by Sarah Ockler
The next week passes quickly, our days filled with swimming and sunning and catching up on sleep in the sand, our evenings spent hiking the length of the beach to the Shack. Each night I’m with Sam, things get more intense, closer and closer to the ultimate end.
Sometimes when I’m with him, something will remind me of Matt. A shooting star, the smell of someone’s shampoo, a long laugh, a turn of phrase from someone passing by along the shore. When it happens, I close my eyes, count to ten, and will him to go away. To leave me. To give me back my memories so that something as simple as a song floating out from behind a bonfire doesn’t bring me all the way back to him every time.
It never works.
twenty-one
“So, did you or didn’t you?” On the way back from our ninth successful moonlight mission, I laugh and grab Frankie’s shoulders. She started telling the story ten minutes ago, and she’s only to the part where they went skinny-dipping. She’s way too starry-eyed, and frankly, this uncharacteristically romantic version of my best friend is freaking me out.
“Frankie, yes or no? You’ve been debating it all week. Come on!” She looks at me sideways, letting her dancing broken eyebrow do all the talking.
“You dirty girl!” I tease. “So?”
“I was trying to tell you before, but you just wanted the punch line.”
“Come on!”
“Sorry, I guess you’ll just have to find out what it’s like for yourself.”
I look at her hard, forcing my smile into hiding. “How do you know I haven’t?”
The weight of the potentially devastating news that I actually had sex without telling her hits her like a wrecking ball. She simultaneously drops her bag and her jaw, cocking her head sideways to begin the scolding. She really knows how to make torture fun.
I work up my best devilish smile and walk past her on the shore. “Let’s go, Sloppy Seconds,” I say. “Aaaa-nnaaaa!” She whines behind me, kicking at the sand and refusing to move until I acknowledge her discomfort, sympathize for the appropriate length of time (it varies by offense), apologize for said offense (even if it isn’t mine), and spill every detail.
“All right!” I’ve built up a relatively high FPT (Frankie Pout Tolerance), but this is getting out of hand. “We didn’t do anything yet. Not like that. I would have told you.”
“I guess.” She picks up her backpack, only partially convinced. “Come on, Frankie. You know I tell you everything.”
She smiles, and I wonder if there will ever be a time when those words don’t burn on their way out.
“Too bad,” she says, Queen of Everything, her little Anna still bumbling down the beach with the big fat albatross. “I guess you’ll have to wait till the party tomorrow night to join the big-girls’ club. Did he tell you about it?”
One of Jake’s surf students has this huge house near Moonlight Bay. His rich parents are supposedly up north all weekend with their rich friends doing rich-people things like polo or something, and he’d probably never be able to face his friends again (what respectable young man would?) if he didn’t take full advantage of the opportunity by throwing a giant beach party, complete with half-naked girls in a hot tub and plenty of underage drinking. I can picture it now — just like the parties on TV where too many people show up, something expensive gets broken, and the poor little hot girl cries about how hard life is, gets drunk, and throws up on herself.
Frankie and I have never been to those parties. Historically, our parties have been more like small gatherings — Frankie, me, and one or two other girls trying to concoct something out of the cooking sherry and orange juice. Since Matt died, our party crowd is even smaller — me and Frankie sneaking drops of rum into our Diet Cokes from the sample-sized bottle stashed in her sock drawer.
“Yeah,” I say. “We won’t be able to stay long or drink too much, though.” Since our run-in with Aunt Jayne, Lady of the Night, we’ve been extra cautious. Extra quiet. Never too late, just in case Jayne is wandering around outside again. Making up a story about filming a moonlit documentary is one thing. Stumbling drunk and deflowered through the front door is quite another.
“Right,” Frankie sighs. “I wish there was some way we could just come back in the morning. I’m sick of sneaking around in the dark.”
“No kidding. More importantly, I believe you were about to tell me the rest of the Jake story?”
Frankie laughs, louder than the ocean. “Okay, okay. Listen and learn, my friend. Listen and learn.”
By the time she finishes her story, which is patchy and romanticized in parts but seems at least fifty percent true, we’re at the front door, peering into the windows for signs of life. Seeing none, we slowly turn the knob and tiptoe back to our room, mission accomplished.
Lying in my twin bed watching the moon through the skylight, I listen to Frankie breathe, deep and happy. The air around her is charged and hopeful and reminds me of summers past, when she and Matt would come home carefree, exhausted, and sun-filled from their annual trip to Zanzibar Bay.
California is good for her. Even Uncle Red and Aunt Jayne seem happy, despite Jayne’s late-night wanderings. They’ve spent most of the trip together, laughing with us at dinner in their old, uncomplicated way. Maybe we’ve gone back in time. Frankie and I are fourteen again. Matt is asleep in his blue-gray attic room. And Frankie hasn’t already been with two different guys — really been with them….
But no — we’re sixteen.
Matt’s not in the attic. Frankie crossed into the realm of “experienced” months ago, and I’m still a little freaked out about Sam’s hands on me, the big scarlet letter V forever emblazoned on my forehead. When I’m with him, I imagine it blinking and sputtering like a neon sign, just before it sparks into its final bright sizzle and then — black. All I have to do is sleep with him, and the embarrassing glow of the big V will be extinguished.
The whole idea of losing one’s virginity is kind of ridiculous. To lose something implies carelessness. A mistake that you can fix simply by recovering the lost object, like your cell phone or your glasses. Virginity is more like shedding something than losing it. As in, “Don’t worry, Mom. You can call off the helicopters and police dogs. Turns out — get this — I didn’t actually lose my virginity. I just cast it off somewhere between here and Monterey. Can you believe it? It could be anywhere by now, what with all that wind.”
I imagine some kids happening upon the cast-off virginity on the shore. They’d have to close down the beach and put up a sign. Danger! Wild virginity found here! Swim at your own risk!
Why does it have to be so special? Frankie says the first time isn’t special. It’s a minor inconvenience, an act no more significant than going to the dentist. You schedule the appointment at a mutually convenient time and lie as motionless as possible to expedite the process. The next time — and all subsequent next times — can be special, but not the first.
The only problem is that with Sam, I want it to be special. I mean, if it happens with Sam. Not that I’m planning it or anything. Other than shaving my legs. Just in case.
It’s almost five in the morning, according to the glowing numbers on my bedside clock. I roll over on my stomach and shove my hands under my pillow, soaking in the cool clean of the sheet.
It’s great that we can vote and go to college and wear pants and all that, but if anyone really wants to make a difference in the lives of women, they should invent a magic pill you swallow with a glass of water before bed, and when you wake up — presto! No longer a virgin! No agonizing over expensive-yet-uncomfortable under-garments! No worrying about how your boobs disappear when you lie on your back to make your stomach look flat! And certainly no lying awake all night trying to figure out a way to sleep over at some stupid party tomorrow just so I can finally have sex with a guy I’ve known just a couple of weeks — a guy I may never see again.
But when I think about him touching me, my whole body feels electrified and I know that there’s only one thin
g left to do. Go to the party and sleep with — Wait — sleep! Sleepover! That’s it!
They say true genius often strikes in the pale moments between awake and asleep. This is one of those moments. Whether it’s the neon V or thoughts of Sam’s hands on my body, the right combination of carbon and oxygen comes together in a single, brilliant spark, a firecracker on the horizon of hopelessness.
It’s my most ingenious idea so far this vacation — possibly ever. “Frankie? Frank?” I call her name until she shakes out of her peaceful slumber. She yawns and sits up in bed, stunned and confused beside the blinding light of such a true mastermind.
“Jackie and Samantha called,” I say. “Jackie’s mom said she can have a slumber party tomorrow night.”
The room is suddenly bathed in light, though from the sputtering neon V, my creative genius, the moon through the skylight, or Frankie’s beaming smile, I cannot discern.
twenty-two
We spend the next day with Red and Jayne, walking around Moonlight Boulevard pretending to be fascinated with beach-themed paintings, handmade wind chimes, and myriad other artsy trinkets without which no family vacation is complete.
Somewhere during the postlunch key lime pie course at Breeze, Frankie mentions Jackie’s all-girls, parent-supervised, ultrachaste night of fun, which starts after dinner (of course we want to eat dinner with you, Mom! The party’s not till later!). She has no trouble securing permission. Red and Jayne don’t even ask to meet the fictitious Jackie and the fabled Samantha. They just nod and smile, thrilled that Frankie is so normal and well adjusted.
With the pier packed and Jayne’s trinket-quota satisfied, we head back to the house for a cutthroat game of Frisbee on the beach with Red. The family fun continues through dinner, and soon enough, it’s time to start prepping for the party.
Frankie and I spend an hour trying on clothes that will fit smoothly over our bikinis and convey just the right kind of mixed messages: casual but not sloppy. Hot but not trashy. Fun but not easy (well, not that easy, anyway). Hair and makeup take another hour — a delicate dance of various chemicals applied with just the right amount of pressure for shading, highlighting, and contouring without caking, flaking, or smudging. Sam prefers the natural look, but Frankie’s right — looking natural takes a lot of science.
We pack our backpacks for our “girls’ night” (cute boxer shorts, matching pink T-shirts, sweatshirts, camera, makeup, nail polish, fuzzy socks, a copy of Celeb Style featuring a two-page spread of Helicopter Pilot’s hot, blue-eyed singer Joe Donohue and Apollo, his dachshund, and the journal I never leave home without), kiss Red and Jayne goodbye, and make our way down the beach, arriving at the Shack precisely ten minutes later than we’d promised, so as not to appear overeager.
Sam and Jake are waiting on the deck in cargo shorts and T-shirts undoubtedly yanked from piles of laundry on their bedroom floors. Sam’s hair is ungelled. His cheekbones — unblushed. His eyebrows are not tweezed, and I don’t think he spent any time curling his lashes.
Despite his ignorance of haute couture, he makes my whole body buzz.
“Wow, you — wow.” He pulls me close to him and smells my neck, his hands finding their way into my hair. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to a party. I mean, there will be other people there. Other guys. Looking at you.”
I wait for a smartass comment from Frankie or Jake, but they appear to be vapor-locked at the mouth, unable to communicate.
“Okay, then,” Sam says loudly. “We’ll just start heading over to the party. You guys can catch up later.”
I follow him down to the beach. The sky is dark, but there are still streaks of orange and pink, fading leftovers from the sunset.
“The key to a great party is the music,” Sam says, scrolling through his iPod as we tramp through the sand. Eddie — the guy having the party — put Sam in charge of the playlist. “If it’s too intense, no one will be able to hang out and talk. But if it’s too mellow, it will turn into a snoozefest. You also have to con sider timing. There’s a particular kind of music appropriate for each stage of the party — intro, warm-up, full swing, wind down, and outro.”
I didn’t know there was a whole science behind party music, but when Sam talks, I want to know. In these moments along the shore, I don’t care about anything as much as I care about the melodic string of words and breath passing from his lips to my ears, and when I nod and ask questions and laugh, his eyes light up as he looks at me and I think I could quite possibly love him forever.
I mean, not that I do love him.
Just that I could possibly.
Love him.
Forever.
“Outro?” I ask.
He smiles. “The opposite of intro.”
“Right. So how do you know when to switch?”
“You just gotta feel it. I’ll show you later. We’ll start with some ambient techno and see when the energy of the crowd calls for something else. Here — check it out.”
When I take his iPod to scroll through his songs, Sam puts his arm around me, strong and protective and tan and a little banged up. The heat from his skin seeps into my shoulders, and I am so suddenly alive that if I don’t kiss him right this second, we will both burst into flames and die. I turn around beneath the weight of his arm and pull him into a desperate kiss, pressing as much of myself against him as I can.
We get to Eddie’s around nine-thirty, Jake and Frankie arriving just after us. The sky is indigo and the moon lights up the backyard like a spotlight, erasing the remnants of sunset. Crowds of people arrive behind us, chattering and whooping and bearing various gifts of an alcoholic nature. Based on the number of times Eddie says, “Cool, nice to meet ya,” I guess each person he invited brought about three or four extras, coolers and pizza in tow. The house fills up fast with noise, bodies, and clanking glass bottles. At times I feel intimidated, afraid that things will get out of control, and I’m careful to stay close to Sam and Frankie. But soon Frankie hands me a fruity drink with a paper umbrella, and everything seems a little less intense.
Sam is right about the music. By eleven, his ambient techno vibe blends gracefully and seamlessly into an all-out reggae dance club, packed wall to wall with more people than the entire off-season population of Zanzibar Bay, gyrating and bouncing to Jamaican kettledrums.
The house can take it. It’s like a dance hall in and of itself. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the ocean. Gigantic, in-ground swimming pool. Pool tables in more than one room. Stainless steel kitchen appliances. The place probably has ten bedrooms, too. It’s like it was built for entertaining — like one of those celebrity houses where a bunch of famous people sit around and do coke all day, whining about their lives. I half expect them to walk in any minute with their drugs and their fantasyland problems, and Eddie will just shrug and smile and say it’s cool, nice to meet ya.
Sam goes to check on the music situation, and in all the commotion and space, I lose Frankie. I wander through the crowds, get lost down various corridors, and finally find her in the kitchen, camera in hand, filming Jake as he takes the door to the side entrance off its hinges.
“Frankie, what are you guys doing?”
“We need a beer pong table,” she says without further explanation, zooming in on my face as if it’s perfectly normal to deconstruct a house for such a noble purpose.
“Remind me again how you play beer pong?”
“Oh, you remember,” she says as if we’re regular pong champs. She slings the camera strap over her shoulder, still filming, and rummages through the stacks of open coolers on the counter for a pack of red plastic cups. “You set up six cups on each side like bowling pins and fill them with beer. Then you have to try to bounce the Ping-Pong ball into the other team’s cups to make them drink. If you miss, you drink.”
“See, Anna,” Jake says over a gathering fan base lining each side of the room, “the thing about beer pong is that even when you lose, you win!” He pulls a pair of yellow Ping-Pong balls from
his pocket that he apparently carries around for just such an occasion. “You in?”
I nod. “Only if we can do teams.”
Frankie grabs me. “She’s mine. Girls against guys.”
Jake calls for Eddie to join him at the helm of the side door, which is now flat and horizontal atop two barstools, six red cups arranged in triangles at each end.
“Girls rule!” She raises her hand up for a high five.
I slap her palm and take a chug of beer. “You two are about to get housed,” Jake says, but not before coming back to our side of the door to kiss Frankie one last time before the big game, eliciting a cacophony of catcalls from the fans on the sidelines.
Jake returns to home field and bounces a ball in Frankie’s direction, missing completely, finishing out his turn with an over-drawn pout.
Frankie returns, surprising me as she sinks her first shot in the lead cup right in front of Eddie. He dips his fingers in to remove the ball and downs the beer.
I turn to her and stare, unable to hide my shock. “Practice, or magic?” I ask.
“I’ve played a few times, Anna. Remember the parties?”
“Not exactly.” I must have been in the bathroom during that part of the nonexistent parties, hiding out from the vomiting hot girl while Frankie completed her beer pong apprenticeship.
The game lasts about ten minutes. Thanks to a strange combination of Frankie’s dead-on skill at sinking Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer and Jake’s distraction over Frankie’s boobs bubbling out the top of her camisole, we win.
Unfortunately, the celebration is short-lived. Our championship title is yanked ruthlessly from beneath our overconfident feet during round two. Jake and Eddie sink every ball, forcing us to chug in record time.
“Sam’s girl drinks!” Eddie shouts as he sinks the final ball in front of me, splashing my shirt.
Sam’s girl. The sound of it hits me hard and fast, spinning my head around. Suddenly, I can’t feel my feet. I’m floating. I’m content.
