The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

  “Boys?” she said. The word was a joy-filled balloon, lifting up. I worried about those shoes in the sand. Could she get stuck out there as the tide came in?

  “Yeah. They played tight end.”

  “Oh, I love football!”

  We inched our way down the boardwalk. I pictured the twist of an ankle, me lunging to catch a body, no safe place to grab, yikes, the two of us sliding to the bottom in a broken heap. I could have run down there and back by the time we got to the ground, but we finally made it. Gavin’s tent was a huge glowing ball out there on the beach. You could fit eight people in there. Yellow-orange lights flickered inside the globe. It looked as if a space vehicle had landed on our Earth.

  “Gavin, Oscar!”

  “What’s that sound?” Hailey said.

  Good question. A loud, vibrating thrum. Some kind of … shooting? The zing and zap of electronic lasers?

  I flung back the tent flap. “What are you guys do—Holy crap!”

  Gavin and Oscar sat crossed-legged on sleeping bags, which were laid out on cushy mattress-thick foam. Between them were two silver foil packages, sliced down the middle and spilling some brownish noodle-like substance. Piles of pillows made a cozy headboard. At the far end of the tent was a large flat screen TV, surrounded by speakers. A heater leaned against one nylon wall, shooting out waves of warmth, and a small lamp sat in the corner. It looked just like Gavin’s room at home. All that was missing was the retro Charlie’s Angels poster and the blanket with the digital-style lettering, reading, NO I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR COMPUTER. Wait, actually, there it was, sticking out from his sleeping bag. I recognized that shade of orange.

  “Cool,” Hailey said. “Can you get cable?”

  They both turned their heads at the same time, Gavin’s big bushy-haired one and Oscar’s with that stupid hat, and both their mouths gaped open at the sight of her. Their controllers went, well, stiff, thumbs frozen midair. Oscar’s car crashed into a wall and exploded, and Gavin’s ran off the road, smashing head-on into a video mountain.

  “Why did I think camping meant flashlights and s’mores?” I said.

  “Oscar’s dad had a generator,” Gavin said. “Hey,” he said to Hailey. “I’m Gavin, and you’re amazing.”

  Great. Just terrific.

  “Oscar. Oscar Maya.” Oscar held his hand out now. He was a genius and his parents were both geniuses, and sometimes geniuses could miss the obvious. Or else those folks had a fondness for hot dogs. Who knew? His name was a cruel parental misstep, I thought, given the crap he always got. But Hailey didn’t notice either.

  “This is my kind of camping,” she said.

  “Six-man tent,” Gavin said.

  “Plenty of room,” Oscar said. He really needed to shave that stuff off his chin.

  Hailey stared toward the TV. “I haven’t seen my shows in two days.”

  “We got shows. Gavin doesn’t have the satellite hooked up yet, but it just takes a sec.”

  Somebody had better step in there, quick, and I guessed that somebody was me. Those two were in way over their heads. Someone was going to get hurt. “We’re heading out. A bonfire down the beach,” I said. “Party. You guys want to come?”

  “Party?” Oscar said to me. “You?”

  “What?” I was getting more irritated by the second.

  “You never go to parties. You hate parties,” Oscar said.

  “You hate par ties?” Hailey said.

  “I don’t hate parties,” I said. “I just don’t usually—”

  “‘Standing around talking to drunk people—,’” Gavin said.

  “‘Isn’t my idea of a good time,’” Oscar finished.

  The truth was, it was one of the reasons we all got along so well. Gavin and Oscar didn’t like that stuff either. They cared about their brain cells.

  “Come on, where is this party?” Hailey said. She took a pinch of Gavin’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

  Was she flirting? With Gavin? In the years that I’d known him, I’d only seen that happen once. Holly Kenelly, and she didn’t shave her legs. I think she went to an all-women’s college to study feminist literature. I seem to remember reading that in the graduation program.

  “I’ll save our scores,” Oscar said. He bustled around the tent, shutting things off. He didn’t seem bothered by Hailey’s attention to Gavin. He was used to it, probably. Gavin always got to the next level before he did.

  The tent went momentarily dark, and then a large disc of light blinded me. I flung my arm to my eyes in protection. “Sorry,” Oscar said. “Emergency flashlight. It has a radio, too, and a siren with a bottle opener.”

  I sat in the back of Gavin’s car with Oscar. He’d pulled off his hat, and now his hair stood up with wavy undersea tentacles of static. Hailey was playing with Gavin’s radio dial. She fingered the tassel from Gavin’s graduation mortarboard that hung from his rearview mirror. “I looove tassels,” she said.

  I was seriously racking up the heaven points now.

  The walk from the car to the beach and then down to the bonfire was a long, slow trip because of Hailey’s shoes. She kept sinking in the sand and giggling, and Gavin would take her outstretched hands and pull her out.

  “You could take them off,” Oscar suggested. He looked toward the bonfire’s orange glow in the distance and to the crowd gathered there with an odd mix of eagerness and worry. We’d felt this same feeling, together, every time we’d stepped onto the bus for a middle-school field trip or into a gym for PE. Oscar was my partner whenever I needed one. He gave me a Christmas present every year, usually a girl gift—perfume, scarf, earrings—which he wrapped with tight, tight corners and a string of ribbon. He was a good friend.

  “I cannot,” Hailey said. “I love these shoes. Aren’t these sexy?” she said to Gavin, and stretched one long leg for him to admire. She sounded tipsy, but we hadn’t even had anything to drink yet, obviously a flirtation tactic that had never occurred to me. I’d have thought Gavin would be having a coronary at the sight of those legs, but after the camping, wow, he was a new man.

  “Sexy as hell,” he said, and then he picked her up and threw her over one shoulder, and she shrieked and he ran. (Okay, this was awkward—an effortful lurching that made me worry he’d pulled some kind of groin muscle.) The bonfire was the finish line.

  “Touchdown!” Hailey yelled, and Gavin swung her down.

  “He’s clutching his pelvis,” Oscar said.

  “I’ve never seen him lift anything heavier than a desktop computer,” I said.

  “Well, we sell a lot of those at Tech Time,” Oscar said. “The fifty-six-inch big screens are pretty heavy too.”

  Hailey was waving her arms, down by the crowd. She was looking pretty chipper now, after all her earlier misery about her father and my mother falling in love and finding happiness together. She seemed to have forgotten about that. She already held a red cup in the air.

  “Who are these people again?” Oscar said.

  “I only know Ash. His parents own Bluff House.”

  Oscar looked at me, raised his eyebrows. “Did you and Janssen break up all the way? You never told me.”

  “No!” I said. I was entirely too known by all the people in my life.

  “Cricket, are you okay?” he said. “You don’t seem okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You seem really off.”

  “I said I’m fine. Come on.”

  There were a lot of Valentine doily tops and short skirts and those squarish white manicured fingernails that always secretly gave me the creeps. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always worried I’d find one in my food. In my sundress and with my plain hands, I was practically the Amish wife in the crowd. I searched around for Ash amid the snapping fire and clinking glass bottles and people laughing. I felt out of place, like those times you went to watch a football game at a different school. It was the bleachers they knew, and their band, and you didn’t even understand how the parking lot
worked, and everyone kept looking your way with those little quick, appraising glances. Usually I had Janssen with me, though. I’d hold his arm. We’d sit together.

  Oscar and I hung back. I tried not to feel awkward, although my covered chest and general party anxiety as well as my pale, shrinking companion with his uncertain chin fluff were making me feel infused with a sudden surge of geek. I felt dipped in geek, both inside and outside. It was the feeling of not belonging, and longing for your familiar couch and your familiar TV with all those comforting TV people who couldn’t see you.

  I felt a pair of hands on my waist.

  “Hey,” Ash said, and I was so glad to see him. He wore his jeans and a white T-shirt, and he smelled good, even in the smoky night air. Some kind of cologne. Something musky.

  “Ash,” I said. “This is my friend Oscar.”

  “Hey,” Oscar said.

  “You guys want a beer?”

  “What else do you have?” I asked. “We’re not big drinkers.”

  “Cool,” Ash said. We edged our way through the crowd. The heat of the bonfire was intense. Maybe doilies weren’t such a bad idea. The sea looked dark out there, though the waves coming in were frothy and white in the moonlight. A couple of coolers were set up against the sand bank. Oscar plucked a can of Mountain Dew from the slushy ice, and I poured some Diet Coke into a cup. “Really glad you could come. Let me introduce you to a few people.”

  Hailey and Gavin had disappeared into the crowd somewhere. I thought I heard her laughing. Oscar was standing so close to me, we could’ve won the three-legged race. We inched our way toward a couple with their arms around each other. It was Ash’s good friend Alex and his girlfriend, yes, Alex, and we talked with them for a while. The male Alex was one of those big guys who are so instantly friendly that you like him right off, and his girlfriend was lively and interested in where we’d come from and why.

  “These guys have been together forever,” Ash said. “Look at them,” he teased.

  “If you had kids—,” Oscar said.

  “We’d name them Alex,” Girl Alex said.

  “You heard it before?” I said. I was starting to feel a little more comfortable.

  “All the time,” she said.

  “Maybe that’s just what we’ll do,” Boy Alex said, and pulled her hips toward his.

  Well, of course I flashed on Janssen. How could I not. I felt so sad, and the shame of how hurtful I’d been shoved me hard once more. Another guy joined us. He had longish blond hair, and was holding a bottle of Southern Comfort. He shot some into my cup. “Fill her up!” he said merrily. “Big Alex, Big Ash!”

  “This is Matt,” Ash said.

  “School’s out for summa!” he sang. “My dudes, my buddies. My bosom pals. Boob pals.” He cracked up. “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

  “Not likely,” Girl Alex said. She rolled her eyes at me.

  Ash leaned over. His breath was warm in my ear. It made me shiver. “Wanna go for a walk? I can’t stand that asshole.”

  He tugged my sleeve toward the beach. I looked over at Oscar. “It’s fine,” he said.

  Guilt filled me, like in those movies where someone’s trapped in a room and water starts coming in. I could feel it rising and rising, but I went anyway. I left Oscar back there.

  “You don’t have to drink that shit,” Ash said.

  I shrugged. I took a sip. Maybe I had some stupid idea that it would erase the guilt I felt about Oscar, about Janssen, about how badly I wanted to be alone on that beach with Ash. I was eighteen, and I wanted to walk by the shore under the moon with that attractive guy, just walk, for God’s sake, and I wanted to feel large and brave enough to not care what that might mean. And so I tipped my head and swallowed that stuff like I was someone I wasn’t. The drink didn’t taste all that great, but it was pleasantly warm. Sweet-warm, like that whiskey drink Grandpa Shine made for me once when I had a bad cold. Lemon, honey, and water, but warm, and I slept so well. Now, it made my knees buzz in a soft, pleasant way.

  “He’s the worst,” Ash said. “We’ve got some great people here. Great guys. And a few assholes.”

  “Like anywhere,” I said.

  The bonfire was getting smaller and smaller behind us. We walked near the shore, and I took my shoes off. The houses along the beach were all different, decks and no decks, small and shingled, huge and modern. In the windows where lights glowed, you could see the people inside, like they were onstage in a play.

  Everything felt a little unreal.

  Oscar was disappearing back there too, and I sipped from my cup and Ash walked close by me, and we talked, and then we were just quiet, listening to the chsh … cshshh … of the waves going in and out. You could walk and not realize just how far you’d gone.

  Ash took my elbow, stopped us.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” I said.

  “It is,” he said. “Your eyes are so bright in this moon.”

  I just looked at him, and we stood so close. His chest was there in front of me, a good place for the flat palm of my hand. I could really smell that musk now.

  “Miss Cricket, I would really like to kiss you,” he said. I felt so warm. So, so warm, and my whole body was buzzing now. “But I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like to wait.”

  He leaned in. I felt only his cheek against mine, and it was crazy, crazy how much I wanted him. Just that—want. I wanted that really good-looking guy and a meaningless, great kiss. He hugged me and pulled away. For one moment his cheek, my cheek, this unknown beach, I felt it. Free. Free from all the ways things could go wrong, and released from faithfulness and constancy and the ties that held me to everyone—Janssen, yes, but my family, too. Ties that felt like ropes sometimes, anchored to the ground on one end, to a hot-air balloon on the other, that hot-air balloon we saw that time, Janssen and I. Someplace inside of me felt that I needed to cut those ropes in order to rise up and see the countryside. That same place inside also knew how dangerous it would be to be so, so high.

  “Maybe we should go back,” I said.

  I was afraid he’d take my hand. I tucked them into my pockets. My hands were mine, but they were also Janssen’s. He’d held my hand after I’d gotten my wisdom teeth taken out, and at the movies, and when we’d lie quietly together. He held both of them that time, after my father scared us all so bad. Janssen held my hand under the table at that awkward Thanksgiving too, the one with my father and grandparents and aunts and uncles. He had to eat with his left hand, so he could keep hold of it.

  We walked. Ash gave me a playful shove, and I shoved him back, and he hugged me again, and I felt that heat, that great heat, and then we were back. My cup was empty. I didn’t know how long we’d been gone.

  Oscar was sitting on a piece of driftwood by the coolers, holding his Mountain Dew. He lifted his hand in a little wave when he saw me. My insides felt like they were swirling a little.

  “We’ll probably be heading out,” I said.

  “Well, it was great. I’m so glad you came. I’ll see you back at the house?”

  “Back at the house,” I said.

  I headed toward Oscar. “There you are,” he said. He stood. “Cricket? Are you all right?”

  “Let’s go back,” I said.

  “Did you drink that stuff?” he asked. “What did you do that for? What’s happening to you? Okay, wait. Let me go get Gavin. Just sit here.”

  I sat. On the way down my head shimmered in a disturbing fashion. My butt almost missed the log. The wood scraped the back of my leg. There were some strange walls going in and out and up and down inside my head.

  We all got back to the car. In the backseat Oscar kept peering at me. His little beard fluff looked very concerned. As the streetlights passed, his face shone with light and then went dark, light, dark. Hailey and Gavin were laughing and talking in the front. She was patting the top of his poofy hair. Did she actually like it? Everything was all loud and swarmy, like a carnival inside my own head—their voices we
re bright and wavy, and when the car turned into the driveway, it felt like we kept turning and turning.

  Gavin and Hailey were saying good-bye. Some faraway piece of me was thankful there would only be two men in the six-man tent that night. Some far faraway piece knew how anything but that would hurt Dan and my mother. The idea of hurting people—it was so far away and small, I almost couldn’t hear it. I felt a little wild and reckless, like I wanted to do something big. Huge. I could take Gavin’s keys and drive back home and knock on Janssen’s door and wake him up. I could say the words that would undo how I’d hurt him. We could stay together forever, and we could have babies that we could name Alex. I would never have to be afraid of assholes ever again. I wouldn’t have to worry where home was—I would always be home.

  “Cricket?” Oscar was breathing beside me. I could hear it, really loud. I could almost see wavy breaths. Were we holding hands? “Maybe I should help you in.”

  “I can go in,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “I want to tell you,” he said. “Now that you and Janssen … I’ve always cared—”

  His bangs were falling into his eyes. I brushed them off his forehead. There. He could see better now. The better to stare at me, which he was doing. “My inside walls are going in and out,” I said.

  Oscar put his arm around me, and I put my arm around his waist. Old Oscar. Good old Oscar. Great guy. I lay my head on his shoulder because my head was very heavy. Oscar’s hand was on my arm, and then it wasn’t, so finally I could leave. It released me, like ropes of a balloon being cut, and I drifted up and went inside and drifted up more, up the stairs, and the real walls were going in and out.

  I went to the bathroom. I think I pretty much brushed my teeth, or something close. I was coming out and heading to my room, when I crashed into Ben.

  “Cricket?” he said.

  “Well, hello,” I said.

  He sniffed. “Cricket, for Christ’s sake, are you drunk?”

  “No!” I said. I’d never been drunk in my life.