by Sarah Ockler
The boys are hanging out in front of the Shack, just like they said they’d be when we rushed through our goodbyes earlier this afternoon. Like the other groups, Jake and Sam have a fire going and a small cooler of beer. My stomach goes a little fizzy when Sam smiles at me. “Missed you,” he says, handing me a bottle. “We didn’t know if you’d actually risk it.”
“I had to convince her,” Frankie says. “Anna can be sort of a baby sometimes.”
I try to choke her to death with my eyes, but she throws her arm around me and laughs. “We love her anyway,” she says.
The four of us stand around sipping the beers and digging holes in the sand with our toes. We tell them about our trip to Alcatraz with Red and Jayne.
“That’s actually a pretty cool tour,” Jake says. “I took my little sister there last year.”
“You have a sister?” I ask, suddenly realizing that in all of our lengthy discussions on best and worst school subjects, potential careers, favorite foods, and music, we haven’t talked much about family.
“Three, actually,” he says. “Katie is thirteen. And I have twin older sisters, Marisa and Carrie. They’re in North Carolina for college. You?”
I tell them I’m an only child and realize with a sharp tingle in my stomach that I’ve just set up a perfectly awkward and agonizing moment. I look at Frankie and make a quick scrunched-up face that hopefully conveys how stupid I feel for getting us into this territory.
“Me, too,” Frankie says, setting down her empty bottle in the cooler. “Jake, let’s go in the water.” She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and turns toward the ocean.
“Are you crazy?” he asks. “We can’t see anything.”
“Exactly.” Frankie takes off her shirt to reveal her bikini and throws it in the sand by the cooler, settling the “to swim or not to swim” debate once and for all.
“In the water we go!” Jake hands his beer to Sam and tosses his T-shirt on top of Frankie’s, chasing her along the shore.
The space of our conversation goes quiet in their absence, but not empty. The fire is warm and so is the air around us.
“Frankie is, um, a fun girl.” Sam shakes a red-and-white-striped blanket out and spreads it on the sand.
“She used to be really shy, believe it or not.” I join him on the blanket, glad to have something to do besides pretend to like beer.
“Why, was she fat or something?”
I laugh at the idea. “Fat? God, no. She — well, her — you know, let’s not talk about Frankie now.” There’s no reason for me to invite Matt here tonight. Frankie said she didn’t want to bring that piece of her life to the beach this summer, and so far, despite my close call with the sibling conversation, she hasn’t. It’s her tragedy, and whatever thoughts torment my head, I have no right to conjure him up at my whim.
“That’s cool.” Sam slips off his sandals and leans back on the blanket with his hands behind his head. “Lie back,” he says. “Trust me.”
I kick off my flip-flops and lie on my back like Sam, keeping a good foot and a half between us, lest a stray toe touch a stray leg and spontaneously combust. Unfortunately (or fortunately, I’m not sure), he turns to face me. I keep my face pointed up, focused on the stars. I’m not thinking about him. I’m not measuring the super-charged particles of air between us, willing them to become smaller and closer. I can’t smell the boy-soap and sea salt on his skin. I can’t hear his soft, measured breaths, or the beating of his heart, opposite mine.
“What do you see?” he asks.
I tell him about the shapes I find in the stars, the all-encompassing blackness of the sky. A gray, smoky wisp of clouds backlit by the halo of the moon.
“Mmm,” he says softly. “Now close your eyes.” His palm is over my face, fingers closing my eyelids. Heat falls in waves off his hand and onto my skin, simultaneously frightening and exhilarating.
“Okay.” He resumes his position on his back, leaving cold in the spaces where he touched me. “Focus on all the things you can’t see with your eyes.”
I take a deep breath and try to concentrate on the task at hand. I don’t want to disappoint him. I don’t want him to mistake my childish nerves for shallowness.
“Now tell me what you see,” he whispers.
“Well, there’s a fascinating view of my eyelids.”
“That’s not what I mean, Anna Abby,” he says, his breath crossing the space between us to reach my ear. “Tell me again.”
I take and hold another deep breath.
In the darkness, I see the way the breeze floats over my skin. I see every grain of sand pressing into my back beneath the blanket. The crackling sparks of the fires, sputtering and fading around us. The music drifting into my ears and into my heart from a cluster of people farther down the beach, playing guitars and singing and laughing. And I see the ocean, the sounds of the waves rushing up against the shore, only to fall back down again — a never-ending race.
My heart is full, but I’m shivering. I open my eyes and look toward Sam. He’s staring at me with such intensity that my whole body reacts to it like a magnet to iron, no choice but the natural order of things, moving closer, surprising me. I’m afraid. Afraid something will break his stare. Afraid something won’t.
Frankie and Jake have disappeared down the shore, the faint line of Frankie’s laughter trailing behind them like breadcrumbs in the air. I hear her far away, but it doesn’t fully register. Nothing registers. I want to say something, but my lips can’t seem to remember how to make words.
“Anna, you’re shivering,” Sam says, breaking the trance. “Here.” He sits up partway to pull off his hooded red sweatshirt and hands it to me.
I sit up and pull it over my head, grateful for the soft fabric against the bare skin of my arms. As I pull it on, I’m instantly and uncontrollably overwhelmed. It’s like Sam has wrapped himself around me, close and warm and safe. It’s him, the smell of his skin and something clean and the smoky campfire, hot and familiar inside as though he’s in here with me.
Everything stops mattering. The cold is gone. Time is gone. The ocean stops whispering. I turn my face to his, his eyes unmoving, and everything around me stops, suspended. Sam grabs hold of the front of his sweatshirt with me inside and pulls it to him. My arms move around him, his around me, and he kisses me, so hot and severe that I feel it all the way in my toes. We fall back to the blanket and I’m outside of myself, twisting my legs with his to get closer, closer, closer. He moves on top of me, the weight of his body pressing me into the sand, kissing my lips, my neck, his hands tangled in my hair, then reaching under my shirt, and I’m floating, all the old, tired heartsickness evaporating. My whole entire heart evaporating.
“Anna Abby from New Yawk,” he whispers. He’s shaking, still on top of me. I move to unzip the sweatshirt and let him in, wrapping us both up, pushing him over and draping an arm and leg over him lazily. My head rests tight in the groove between his chin and shoulder. I breathe in his skin and hold him there, right in my lungs, where nothing can get to him.
My whole life can end right now and nothing else will ever matter, not now and not again.
Moments later, Frankie and Jake walk up the shore and Sam and I untangle. That’s when I feel it. Like trying to hold water; that old slipping away. The cold air on my skin where he pressed against me just moments ago. The smell of his hair fading from my breath. The gentleness of his hands, gone. Sadness rolls over me like a wave, but Sam is still next to me, smiling. His eyes are content. His hand reaches to brush against mine. Frankie and Jake run up from the water, breathless and laughing. Sam moves a stray curl out of my eyes and kisses my eyebrow.
I can’t stop thinking about what he felt like against my body, against my lips. I can’t remember anything else, anything before that. And I realize in this moment that I’ve finally done it. That horrible, awful thing I swore I would never do.
The frosting. The cigarettes. The blue glass triangle. The shooting stars. The tas
te of his mouth on mine in the hall closet.
Gone.
All I can think about is Sam. Matt is — erased. My whole body is warm and buzzing.
Sam is smiling next to me, because of me.
And I’ve never felt so lonely in all my life.
seventeen
Dear Matt,
What is the statute of limitations on feeling guilty for cheating on a ghost?
The words are black and messy like ants in my journal and look about as ridiculous as they sound. It’s been almost twenty-four hours, and I can’t shake the hot, prickly feeling that’s settled in my stomach. It’s not so much that I kissed him — romantic night on the beach, stars, campfire, beer — these things happen, according to Frankie.
It’s that I want it to happen again.
We didn’t see them today. We promised to spend the morning with Jayne on the beach, which quickly turned into lunch, then dinner, then game night with Uncle Red. By then it was too late to go back to the beach — the sun was down, and somehow we’d managed to spend the whole day with Frankie’s parents doing wholesome family vacation things involving neither boys nor guilt nor things that shiver in the night.
Part of me doesn’t want to go. Matt and I were walking through the neighborhood, whispering in the middle of the street at two in the morning. They were set to leave for California in two days, and after that, we’d have about a month before Matt moved to Cornell. I tried not to think about it; tried not to count the days until he left or the days until we’d visit him or the days until he was home for break. An hour wasn’t that far away, but we’d all have school and it’s not like we could just go up there whenever we wanted. No more text messages to sneak out in the middle of the night. No more dumping out all the sugar just to have an excuse to run next door for something after dinner.
You’ve been talking about college since we were kids, Matt.
I know, but you won’t be there. Everything will be different.
Not here. We’ll be the same.
What if I come back and I’m different, Anna? Sometimes you go to a place where everything is different, and everything you ever know changes, and no one ever looks at you the same.
No way. It’s all I could say. And then I kissed him.
I didn’t know what he meant back then. I thought he was being sentimental, just worried about leaving home for the first time. To Frankie, Red, and Jayne, he was confident and ready, born for college, born for reading and writing and achieving great things. But I knew he was scared. It was such a change for him — being away from me and Frankie, away from our inseparable triune, away from his family. Truthfully, I was just as scared to see him go as he was to leave, but in those vulnerable moments when he confessed his insecurities under the stars, I couldn’t agree with him. I couldn’t do anything but stare at him and hold his hand and hope that he knew what I was thinking — that I could never, ever look at him differently, or feel anything other than what I felt in those shared and fleeting moments.
Now, curled up under my sheets and writing to a ghost in my journal, I know what he meant. I’ve been in California for just over a week, and I’m already different. Everything about me feels different. It hurts to remember Matt, to relive his postcards, to try to simultaneously remember and forget his voice. I’m fighting it every day.
I can’t stop thinking about Sam.
And Frankie has absolutely no clue about any of it.
It’s ten-thirty, and Red and Jayne are finally asleep. The sneak-out witching hour approaches. Frankie is anxious to get back to Jake, but I’m not ready to see Sam tonight.
“What’s up?” Frankie asks, surprisingly gentle. “You were all over him last night. You don’t want to go?”
I close my journal and shrug, not quite sure how to explain it. She sits on her feet at the end of my bed. “Anna, did something happen?”
I consider her question. Yes, something did happen. Sam kissed me, and it was crazy and intense, and even more amazing than it was with Matt, and now I want it to happen again. There, I said it. Only I didn’t really say it.
“No, not like that. I don’t want to freak them out, that’s all.” I conveniently omit the rest. “If we keep showing up every single day and night, right on schedule, they’re going to think we’re desperate.”
“Aren’t you?” she teases, broken eyebrow arching hopefully toward the sky.
“Sure.” I smile. “Just not tonight.”
Frankie nods, playing with the red glass bracelet on her wrist. This buys me the night, but another day wouldn’t hurt, either.
“Frank, we haven’t really spent any time alone together on this trip. Why don’t we get up early tomorrow and go somewhere without the guys? San Francisco, maybe?”
“Wow, you really don’t want to seem desperate.”
“I just thought it would be nice to get off the beach for once. We still have two more weeks to hang out with Jake and Sam.” His name catches in my throat, and I hope that Frankie doesn’t notice my skin flush.
She considers my idea and nods.
“There’s a bus down the street that goes into the city,” she says. “But my parents would never let us go alone, and I don’t really feel like spending the whole day with them. I had enough family bonding today to last the rest of the trip.”
“So. They don’t let us sneak out at night, either, but we do that.”
“Excellent point,” Frankie says. “Isn’t it time Jackie invites us out on her boat for the day? With her parents, of course.”
It’s probably the one and only time Frankie will ever call me brilliant, but she does, and as we turn off our matching lights and pull up our matching blankets, the wheels of Operation San Francisco are in motion.
The next morning, I wake up at seven as Red and Jayne leave for their morning walk. I grab my journal and tiptoe down to the kitchen, hoping to finish writing about the past few nights and work out the remaining bits of guilt still jolting my stomach before Frankie wakes up.
I make myself a cup of green tea as quietly as possible, dig around for a granola bar, and head out to the deck in my bare feet, carefully sliding the door closed behind me.
The morning is perfect. It’s early enough that only the runners are out, affording me a relatively unspoiled view of the ocean. I peel open my granola bar and prop my feet up on the adjacent chair, making a mental note to get out of bed early more often.
The earthy smell of the tea reminds me of Mom and Dad in their garden, quietly working side by side on steadfast soil invaders, not talking yet still somehow communicating — kind of like seeing with my eyes closed last night with Sam. I can’t picture Mom and Dad in the same thought with me and Sam, so I dismiss it entirely, wondering instead what they’re doing two thousand miles east and three hours into the future. I sent them a postcard from Alcatraz and talked to them a few days ago on the phone. Their voices were light and faraway as they told me about Dad’s latest sale and ongoing progress in the garden, real estate deals closing and weeds growing and life moving on without me.
I close my eyes and sip the tea, allowing Sam to creep back into my thoughts. The sun falls warm on my face in orange and lemon rays, reminding me of his hands as he closed my eyelids and taught me to see in a whole new way. It’s simultaneously painful and exhilarating, but I make myself go back there in my head, replaying every instant, every touch, every breath. I can almost feel his lips on my mouth again, when —
“There you are!” Frankie startles me, stomping all over my quiet reverie like an impossible elephant. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I thought you heard me get out of bed,” I lie, hoping I don’t sound too irritated.
“Anna,” she says, pulling hairs off her shirt and letting them drop to the floor. “You have to shake me, otherwise I’m dead to the world and look what happens. You have to spend your morning alone.”
“Right.” I close the unfinished story in my journal. “Tragic.”
“What ar
e you wearing today?”
“For what?”
“Anna!” She sighs. “You really exacerbate me sometimes!”
“You mean exasperate.”
“Huh?”
“I exasperate you.”
“That’s what I said! Anyway, San Francisco, remember?”
Oh, that. While I was off on my pre-Frankie morning mind trip, I kind of forgot about my idea. My San Francisco Sam diversion.
“I’m sure you’ll pick out something cool for me,” I say as she heads back into the kitchen to look for breakfast.
I watch her through the open sliding door. Beneath the clang of her hands searching the silverware drawer, the clink of a spoon tossed into a cereal bowl, the bang of the cupboard door responding to her careless hand, Frankie softly hums a song from our shared childhood. She pulls a box of Cheerios from the pantry, a carton of milk and a can of Diet Coke from the fridge, and sings quietly, unaware of her audience.
“If you could, would you ask
for moonbeams in a heart of glass?
For sun rays on the silver sea?
Or would you ask for me?”
I haven’t thought of that song in forever. When we were in fourth grade and Matt was in sixth, we all went to see him perform in the school show, Music Moves Me. My parents and I sat with Frankie and Jayne while Red stood in the back row with all the other dads videoing the musical for future hours of family torture.
Now I remember it as if we’d just left the auditorium. Matt had a solo for “Ask for Me.” He wore a tuxedo with a silver-sequined cummerbund. Kids from the younger class dressed as mermaids and fish. Matt sang the chorus and led the kids center stage to sing their own verses. Most of them forgot their lines, so Matt just kept on singing as if it were scripted that way.
Sometimes looking at Frankie is like seeing Matt through a glass of water — a distorted composition of him with all the right parts, but mixed up and in the wrong order. As I watch her sing his old song, I can’t shake the feeling that he just stopped by to say hello.
