I hesitated for a moment, then dropped to one knee to spritz the fumy stuff on Will’s ankles and calves. I tried not to fixate on Will’s muscles, the hair on his legs that was somewhere between light brown and sun-bleached gold, or the way his frayed khaki cutoffs grazed the top of my hand when I stood up to mist his arms.
I guess I held the bottle a little too close when I sprayed the back of Will’s neck, because the repellant pooled up in a little froth just below his hairline.
“Man, that’s cold!” Will said.
“Sorry!” I giggled, then used my fingertips to rub the stuff in.
Touching Will’s neck seemed shockingly intimate. Part of me wanted to jerk my hand away. Another wanted to put my other hand on his neck too, and maybe give him a little massage.
But instead I just swiped the bug spray away quickly and said, “You know, my shift at The Scoop starts kind of soon. I should probably …”
Will nodded, smiled, and walked toward his bike.
I had no idea if he’d thought of that moment as A Moment—or if he’d just been grateful for the bug repellant.
Either way, I felt calmer as we walked our bikes back to the highway and headed to town.
Because whatever that moment had been, I now felt pretty certain that it wouldn’t be our last.
Over the next couple of weeks, Will and I fell into such a comfortable groove, it was almost hard to remember that day and a half of will he call or won’t he? Because Will did call, whenever he felt like it.
Or I called him.
One morning he wandered over to the North Peninsula with a beach towel, a paperback book, and a giant iced coffee, just because he knew I’d be there.
And one evening I stashed some ice cream in a cooler and drifted over to the crooked little boardwalk that connected his rental cottage to the beach, because he’d told me that he liked to sit there at night, dangling his legs over the tall grass and listening to music.
We covered every corner of Dune Island, me on Allison Porchnik and Will on Zelig. That’s the name, from another Woody Allen movie, I’d come up with for his chunky red bike.
But with each day that went by, I realized we hadn’t given our bikes the right names at all.
Unlike Zelig, the character who traveled the world pretending to be all sorts of people he wasn’t, Will was incredibly honest—but sweet about it. (For instance, he eventually told me that he had noticed my blue lips that morning on the beach. But he also told me he’d thought they were cute.)
And after Will chucked Owen’s thirty-six-hour rule, I never felt like jilted Allison Porchnik again.
It was thrillingly comfortable being with Will.
But also uncomfortably thrilling.
Every time I saw him, I felt like my eyes opened a little wider and my breath got just little quicker. I felt intense, like I was getting more oxygen than usual. And even though this was preferable to the way I’d felt when I’d first met Will—and couldn’t get enough air in—it still made me a little self-conscious.
I worried that I looked like a chipmunk in a Disney cartoon, all fluttery lashes and big, goofy smiles—basically, the worst incarnation of cute.
But I couldn’t stop the swooning. Every day I discovered another little bit of Will. One afternoon he told me he’d been the resident haunter in his old apartment building. Every year on Halloween, he’d dressed up in a different creepy costume to scare the sour candy out of the kids trick-or-treating in the hallways.
Another time he reminisced about spotting his dad one day eating alone at a diner. He said he’d almost burst into tears, right there at 66th and Lex.
All these layers made me like Will more and more.
But was I falling for him?
That was the big question—that I had no idea how to answer.
“How did you know?” I asked Caroline one day. It was the third week in June and the heat had gotten to that point where you could see it waving at you as it shimmied off the hot asphalt. We were sitting on a shaded bench at the far end of the boardwalk, eating coconut sno-cones. We shoveled the crushed ice into our mouths, trying to eat it before it melted into syrupy puddles.
“How did I know what?” Caroline slurred. Her tongue was ice-paralyzed.
“That Sam was it,” I said.
Caroline looked down into her Styrofoam cup, then smiled a private smile, remembering.
“You’re gonna think it’s dumb,” she said.
“Caroline,” I said urgently. “This is research. I’m totally objective.”
She gave me a funny, searching look, but then went dreamy again as she thought about Sam. About their Moment.
“It was almost nothing,” Caroline said. “We were out at the Crash Pad.”
The Crash Pad was Caroline’s dad’s bizarro version of a play set. He had this ancient Airstream trailer that the family used to take out for long camping trips. But when Caroline was eight, her mom had put her foot down and said she’d rather live in a yurt made from recently slaughtered yak skin than spend one more night in that camper.
So Caroline’s dad had moved the Airstream into the backyard. Then he’d put an old trampoline next to the camper and connected the two with a slide.
And that was what we’d grown up playing on. Now the camper was completely taken over by kudzu and the slide was no longer slippery, but the huge trampoline still had some bounce. We’d named it the Crash Pad, the perfect place to look at the stars through a halo of crape myrtle branches or to just goof around, jumping between snacks and snacking between jumps.
“We were just sprawled on the trampoline, talking about some school drama,” Caroline reminisced. “I don’t even remember what it was. But then a wind came and blew all these pink crape myrtle blossoms all over us. A bunch of them stuck in my hair and Sam started pulling them out. He was so gentle, so careful not to pull even one strand. And when they were all out, he made this tiny bouquet out of them and handed them to me.”
I wanted to laugh, because this was just the sort of goofy thing that Sam did all the time.
But obviously, this time it had been different. It hadn’t been a joke. And somehow they’d both known it.
“For me,” Caroline said, “it was kind of like when my dad got new glasses. He wandered around for two days just so happy because everything suddenly looked more clear and crisp and colorful. Well, suddenly Sam looked, not different. Just more vivid, I guess. More interesting. More Sam.”
My own eyes went wide. That sounded a lot like what I was feeling for Will.
“I just knew,” Caroline said with a happy shrug. “And somehow he knew that I knew and he told me that he’d loved me for more than a year!”
“Really?” I gasped. “He kept it a secret all that time?”
“Well, what if I hadn’t felt the same way?” Caroline posed. “Can you imagine how crushing that would be?
Yes, that I could imagine.
Like Sam, I didn’t know how Will felt about me. Of course, I knew that he liked me. But did he like me like that?
Had he gone shivery all over when I’d touched his neck, or had he forgotten it before his mosquito bites had even healed?
And how much of all this time together was happening because there was nobody else here for him hang with except his brother and his mom?
The only time I asked myself these questions, though, was when Will wasn’t around. When we were together, I was having too much fun to think about the nuances of his feelings. We could be bobbing in the waves, talking, and suddenly two hours had gone by and I was a total prune, late for my shift at work.
We’d get lunch and I’d be too busy talking to eat it.
Strolling down the boardwalk, he’d make me laugh so hard I’d forget that I hated attracting the attention of nosy islanders.
Will didn’t mind people looking at him. He seemed to actually like the fact that we couldn’t go anywhere without people saying, “Hey, Anna! What’s the flavor du jour?” Or, “Anna, tell your mom K
at left her goggles at our house.” Or especially, “Anna, who’s your friend?”
“At home,” Will told me as he was walking me to work one afternoon, “you’re always walking through this sea of strangers. Here it’s like everyone’s family.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And what does family do? Nose into your business, remind you of embarrassing things you did when you were four, and never fail to let you know when you need a haircut. You don’t know how good you have it.”
“Yeah, well …” Will drifted off as we arrived at The Scoop. He looked through the window and as I followed his gaze, I cringed.
My entire family was inside.
Sophie was behind the ice cream case with a friend, sneaking samples. My dad was settling Kat and Benjie at one of the kiddie tables with some sorbet, and my mom was scooping for a small crowd of customers.
They looked like, well, my family. Chaotic and dreamy and … happy.
And together.
They were everything Will’s family wasn’t. And I’d just stuck my big, sandy foot in my mouth.
While I was wondering if I should apologize or if that would just make things worse, Will opened The Scoop’s warped screen door and went inside.
I froze.
This was new. Will had walked me to work once before, but I’d said a quick good-bye before we’d arrived. I hadn’t wanted to subject him to my dad’s clueless questions, my mom’s big, overeager smiles, or God forbid, Sophie scanning him from head to toe for fashion appropriateness.
Plus, bringing Will home to meet my family (because The Scoop was home just as much as our house was) seemed so old-fashioned. So girlfriendy. And we weren’t there.
Yet.
Yet?
I watched Will pause inside the door and glance back at me with a look that said, Aren’t you coming in?
There were a million ways I could have analyzed Will walking into The Scoop. But I tried (really hard) not to.
Whatever was happening between me and Will—whether it was a “relationship” or just a friendship—would make itself clear soon.
It has to, right? I asked myself. How many dates can you have without any handholding, kissing, or sappy declarations of like before you realize that they’re non-dates? They’re just two friends (one of whom has an unrequited and possibly tragic crush) hanging out.
Something would happen, I told myself, or not happen, soon.
And I just had to keep myself together until then.
With that I gulped and went with Will as he met my entire family.
* * *
My peace-love-and-gelato parents are not exactly the types to give boys bone-crunching handshakes or a threatening mention of my eleven o’ clock curfew. When I introduced them to Will, they only wanted to foist heaps of ice cream on him.
“Will, I want you to taste this,” my mom said from behind the counter. Her voice sounded a little shrill and overenthusiastic. I was both touched and mortified that she was trying to make a good impression on Will. My parents hadn’t asked me much about this boy I’d been spending so much time with, but clearly they’d been curious. As my mom mixed up something at the marble slab, she kept shooting Will quick, probing glances. She must have been wondering if this introduction to Will Meant Something.
Of course, I was wondering the same thing.
Mom plopped a huge, shaggy scoop of ice cream into a bowl and placed it on the counter.
“This,” she told Will, “is a mix-in I’ve been playing around with.”
“Mom,” I interjected, “I don’t think—”
“Looks good, Mrs. Patrick,” Will interrupted, giving me a nervous glance. “I’ll give it a try.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh at all this posturing or leap in to save Will. My mother was an ice cream genius, but somehow her mix-in ideas were almost always awful.
Will took a very large first bite. He started chewing. And chewing. His eyes practically watered from the effort.
“Mom?” I quavered. “What’s in there?”
“Maple Bacon Crunch ice cream with mandarin oranges and sliced almonds,” my mom announced proudly. “It’s my play on duck a l’orange.”
“But,” I sputtered, “bacon is not duck. And anyway, duck ice cream?”
I think it took Will a full minute to choke his mouthful down.
“You don’t have to eat any more,” I assured him. “My mom won’t care, right, Mom?”
“Well, I guess not, sweetie,” Mom said. “But, Will, maybe you should tell us what you think.”
She looked at him eagerly.
I watched Will’s jaw tense. Either he was trying to figure out what to say, or he was working the horrible taste out of his mouth.
“Well …,” he said carefully, “it’s very, um, textured. Yeah. A lot of textures going on in there.”
“Do you want a palate cleanser?” my dad offered. He jumped off his stool behind the register. “Some sorbet?”
“No!” Will burst out. Then he reddened. “I mean, no thanks … sir.”
At this Sophie and her friend dissolved into giggles. I had to stifle a laugh too as I grabbed Will by the elbow and pulled him into the kids area.
“Sir?” I said.
“Well, like you’ve said,” Will said defensively, “it’s the South. I figured where there’s a lot of Jesus, there are probably plenty of ma’ams and sirs, too.”
“That’s true,” I admitted, “but believe me, not with my dad.”
“Oh,” Will said. He shook his head wearily. And then … he shrugged it off. He pointed at the doodles Kat and Benjie were making on their chalkboard table.
“Hey, what’s that you’re drawing?” he asked. “Is it an Ewok?”
An instant later Will was sitting with my brother and sister, doing a Darth Vader voice. He seemed completely recovered from the duck a l’orange, not to mention meeting my parents.
So what does that mean? I started to ask myself. But before I could even begin to ponder that question, I gave my head a little shake.
Don’t analyze, don’t analyze, don’t analyze, I ordered myself. Just because he isn’t traumatized after kind of bombing with Mom and Dad doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not interested in me.
After another few minutes of amusing my brother and sister, Will stood up to leave.
“So my brother wants us to try ghost-crabbing tonight,” he told me.
“Ah, yes,” I teased. “For those who don’t like cow-tipping, there’s always ghost crabbing.”
“You know I have to do it,” Will said. “It’s so Dune Island.”
“Yeah, you kind of have to,” I agreed with a grin. “Well, you and Owen have fun.”
“Um, Anna,” Will said, clearing his throat. “That was sort of me asking you if you wanted to come.”
“Oh!” I said, rolling my eyes and grinning. I hesitated before answering, though. A date with a boy and his brother was definitely a non-date, wasn’t it?
Just like this powwow with my family seemed to be too.
It was all just so friendly.
My heart sank a little bit. But then Will grinned at me, and he shrugged his bony, broad shoulders and I noticed a small hole in the neck of his faded navy T-shirt. It all made me feel that familiar Will-induced intensity once more.
So what could I do? I said yes. But in the back of my mind, I was also steeling myself.
Crabbing with Will’s brother isn’t exactly a setup for a first kiss. I might as well face it—it’s not going to happen tonight.
I didn’t want to think about the bigger picture, though, which was this: If we didn’t kiss soon, there was clearly not going to be any romance between me and Will Cooper.
“Wow,” I said to Owen and Will that night on the beach. “It’s a good thing I’m here. You guys really don’t know anything about crabs.”
Both of them were crouching next to a little hole in the sand, shining their flashlights down it. They looked at me, bewildered.
“Yeah, wh
ere are they?” Owen said. “It’s eight thirty and finally cooling off. I heard this was prime ghost crab time.”
I laughed, walked over to the brothers, and turned their flashlights off.
“Give your eyes a minute to adjust,” I said. “Then listen …”
The three of us stood very still.
Except I didn’t feel still.
Ever since I’d made that secret pact with myself at The Scoop, I’d felt buzzy. Like a quivering pitch fork. Like a ticking timer.
All I wanted was for Will to put his hand on my arm or shoulder, to quiet all that nervous vibration.
But he didn’t—because Owen was there, cracking jokes.
Or maybe Owen was there so that Will would have the perfect excuse to keep his distance.
Maybe this was his signal.
Maybe this was how it was going to be. Me and Will—and Owen. And Caroline and Sam and my parents and siblings …
Maybe we would just be friends.
I was trying to be fine with this. I mean, this evening had been fun so far. Until I’d turned off their flashlights, Will and Owen had been splashing water on each other and romping on the beach. Like all boys, they reminded me of dogs. (In a good way.)
Also, Owen—who would apparently do anything for a laugh—had actually checked out one of those Love Storys from the library. He kept tossing the book’s cheesiest lines out at the most perfect moments, cracking us all up.
And I’d forgotten how ridiculously fun ghost-crabbing could be.
That was, if I could get the crabs to actually recover from Will’s and Owen’s flashlights.
I told Owen to stop talking.
“Just listen,” I whispered.
Then I heard that familiar crunchy skittering and my instincts took over. I snatched Owen’s flashlight out of his hand and clicked it on, illuminating four tiny crabs zipping sideways over the wet sand.
If not for their darting, spidery movements, we never would have seen them. Ghost crabs were often smaller than your palm and a mottled beige, the exact color of the beach. They camouflaged themselves so perfectly, they were always a surprise, even to ghost crab lifers like me.
“There!” I shrieked.
Sixteenth Summer Page 9
