by Kat Fletcher
“Hi,” I say, feeling a little shy. Rachel’s looking at me and I swear she’s checking me out. I can feel a warm flush in my cheeks and make myself busy finding a place to put my bag down, hoping nobody notices the condition of my face.
“Hey,” she says in her cool girl voice.
“Would you like something to drink? Juice? Soda?” her father asks as he gets up and heads to the stainless steel refrigerator.
“Root beer?” I ask as if I’m dubious they’ll have it.
He pulls a bottle of out of the fridge. I’ve never had it, but it’s one of those expensive brands that have their own special section in the supermarket. With perfect coordination Rach plunks down a thick glass mug on the breakfast bar in front of him, just as he twists it open and pours.
“Go ahead and sit down, I’m finishing the dishes,” she says, smiling broadly.
I pick up the mug and try to figure out where to sit. There’s one stool between her mom and dad, but that seems like it will be a little too much pressure, so I take the fourth one on the far end past her mom.
“This is really good,” I note, tasting the root beer and savoring the sweet taste as it hits my suddenly dry mouth. It’s better than the regular stuff in a can. Sweeter, but at the same time, not artificial. The bubbles aren’t as foamy, but there’s this earthy tang.
“IBC is the best,” Rach says, looking at me from the other side of the island. She’s resting her arms on the counter right in front of me, our faces only a few feet apart and for a moment I hold my breath, thinking, or is that wishing, she’s going to lean over and kiss me. Instead, she gives me a little smirk, and goes back to the dishes, but I see her mom and dad exchanging glances, so maybe it isn’t me.
“So you two girls had a good time at the beach?” her mother asks.
“Yeah, I’m glad she brought that umbrella thing though.” I answer.
“Sport-Brella,” Rach corrects me.
“Whatever,” I say jokingly. “It was hot in the sun and it was nice to have a place to hide.”
“Well, I never thought we’d coax her onto the beach.” Her dad’s voice is a little patronizing. “I’m glad you invited her.”
“She invited me,” I reply and Rach turns, drying a dish, and gives me a look like she doesn’t want me to talk about it.
“Oh, that’s quite interesting,” her mom says suspiciously.
“Done!” Rach announces with a strained enthusiasm as she puts the last dish into a cabinet. “Let’s go figure out what we’re watching!”
“Sure,” I say, then remembering my manners, “thank you for having me, Mr. and Ms. Gill.” I wasn’t sure if that was overkill, but her mom is clearly pleased and smiles at me. Her father, on the other hand, shifts awkwardly. I suspect he doesn’t like thinking of himself as a “Mister” anything and I kind of like him for that.
Rach leads us into the living room, turns to me, and rolls her eyes. “Sorry you got stuck with the parents thing.”
“They’re not that bad,” I reply.
She looks at the ceiling, shaking her head.
“They aren’t!” I insist, starting to laugh. “Plus, I could see you through the windows. You guys were having a good time.”
“So what do you want to do?” she asks, flopping down on the square cushions of the low-slung, light brown couch.
I stand there for a moment while visions of us doing each other’s toenails or hair gurgles up from some reservoir of slumber party stereotypes that’s been sitting deep in my soul since I was nine years old and reading horrible girls books. Not that the thought isn’t somewhat thrilling, but bizarre and terrifying come to mind first. Anyway, at the beach, I noticed her toenails were perfectly shaped and painted black.
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” I toss the question back at her. “TV?”
“Blah,” she squinches her nose. “Too early to start binge-watching.”
I shrug and plop myself down on the opposite side of the couch.
“What time is it?” Rach asks.
I pull out my phone. “Quarter to eight.”
“The Clam Basket is open until nine. You want to get ice cream? We can walk,” she whispers, “and by the time we get back my parents will be ready to go to bed. At least I hope so.”
“Trying to get me alone?” I quip back.
A little grin comes across her face and she gives me a meaningful look, but after a moment denies it, “Nah. Just don’t want to deal with my ‘rents.”
“Can we wander past my house so I can get my hoodie? Well, I guess it’s not my house. It’s not even my rental, it’s my parents’ rental. It’s mine for the next two weeks though, sort of. You know what I mean.”
“You’re weird,” she smirks.
“I’m not weird, I’m cold.”
“Doesn’t matter, I can loan you a jacket. We’re about the same size. Well,” she stares at my chest for a moment, “you’re a little curvier, but I can find something.”
“Thanks,” I say, only slightly rattled at the notion of her sizing up my breasts.
“You’re still weird though, but it’s kind of cute.”
I could take that two ways. It could be dismissive or it could be friendly, even flirtatious. Normally, unless it was Justin or Sierra goofing on me, I’d assume the worst and slink away. Instead, this warm thrilling tingle goes through my whole body when I hear the word “cute.”
I’m not sure if I should follow her into the bedroom or not, but curiosity gets the better of me and I puppy dog after her. Her room is down a hall and on the left. It’s like the rest of the house, sparse and modern. There are two beds, both of them plain unstained wood with cream-white linens. One is an unmade mess of scattered covers and blankets and the other is strewn with clothes spilling out from a half-opened duffel bag.
She starts grabbing clothes out of the duffel bag and I sit on the other bed and feel something rigid under my butt. I reach down and pull out a huge hardcover textbook. “Modern Differential Calculus?” I ask, paging through it.
She glares and I cringe inside. “More crap for my mother. So I can get into Harvard or some shit that’s never going to happen. I have no fucking idea how to do any of it. At least the reading is only boring, not impossible and pointless.”
She turns back and rifles through the bag until a trim black leather jacket emerges from the chaos. She turns to me, looks me up and down, glances at the jacket, and nods. “You’ll look good in this,” she says, handing it to me as she puts on the black denim she wore to dinner last night.
The jacket fits, which I wouldn’t have expected. It must be loose on her.
“That’s awesome on you, but we need to do something about the hair.” She goes over to the pile of stuff on the bed and comes back with a hair tie and before I realize it, she’s pulling my hair into a ponytail.
“Okay, that’s better. You are killing it. Check yourself out,” she says pointing at the full-length mirror on the closet door.
“Yeah right,” I reply skeptically, but when I get in front of the mirror, it’s a big change for adding a jacket and putting my hair in a tie. The black leather gives my look an edge and she’s swept the ponytail low and to the side, so from the front, it seems shorter than it is. I look back at her with a huge smile.
“See? Told you. Come on.”
I follow her. Before heading outside, we stop in the kitchen and she tells her parents where we’re going. I start heading toward the road, but she stops me. “No, this way, we can walk along the beach and it’ll be shorter.”
When we get out of range of the porch light, I can see this faint blue light shining through the white fabric of her tank top. She catches me looking and I realize that staring at her chest may be somewhat awkward so I decide to make a joke of it. “I don’t know how to tell you this Rach, but I think you’re radioactive.”
“What?” she notices. “This? It actually is radioactive. But safe. It’s just a dorky thing.”
“Can I see?�
�� I say leaning closer and peering, as if I’m going to peek down her tank top.
“Hey!” she objects. “You promise you’re not going to laugh at me because this is really nerdy.”
“Somehow I don’t think anything you are into is going to be dorky, Miss Cool Girl,” I quip back, realizing after saying it exactly how flirty my tone was.
“Whatever,” she says and pulls it out.
At the bottom of the chain is a little dark metal frame around some kind of blue glowing thing. “That’s cool. It looks like the TARDIS. What is it?”
She does a double-take. “It is the TARDIS. Duh.”
“You like Doctor Who?” I am utterly skeptical.
“Yeah. And is there something wrong with that?”
“No! I love Doctor Who and I can’t believe you have even heard of it. Can I see?” I say and reach out my hand, stopping a few inches away when I realize if I take it that I’m going to brush up against her breasts. “This is amazing, where did you get it?”
She cocks me a look and leans forward, holding it out to me with the chain still around her neck, “I bought it from some guy on Etsy.”
“How do you get the battery in?” I ask, turning it over in my hand.
“No battery. It’s got some little glass vials with some radioactive gas in them so they glow.”
I turn it over in my fingers, examining it. “Radioactive gas? And this is safe?” I’m dubious.
“Safer than fish fingers and custard. If not, YOLO!”
She’s obviously being sarcastic. I shake my head at the cheesy comment and peer up from the pendant at her. Her face is only a few short inches from mine. We’re so close I can catch the faint scent of sunscreen from her skin. Our eyes meet, the reflection from the glow of the amulet turning them from their normal gray to a deep blue. Her smile fades and she bites her lip. For what feels like forever, neither of us says anything.
I can’t stand it anymore and break the silence. “The new season starts this week,” I say quietly. “You know. Doctor Who?” My voice is soft, but my mind is screaming Kiss me. Kiss me! For a wonderful moment, I think it’s going to happen, but she blinks and steps back instead of forward. I let the necklace slip from between my fingers.
“We should get together and watch it,” she says, her voice disappointingly casual, as we head down the stairs to the beach.
“I think cable here gets it if you want to come over. Or we can stream it from somewhere I’m sure. Maybe you could sleep over too?”
“Yeah,” she says, a smile coming back to her face. “Let’s do that.”
We plod slowly down the beach, along the edge of the water. The sand is firmer here, making it easier to walk, but we have to occasionally retreat when a particularly strong wave comes in. Other than the two of us, the beach is deserted. There’s a moon and a bit of lingering light. It’s enough to see once our eyes adjust, but I’m not sure I’d want to be here alone this late. I’m not alone though.
“So what kind?” she asks.
“What kind of what?”
“Ice cream? What kind of ice cream are you getting?”
“Swirl. It’s soft serve right?”
“It is. And good choice. I’m in with the swirl as well. Chocolate dip?”
“No. Just ice cream,” I say, feeling suddenly boring.
“Seriously? No chocolate dip? When did you start to hate America? Not even any Jimmies?”
“Maybe Jimmies,” I admit, “but only the chocolate ones, not the multicolored ones.”
“Well, okay,” she says, “and those are sprinkles, not Jimmies. Only the chocolate ones count as Jimmies. And really? No chocolate dip? What kind of heathen are you?”
“I had a tragic experience with a chocolate dip.”
She turns around and walks backwards, looking at me. “How can you have a bad experience with chocolate dip?”
I roll my eyes, wishing I hadn’t brought it up, but it’s too late for that now. “When the chocolate shell cracks, it spurts once it’s melty. When I was little, we went to this family gathering and stopped on the way home. I think it was supposed to be a reward for me being good at my aunt and uncle’s house? It didn’t end well. I had this really nice white dress on. The cone melted a little, I took a bite, and it spurted all over me.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “Too much. Spurting though? That could be good,” she says salaciously.
“Ewww,” I say and fake punch her arm. I’m being totally ridiculous, but that tiny touch triggers a wonderful feeling all over my body and I want to do it again. God. Am I in middle school or something?
“So what else are you into?” she asks.
“What else what?”
“What else whatever. I don’t know. Who’s your favorite baseball player?”
I stop and give her another fake punch. “Baseball player? God. I thought you were cool.”
“I don’t know,” she laughs. “I was trying to think of something.”
“Well,” I say with my voice all mock serious, “it would have to be someone in the Red Sox or my parents would kill me.”
“Yeah, my mom would too.”
“Shouldn’t you be more interested in softball players?” I say, then worry she won’t realize it’s a joke.
“That could be interesting, but Valley doesn’t have sports teams. Remember, we’re all artsy and wear black and stuff.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot for a moment how cool you all were when I found out you were wearing a glow-in-the-dark TARDIS.”
She laughs, which is good. “Doctor Who is very alt. He’s foreign and acts weird. That’s a ticket to popularity at Valley.”
I gaze around and can’t see much beyond the beach. Certainly not a restaurant. “I don’t want to be too vacation-dorky, but are we there yet? I can barely see.”
“Actually, we are,” she says and points.
I squint and can barely make out a trail. It leads up through some woods and then out onto a sidewalk with the brightly lit restaurant only a few hundred feet away.
“How did you know about the shortcut anyway?” I ask, astonished.
“Google Maps.”
“So you had this planned?”
“It’s possible,” she says, sounding very satisfied with herself.
The Clam Basket is a serious old-school clam shack. It’s exactly the kind of Cape Cod thing my mom loves and I make a note to myself to mention it to her. The sign, featuring a smiling cartoon clam, overlooks the still-busy parking lot and an assortment of mismatched picnic tables, a few of which are fortunately unoccupied. They’re still serving food inside, but there’s a hand-printed sign with an arrow telling ice cream customers to go to the outside window.
Rachel insists on paying, which, at first, makes me a little uncomfortable, then brightens my mood. Maybe this is actually a date? Sort of a date?
That’s probably me engaging in wishful thinking, so I try to make myself useful and go crazy on the little napkin dispenser, grabbing out a huge handful one at a time. It’s ice cream. Why does every soft serve place on the planet only have those tiny little napkins? I don’t get it. They can’t possibly cost much. Is it supposed to be part of the experience to get covered in sticky goo?
It probably is.
We scout out a table and after sitting down I realize the top is covered in ice cream drips. I start using my precious bundle of napkins to wipe it up with one hand while balancing the rather generous and already starting-to-drip cone in the other. “Blah,” I get up from the table with the wad of cream soaked napkins in my hand. “Let me chuck these and get more.”
I get back to the table and finally get a chance to dive into my ice cream. It’s soft and wonderfully artificial-tasting the way that good soft serve should be.
Rach purses her lips, looking decidedly not pleased. “Don’t look now, but the guys over there are checking you out,” she says nodding toward another cluster of tables.
I peek over and there’s two guys about our age.
They’re drinking sodas and the remnants of a seafood dinner are stacked up on the table. One of them is some kind of jock type. He’s all broad shoulders, tall, and wearing a faded rugby shirt. The other is thin and rocking a stylish, well-dressed look with perfect hair, a blue button-down shirt, and new-looking jeans.
The unpleasant thought that he and Rach would look great together drifts through my mind, leaving me irritated.
“Oh boy,” I say. “Plus I doubt if it’s me they’re looking at.”
“If you want to talk to one, tell me. I can be entertaining to the other one, but if you want Jock Guy you’d better be quick because I think Well Dressed is smart enough to figure out the rainbows mean I’m not his ideal match.”
“Um, that would be a no on either one,” I say very firmly. “Definitely not my type.”
“And what would your type be?” she asks.
“Not them,” I reply.
She raises an eyebrow, “Okay then,” and takes a long swirling lick of her ice cream that leaves me staring until I feel a cold dribble start to make its way across a finger. It startles me and I jerk my head a little, resulting in her breaking down laughing.
I turn my attention back to the cone, hoping the cold ice cream will cool the warmth of the blush on my cheeks. Rach isn’t even trying hard to hide her amusement, which makes it even worse, but she finally gets her comeuppance when, as I predicted, the chocolate dip springs a leak and drools down her hand.
“Told you,” I say and hold a napkin out. She reaches for it and I fake pull it away before letting her take it.
“Laugh it up, but chocolate is worth it.”
It’s my turn to give my cone a long lick, and with our ice creams in full melt mode, we race to finish them before they start to disintegrate. When we’ve peeled back the paper covering and taken the last bite of our cones, I grab up the napkins to take to the trash.
“I’m going to wash my hands,” she announces and goes toward the bathroom while I head to the trash barrels. I poke a little at it, afraid there might be a yellow jacket feasting on the sweet drippings, but it’s either too cold or maybe they’ve all gone to bed.
