by Blake Nelson
“I do,” said Kyle. “And I appreciate it. Thanks, Billy.”
Back in the truck Kyle pulled up to the highway and waited for the traffic to clear. I said, “You really know how to handle that stuff.”
“What stuff?” he said.
“You know, people wanting to congratulate you. People wanting a piece of you.”
“They don’t want a piece of me. They’re just happy for me. That’s all.”
“But isn’t it a lot of pressure? On you?”
Kyle shrugged in his casual way. “It doesn’t feel like pressure.”
“Well, you’re lucky then.”
Kyle thought about it for a moment. “It’s just what you gotta do,” he said. “People give you love. You give it back. What else you gonna do?”
I nodded at that.
A break came in the traffic. Kyle hit the gas, and we rumbled onto the highway.
“And anyway,” he said as the cab filled with rushing air. “It could all end tomorrow. I could get hurt. I could blow out my arm. Gotta enjoy it while ya got it.”
He looked at me and grinned. I grinned back. He hung his elbow out the open window. “I’m glad you’re here this summer,” he said. “I know we can’t hang too much. But it’s nice.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
* * *
Back home Kyle and I microwaved some meat loaf for dinner. I took a shower and went downstairs to get dressed. My first beach party, I thought. I put on some Old Spice and brushed my hair. It would be cold at the beach at night, even after a hot day, so I wore my wool sweater. I also stuck Letters to a Young Poet in my back pocket, in case there was someone at the party who might appreciate something like that. It wasn’t likely, but if there was, it would give us something to talk about.
I went back upstairs and sat outside on the front porch while I waited for Kyle. As I stared down the hill at the trees and the road, it occurred to me how far away I was from my old life. I hadn’t talked to my dad for a week. I hadn’t talked to my mom since I left Eugene. There’d been no sessions with Dr. Snow.
I was really on my own now, and it felt good. And now I had a beach party to go to.
14
Kyle and I drove south on the highway to the last stoplight in Seaside. We turned right toward the ocean and followed an asphalt road, traversing the side of Tillamook Head, which was a huge mountain that stuck out into the sea. We drove along that, beside the ocean, looking down through the trees at the surf.
At the end of the road was a gravel parking area on a bluff. Kyle parked and we got out. I walked to the edge, and there, down below us, was a beautiful crescent beach with several driftwood-fire sites. This was the Cove, which I’d heard Justin and other people talk about. This was Seaside’s famous party spot.
A few people were down there already, standing around in shorts and T-shirts, others carrying firewood. Another car pulled in. These people greeted Kyle and chatted with him as they gathered their blankets and wine bottles and backpacks. I watched as they began the somewhat treacherous descent down the trail. They were older, in their twenties, with thick hairy legs and facial stubble. “See you!” they called to Kyle as they disappeared down the hill.
As more people arrived, Kyle recruited some helpers to carry our beer to the beach. It wasn’t easy carrying a thirty-pack along that trail. I nearly toppled over when I tripped on an exposed root.
On the beach Kyle told me he had to pick someone up and climbed back up the trail by himself. This was probably Britney, his current and supposedly doomed girlfriend. So I was left with a bunch of older people I didn’t know, who were building the fire. I helped gather driftwood with them, then helped blow on the fledgling flames, then helped celebrate when it finally got going by helping myself to a beer.
* * *
It was nine thirty when the sun touched the horizon that night. By then there were about thirty people on the beach and more coming down the trail. I didn’t know most of them, but then Justin appeared. I was glad to see a familiar face. He was dressed in jeans and a Western shirt, and of course he had a joint, which he fired up the second his foot hit the sand. He was with one of his stoner buddies, Tyler, who had thick black hair and weird fang teeth.
Then I saw Jace coming down the hill. I was even more excited to see her. She was wearing skinny jeans and a poncho. Emily was next, in Bermuda shorts and a sweater, and Kelsey was behind her, in a hoodie. They would be the youngest people at the party, by quite a lot, but I noticed that people seemed excited to see them. I remembered that Emily was Kyle’s little sister, which probably made her an important person in the Seaside world. This explained certain things, like why she was so sure of herself.
When Jace and Emily got down the hill, they didn’t come over to me, though they obviously saw me. I guess they were being cool. Whatever. It was fine. Everything seemed perfect just as it was. I stayed with Justin and Tyler, drinking beer and taking hits off their joint. The sun was now down, which lit up the sky, bright pink and red to the west, while to the east the dark blue of night was gathering above the mountaintops. I stood, holding my beer against my stomach, and listened to the party talk and the crackling fire. Cars were still pulling up in the parking lot. You’d hear the different music from each car stereo, and you could guess what type of people they would be when they appeared on the trail. It was quite a scene there at the Cove. Everyone was laughing and smiling and having a great time. The mood was like: Finally, it’s summer!
* * *
Emily, Jace, and Kelsey had a blanket, I noticed, and had neatly spread it out a proper distance from the fire. I checked on them occasionally, waiting for a good moment to go over there. Eventually, Jace caught my eye and waved me over.
“How’s it going, Responsible Nick?” she teased.
“It’s going all right,” I said, sitting down on the edge of their blanket. I somehow lost my balance and fell over sideways in the sand. The girls all gawked at me.
“What?” I said, righting myself. “I’m not used to sitting in sand.”
“How hard is it to sit in sand?” said Emily.
Jace was more welcoming. “Look at you, all dressed up in your nice sweater!” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. I got my butt properly settled and took a swig of my beer. Jace sat beside me. An older guy appeared and began chatting up Emily and Kelsey. He was holding his longneck beer bottle in that way older dudes did, using it as a pointer and being very suave and cool. Emily listened to him for a few seconds, then ignored him.
“This is my first beach party,” I told Jace.
“Really? Ever in your life?”
“Ever in my life,” I said. “I keep waiting for someone to get a guitar out. That’s what they do in beer commercials.”
“Is that how you define things, by beer commercials?” she said, smiling.
“I guess so. How else would I define them?”
“But commercials show you a fake version. Since they’re trying to sell you something.”
“Well, at least it’s a version,” I said. “At least it gives you the basic idea.”
Jace thought about that. We both sat for a moment, staring at the fire.
“How’s the Happy Bubble?” she asked.
“Good,” I said. “Lots of customers today. With the heat.”
“What do you do there?”
“I vacuum mostly. Me and Justin. And clean windows.” I took a sip of my beer. “Yeah. Mostly we vacuum up small change. Out of the ashtray, out of the carpets. And then we split it at the end of shift.”
“How much do you usually get?”
“Five or ten bucks.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I get my car washed. Hide your change.”
“Oh, you can’t hide it. We’ll find it. We’re professionals.”
Jace laughed. “I bet!”
“What about you?” I said. “Do you have a job?”
“I work at the library,” said Jace.
&n
bsp; “Really?” I said, pulling my beer away from my mouth. “There’s a library here? Where is it?”
“It’s behind the Dunes Hotel. It’s small. The hours are a little weird. But I’m usually there.”
“I’ll come check it out.”
“Are you a reader?” she asked.
“Yeah. I mean, sometimes.” I dug around in my back pocket and pulled out Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. “I’ve been trying to read this. It’s my summer reading for AP English. But I haven’t gotten very far.”
Jace took the book from me and studied the cover. “I don’t know this.”
“It’s this German guy. A poet. It’s his words of advice for young writers.”
“Do you want to be a writer?”
“Me? Nah. I don’t know. Maybe. My mom wrote a book.”
“Yeah? What’s it about?”
“I don’t know. Gender. It’s hard to read. It’s for academic types.”
“Sounds deep.”
“Yeah,” I said, taking Rilke’s Letters back. “My English teacher suggested this. It’s short, so that’s good. But I can’t seem to get into it.”
“I know,” said Jace. “I totally do that. I save certain books for the summer, but then when summer comes, I can’t read them. I just want to read something stupid. Romance novels. Or something with lots of sex.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I like stuff with sex.”
She suddenly saw something over my head. “Oh, look! Kyle’s here. With his girlfriend.”
I looked up the trail, and there they were. Kyle, looking clean and collegiate, and a girl I’d never seen before, also well-dressed, in Levi’s and a baby-blue down vest.
“That’s Britney?” I asked Jace.
“That’s her.”
“She’s kind of doomed, isn’t she,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“Just that Kyle’s going to leave for college.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s doomed.”
“Well, no,” I said. “I guess not.”
People began to see Kyle and Britney and yell out greetings.
“Everyone’s always happy to see Kyle,” said Jace. She leaned a little closer. “But the party doesn’t really start until Nicole gets here.”
15
Nicole and Phoebe showed up a half hour later. Nicole started yelling and waving from the parking lot. While everyone watched her shriek and stumble down the trail, my eye followed Phoebe, who was behind her. Phoebe was wearing tight black jeans and red sneakers, and was having less trouble than Nicole, carefully stepping over the roots and avoiding the slippery spots.
As they descended, I wondered what was going on with Kyle and Britney and Nicole. Was everyone cool with everyone else? Nicole was obviously still in love with Kyle and wasn’t shy about it. What did Britney think about that?
Once it got dark, Justin came over and plopped himself down next to Jace and me. He got out another joint. The party had spread up and down the beach by this time. There were several other fires burning. Some of these groups were separate from us but I noticed people were circulating around, blending together, sharing wine or weed or marshmallows. Four brave tourists—two guys, two girls—had stripped down to their underwear, run down the beach, and dove into the freezing ocean. Now they huddled close to our fire, blankets over their shoulders, warming their shivering selves. Beside them some local guys were trying to cook hot dogs on sticks, while some traveling surfer dudes discussed the morning’s waves. Then two soft-spoken Norwegian guys sat down and told us about their bike-riding trip across the United States, which they were about to begin, Seaside being the traditional starting point for such trips. This explained why you’d sometimes see gangs of foreigners clustered around the Promenade in expensive biking gear. Anyway, there was all sorts of fun stuff going on and interesting people to talk to. And of course, sitting together in the firelight, everyone was happy and in a good mood, sipping their beers and enjoying that cozy, communal, beach-party feeling.
* * *
Emily and Kelsey went off somewhere, and then Jace and I went for a walk on the beach. We talked about high school and life in general. She wanted to go to college, but her school counselor mostly sent people to community college or maybe Oregon State if they wanted to study forestry or agriculture. Jace’s parents hadn’t gone to college, so they weren’t much help either. Jace herself didn’t seem to know which schools were good and which ones weren’t. I tried to explain about that, how you didn’t judge schools by their campus, or if they were in a sunny climate. It was more about what kind of people went there, and what the academic reputation was. I told her about my mom, how she had gone to a small women’s college in Minnesota and then transferred to University of Wisconsin, which had better professors. Then she went to Berkeley for grad school, and finally to Yale for her PhD. With every step, she had moved up in terms of prestige and reputation. The better the schools you went to, the better the jobs you got. That was how the academic world worked.
This was probably more information than Jace needed, but I thought it would help. I also told her it was good she was from Seaside. The top colleges liked people from unusual places. Especially somewhere like Seaside, which was so working class. She could write her college essay about her life there and the lessons she learned from working people. It would help her stand out from the other college applicants, who were mostly rich kids who lived in the suburbs.
* * *
It was later, when we were back on our blanket, that the drama started with Nicole. I didn’t see it; I just heard Nicole’s loud, drunken voice arguing with someone, not Kyle. Someone else was telling her to calm down, but she wouldn’t. And then she went storming down the beach, making sure she marched right through the people around our fire, kicking up sand and knocking people’s beers over.
I didn’t know where Britney was, or Kyle, probably somewhere else on the beach. Nobody seemed to think much of it. Later Nicole came back to our fire and sat on a log and drank wine from a bottle, while the guy next to her tried to look down her shirt. Phoebe was also around, beer in hand and looking sexy and bored in the firelight. Different guys were hitting on her, chatting her up, trying to impress her. She barely said anything back, I noticed. I thought if I ever got a chance to talk to Phoebe, I’d ask her questions, because a girl like that might have something interesting to say. Why would you just babble at her about your stupid motorcycle? Probably every guy in Seaside had tried that a hundred times.
At one a.m., Emily and Jace and those guys had to go home. I decided I better go with them, since I wasn’t sure where Kyle was, or what he was doing. The bunch of us climbed up the trail. It had been a great night, for me especially, and when we reached the parking lot, I stopped and looked down one last time. It looked so peaceful down on the beach. The soft sounds of voices and laughter rising up from the sand. The firelight on the people’s faces. The stars shining and the cool night air that smelled like summer dust and pine trees. And beyond all that, the big black ocean, vast and calm, like a great mysterious being, watching us, protecting us, loving us from afar.
* * *
Driving home, everyone talked about the party, except for Emily, who stared out the window. When Kelsey tried to gossip about Kyle and Nicole, Emily said, “I’d rather not talk about my brother.” So then the car went quiet for the rest of the ride.
Jace dropped Kelsey off first and then drove to the Reillys’. The minute we pulled up, Emily jumped out of the back seat and ran up the driveway toward the house. I was in the front passenger seat and was getting out too, but Jace touched my arm, holding me until Emily was gone.
“Hey, that was fun,” she said.
“That was great,” I said. “My first beach party!”
“Was it better than a beer commercial?”
“Way better.”
Jace smiled in a bashful way. “And thanks for explaining that stuff about colleges.”
“No problem,” I said. “I o
nly know about it because of my mom.”
“Well, it’s good for me. I don’t know anything.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty important . . . what college you go to . . . it can affect your whole life. . . .”
Jace was looking at me a certain way. I didn’t understand at first. Then she unhooked her seat belt and leaned toward me. She kissed me. On the lips.
I wasn’t expecting that. I didn’t react. Then I recovered, sort of, kissing her back for a second. But inside, I was like, What does this mean? Did I like Jace? I mean, I did like her. I liked hanging out with her. I liked talking to her. But I hadn’t thought of her as a person I would make out with.
I guess she sensed this, because she pulled away and returned to her own seat.
“Anyway, thanks,” she said. She seemed flustered now. She wouldn’t meet my eye. She refastened her seat belt. Then I felt bad. I wanted to say something. Or maybe kiss her some more. But the moment had passed. And I was embarrassed too. So I opened my door and thanked her again and hurried up the driveway.
16
Back in my room, I sat on my bed. I couldn’t believe Jace had kissed me. Seaside girls didn’t mess around! Then I remembered Emily asking me if I had a girlfriend back home. And asking me if I liked tall girls. So maybe this was something the two of them had been planning all along.
I took off my jeans and sweater and brushed the sand out of them. I could hear through the ceiling Emily going into the bathroom and the toilet flushing and her going back to her room. So then I went upstairs and brushed my teeth and looked at myself in the mirror. I thought about Jace. I almost wanted to go talk to Emily about her but decided I better not. I went back downstairs to my basement room. It was two a.m. now. I got in bed. But I was too excited to sleep. I thought about the party. I thought about the entire night. And then the most important question: Could I like Jace? I pictured her face. She wasn’t super beautiful. But that didn’t matter. She was like Kate, cute in a way, but the real appeal was she was someone you felt comfortable with, someone you could care about and who would care about you. It was funny that she called me Responsible Nick. I guess I seemed that way by Seaside standards. As for the kiss, the more I thought about it, the more I wished I’d kept it going.
