I even loved the movie, despite the fact that the holey screen made little Drew Barrymore look like she had chicken pox. Watching such a kiddie flick with Will made me feel somehow grown-up. I listened to the kids around us squealing when E.T. got left behind by his spaceship, and I could remember so vividly when that was me. Mermaid-kicking, cartwheeling, boys-are-gross me.
But those days also felt very far away. In the course of just a few weeks, I felt like I’d crossed a divide from childhood into … I didn’t quite know what. A place that wasn’t quite adulthood but was way more complicated than being a kid.
All of it made me feel 80 percent thrilled, 10 percent baffled, and 10 percent freaked-out, the way I’d feel if I woke up one morning to find myself several inches taller. (Not that that was ever going to happen. I was more sure of that with every day in my puny body.)
I even got into the goofy date-nightness of the Movie on the Beach. I looked at the couples around us—the other young people lounging on blankets with their ankles lazily inter-twined; the parental types in fancy folding chairs, pouring each other plastic cups of wine. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had something in common with them. Like we shared a secret.
It was just … lovely, it really was.
But, after years of mocking the Movie on the Beachers, it also made me cringe.
I just wanted to be a tourist in the land of cheesy dates. I didn’t want to move in.
So when we talked on the phone the next morning, I told Will, “I have to admit, I liked our little Movie on the Beach…”
“Wait a minute,” Will squawked. “‘Little Movie on the Beach’? E.T. terrified you!”
“No it didn’t!” I sputtered.
“You’re telling me you didn’t grab me and spill all the Good & Plenty when the government agents swooped in to grab E.T.?”
“Well,” I muttered, “guys in hazmat suits are always scary.”
I shuddered at the memory of the cute little alien trapped in an isolation tank. Then I pressed on.
“Will, that doesn’t make the whole Movie on the Beach scenario less corny.”
“So what are you saying?” Will asked, a laugh in his throat.
I chose to ignore it as I declared, “No more dates out of a romantic comedy. No tandem bicycle rides, no milk shake with two straws, no mini-golf. I refuse.”
“Mini-golf?!” Will exclaimed.
I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell it was lighting up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
And that was how I ended up at Putt Putt Dune Island! (exclamation point not mine), strolling the Astroturf with Will, clunking my neon pink ball into holes, and—despite my best efforts—loving every minute.
What made this even more implausible was that I was possibly the worst mini-golfer in the history of mini-golf. That’s probably a pretty short history, but still …
“How is it,” I asked Will when I failed for the third time to clear the puddle (excuse me, water trap) on the seventh green, “that you’re so much better at this than I am? You’ve never played mini-golf in your life. I lived here when I was a little kid.”
“Maybe it’s an attitude thing,” Will teased me. “Or maybe it’s your stance. You keep ducking your head, afraid that someone will see you.”
“No worries,” I said with a laugh in my voice. “My crowd doesn’t come here anymore. Not since every single kid in the third grade had his or her birthday party here. After that, putt putt was so over.”
Will got that look on his face again. The one that was a cross between who is this girl? and I like this girl.
Before I knew it, he’d crossed our little putting green and wrapped me in a hug that took my breath away.
“So if we’re basically all alone here,” he said, burying his face in the crook of my neck, “I guess you won’t mind a little PDA?”
Will smelled wonderful, like clean ocean water and a little bit of coconut. I found myself wondering if he was different here on Dune Island than he was back home. Surely he couldn’t smell like this during a New York winter, could he? And would he have been this demonstrative if we were on a busy Manhattan street?
I contemplated asking Will this. But when he planted a soft, smiley kiss on my lips, all contemplating ceased. All that mattered was Will in this very instant. And in this instant, he was pretty—
“Amazing.”
I startled. “Amazing” was exactly the word I’d been thinking, but the voice wasn’t mine. It was sarcastic and exasperated and loud, coming from behind the windmill at the next hole.
And if I didn’t know better, I’d have been sure that voice belonged to …
I pulled away from Will and said, “It can’t be.”
I stalked over to the windmill, peeked around it, and saw—Caroline! Her fists were planted on her hips and she was staring, no, glaring, at Sam.
“Um, hi?” I blurted.
Caroline saw me and Will and threw up her hands.
“Oh, that’s just great,” she sputtered. She scooped her neon yellow golf ball off the green and tossed it over her shoulder.
Sam spun around.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“What are you doing here?” I retorted.
Caroline pointed at Sam—just as I pointed at Will.
I coughed, trying not to laugh.
Will covered his mouth with his fist, clearly working hard to keep a straight face.
And this was the part where all four of us were supposed to crack up, right? We’d been caught in the act of the goofiest dating ritual of all time.
But the tension between Caroline and Sam quashed it.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “What happened, y’all? Did Sam start doing the Caroline voice again?”
I rasped my way through a bad imitation of Sam’s bad imitation of Caroline’s voice.
At which point Will really did crack up.
But Caroline just looked down at the Astroturf and bit her lip.
I stopped my little comedy routine with a lurchy feeling in my stomach. Something really was wrong.
“Caroline?” I said, reaching out for her arm.
She sidestepped me.
“Whatever,” she said. She acted as if she was shrugging it off—whatever it was. But I could tell she was upset. She had those two pink spots that always flame up on the apples of her cheeks when she’s trying to keep her emotions in check.
Then she waved one hand back and forth in front of her face, the same irritated flutter she’d use to shoo a horsefly.
“I’m just …” she said. She took a deep breath and started over. “I used to be the putt putt champ!”
“I know, right?” I said with a little laugh. “Is it that we’re too tall now for these little clubs?”
“Anna,” Sam said, the defeated S-shape of his torso straightening a bit. “I don’t think you’re too tall for much of anything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a grin. “Heard it all before, Jolly Green.”
Sam always laughed smugly when I called him a giant, but this time he just gave me a weak smile. Caroline wandered away, idly swinging her putter around her ankles. The leaf-green tape on its handle was frayed and faded after years of being clutched by sweaty kid hands.
“This was supposed to be …” Sam trailed off. “I don’t know what. But whatever I thought, it’s not happening. We should just go to The Swamp or something.”
I didn’t know if he was talking to Caroline alone or if he wanted me and Will to join them. I glanced at Will, who gave me a little smile and a shrug.
“I think it’s kind of fun,” Will said apologetically.
“Well, we set the bar pretty low,” I allowed. “Seeing as you dragged me here kicking and screaming.”
“You know you love it like you love curly fries,” Will said.
“See?” I said indignantly. “I tell you my dirty secrets and you just throw them back in my face.”
As Will laughed, I realized
I’d turned toward him—and away from Sam and Caroline. For a moment I’d even forgotten they were there. Feeling strangely guilty, I spun around to discuss plan B with them.
But they’d already headed for the cinder-block building—painted the same swimming pool blue as Will’s golf ball—to turn in their clubs.
“Do you want to go with them?” Will asked. “Seems like there’s something going on there. Maybe …”
I bit my lip as I regarded the foot or so of space between my friends as they walked through the course. Sam refrained from leapfrogging the giant red mushroom at the eleventh green or jumping the stepping-stones that crossed the “rushing river” at the eighteenth hole. This was definitely out of character for him. Then again, Sam was a boyfriend now. Maybe maturity, even while playing mini-golf, came with the territory?
I didn’t know, probably because the ways of boyfriends and girlfriends were as mysterious to me as math. It wasn’t as if I’d learned much yet from being with Will. And besides, he wasn’t my boyfriend. At least, I didn’t think he was.
Wait a minute, was he?
Bubbles of happiness at the idea began to fizz up in my brain, but I tried to shake them away and focus on what was going on with Sam and Caroline. I couldn’t imagine their issue was anything that couldn’t be solved by a little loud music and chili-laced grub at The Swamp.
So I said to Will, “Oh, they’re fine. Sam and Caroline bicker. They always have. I think they had a little hiatus when they first started going out and now …”
“The honeymoon’s over?” Will said. “Well, we won’t let that happen to us, will we?”
He said it casually, before dropping his golf ball on the faux grass and nudging it toward the tee with his putter. I was glad he wasn’t looking at me, because I was suddenly feeling almost dizzy.
I couldn’t imagine anything more boyfriendy than what Will had just said.
I also truly believed it. Will and I were our own little island, and nobody else’s rules applied to us, not even Sam and Caroline’s.
I suppose this was just another version of me being a loner, like Caroline always said.
The only difference was, this time I wasn’t alone alone. I was with Will, who seemed to fit me like my favorite T-shirt but also felt more like a wonderful surprise with each day that I knew him.
Every year my parents throw a big Fourth of July barbecue. I mean big. Every bar, restaurant, and sno-cone stand on Dune Island is run by skeleton crews that night because everybody else is in my backyard.
The day starts at sunrise, when a bunch of other dads show up in their grubbiest clothes and help my dad dig a pit somewhere between the vegetable garden and Benjie’s sandbox. They fill it with smoldering hickory wood and—a pig. Snout and all. Twelve hours later, he or she is the main course. (I try to avoid learning whether the pig is a he or she, and my siblings and I definitely don’t name the pig, ever since our great Wilbur boycott of a few years ago.)
Also on the menu are bourbon-boiled peanuts, ambrosia salad, cheese straws, dog head biscuits, boiled shrimp, pickled okra, and basically every other super-Southern morsel that my Midwestern parents find fascinating. If you could put grits on a stick, they’d serve that, too.
The one thing they don’t serve is ice cream. Oh, it’s there of course. We roll an entire eight-tub freezer out of The Scoop and transplant it onto the screened porch. My mom always makes up a special one-day-only flavor for the party. But it’s a rule that nobody in our family is allowed to scoop. It’s our holiday. The guests make a big deal of putting on aprons and paper soda-jerk hats. Then they take turns dipping gargantuan scoops and making lopsided cones and sundaes that shed gobs of marshmallow and fudge across the grass.
When everybody’s good and full and sticky, we all head to the field out back. It’s a big, shaggy mess of wildflowers and scratchy grass that’s separated from our (slightly) more groomed yard by a thicket of blueberry bushes. The field is tree free, which makes it the perfect viewing spot for the Beach Club fireworks, about half a mile due east.
Inevitably, when the fireworks finish, someone starts singing patriotic songs and somebody else tells them to shut up. Then the parents make more spiked Arnold Palmers, the kids twirl with sparklers and gobble fizzy candy, and everybody stays up way past midnight.
I hadn’t thought twice about inviting Will to the barbecue. I’d even told him to bring his mom and Owen. (I mean, our mailman comes to the Fourth of July barbecue.)
It was only after the three of them arrived that night at seven o’clock—and stopped cold in our red dirt driveway to gape at Figgy Pudding—that I saw the party from an outsider’s eyes.
Oh yeah, I realized, this must look kind of weird.
My family (and the rest of Dune Island, for that matter) are so used to our Fourth of July tree, otherwise known as Figgy Pudding, that even Sophie isn’t embarrassed by it. It’s just part of our summer landscape, along with sea turtle nests, sunburned tourists, and the constant slap-slap-slap of flip-flops.
Figgy Pudding became Dune Island’s tackiest icon when I was still a baby. One of my parents decided that since the Fourth of July in a beach town is like Christmas everywhere else, it required a tree. But not some tasteful fir swagged with garlands and earnest ornaments. They chose the sprawling fig in the center of our front yard.
From then on, instead of bringing covered dishes to the barbecue, guests have brought strange things to drape on Figgy’s branches. The ornaments are different every year, but platform shoes and feather boas are always popular, as are stuffed animals and Slinkys. People make scary fairies out of twigs and feathers. They also hang kooky cooking utensils and, of course, ice cream scoops.
After everyone has looped their decorations around the tree’s branches—plucking handfuls of sticky, purple figs while they’re at it—the poor tree looks like a huge, bedraggled drag queen on the morning after Mardi Gras. Enterprising tourists have even been known to come out and snap pictures of it.
We keep Figgy in her finery until the first rain turns everything to muck. Then Sophie and I climb the branches and throw down the decapitated fairies, sogged-up feather boas, and musty shoes, returning the tree to her natural state.
Benjie always cries about the dismantling of poor Figgy Pudding, but I’ve never thought much about it. I’ve always known she’d be back the following year.
And now Will and his family were meeting Figgy for the first time. Even though she was only halfway to her full gaudy glory when they arrived, she was still kind of a shock to the system.
As usual the decorations were pink, white, and blue (but heavy on the pink). Figgy was bedecked with lawn flamingos, pinwheels, and even a pink bicycle, its wheels straddling the point where the trunk split into two thick branches. There were many shoes and feather boas, of course, somebody’s collection of troll dolls, and a shocking pink stuffed boa constrictor twining around the trunk. The Garden of Eden gone wild—that was my front yard.
Once they got past Figgy Pudding, I realized, Will and his family were going to see the pig, the tipsy adults making jokes about the pig, the not-completely-ironic pastel mini-marshmallows in the ambrosia salad, and half a dozen other possibly mortifying things.
For a moment I considered saving face by shrugging off the party as an obligation I didn’t really like; a parental eccentricity.
But then I looked at Will—who was grinning like mad at the tree, while his mom shook her head in amazement—and reconsidered.
Will liked my (allegedly) Southern accent. He fed my gummy habit without judgment. He didn’t think it was weird that sometimes I’d rather spend my time alone with an ice cream churn than with my friends on the South Shore.
And unless I’d been very misguided, he’d like our wacky barbecue, too.
Even though I’d never really stopped to think about it, I loved our Fourth of July party. It was one of my favorite nights of the year. On the Fourth of July, I felt like we were one big, crazy, happy family—me and the
Dune Islanders.
And I wanted Will to be a part of it too.
So I swallowed my self-consciousness and smiled at Will’s mom. She was pretty in a mom-ish kind of way—thin, with an upturned nose and freckles. She wore her hair in a slightly frizzy blond bob, and she had the same pointy chin as Will and Owen.
“Ms. Dempsey?” I asked. (Will had told me she’d gone back to her maiden name after the divorce.) “Can I get you an Arnold Palmer?”
Will didn’t like the party.
He loved it.
He loved the fact that Ellie Dunlap, Dune Island’s mayor, was singing old standards with a karaoke machine on the back porch.
He loved that there were kids (and grown-ups, too) swooping on our swing, which hangs from a high branch in an ancient water oak.
He was nuts about the food, especially, as a matter of fact, the boiled peanuts.
He loved it all so much that I worried (just a little bit) that I was being overshadowed. I mean, how could I—even in the cute navy-and-white-striped halter dress I’d fished out of Sophie’s closet—compete with the feeling of this party? With food that made your mouth sing, in a yard strung with so many white lights that the stars were superfluous, while on the porch a town leader in white braids and overalls sang, “If you don’t like them peaches, don’t shake my tree …”
But then Mayor Dunlap started a new tune. The song was clearly very old. It made me think of women wearing silk stockings with seams up the backs. Mayor Dunlap’s clear, pretty soprano was both lilting and melancholy, making the couples dancing on the patio sink into one another and sway more slowly. As for me, I recognized the sweet yearning—and reward—in the lyrics.
“I wished on the moon, for something I never knew,” Mayor Dunlap sang.
And Will asked me to dance.
“Seriously?” I asked. I was sprawled on the porch steps, one arm propped on the banister, the other dunked into a bowl of butter mints. I did not look, I was sure, like the kind of girl you asked for a waltz.
“Anna,” Will said, standing over me with one hand extended. “Don’t make me lose my nerve.”
I laughed with a whoosh of relief.
Sixteenth Summer Page 11
