Clearly I’d been right. Our fireworks were “cute.” Great.
Owen snapped the phone closed and settled back onto his elbows, probably letting the brief phone chat drift from his mind as easily as firecracker smoke dissipating into the breeze.
But I felt a chill wash over me, as startling and painful as an ice cream headache.
If Owen was heading back home in eight weeks, so was Will.
Of course, I’d always known this. Will was a summer guy; an out of towner, if not quite a shoobee. His Dune Island stopwatch had begun ticking the moment he’d arrived.
But somehow I’d forgotten this. Because in June, as the days are just starting to stretch themselves out and the tomato plants are still crisp-leafed and runty, the idea of September seems like just that. An idea, as remote and hazy as a dream.
But now we were just a week shy of mid-July. Suddenly the summer felt to me like one of those log flume rides at an amusement park. You skim along a pleasantly lazy channel, until you land on a conveyer belt inching you upward. With every crank of the belt you grow more breathless, more excited, and then—you thunder downward, and with a cold splash of water to the face, it’s all over.
I felt myself stiffen. Just a moment ago I’d been so pleasantly aware of all the points where my body and Will’s were joined. Our feet were tangled up, my knees touched the side of his leg, my arm was slung across his chest, and my cheek rested on his shoulder.
But now I was painfully conscious of all the points where we were separated. The night air—damp and coolly redolent of pollen and grass—seemed to whoosh between us, making unpleasant prickles on the backs of my legs and neck.
I continued to stare at the fireworks, but now I found myself focusing less on the sizzles and lights, and more on the clouds of gunpowder that lingered in the air afterward, black and acrid.
Like a little kid, I wished that the fireworks could go on forever; that this summer could go on forever.
Involuntarily, my fingers tightened on Will’s soft T-shirt.
Will felt it and turned to me. And then we were kissing again, without hesitation, without a thought. Our kisses became urgent, with me squeezing Will’s arm, him clasping me tightly around the small of my back. We weren’t so much ignoring the fireworks as channeling them.
Only when the finale pummeled us with an endless stream of booms and pops did we drag ourselves from each other and watch the end of the show. We sat up and Will shifted behind me. He held me and rested his chin on my head as he cheered on the last of the show.
When it ended, there was a moment of silence. A hovering. An intake of breath. I found myself closing my eyes and wishing that we could all just remain suspended in this moment of happiness and satisfaction; in this moment when all was perfect.
But of course I was wishing for the impossible. In the next instant everyone started hooting, pounding their hands together, and getting stiffly to their feet. They shook grass from their blankets and began picking their way across the meadow, back to the party.
Back to real life.
My ice cream, barely touched, had melted. Will suggested getting a fresh helping and I nodded numbly. I let him hook my fingertips in his and lead me around the blueberry bushes. This time it was Will who swiped some berries from the branches. As he handed a couple to me, one squished in my palm, a glistening, black-violet blotch.
“It’s overripe,” I observed dully. “Already.”
Will gave me a small, confused smile. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, then reconsidered.
“You need a pick-me-up,” he declared a moment later. “What do you think of an iced tea float with peach ice cream?”
Despite myself, I felt my eyebrows rise.
“That actually sounds pretty good,” I said.
“See?” Will said. “Your crazy flavor combos are making an impression on me.”
He stopped walking and pulled me into an enveloping, breathtaking hug.
“Your everything,” Will murmured into the top of my head, “is making an impression on me.”
Later, much later, Will and I ducked under Figgy Pudding to say good-bye. Owen and Ms. Dempsey had already started walking home. Will had brought his bike, so he’d told them he’d catch up to them in a few minutes.
We hid under a branch that was heavy with sticky-smelling figs. While Will put the cup of lemonade he’d been sipping on the ground, I leaned against the trunk, my back cushioned by the neon pink boa constrictor. Will kissed me good-bye, a delicious lemon and sugar kiss. Then we kissed again. And again and again.
It was I who pulled away first. I looked down at my hands, trying not to bite my lip in disappointment. The end of this evening somehow felt like the end of everything.
When I looked up at Will, though, it was clear that he wasn’t thinking anything like this. He was only surfing the swells of those kisses, not to mention the crazy crowd, the weirdness of Figgy Pudding, and the exotic party food.
Will pulled something out of his back pocket—a handful of plastic spoons and a long twist tie that he must have found on a bag of paper plates at the food table. He grabbed his Styrofoam cup from the mulchy ground and slugged down the last of his lemonade.
And then he started poking the spoon handles through the Styrofoam, just below the lip of the cup.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Hold on,” Will said. “This’ll just take a minute.”
He placed each spoon about an inch from the last, so their handles crisscrossed inside the cup and their bowls protruded outside of it. The spoon bowls all faced the same direction, reminding me of the curvy wings of a pinwheel.
Next Will knotted one end of the twist tie and poked it through the bottom of the cup. Finally he dangled the sad little sculpture in front of his mouth and blew.
It spun.
“It’s the best I could do on short notice,” Will said.
“That’s a whirligig,” I pointed out, laughing despite myself. “Are you sure you aren’t Southern? You’re, like, one step away from catching ghosts with a glass-bottle tree.”
“A what?” Will said.
I waved off his question with a weary smile.
We crept around the tree until we found the perfect branch on which to hang Will’s ornament. Then I watched him swing his leg over Zelig and roll down the dirt drive. The tick-tick-tick-ticks of his coasting bicycle gears were quickly drowned out by the whirring of the cicadas. A moment after that, Will was swallowed up by the night.
Every time I left the house for the next few days—until a raging thunderstorm put an end to Figgy Pudding for another year—I stopped by the branch where Will had perched his whirligig.
I would reach out with a fingertip and graze the plastic, wishing it was Will’s hand that I was touching instead. I’d pause and close my eyes for a moment of languid sensation that existed only in my mind, in my memory.
And then I would remember that too soon, all I’d have left of Will were memories.
My hand would drop to my side, a dead weight. I’d stalk toward my bike with hunched shoulders and ride away fast. As I sped along I’d hope that my ragged breath would drown out all these thoughts about Will leaving. I tried to push them below the surface, because I knew that they could easily muck everything up, like a broken well silently spewing oil from the ocean floor.
But like an ugly oil spill, I feared my obsession about summer’s end was going to be almost impossible to contain.
When I called Caroline on the fifth of July and told her to meet me at the beach, I told myself that I was doing it for her, because I knew she needed to talk.
The fact that I had an iced tea float hangover and was suddenly feeling very much like an about-to-be-ditched Allison Porchnik? Oh, that had nothing to do with it.
And that’s how two girls in already-beginning-to-fade wraps—one blue and one orange—ended up scouring the aisle of Angelo’s for their breakfast.
If we weren’t alr
eady feeling bitter, our food choices were definitely going to get us there. Caroline grabbed a cellophane tube of shell-on sunflower seeds, the kind that taste like bark and lodge in your throat like salty moth wings. I went for beef jerky.
“It’s like everlasting breakfast sausage,” I tried to joke, even though my own crack made my throat close up.
Then Caroline chose vanilla wafers, which always made my mouth feel like it had been coated with a partially hydrogenated film. I got some of those cheese and cracker sets where the tiny tub of cheese is made out of wax or plastic or some combination of the two.
And finally, because this was breakfast, after all, we chose some minimuffins, but instead of getting blueberry or apple spice like two sane people might, we went with banana nut, which is universally known as the worst muffin flavor ever invented. (And yes, I am considering bran.)
It was a feel-bad brunch, and we dug into the plastic grocery sack before we even made it to the beach.
“So where’s Will?” Caroline asked as Angelo’s door swung shut behind us. She popped a sunflower seed into her mouth and chased it with a slurp of bottled iced tea.
“I don’t know,” I said, just a touch defensively.
Caroline gave me a sidelong glance as we crossed the parking lot and stepped onto the beach. Sand was sort of like truth serum to us. Caroline, Sam, and I had always had our most honest talks here.
“So it didn’t go well last night?” Caroline asked as we walked down the beach.
“Um, actually.” I sighed. “I’m pretty sure it was the best night of my life.”
“Oh,” Caroline said. She nodded as she took another sip of tea. “I can see why you’re miserable.”
“I’m not miserable,” I said. I gnawed for a moment on my beef jerky, which was literally as tough as leather. When I couldn’t get a bite off, I grabbed Caroline’s iced tea instead and took a slurp.
“I’m just … pensive,” I declared.
“You’re overanalyzing,” Caroline said, correcting me.
“I am not,” I scoffed.
“Oh, yes you are!” Caroline said with a grin. “You’re doing that thing where you imagine that you’re a character in a Woody Allen movie.”
I narrowed my eyes at my friend.
“You know,” I said, “I think it is possible for someone to know a person too well.”
“You love it,” Caroline said.
And she was right. I sort of did love it. I think I’d forgotten for a while how much I needed Caroline to be my mirror in harsh light. I could always count on her to matter-of-factly point out my every blemish, literal and figurative—and love me just the same.
“Anyway, we’re not here to talk about me,” I said as we continued to tromp along. “What’s going on with Sam?”
Caroline ducked her head quickly. She pretended to be fixated on tearing open the muffin bag so I wouldn’t see her cheeks flush.
I knew not to press. Instead I walked ahead of her and chose a spot on the sand. I tossed my book and our bag of breakfast onto the ground, stretched out my wrap, and laid down on it, using one forearm to block out the sun.
“Why don’t you get a pair of sunglasses ever?” Caroline asked as she sat next to me. There was a hint of annoyance in her voice.
“Too much to keep track of,” I said without moving my hand. “I’d only lose them.”
There was another long pause until Caroline said, “Sam told me that before we got together, he used to dream about us having this perfect, romantic date.”
“Really?” I said. I uncovered my eyes now and looked at her. “That’s sweet, if … kind of girly.”
“I know, right?” Caroline said. “I mean, a perfect date. What is that? A candlelit dinner with a violin player?”
“Can you imagine?” I said, trying not to cringe at the memory of my equally cheesy picnic with the champagne flutes under the Beach Club pool deck. “So what was the dream?”
“Oh, he’s kind of vague about it,” Caroline said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
She glowered at the waves.
“He’s probably off somewhere right now,” she said, “plotting this evening of devastating romance instead of just being here with me. Being normal. Being fun.”
“So Sam wanting to sweep you off your feet is a bad thing?” I asked.
“Noooo,” Caroline said, sounding confused. “I guess I’m still getting used to the way things are now. I mean, you know how little things about Sam used to annoy me?”
“Like the way he consciously tries to work surfer terms into his vocabulary,” I offered, “and loves raw onions and snorts when he laughs?”
“Oh, don’t let me stop you,” Caroline said.
“Hey, I’m just quoting you,” I said. “I think all those things are endearing. Well, except the onions. Gross.”
“That’s the thing,” Caroline said. “After we got together, that’s how I felt. Suddenly I liked all these things about Sam that I hadn’t liked before. Like it was his flaws that made me love him, in a weird way.”
“That’s so romantic.” I sighed.
“Shut up,” Caroline said, giving me a little swat on the arm.
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked at her.
“No, I’m serious,” I said. “A perfect person is easy to love. But when somebody likes all your imperfections, well, that’s when you know they really mean it.”
“Well, try telling Sam that!” Caroline said. She grabbed a muffin from our breakfast bag but forgot to take a bite out of it. “I almost feel like now that we’re together, he doesn’t want me to see the real him. Only the dashing, romantic version of him. We never just hang out anymore, watching TV or sitting around on the beach being bored. Everything’s a Date. That’s why we ended up at the stupid putt putt golf place that night.”
“Maybe he thinks since you’re not just friends anymore,” I said, searching for an explanation, “you shouldn’t act like you did when you were?”
“Maybe,” Caroline said. “Or maybe he was just friends with me so he could make me fall for him. Now that I have, he can spend his ‘friend’ time with other people, like the guys from Undertoad. Then when he feels like making out, or having someone to go to parties and dances with, he’s got me. It’s the perfect balance. For him.”
Caroline’s lip trembled just a little bit as she added, “But I miss being able to just bum around with my friend.”
“I think Sam’s just being careful,” I said, trying to keep my voice optimistic. But deep down? I was as bewildered as Caroline. “He doesn’t want to mess things up. He wants you to make it for the long haul.”
“Well, that’s depressing on so many levels,” Caroline said. “My God, Anna. We’re sixteen. Who’s thinking about the long haul?”
This made me bite my lip. I felt both bereft and ridiculous about my current angst.
On the other hand, I told myself, was it unreasonable to wish for more than eight weeks with Will? Eight weeks wasn’t even a little haul.
Caroline finally noticed the squashed muffin in her hand. She began to pick the nuts out of it and throw them over her shoulder. A couple of seagulls immediately swooped down. They squawked and pecked at each other as they scrounged for the tiny bits of food.
I looked away from the bickering birds and squinted out at the waves. The sun hit the water at an angle that seemed to shoot the light directly into my eyes, making them almost hurt.
Everything just felt too intense this morning—the sun, the taste of all this processed food, the stupid seagulls, Caroline’s anguish…. Most of all, my feelings about Will were as raw as an exposed nerve.
My impulse, as always, was to jump to my feet and run for the ocean, for that head-clearing plunge into the cold murk.
I got to my feet.
“Come on,” I said to Caroline.
Without hesitation she threw the rest of her muffin at the gulls and jumped up. Joylessly we sprinted toward the surf, high-stepped over the frothy sh
allow bit, and dove together under the first big wave. When she came up for air, Caroline’s fine blond hair was plastered to her scalp, satin smooth.
We swam past the breakers until the waves softened into lazy undulations. The water was calm and sleepy this morning, as if it, too, was drained after the holiday.
Caroline and I faced each other. We let our legs go slack, planting our toes in the sand and fluttering our hands to keep our balance. Then we let the waves rock us from side to side. I felt a fish flick against my calf. I sank down until my chin rested on the water’s surface.
Caroline gazed at me, her face calm now. We were both deep in thought.
“It’s kind of scary being in love,” I said after a while. “The stakes are high, you know?” I paused again. Then, even though I was sort of scared to hear Caroline’s answer, I whispered, “What are you going to do?”
Caroline lifted her legs and rolled onto her back. She floated on the bobbing water and gazed up at the almost cloudless sky.
“Maybe Sam’s right and I’m just being moody,” she said. “Maybe I should just get over myself.”
How many times had I heard Caroline say those words to me?
“Get over yourself,” she’d say when I complained about Dune Island’s dinkiness or mandatory pep rallies or the fact that I had to share a room with my sister. She’d gotten this saying from her track coach, who shouted it across the field approximately 150 times per practice.
It was, I realized now, the perfect motto for Caroline. She was a jock. She had complete faith in her own power, whether she was pushing for another ten laps or telling herself not to read too much into the changes in Sam.
So maybe I could get over myself too, I thought. Caroline bobbed about on the water’s surface as if a sudden easing in her mind had made her body feather-light as well. Maybe I could just force myself to think, ‘Yay! Eight more weeks!’ instead of ‘Only eight more weeks.’ You know, half full versus half empty.
This was a tactic that would have worked like a charm for Caroline.
But deep down I knew I had a different interpretation of “half full.” It was halfway to gone. My time with Will was draining away fast, and when it was over, all I’d be left with was a big, old empty.
Sixteenth Summer Page 13
