Sixteenth Summer

by Michelle Dalton

  I started crying.

  No, I sobbed. In big, loud, embarrassing heaves.

  I turned and stumbled away from the hatchling run, heading north. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears to block out the horrible squawks of the gulls, but that seemed even more childish than running away.

  So I just ran until all I could hear were the waves and, a moment later, the huffing and puffing of Will running after me.

  Immediately he wrapped his arms around me. He held me while I gasped and sniffled.

  But I didn’t melt into him the way I usually did. I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Will said. “But think of how many of the turtles made it to the water. They made it, Anna. And it was awesome.”

  This only made me stiffen more.

  Will pulled back and looked at me in confusion.

  “Anna?”

  “What!” I blurted. Then I cringed. I’d sounded so impatient, even hostile.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  Oh great, now I sounded sulky.

  “Is this …?” Will began. “Are you …?”

  He searched for the right thing to say, because he clearly had no idea what was wrong with me. I wasn’t sure I knew myself. All I knew was I was suddenly hurting so much, my body almost ached with it.

  I spun away from Will to face the ocean. I imagined turtles paddling their way through the dark shallows right in front of me. I could picture their tiny bodies buffeted by the water, but doggedly swimming along. Evolution had wired them for this. But it hadn’t taught them how quickly, and brutally, everything could end for them.

  This thought made me start crying again.

  “Oh, Anna,” Will moaned. “Stop. Please stop.”

  I shook my head angrily.

  “I am not a crier,” I declared.

  I heard Will stifle a laugh. I should have laughed too. It had been a ridiculous thing to say under the circumstances.

  But instead I whirled around and glared at him. It was dark on the beach, and my tears were blurring my vision, but Will still looked beautiful to me.

  I wanted to look at him forever. But since I couldn’t do that, suddenly I didn’t want to look at him at all.

  Or perhaps, ever again.

  Every once in a while, my sisters and brother and I spend an obsessive day building a sand fort. We pack and smooth the sand until it looks as sturdy as cement. By day’s end, part of me fantasizes that this fort will somehow last. It always seems impossible that something so strong, so solid, can just be washed away by the tide in less than an hour.

  I realized now that I’d done same thing with Will. I’d built a happy little fortress of denial around us, filling it with blueberry picking, ice cream, and kisses. I’d convinced myself that August 29 would never really arrive.

  But of course it would.

  And when I forced myself to finally acknowledge this, it hurt like a sudden, startling muscle cramp. Like a flash of heat.

  And who wouldn’t try to protect themselves from that, right?

  “Will,” I said, shaking my head slowly and for too long. “I can’t do this.”

  “We won’t go back,” Will agreed, glancing over his shoulder at the loggerhead run. “Let’s just go get some coffee or something. And we can talk.”

  “No!” I said. “I’m saying I can’t do this. Us.”

  Will looked at me incredulously. And then his face shifted, subtly, to stone.

  “If I can do this,” he asked in a low almost-growl, “why can’t you?”

  “You don’t know how badly it’s going to hurt when you leave,” I said. “Do you even care?”

  “It’ll hurt me, too,” Will said. “Believe me.”

  “But the difference between you and me is”—I clutched at my middle with both hands, the way you do when you have a bad stomachache— “it’s hurting me now.”

  “I don’t get it,” Will said. I saw his eyes flicker to the shiny bangle on my wrist. “Anna, I’m having the most amazing summer—because of you.”

  “And then your summer ends,” I flung back, “and you go back to New York, to your old life where there’s not a glimmer of me. But me? I’m still gonna be here bumping into you, the memory of you, everywhere I go.”

  “I know that,” Will said. He took a step closer to me. “And it’s not fair. But, Anna, we talked about this already. Why ruin what we have now just because we can’t have it later?”

  “Because that does ruin it for me,” I said, backing away from Will.

  “Well, if you ask me, you’re ruining it,” Will said. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

  “You’re a shoobee, Will,” I said.

  It was the first time I’d said that word to him, though certainly by then he’d probably heard it around the island. He probably also knew it wasn’t complimentary. I saw shock register on his face, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “You leave at the end of the summer,” I said. “Maybe you go home and tell your guy friends about the townie you had a fling with. The one who couldn’t pronounce ‘knish.’ The one who couldn’t keep it casual like you could.”

  Will just shook his head in disbelief.

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

  “Because we’re not the same, Will,” I said. “That’s why you don’t understand how I’m feeling. And that’s—”

  I gasped, on the verge of tears again.

  “And that’s why we shouldn’t be together,” I declared.

  Will stared at me.

  And then he closed his mouth so hard, I could hear his teeth click. He shook his head angrily.

  “You know,” he said, “I get it now. You hate Valentine’s Day and you love Independence Day.”

  “What does that mean?” I sputtered.

  “You don’t want to be with anyone, Anna,” Will said. “Even me. Maybe especially me. Maybe you’ve just been looking for a way out.”

  Will stopped and swallowed. He stared at the ground, breathing hard. I stood there, my hands fisted at my sides, waiting for him to speak. I was still crackling with indignation but I also felt confused. How had this fight happened? It felt like it had come out of nowhere. And I couldn’t make it stop.

  When Will looked up again, his eyes were defeated.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “you got it. You got your way out.”

  He turned abruptly and stalked away with swift, sure strides.

  As I watched him go in stunned silence, it occurred to me that Will was walking without stumbling. He had spent his first two months on the island struggling to get his bearings in the sand, always sinking in too deep or losing his balance in a hole. But now he was skimming over the beach like a local.

  Like me.

  Not that it changed the reality. He wasn’t a local. And I was stuck here on Dune Island.

  And that was that.

  I watched Will until he was swallowed up by the darkness. Even if I had wanted to call out to him, I don’t think I could have. My throat felt so choked, I was surprised I could breathe.

  Will had gone back to taking my breath away.

  This thought made me laugh. A dry, humorless laugh.

  And then, instinctively, I turned to the ocean. I stared at the waves and cried—for a long time.

  When I couldn’t cry any more, I sat at the very edge of the surf and gazed at the water some more. Only the roar of the surf, pushing, pulling, and thrashing, could drown out my thoughts about Will. About everything.

  At some point I jolted out of this trance and looked around, blinking. The moon had shifted in the sky. The turtle watchers had gone home. I was all alone.

  And that’s exactly how I felt—alone, which was perhaps even more shocking than what had happened between me and Will. Never in my life had I felt lonely at the beach. Even on a weekday in winter when nobody was around, the sea and sand had always felt like a haven. Like home.

  And now, I didn’t want to be here.

  Which meant I�
��d lost more than Will—I’d lost a part of myself.

  And the part that remained was already roiling with regret.

  August

  My mom always says August in south Georgia is like February in Wisconsin. The weather is so beastly and unrelenting, it’s like a cruel joke.

  The ice cream is always runny, no matter how long it hibernates in the deep freeze. Our back field turns brown and crackly, littered with grasshopper husks and lost blueberries, as dry and hard as pebbles. The cicadas sound tired, their chirps thin and grating. Or maybe they’re just drowned out by the grind of the air-conditioning units, which blast constantly, or so it always seems.

  In August we all retreat indoors. We can’t even stand the screened porch, where the ceiling fans just waft hot air at you, which is about as refreshing as being under a hair dryer.

  My parents spend the month puttering (when they’re not at The Scoop). My dad does the taxes on the dining room table and my mom pulls out her to-do list. Then she grabs any kid within reach and assigns him or her random, awful tasks like scrubbing the bathroom grout with an electric toothbrush or spray painting all the chipped air-conditioning vents.

  Every year Sophie and I have to choose between two evils—mom and her chore chart or the furnace blast that was the world outside.

  This August, I decided, I would stay in.

  I wandered around the house for the first couple of days, clutching Judy Blume books under my arm. In chick flicks, brokenhearted women always seem to devour pints and pints of ice cream. That, of course, was normal behavior for me so I devoured Judy Blume instead.

  I kept telling myself that, yes, I felt lonely and awful now. But if I’d let the relationship go on longer—and get that much more serious—the ending would only have been worse.

  I was doing the right thing, I insisted in my head. I was looking out for myself.

  I was being a realist.

  I was being the strong one.

  And did any of these things I told myself help? Not even a little bit.

  By the end of day three (or was it four?), I couldn’t stand my own wallowing any more. If I couldn’t get happy, I decided, at least I could get distracted. So, I went to my mom, who was decked out in rubber gloves, scouring something in the kitchen sink. Dinner was over, Sophie was working with my dad at The Scoop, and Benjie and Kat were running around the backyard with dryer sheets hanging out of their pockets, snatching fireflies out of the air.

  “Okay, what have you got for me?” I asked my mom, going over to the bulletin board where she’d tacked her to-do list. She’d been jotting on the long sheet of yellow legal paper for months.

  The list was a little crinkled, with a tea stain on the corner and about four different colors of ink. I skimmed through it. I spotted sand and stain porch table and organize photos, past 2 yrs. I shuddered.

  But if I read one more page of Deenie, I was going to throw myself off my bedroom balcony, so I stood my ground.

  My mom turned around and leaned back against the sink.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything. I know …”

  I watched her face as she paused and searched her parental database for the proper words.

  “… I know you’re going through a hard time right now.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I was grateful that neither of my parents had pried into what had happened the other night. They’d gotten the gist—that Will was no longer in the picture. And though I’d spied them exchanging lots of meaningful glances and gestures, they hadn’t interrogated me about it. Even Sophie had been sympathetic in her own way. She’d offered to do my laundry, adding, “I’ll even iron stuff so you don’t have to look all wrinkled, the way you usually do.”

  The problem was, all this familial sensitivity hammered home how wretched my situation was. Which only made me feel more pathetic. It had gotten so bad that I had to fight off tears every time my mother even looked at me.

  I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Will that I wasn’t a crier. I hated crying, especially in front of people. It was humiliating and soul baring and just … messy. So the fact that I was now a blubbering mess was making me really cranky.

  I guess that was why, in response to my mother’s completely nice comment, I snarled, “Mom, could you please just be normal and give me one of the dumb chores already?”

  Acting like such a jerk, of course, made me feel even worse. And trust me, that was a feat.

  I don’t think Mom was getting revenge for my smart mouth when she gave me shower curtain duty, but I couldn’t be sure.

  In case you’re wondering, shower curtain duty means taking down the vinyl curtains from all three of our claw-foot tubs (and remember, a free-standing bathtub requires two shower curtains), laying them out flat, scrubbing off all the black mildew and pink mold that’s accumulated at the seams, then hanging them back up.

  It was a yucky, tedious, hard job and it suited me perfectly.

  I was actually a little hopeful, as I unhooked the curtains from my parents’ tub on the second floor, that the tedium would help me. Sam had once confided to me that he’d done some meditating after his parents’ divorce and that it had really helped him just wash all the churning thoughts from his mind, even if it was only for the twenty minutes a day that he was able to sit still and focus.

  What was more meditative, I thought, than scouring a giant sheet of funky plastic, inch by inch?

  I got some soapy rags and headed outside, laying the curtains out on the patio.

  I knelt before the yucky bottom edge of the curtain, took a deep, cleansing breath, and started to scrub.

  Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to go back to my Judy Blumes. If I’d done any meditating at all it had gone like this:

  Okay, breathe in, breathe out. Focus on the task at hand and only the task at hand….

  Ugh, not only is this mold disgusting, it’s not coming off. Why can’t we just buy new shower curtains when they get all funky like this?

  Okay, that’s not very green. Something tells me meditators frown on disposable culture.

  Maybe some bleach will help.

  (Five minutes later.)

  Okay, breathe in, breathe out, breathe—agh! Bleach is searing lungs!

  (Suddenly, bleach smell reminds me of cleaning Scoop tables with Will.)

  Don’t think about Will, think about scrubbing. It’s like a metaphor. I cleanse the curtain, I cleanse my mind of unwanted thoughts. Like thoughts about the last kiss I had with Will. I think I could still sort of taste it—until breathing in this bleach probably killed some of my taste buds!

  Whatever, just breathe, darnit. Breathe in, breathe out—

  Hey! I wonder if you could put these things in the washing machine!

  And that pretty much was the end of my meditation—and my help with the to-do list. (For the record, the washing machine didn’t work so well, either.)

  So now on top of feeling tragic about Will and guilty about sassing my mom, I also felt like a failure at both my hideous chore and my meditation.

  I climbed up to the screened porch and slumped onto the swing. Through the open front door, I could hear my mom rallying Kat and Benji for a bath.

  “Hey, where are the shower curtains?!” Kat asked cheerfully, making me feel like even more of a loser. The air on the porch felt like warm, soggy wool on my skin and my hands smelled of bleach. Yet after a few minutes, the cricket chirps and the creak, creak, creak of the swing’s chains began to make me feel a little less wretched.

  I glanced through the window into the kitchen. The room was quiet, empty, and lit only by the small light over the stove. I’d always loved our kitchen at this time of night, when the cooking smells from dinner still hovered in the air but the counters and appliances were shiny clean, like blank canvases, lying in wait for inspiration.

  Of course, tonight I had none. I hadn’t had a vision, or a taste, for any ice cream for days. Which just … sucked. Usually I could always find com
fort in ice cream. I loved zoning out to the I-could-do-it-in-my-sleep process of making the custard—heating the milk, tempering the egg yolks, whisking the cream. Then coming up with a new flavor always felt a little bit like magic; like having a muse whisper in my ear.

  Now the muse was so very absent that I was worried it would never come back. I would live the rest of my days in this radio silence, never again to come up with a Pineapple Ginger Ale or Buttertoe.

  Just as an exercise, I consciously tried to think of some new flavor. Something, anything, that I’d never heard of before. I actually squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my fingertips to my temples, but—nope. Nothing.

  I was starting to feel a little panicky when I remembered something. I had a notebook—just a cheap, pocket-size one from the drugstore—in which I’d once jotted ice cream ideas for future reference. I’d started the list last summer, but when I’d gotten better at creating flavors on the fly, I’d forgotten all about it.

  Where was it?

  I dashed upstairs to my room and searched my dresser drawers, peeked into purses and tote bags, and even looked under the bed. I’d almost lost hope when I thought to look in the dusty old jewelry box on top of my dresser. Since I had almost no jewelry to speak of, I often tossed other random items inside.

  I creaked open the wooden box and there, among some Mardi Gras beads and barrettes, was the notebook. I sighed with relief. My present self was clearly hopeless, but the past one just might come through.

  I flipped through the pages hungrily; looking for an idea that made me feel zingy inside.

  Once again, nothing. I simply felt tired and so lonely that I physically ached. And bitter. Oh, was I bitter.

  But that was one reason I’d always loved making ice cream. It was such a sweet, simple antidote—if a temporary one—to all of life’s bitterness. It was a little vacation that lasted until you popped the last bite of your sugar cone into your mouth.

  After losing Will, I was finding it hard to care about much of anything, but deep down I knew I still cared about this. I didn’t want to lose this.

  So I decided to choose a recipe at random. I closed the notebook and reopened it, landing on a page with the heading Greek Holiday. The title, I remembered vaguely, had been inspired by an Audrey Hepburn movie my mom had rented.