Pulled Under (Sixteenth Summer)

by Michelle Dalton

  I reflexively run my finger along my chin.

  “And your eyes defy description,” he continues. “When I met you, I thought they were blue. Then, when we went to Luigi’s, I could have sworn they were brown. And yesterday morning . . . I’m certain they were green. Every time I see you, the first thing I look at are your eyes so I can see what color they are.”

  Let me reiterate that this type of conversation is new to me, and it has me feeling a little breathless.

  “And when you get embarrassed your cheeks turn red.” He uncovers his eyes and looks right at me. “Like they’re doing right now.”

  Of course the fact that he says this makes me blush that much more.

  “The first time I saw it was when I asked you how the poster looked and you started to say ‘awful’ but tried to change it to ‘awesome,’ and it came out ‘awfslome.’”

  “You noticed that?”

  He nods. “I notice everything about you.”

  “Well, I can’t help but notice that all the things you just pointed out—wrinkly chin, inconsistent eye color, and the oh so sexy blushing—are in fact flaws. So again I say that you’re kind of proving my point.”

  “You cannot believe that,” he says. “You know they’re not flaws.”

  “Well, I admit that you manage to present them in a way that’s kind of amazing, but—”

  “Maybe this analogy will work for you. Before you got to the garage, Mo showed me all the different types of surfboards. She really opened my eyes. Who knew there were so many?”

  “I knew,” I joke, but he ignores it.

  “Girls like Kayla are like factory boards. Shiny. Smooth. Pretty. They look great but they look alike.”

  “And girls like me?” I ask.

  “There aren’t girls like you, Izzy. There is a girl like you, singular. You’re like this custom board that Mo showed me. She shaped it herself, and it has all these little details and indentations that make it special and unique. They’re features, not flaws.”

  I look at him and am totally speechless. On the list of the greatest things that anyone has ever said to me, this is the entire list. Nothing else is even close.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, you could say something about who you are. For once don’t make me do all the talking.”

  “I’m really not trying to be difficult; I just can’t think of anything.”

  “Tell me why you won’t surf in a contest.”

  “I already did. It’s just not my scene.”

  “Sorry, wrong answer,” he says as he makes a game show buzzer noise. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Is it because you’re shy? Is it because you think you’ll lose?”

  “Maybe . . . but there’s more to it than that,” I try to explain.

  I think about this for a moment, and he waits patiently for an answer. I look out at the water and try to put it all into words.

  “For me surfing is completely pure. It’s just me and the water and my board. It’s almost spiritual. Actually, it is spiritual. There’s no one watching, no one judging. It doesn’t matter who’s popular or who’s pretty, and it’s not about being better than anybody else. It’s just about the quest for perfection.”

  “And what do you mean by perfection?”

  “Think about everything that goes into creating a wave: the gravitational pull of the moon, the wind and weather thousands of miles away in the middle of the ocean, the contours of the ocean floor. It’s an amazing cosmic event that is hidden from sight until the last possible moment. The wave only breaks the surface for such a short period of time, and perfection is the tuning fork that rings in your heart when you catch it the moment it comes to life and ride it until the last bit of it disappears. It’s the feeling of knowing that the forces of nature all came together and you were there to fully appreciate every last bit of it.”

  He considers this for a moment, and this time I wait patiently.

  “Was that perfection yesterday morning?” he asks. “When you caught that last wave?”

  I close my eyes and think back to the wave. “Absolutely.”

  “And did it ruin it for you when you found out that I saw you do it? Did my being there make it imperfect?”

  “No,” I answer. “Of course not.”

  “Then why would other people ruin it? I think you should get over this fear. Better yet, I think you should compete in the King of the Beach contest. It’s not like girls don’t enter. Mickey and Mo both won it. Why not you?”

  “Because,” I say, as though that alone were enough of an answer.

  “That’s it? ‘Because’? That’s not a good enough excuse.”

  “It should be,” I reply a little prickly. “You wanted to know something about me and I told you. And the first thing you’re doing is telling me to change that thing. It’s not a fear. It’s just the way I’m wired. You watching me surf is different from a crowd of people watching me. It’s the most personal thing I can share. I don’t think you understand that.”

  “I don’t think you have any idea how great it is to watch you. I don’t even understand surfing and I think it’s amazing. Yesterday morning, watching you, that was mind blowing. Without a doubt it was the best forty-five minutes I’ve had since I’ve gotten here.”

  “Really?”

  “There is nothing I can do as well as you can surf. When I first got here, I thought surfing was a hobby. Then, after a few weeks of talking to you, I began to think of it as a sport. But yesterday, when I was watching you, I realized that it’s an art. You’re an artist, Izzy.”

  You can now add this to the list I just mentioned of the most amazing things anyone’s ever said to me.

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Okay,” I say shyly. “Then that’s one thing that you know about me. But I’m not looking to share that with the world, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says. “I’ll stop pushing you.”

  We both share a smile, and he reaches over and slips his hand into mine. I feel a charge crackle through my body. Neither of us says anything for a moment, and I give his hand a little squeeze in return.

  “Now I want you to tell me something,” I say.

  “Anything.”

  “Why did you kiss me yesterday?”

  He thinks about it for a moment before he answers. “Because I was tired of imagining what it would be like. I just had to know.”

  “You’d been imagining it?” I ask. “Imagining kissing me?”

  He nods. “Big time.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I met you.”

  “Right,” I say with a laugh. “When I had the guacamole stain on my shirt?”

  “I like guacamole and I respect a girl who can pull it off as a fashion statement.”

  I turn to look at him, and the sea breeze blows my hair in every direction. He reaches up and gently moves it out of my face, and I tuck it between my neck and shoulder.

  “And what was it like?” I continue. “Kissing me?”

  He flashes the smile I see in my mind whenever I think about him.

  “Even better than I had imagined. Which is saying something, because I had set the anticipation bar pretty high.”

  “Do you . . . maybe . . . want to try it again?”

  “I . . . do,” he says, but with some hesitation. “I . . . really . . . do.”

  “Why do I sense another ‘but’ coming up?”

  “It’s already July first and I go back to Wisconsin on August twenty-fifth. That’s—”

  “Fifty-five days,” I interrupt.

  “Wow, you came up with that quickly.”

  “I’ve already done the math. All of it. Fifty-five days, seven weekends, six more summer camp classes.” I shrug. “You’re not the onl
y one who’s been imagining.”

  This makes him smile.

  “I want to kiss you very much,” he says. “But if I do, I know that it will hurt unbearably bad fifty-five days from now. Maybe worse than anything’s ever hurt before. And that makes me wonder what I should do.”

  Now I turn my whole body and lean forward so that I am just inches from his face. “What you should do? Don’t I have a say in this?”

  “Of course you do,” he answers. “What do you think we should do?”

  “I think it’s like a wave,” I say. “But that’s just me. I always think everything’s like surfing.”

  He has a perplexed look on his face. “How is it like a wave?”

  “Consider all the cosmic forces that have brought us to the end of this pier. Your parents, my job, your uncle, summer camp. All of these unseen forces have led us here, and the chance that we have is only going to last for a brief period of time. Just like a wave. I say we catch it as soon as we can and ride it until the very last part dissolves into the sand. I say that we shoot . . . for perfection.”

  I don’t wait for him to respond. Instead I reach around, put my hand on the back of his neck, and pull him gently toward me as I begin to kiss him. I can taste the salt air on his lips, and when I close my eyes I lose myself in those lips. It is wonderful and exciting. It’s more than I ever would have dreamed could have happened. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t ignore the clock that starts in my head. Even as I kiss him I can hear it ticking away.

  Fifty-five days and counting.

  I want you . . . to name which five members of the Continental Congress were selected to write the Declaration of Independence.”

  I blink, rub the sleep out of my eyes, and try to refocus. Much to my horror I realize that it’s not a nightmare. Uncle Sam really is accosting me in the kitchen. Okay, it’s my father in an Uncle Sam costume, but it’s still pretty nightmarish.

  “What?” I mumble with a sleepy yawn.

  “I want you,” he says, exaggerating the pose to look like the famous Uncle Sam poster, “to name which five members of the Continental Congress were selected to write the Declaration of Independence.”

  Normally, I make it a rule to ignore my father when he’s in costume. And you’d be surprised by the frequency with which I have to invoke this rule. But that’s impossible at the moment because he’s blocking my access to the refrigerator.

  “I just want to get some milk for my cereal,” I moan. “Why does there have to be a quiz?”

  “Because it’s the Fourth of July and your father’s an American history teacher,” he says, as though that were a reasonable explanation. “C’mon. Give me the names.”

  I can tell that he’s not giving up, so I rack my brain. “I’m pretty sure one was Thomas Jefferson.”

  “Yes,” he says, no doubt perturbed that I’m only “pretty sure.”

  “And you’ve gotta figure that Ben Franklin was there, right?”

  “He was.”

  He waits for more, and all I do is shrug.

  “That’s it?”

  “It’s seven in the morning and I’m in the middle of summer vacation,” I say. “You should be happy that I got that many.”

  He shakes his head in total disappointment. “That’s two out of five. That’s only forty percent. Do you find forty percent acceptable?”

  “I’m only getting two percent milk, so yeah,” I say with a wicked smile. “That leaves thirty-eight percent for later.”

  Rather than continue our back and forth history lesson, I wedge my way past him, grab the milk and orange juice, and head for the table.

  “John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman were the others,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”

  “Thanks,” I answer as I pour the milk over my cereal. “But I wasn’t.”

  Despite my current—and I would argue quite defensible—lack of excitement, Fourth of July is a huge deal in Pearl Beach. It’s the busiest day of the year for tourists, and we really give them their money’s worth. The celebration starts off in the morning with the Patriots Parade, continues all afternoon with live music at the bandshell, and concludes with a huge fireworks display over the pier.

  I don’t want to be a buzz kill for my dad, so I try to engage in some conversation. “Is your band marching in the parade this year?”

  “Yes,” he says with glee, unwilling to let my mood dampen his enthusiasm. “And we’re playing the two o’clock set at the bandshell.”

  I swallow a spoonful of cereal and chuckle. “You love saying that you’re playing a ‘set,’ don’t you?”

  “I almost said that we had a ‘gig,’ but I thought you might give me a hard time about it.”

  “I definitely would have.”

  Every year on the Fourth of July my dad and a bunch of other guys he knows form a band they call the Founding Fathers. It’s perfect not only because he gets to dress up as Uncle Sam, but also because it blends three of his greatest loves: music, American history, and bad puns.

  “Are you going to sing my song?” I ask, giving him my best doe eyes.

  My song is “Isabel,” an old country song by John Denver that my father used to sing to me when he’d put me to bed.

  “I don’t know,” he says, playing hardball. “Our set’s only for thirty minutes and we’ve got a lot of songs.”

  “Seriously? That’s your answer?”

  He nods and we have a little stare off before I finally relent.

  “Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.”

  “And why are you suddenly listing states?”

  “Because those are the colonies that John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson represented in the Continental Congress.”

  “You knew all along.”

  “Of course I did. You’ve only made me watch 1776 about a thousand times.”

  “Then why’d you act like you didn’t know?”

  I give him a look. “Because I don’t want to encourage you to give me pop quizzes every morning.”

  He smiles broadly. “That’s my girl.”

  “Now what about my song?” I ask.

  “I guess you’ll have to come and find out,” he answers. But as he walks out of the kitchen I can hear him start to sing, “Isabel is watching like a princess from the mountains . . .”

  Today would be the perfect day to hang out with Ben, except we’re both busy for huge chunks of it. He’s marching with the campers in the parade and working at the bandshell during the concert. Meanwhile, I’m going in early to help set up at Surf Sisters and working the late shift tonight. If I’m lucky, I’ll get out in time to catch some of the fireworks. I’m pretty sure our paths will cross a few times during the festivities, but there are no guarantees as to when.

  I ride my bike to the shop, and when I get there, I’m surprised to see Nicole standing in the parking lot wearing her band uniform.

  “You know I’m all about seeing you in the funny hat, but shouldn’t you be lining up for the parade?”

  “I’ve got about twenty minutes,” she says.

  I lock my bike to the rack and reply, “I’m sure we’ve got the inventory all covered. You should go hang out with the drum line. And by drum line I mean you should go hang out with Cody.”

  “I will,” she says. “But Mickey called me first thing and asked me to come in. She said that she wanted to talk to the whole staff.”

  Mickey and Mo must be concerned about something, because the Fourth is our biggest sales day of the year. I assume they want to make sure that everyone’s ready. But when I walk into the shop and see them talking in hushed tones, I begin to worry that something’s wrong. Typically they’re upbeat, but there are no smiles today.

  Mickey steps forward first and does a quick head co
unt to make sure we’re all here. Including the two of them, there are ten of us in total, and while I’m closest to Sophie and Nicole, I think of everyone as my extended family.

  “We really hate to do this today,” Mickey says. “The Fourth is such a big day for the beach, and we know how much of a zoo it can be. But there are some developments that are about to become public, and we want to make sure that you hear them from us first.”

  Now I am really worried. Mickey is getting teary and has trouble continuing, so Mo puts an arm around her and picks up where she left off.

  “After thirty-three years of doing what we love . . . we are sorry to announce that . . . this is going to be the last summer for Surf Sisters. We’re closing down the shop at the end of September.”

  She continues speaking, but I literally do not hear another word while my mind tries to process what she has just said. I know this sounds melodramatic, but I can’t overemphasize how important the shop has been to me. I look around and realize that everyone else is equally stunned. This is our place. This cannot be happening.

  “What are you talking about?” Sophie blurts out.

  “Like I said,” Mo continues, “we didn’t want to tell you like this, but you’re family to us, and word has leaked out and we’re sure you’ll hear about it.”

  “How is this even possible?” one of the girls asks. “I know we don’t get the crowds that Surf City does, but business seems like it’s been good.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Mickey says, clearing her throat. “A developer is going to build a new resort, and the bank sees this as a chance to make a lot of money. We’ve tried everything we can think of, but there’s really nothing we can do about it. We will, however, do everything we can to help you all find new jobs.”

  We sit there in stunned silence for a moment, and an idea comes to me.

  “What about Luigi’s Car Wash?” I say. “Luigi’s was able to stay open because it had been here so long. Doesn’t the same law protect us?”

  They share a look and turn back to us.