bathroom.
“I’m holding the door closed until you show me your underwear,” she says.
Someone nearby laughs.
“Did you talk to Sherman yet?” I ask.
“No.”
“Teddy told me about the dare,” I say.
“Game,” she says in reference to her love affair with tennis and my success in diverting the conversation from my bathing attire to her failure at talking to Jud Sherman, resulting in a point for me, hence her use of the word game.
As though relieved, she goes on. “A bathing suit is the only thing that makes sense today. Not only are you showing senior class spirit, it’s like a million degrees out. Ms. Keenen is making us read Fahrenheit 451. How's that for ruthless? Less than two weeks to go and she’s cramming it in. And it’s sweltering. It's a book about fire. Hot, burning fire.” The exasperation in her voice echoes off the tiles.
“It's also wicked hot in this stinky cube. Plus, at least you don’t have Mr. Dicostanzo.”
“Set,” she says, giving me another point by recognizing that I have it worse than she does.
“What if you don’t read it?” a smoky voice asks from the other side of the door. “Two weeks to go, like you said, what are they going to do now? Fail you?”
“Match,” Heather says, giving the speaker the winning point because we both know Heather is an A+ student and will do the assignment no matter what.
I push open the door, wearing only a yellow and white polka dot bikini. Like my crush on Grady, I’ve had this suit since ninth grade. But the pair of eyes gazing languidly up and down my body aren’t brown. They’re more like gray. I feel a hint of shy, but something about Joss frees me from wanting to cover myself.
“Crap. I have to go meet Rosa. See you later.” Also in a bikini, H rushes out of the bathroom, looking naked from behind because her backpack hides everything except her bare limbs.
Alone in the girls' bathroom, a purring silence slinks between Joss and me as if we're each waiting to find out what's going to happen next. I cannot deny the light pressure blossoming under my bikini bottoms. Yet there's fuzz in my mouth where there should be words.
“A real senior prank would be for the entire class to streak naked,” Joss says. "Just sayin'."
I need a firehose. If I told my mother about how lately I’m suddenly almost constantly turned on she’d probably give me an herb tincture to cure it. Or not. She has liberal ideas about embracing sexuality. Although, thinking about my parents douse the flames.
“Did you just move here?” I ask. Our school is relatively small. I'd recognize every longtime student even if they'd dyed their hair blue. Plus I have no idea what else to say.
“Yeah. From Canada.” She says it with a French accent.
Ooh la la. “Cool.”
She shrugs. “So when is this slip and slide thing happening?”
Someone from the hall answers with a shriek as if they were just soaked with cold water.
“Now.”
Joss and I smile at each other and rush for the door. Annie Lemon sails by on her belly. Bubbles float in the air from down the hall. The shiny rainbow orbs pop before they reach me, but the floor is already sudsy and there’s laughter and screaming as more students sail along the stretch of plastic.
Joss turns to me. “Wanna?”
I follow her to the end of the line and we wait quietly amidst all the cheering and chatter. It was easier to talk to Grady, but maybe that’s because I’ve practiced. He’s been my white whale for years, except that he’s tan and surfer-toned. Joss is edgy, pale, and just out of reach.
Heather appears, soaked, her makeup smudged, but wearing a big smile. “Hey, where’s Theo?”
“Probably with his academic advisor,” I say, meaning for it to be a joke.
Heather doesn’t laugh, instead her eyebrows bunch together with concern.
Everyone in the hall frenzies and jostles, perhaps fearing the administration is moments away from shutting us down.
“I wanted to tell him that I did it. Just now. I talked to Jud. Kinda,” she calls over the hooting.
“And…”
Her face falls. “I told him this was awesome and, he, um, he wiped bubbles off my nose...”
“And…” I repeat.
She rushes back down the hall as if realizing a completed dare that did not make. She calls, "Game," once more assigning me a point.
With a smile, I shake my head in her wake.
“So, Theo…” Joss asks.
“Teddy,” I correct.
“You guys?”
“Friends,” I say. My forehead wrinkles. I wonder if she likes him. Um, gay-dar much, new girl? Also, I was kind of hoping that the look she gave me when I stepped out of the stall in my bikini might be confirmation. My cheeks blaze.
There’s a loud whistle, not the gym teacher kind, but the hey sexy kind. A few pairs of eyes land on me, even though I’m anything but conventionally sexy. The back of a familiar brown-haired head fades into the crowd.
Joss tosses her boots next to her bag, which sits in a soapy puddle. She pulls her tank over her head and then tugs off her skirt. Only wearing a Day-Glo bra and pair of boy shorts with a Wonder Woman symbol on them, she launches herself down the slip and slide, whooping. I hardly have enough time to process what she looked like standing there and the way it made me feel when my thoughts drown in loud cheers as she streaks away. Then it’s my turn. I get into position and then fly down the slippery mat as seniors clap and underclassman look on with jealousy.
Joss helps me up and then a coach’s whistle that tells us game over.
“Okay, seniors, you’ve had your fun. Get this cleaned up and back to class,” Principal Whitaker says.
A few brave students take their turns, but everyone scatters to the bathrooms or classes with no intention of clearing gallons of water and soap from the hall. Joss stares at me a moment, her lips on the edge of amusement, and then disappears into the fray.
I go back to the bathroom and work my way into my clothes. They snag and stick to my damp skin. It can't be easy to get a wetsuit off. Grady replaces thoughts of Joss. Someone knocks on the stall door.
“Just a sec,” I say, sweating profusely.
“Need help?”
Holy hotness, it’s Grady. I cover myself even though he can’t see me.
“Uh, no. Uh, uh,” I stammer.
“I figured I’d hide out in here until the end of the period. If you want company…”
I inch the door open, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror across the room. I wear a deranged gap-toothed smile. My cheeks are on fire. I smooth my hair and then step into the girls’ room. Grady stands where Joss had only minutes ago.
“Yeah, um,” I start.
He reaches for my shoulder and straightens the straps of my bra and tank.
I bite my lip. Shivers, colossal shivers, work their way along my skin.
“I didn’t have the girls’ bathroom in mind yesterday when I asked if you wanted to…”
From the doorway, there's a yelp, but not the kind that says the slip and slide is back on.
I roll my eyes. “Elspeth Coterell,” I say by way of explanation. "When we were in math together, she was heckalotta freaky about rules." I don’t want to take any chances with her rushing to tattle. The seniors are probably already getting detention.
“Shit. She’ll probably flip out and tell the office. ‘There’s a boy in the girls room,’” Grady imitates her in a high pitch. “This isn’t first grade anymore. We’re getting out of here in a week; we can break the rules a little.” He steps closer to me.
“Are you still in there?” Elspeth calls from the other side of the door. "I really have to go and he's not supposed—"
Grady rolls his eyes
at the ceiling. “Obviously I'm still in here if I didn’t walk by you on the way out," he calls then turns back to me. "Guess we're not going to break that rule. Let's try again later?”
“Nudibranch,” I call after him. I'm a dork to the tenth degree.
Elspeth looks at me disapprovingly as I splash cold water on my face. Not only is my hair in tangles, but every other part of me ties into tighter and more confusing knots.
☼
When I meet Teddy at the end of the day, he's a few shades brighter than this morning. He fills me in on how Heather asked if Sherman wanted to study for their math final together as we drive away from Puckett.
“Sexy,” I say, joking.
“Apparently not as sexy as you baring it all in your bikini today.”
My mouth falls open.
“Everyone was talking about it. Plain Jane Wohlbreuk hiding under her parents' old band T's and shredded jeans all these years.” He laughs.
I’d shove him if he weren’t driving.
“That’s just what I heard anyway.”
“You’ve seen me naked. I’m not centerfold material.” If I didn't know better, I'd claim his cheeks tinged pink.
“We were nine. And your mother didn’t have curtains up in the bathroom.”
“Yours did.”
“You can’t blame me, I was curious.”
I make a gagging face.
Teddy pulls into a convenience store. “I’m like the Sahara.”
“And you don’t want to go home.” I add.
“Nope.”
“Come back to my house,” I offer.
“Plans.” He’s halfway out of the car.
“What?” He slams the door, leaving me in the air-conditioned Grapesicle. My phone beeps. Heather sent a photo of me, smiling in the hall, wearing nothing but the polka-dot bikini. She captioned it with You’re all over social.
Teddy appears with two bottles of water. He tosses me one. “So you’re all over Facebook, Instagram… huh?”
“H texted you too? I had nothing to do with that,” I say defensively.
“I know. You’re the only human being alive not using social media. Well, you and Joss. So what's up with Grady?”
I’m a sentence behind, stuck on Joss. “Yeah?”
“He wants all over you.” His cheeks flush, but maybe it's the heat.
“Puh-lease.”
“Enough with the modesty. Go for it!” he says flatly as he takes a sip of water.
“But don’t you think I’m a little too far left of cool?”
“Labels are so last season. But if you want to know, I'd say you’re awesome, unique, funny, a good listener…and totally weird.”
“See, told ya. But thanks.” And I mean it. Somewhere under his frustration, the real Teddy still glitters. But the bit that’s concealing it, the sudden vacant recklessness that makes me uneasy, covers him like a fog.
“So yeah, two weeks left—”
“Twelve days,” I interrupt, correcting him.
“Twelve days," he repeats slowly, softly as though he hardly believes it. Then he smirks and shouts, "Live it up. Light it up,” followed by a whoop.
I swallow, realizing he might mean it, as in virginity.
“Obi Wan, there’s only twelve days left,” he says mystically and then launches into a tangent about various pairings that have suddenly cropped up now that the end draws tightly around us, shaking us up, so our compasses spin and spin, leaving me, at least, uncertain where I'll land.
“I’m confused,” I blurt.
“That’s an understatement.”
I try not to let it sting because if anyone in the world should side with me being solid—weird, but solid—it’s Teddy, or rather, Theo. Maybe neither of us knows who we are anymore.
“You’re just dramatizing,” he says unhelpfully.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Willa, I’m still working on answering that question for myself.”
We cruise by the beach again. Teddy’s driving in circles and my thoughts irritatingly follow the looping trajectory. At a stop sign, I get out of the Grapesicle.
“Where are you going?” he asks, his eyes wide, finally showing emotion.
“I need to walk.” For years, Teddy has been my sounding board, has provided me with insight, and has managed my three-ring circus, but this Theo character is dealing with issues of his own and doesn’t have time to be the ringleader for my dramatizing.
"I can bring you home," he says.
“I need to clear my head.” I say, slinging Grady's words from yesterday evening into the wind.
Chapter Five
☾
Tuesday
I walk up and down the beach until the crescent moon slices its way into the night sky. I may have ended up in Maine for a few feet. I meander home without having figured out the difference between being lonely and being bored, being a high school student and whomever I’m supposed to be the days after graduating. Analyzing the feelings that haven't quite defined themselves isn't helpful. Maybe we should all wear nametags.
Hi, I'm Willa and I'm puzzled. Nice to meet you.
I'm Trepidation. Nice to make your acquaintance.
And I'm Theo, artist formerly known as Teddy, the incredible vanishing friend!
Hi, I'm Grady, and I'm hot.
Joss: her half-smirk says it all.
I slouch as a stream of cars block me from crossing the street. When I reach the other side, someone my dad would call a key member of the backwash of society shuffles by—the people my mom has compassion for, offering them food and money.
“Not a drop to drink,” he shouts at me.
He looks only about ten percent there. “When I was your age, I had it all figured out. Now look at me. All this—" He gestures toward the ocean. "And not a drop to—” His head hangs as he mumbles something about conformity and taxes then follows up with the not a drop to drink line again.
A vague memory solidifies. I think his name is Keith. I catch a whiff of what I imagine a gin mill smells like after the janitor passed out drunk. He releases a shower of saliva when he repeats, "And not a drop to drink."
When the shutters close for the summer beach season and the snow falls, this town’s claim to fame is the ability for patrons to go from bar to bar on foot. The population is under ten thousand. The number of drinking establishments, fifteen. With those statistics, along with boredom, and the desire to appear experienced before the age of twenty-one, parties start early around here. There’s the chunk of woods at the end of Seacrest Street, the Parker’s basement, then there’s the Palisades, the site of an abandoned theme park, now covered in graffiti and dog poo. Its claim to fame was a rollercoaster that boasted the steepest drop in the country.
“Not a drop to drink,” Keith shouts, now a few paces away.
My water bottle sloshes. Keith is my parents’ age. They went to high school together. My mom looks sad whenever she sees him. She tends to see the best in people. She invited him and a bunch of other guys bumming around the convenience store to Thanksgiving one year. She said they looked like they needed something to be grateful for. But they never showed up.
Nevertheless, I catch up with Keith on the sidewalk and hold out the bottle of water. He stares at it.
“Are you thirsty?” I ask.
His eyes crinkle as he stares at the label. “Thank you. I was looking for something stronger, but thank you,” he says suddenly more lucid .He chugs the water and shambles off.
“Be cool, Keith,” I say, but he’s so far gone down the sidewalk I don’t think he hears me.
He shouts, “Not a drop to drink,” one more time.
I place the line from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I wonder what kind of voyage awaits me.
As I continue home, I create a class photo in my head, drawing my own superlatives: Grady's ex, Nina, labeled Princess of Puckett. Teddy, most artistic. Heather, spunkiest. I speculate that maybe Augie Parker is the Keith in our crowd
: he’s an honorary senior even though he’s a junior. So far, no couple has earned the title, "Most likely to get pregnant and have a kid." But if what Teddy said is true, there's still time. My mom’s twin, Uncle Guzzi took off the night of graduation and we only see him once every couple of years. I think about who would potentially bail at the last moment. As for me? I get most clueless.
I wonder what Grady’s doing and where he’ll be in five, ten, or seventeen years. Right now, he’s probably with Augie and a keg.
And Joss, what does she do when she’s not boldly stripping down to her wonder-wear and giving people the side-eye? She probably doesn’t need a plan for the future.
Aside from the well-meaning, but nosy adults in my life and people like Mrs. Chang, I doubt there's anyone wondering what I’m going to do. No boy or girl pining over me, trying to get up the courage, in the remaining days of school, to profess their love with a poem in their pocket, breakfast on my front porch at dawn, or dancing in the moonlight.
I make slow progress home. The stars blink on and I hope for teleportation away from this place called confusion.
Once I turn onto Druery Lane, the familiar slam of Teddy’s front door ricochets in the otherwise still night. I linger in the shadows as he checks his phone under the interior light of the Grapesicle before speeding down the road past me. I stay put until the glow of his taillights disappears. I check my own phone. There aren't any messages asking me if I've ever tried sweeping the carpet or showered with my clothes on and no request to call him back.
His hair was full of gel and the tight black and white plaid pants and fitted tee under a denim jacket without arms is Teddy’s version of stepping out. On anyone else, the outfit would be a catastrophe. He defines fabulosity.
The faint smell of grape juice, grapefruit body wash, and exhaust ushers me across his lawn and home. The Westings house is dim and mine is dark. When I get to the back door, I plug in the white and green Christmas lights that twinkle in the Japanese maple tree in the front yard. My parents planted it when I was born. They buried the placenta underneath.
Chasing Days Page 5
