Sixteenth Summer

by Michelle Dalton

  “Aaah!” Owen and Will yelled together as the crabs scattered. Will grabbed the tin bucket they’d brought with them, pounced at one of the crabs, and scooped.

  Which left him with a bucket of sand, water, and probably some crab poop.

  “Oh my God,” Owen huffed, bending at the waist and putting his hands on his shins. “Those things are scary. And so fast! I mean, they’re worse than roaches.”

  “Naw, they’re cute!” I said. “Let’s try again. This time let me do it.”

  While Will laughed at Owen, we turned off our flashlights. Soon the creepy crawling sound returned and I leaped into the fray. Cornering one crab, I hopped around it, blocking its escape with my ankles. Then I scooped it up. You had to hold ghost crabs carefully on the sides of their bodies. Their front claws were little, but they could still pinch you until you cried. I thrust my little crab toward Owen and Will and it wiggled its many limbs in annoyance.

  “That was simultaneously the most ridiculous and cool thing I’ve ever seen,” Will said, cracking up as the crab writhed in my hand. I put it down and it darted into the water.

  “I’m so freaked out right now,” Owen said, glancing at the sand nervously. “Keep your lights on so they don’t come back!”

  “You should see him when there’s a spider,” Will said. “He screams like a little girl.”

  “I do not,” Owen started to say, when his phone buzzed.

  “Oh my God, Mir,” he said as he answered. “You would not believe what we’re doing right now …”

  Owen wandered down the beach as he talked.

  “So much for Owen,” Will said. “That’s Miriam, his girlfriend. They’ll be talking for the next hour at least.”

  I cocked my head. Will didn’t sound disappointed.

  “Clearly, he can’t handle the crabs, anyway,” Will said. He grinned and I could see his teeth shining in the moonlight.

  “So you’re the bug killer in the family,” I said. “So am I. Well, except for spiders, because we need all of those we can get to eat the mosquitoes. And crickets, of course. They’re good luck. And bees and butterflies—”

  “Pollinators,” Will filled in. “What about ghost crabs? Do you ever, you know, cook them?”

  “Uch.” I laughed. “Believe me, those things aren’t for eating.”

  Will started to laugh with me, but before he could, he whooped and jumped to the side, kicking his right leg around frantically.

  “I think one just crawled over my foot!” he yelled.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Who can’t handle the crabs now?” I asked.

  “Oooh,” Will said, shuddering. “You win. I was trying to be all macho, but those things are skeeving me out!”

  “I’ve got to go ghost-crabbing, Anna,” I said in a deep voice. “It’s so Dune Island.”

  This was me embracing the just-friends thing. Because you don’t mock boys that you’re angling to kiss, right?

  Will uttered a faux growl and turned his flashlight on himself, making a gruesome face in the shadows.

  I just laughed again, then pointed at his feet.

  “There goes another one,” I announced.

  “Where, where?” Will yelled, running with pumping knees into the water.

  “Oh, it must have just been your toes, wiggling around,” I said.

  “Oh, really,” Will said.

  “Yes, really,” I replied, trying not to giggle. “It was an honest mistake.”

  “Like this?”

  And suddenly Will jumped back onto the sand, grabbed me around the waist, and plunked me into the water.

  I was just wearing cutoffs and a striped tank top, so I didn’t care about getting wet.

  I also couldn’t remember what I’d always found so unlikable about boys scooping me up and dunking me into the ocean. Will’s arms around me had felt as different from Landon Smith’s as a hammock feels from a desk chair.

  Will stepped back and pointed at my splashed clothes.

  “Oh, it was an honest mistake!” he teased. “I’m sorry.”

  Then he splashed me some more.

  I started to laugh, but it got caught in my throat when I looked at Will’s smile in the moonlight. I still felt wonderful, but no longer in a giggly way. I wanted Will’s arms around me again. I wanted to know what his lips felt like. I just plain wanted. Him.

  Will’s smile, too, faded and in midsplash he retreated, dropping his hand by his side.

  Then, with a couple of quick strides, Will closed the open space between us and he was holding me. He pulled me tightly to him. I looked up into his eyes, feeling both surprised and … finally.

  I didn’t know how I could have doubted it. This was the place we’d been moving toward on all those walks and bike rides. Toward Will’s warm, firm arms around my shoulders. Toward my hand on Will’s back, feeling his muscles shifting under his clean-smelling T-shirt.

  Toward this kiss.

  This soft, sweet, so-worth-the-wait kiss.

  July

  First off, the kissing.

  Kissing Will felt like so many things. Like the time I swan dived off the lighthouse catwalk and felt, for just an instant, like I might swoop into the sky instead of plunging into the water.

  It felt like a sun-warmed beach towel snuggled around you after the first chilly swim in April.

  It felt both zingy and cozy; breathless and … like breathing. Like I could do it all day.

  As June gave way to July and the days stretched out, kissing Will seemed like the only thing worth doing.

  Of course, I couldn’t tell Will that; tell him that the day after our first kiss, I’d woken up thinking about his perfect jaw-line and imperfectly beautiful nose.

  That after I’d gotten out of bed, I’d zoned out in front of the bathroom mirror for a good ten minutes, my fingertips resting on my lips. I’d stood in a trance, remembering how we’d kissed while the ocean bubbled around our knees and indignant ghost crabs skirted our ankles.

  That while I made a batch of Raspberry Bellini sorbet that morning, the peaches had reminded me of his breath.

  Yes, I was so smitten, I was thinking swoony thoughts about Will’s breath.

  When he’d called that afternoon during my shift at The Scoop, it had felt strange to hear his voice but not be able to touch his smooth, callused fingertips, or put my cheek against his shoulder.

  I still wanted to talk to him, though. I headed back to the cooler, flashing my dad a be back in five signal and trying not to grin like a complete fool.

  “So I realized something,” Will said as the cooler door whooshed shut behind me, “about last night.”

  “Um, what’s that?”

  His serious tone made me nervous suddenly. After all this—was something wrong?

  Nervousness was the one emotion I’d forgotten to feel in the blissed-out hours since our kiss. Now it caught me by such surprise that I stubbed my toe on a milk crate and had to sit down on the floor. I felt myself bracing for whatever Will had to say, but couldn’t imagine what it would be.

  “I never did,” Will said, “catch a ghost crab.”

  Now I heard the laugh in his voice—and something more. A sweetness. An I really like you, Anna Patrick lilt.

  “Yeah, you really fell down on the job, didn’t you?” I flirted.

  “Well, something got in the way,” Will flirted back.

  “Something?” I said.

  “Someone,” Will corrected. “A terrible distraction, really.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, trying hard not to giggle. “Terrible.”

  The throbbing in my toe had stopped completely. All the blood had clearly rushed from my foot to my flaming, grinning face. The blood certainly wasn’t flowing to my brain. This conversation was vapidly cute, the kind of banter that always made me roll my eyes when I saw other people engaging in it.

  Well, how could I have known that flirting could be so fun?

  I decided that I should read a really dark a
nd existential book to counteract the cuteness suddenly flooding my soul. It’d be penance for my hypocrisy. I vowed to go to the library the next morning—and plunged right back into the flirtfest.

  “So what are we going to do about this ghost crab problem?” I said. “Try, try again?”

  I imagined us going back to the beach that night after sunset, and once again my mind flashed on me and Will tangled up together in the surf. A strand of my hair had blown against his cheek as we’d kissed, and he’d smoothed it back, gently looping it behind my ear. Then he’d let his fingers flutter down my neck before resting on my shoulder.

  I shivered as I remembered it, and not from the chill in the cooler.

  “How about we try again,” Will posed, “minus the ghost crabs?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said through my smile. “There are plenty of other things you can do to bulk up your Dune Island cred.”

  “Well, that’s what I was thinking,” Will said. “There’s another Movie on the Beach tonight. I know it’s dorky. But come on. They’re showing E.T. How can you not like that little alien? He’s all big-eyed and … lumpy.”

  “Lumpy.” I laughed. “How can I resist?”

  I was so grateful to be locked in the dark, damp cooler right then. Nobody could see me glowing at the thought of snuggling up with Will on a blanket. We’d lean back on our elbows as we ate candy, whispered jokes to each other about the movie, then tried to suppress our laughter as adults shushed us. Sitting nearby might be some girl of thirteen who had no idea (yet) what it meant to like a boy this much. She would roll her eyes because we were so disgustingly smitten.

  “Anna?” Will said. “Are you there? Is the idea of going to a Movie on the Beach that bad?”

  “No, no, it’s not that,” I said. “I was just wondering if they have any books by Sartre or Camus at the Dune Island library.”

  “Oh-kay,” Will said, clearly confused.

  “So, Will?” I said. I cradled the phone between my head and shoulder and ran my fingernail across the side of an ice cream tub, scraping a wavy trail through the frost. “What do you like at the movies—popcorn or Twizzlers?”

  When I returned to the front, my arms covered with goose bumps, my mom was just walking in with Kat and Benjie for the evening shift. The kids immediately ran to the chalkboard tables and began scribbling. The Scoop was sleepy at the moment. No gaggles of summer people in sight.

  I saw my mom’s eyes flicker to my phone, and thus, mine did as well. Only then did I notice that I was clutching it like it was a staff of life. I stuffed it into the pocket of my cutoffs like it was something private and personal instead of just … a phone.

  “Getting ready to go?” my mom said. She walked behind the counter, gave my dad a quick kiss on the cheek, then started neatening the stacks of cups and bowls.

  “I think I’m gonna head to the Movie on the Beach,” I said, trying not to cringe as I admitted it out loud.

  “Oh,” Mom said with forced casualness. “Are you going with Will?”

  “Yeah,” I said with just as much false breeziness.

  My mom knew just what my friends and I thought of the cheesefest that was a Movie on the Beach. I was as much as coming out and telling her that I was going on a Date with a capital D.

  “Well, I thought he was very sweet, when he was in here yesterday,” Mom said. “Didn’t you, honey?”

  She looked pointedly at my dad.

  “Oh, sure,” my dad said jovially. “A very nice boy.”

  Oh my God. That made Will sound about as sexy as a puppy. A neutered one.

  “You know, he kind of reminds me of your dad when we first met,” my mom said, her smile going all dreamy.

  Wow, she’d actually come up with an image that was even less sexy than a neutered puppy.

  “You know, back when your dad had more of it,” Mom went on, “his hair was kind of shaggy like Will’s.”

  “Okay, no offense to Dad?” I said. “But I’ve seen old pictures of him. There is no resemblance between him and Will. Mom, he had a mustache.”

  “Eh, I was going through a phase,” Dad said, waving his hand.

  “Well, everyone thought you were a phase I was going through, remember?” Mom teased him. “There I was, all set to go to law school …”

  When my mom talked about her near miss with the legal profession, she always made it sound like she’d caught the last lifeboat off the Titanic.

  “… and instead I find myself on Dune Island, Georgia, with this guy!”

  “Yeah, yeah, just some guy,” my dad scoffed. “That’s all I was to you.”

  “Well, they all are,” my mom said. She glanced in my direction. “Until one is more than just some guy.”

  “Yeah!” Kat piped up. She’d just meandered over from the kids area and was studying the day’s ice cream flavors. “And that’s the boy you kiss. Right, Anna?”

  “No!” I sputtered. I felt myself turn bright red.

  When I looked at my parents, standing side by side behind the ice cream case, they looked a little green. My mom quickly went back to fussing with all the ice cream paraphernalia, but I could tell when she accidentally plunked the sticky hot-fudge ladle into the ice cream scoop bin that the kissing comment had flummoxed her a bit.

  “Well, anyway,” she said brightly, “it just shows that you have to keep an open mind in life, right? I chucked the world of suits for a life on a crazy island. And you, Anna—”

  She looked up from the counter to smile at me with the same happy/sad/freaked-out expression she always had when I did something for the first time, whether it was riding a bike or muddling through my first batch of ice cream.

  “—you gave a ‘shoobee’ a chance,” she said.

  I shrugged and tried not to grin swoonily.

  “You know, Mom, they’re not all shoobees,” I said.

  “I know that,” Mom said. “Like I said, he’s a very nice boy. I’m glad we got to meet him, sweetie.”

  The whole exchange, so different from our usual recaps of Dune Island gossip or check-ins about school, made me feel sort of floaty as I went to the bathroom to freshen up for my date. I couldn’t help feeling happy about their thumbs-up for Will.

  And not just because it validated my sense that he was special and different. My parents were raising four sandy-footed, Southern-speaking (allegedly) Dune Islanders. But if they could see me with Will, perhaps they also had an inkling of the future Anna that I envisioned. The one who rode subways, had been on plenty of dates, and had a card to a library twenty times the size of Dune Island’s.

  Somehow that made getting ready for this date that much more exciting.

  Will and I sat a bit apart from all the other moviegoers, in a pocket of sand surrounded by a narrow horseshoe of panic grass.

  Since I’d come to the movie straight from The Scoop, I’d had nothing to bring but some Italian sodas and a bag of broken waffle cones, still warm.

  Will provided the picnic blanket, a classic red-and-black plaid one. As we stretched it out between us, our eyes met, and Will smiled. His grin started out quiet and shy, then grew.

  I wondered if he was feeling the same way I was. My emotions were so up and down, I felt like my head was on a seesaw.

  First I thought, I almost can’t believe it happened. We actually kissed, after all that yearning. And then we went right back to being normal and hanging out. Which makes it kind of hard to imagine doing the kissing again.

  This quickly led to:

  If I don’t kiss Will again, and soon, my head might explode.

  Followed by:

  How do you go about kissing a second time? The first time was this grand fit of passion. But after that it’s sort of premeditated, isn’t it? Which sounds awkward. And probably not as exciting, right?

  Then I was back to:

  No, seriously, my head will explode.

  I felt self-conscious crawling onto the blanket with Will. The sun had already set, leaving blue-gray dusk, a
light in which everything looked a bit fuzzy and everyone seemed to be at loose ends, just waiting for something to begin.

  For most of the folks here, that something was the movie.

  For me, of course, it was that inevitable liplock. I wondered when the kissing would happen. Would Will sneak one in during the movie?

  Or maybe he’d see me home and kiss me good night at the door, the way they always did on TV shows.

  Whenever it was going to happen, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that it would happen. It was just out there, this destination, this sure thing. I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.

  The one thing I did know—I hoped Will would take the lead. Despite the perfection of the previous night’s kissing, I was now feeling a little shy.

  I arranged my snacks on the blanket and said, “Sorry, it’s not much. I figured ice cream would get too melty.”

  “It’s awesome,” Will said. “I love waffle cones. I brought snacks too.”

  He reached into the backpack he’d brought with him and pulled out a familiar-looking white paper sack.

  “Is that …?”

  “It’s candy from Angelo’s,” Will said with a grin. “Didn’t you say that was your favorite beachmart on the island?”

  I was stunned. I peeked into the bag and saw a garish rainbow of gummies, a packet of Sugar Babies, and some Good & Plenty.

  “I didn’t know your favorites,” Will said with a shrug, “so I got a range.”

  Clutching the bag in my lap, I gaped at Will.

  I wanted to tell him that he’d somehow picked all my favorites. That he’d paid attention to me, and to the little things that delighted me, in a way that few people had ever done. That he’d looked into my soul—and seen high-fructose corn syrup.

  But I couldn’t seem to form any words that would express all that.

  So I did the only thing that could demonstrate how I was feeling right then.

  I threw my arms around Will’s neck and I kissed him.

  A big part of me didn’t want to have another date like the one at the Movie on the Beach.

  Don’t get me wrong. The snuggling on the picnic blanket was great. The candy and kissing? Even better.