Pulled Under (Sixteenth Summer)

by Michelle Dalton

  “It was a poor choice of words,” I offer. “I apologize.”

  “It’s us,” says Nicole. “You don’t need to apologize. You just need to talk.”

  I don’t respond. I just keep rehanging shirts that were left in the fitting rooms. I figure they’ll give up, blast some music, and let me get back to my mope-a-thon. But they wait me out. There’s no music or questions, just the sound of the hangers as I slide them on the rack. Finally, I give in.

  “You really want to know what’s bothering me?” I say.

  “We really do,” says Sophie.

  “He’s only been gone for five days and I’m fully mental. What happens a month from now when he’s gone for good? And what happens a month after that when this shop closes? What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? I can’t just sit in my room and cry all the time.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing, sweetie?” asks Sophie. “Have you been crying in your room at night?”

  “Maybe,” I grudgingly admit. “But I’m serious. What should I do? I can’t figure it out.”

  I look at them and wait for answers. I can see that Nicole is carefully considering her words before responding, “I don’t know.”

  I wait for more, but she doesn’t say anything else. “‘I don’t know’? That’s your answer?”

  “That’s the truth,” she says. “I don’t know what you should do. But I do know that whatever it is, you’re going to do it with me. You’ll be with me at school and wherever it is that we decide to hang out once this place is gone, and we’ll figure it out together.”

  “It’s awful,” Sophie adds. “Ben’s great and he’s totally into you. You’re such a cute couple, so we get that it’s not fair. But don’t forget that you were already awesome before he came into your life. And you’ll still be awesome after he goes back home. Maybe even more so because he’s opened up parts of you that we’ve never seen.”

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “Like the fact that pre-Ben Izzy would never have entered the King of the Beach,” says Nicole. “She should’ve, but she wouldn’t have. Ben gave you confidence. He made it so you believe in yourself.”

  This is something that I had not thought of. “You might be right about that.”

  “Of course we are,” says Sophie. “We’re your best friends. We know things about you that you don’t even know about you.”

  “Is that so?” I ask, amused.

  “Yes, it is,” she says. “Like for instance, right now I know that you’ve still only told us part of what’s bothering you. We already knew that you missed him and were unsure about the future. This is not that kind of moping. This goes deeper. What else is it?”

  Somehow the vibe has gone from interrogation room to confessional. They really are great friends, and I know that I can tell them anything. Still, I have to take a couple of deep breaths before I can say it.

  “I love him.”

  They raise their eyebrows at this announcement, but neither says anything, so I continue.

  “It’s not a crush. I don’t just like him. I am in love with him. And I know that I have no experience and don’t know what I’m talking about. But I also know what I know. I love him and I can’t even tell him.”

  “Why not?” asks Nicole.

  “He broke up with his last girlfriend because she was in love with him and he didn’t feel the same way in return. He said he didn’t think it was fair to her. I can’t take that chance. It’s bad enough that I’m going to lose him at the end of the month.”

  It’s amazing how relieved I am to have that off my chest. I can’t tell Ben, but I can tell the two of them. Saying it out loud makes it seem real and not just something floating around in my mind.

  “If you really feel that way, then I think you should tell him,” Sophie says. “You should at least give him the chance to say it back to you. But that’s for you to decide, not us. That’s well beyond the powers of whoever controls the register.”

  “Does that mean you’re ruling in my favor?” I ask.

  “You’re guilty of shutting out your best friends. There’s no doubt about that. But I’m going to let you off with a warning and a reminder that we’re your biggest fans. All we ever want to do is make things better.”

  “Okay, I know that. I won’t forget.” I’m relieved to have shared my secret and relieved that she’s not going to make me do something stupid. “I also appreciate the fact that you resisted your recent trend of overstepping your bounds when you’re on the register.”

  “I’m not done yet,” she says.

  I shake my head and turn to Nicole. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

  “This court also finds you guilty of another crime, and I’m afraid it’s one that cannot simply be ignored.”

  “And what is that?” I ask.

  “Failure to dance to ‘The Rockafeller Skank.’”

  This makes me laugh for the first time all week. “Please tell me it’s another warning.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” she says. “We are going to stay here until we see . . . the Albatross. And don’t just go through the motions. We want to see it performed with the passion and pageantry it deserves.”

  The Albatross is a goofy, over-the-top dance we came up with one night when we were doing inventory. It involves strutting around while holding your arms fully extended like wings. It’s exactly the type of thing that you do when you’re being silly with your friends, yet under no circumstance would you do anywhere else.

  Sophie presses play and the music starts blaring again.

  They just stand there with their arms crossed, looking at me expectantly.

  “No way,” I say. “You can stare at me all you want,” I continue. “Because I am not going to do this.”

  They turn the music up even louder.

  That’s it. I can fight it no longer.

  At first I just tease it a little and bounce my knees, then I bust out a big smile and the arms extend as I start the strut. They clap and holler, and pretty soon the three of us are grooving. It’s fun and a great emotional release. I get so into it that I even close my eyes, which is dangerous when performing the Albatross.

  We’re startled out of our little moment when the music shuts off abruptly. We look to the counter and see Mo standing by the sound system. I’d totally forgotten that she was working in the garage.

  “Sorry to interrupt your party,” she says, clearly enjoying the moment, “but I need you guys to come out to the garage.”

  We follow her outside and are surprised to see that Mickey is there too. Today was her day off, which means she must have come in through the back door while we were busy.

  “What’s up?” asks Sophie.

  “The King of the Beach is coming up,” says Mickey, “and we thought we should have a team meeting.”

  Even though there can be as many as eight competitors on a team, so far the Surf Sisters squad is just the five of us. None of the other girls at the shop really surf much, and despite my attempts to secretly recruit during my practice sessions at the pier, so far I have struck out.

  “That’s a good idea,” I say. “You want to go over practice schedules?”

  “Actually, we thought we might start off by giving you guys some M&M’s.”

  “None for me,” answers Nicole. “I try to eat just a few, but then I start craving more, and before you know it I’ve polished off an entire family-sized bag. It’s not pretty.”

  The sisters share a look and chuckle.

  “We’re not talking about the candy,” says Mickey.

  It takes a moment, but I’m the first one to figure it out. “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” I say as I begin to tremble with excitement. “Do you mean . . . ?”

  Mo looks at me and nods. “We figure it’s the least we can do. We may not
have the best team at the contest, but you can bet we’re going to have the best-looking boards.”

  Now I notice that there are three gift-wrapped surfboards lined up against the back wall. They’re giving us hand-shaped, custom made Mickey and Mo—M & M—surfboards. (This is me hyperventilating.)

  “Those M&Ms?” Sophie says, pointing at them and practically crying. “You mean those M&M’s?”

  The sisters laugh even more, tickled by our excitement. “Consider them your bonus for years of hard work and dedication.”

  Nicole’s the last one to catch on, but when she does, her reaction may be best of all. She doesn’t say a word. She just squeals as she runs over to them, her long arms flailing in excitement.

  “We wanted you to have them for the contest,” Mickey says. “But we figured you’d need some time to break them in.”

  “Go ahead,” says Mo. “Open them up.”

  We tackle the wrapping paper like human paper shredders and unveil three gorgeous and gleaming surfboards. Each one has an original design and color scheme. Sophie’s is cosmic seventies psychedelic, perfect for her retro tastes, while Nicole’s has a pattern that looks like a stylized sea turtle’s shell, no doubt because she’s our most ardent environmentalist. They’re both beautiful, but mine . . . mine is the prettiest of them all.

  “I absolutely love it,” I say. “It’s breathtaking.”

  My board has a swirl of colors that radiate from the center like the fingers of a hurricane. The colors look like little tiles in a mosaic and alternate between shades of green, blue, and brown. The phrase “The Eye of the Storm” is written in the center.

  “I’m particularly pleased with how that one turned out,” says Mickey. “I took a couple of pictures for our portfolio.”

  I look up at her and shake my head in awe. “It’s a work of art, Mickey. How’d you come up with the design?”

  “I didn’t,” she says with a smirk. “It was your boyfriend.”

  “Ben? Did this?”

  “He actually wanted to buy you a custom board,” Mo starts to explain. “He asked if we could work out a payment plan because he said he wouldn’t have enough money until the end of the summer, but that he really wanted you to have it in time for the contest. He said he even knew what he wanted the design on the board to be.”

  I look over at Sophie and Nicole, and they smile warmly at the thought of Ben doing this.

  “We told him that we had already planned on giving you boards for the contest,” adds Mickey. “But we were curious to see his design.”

  “That’s when he handed me this,” Mo says as she holds up a sheet of paper with the design sketched out on it. “I thought it was great.”

  “I wonder why he wanted this design in particular,” I say.

  She shrugs. “So do we. He told us that you would know.”

  I have no idea.

  I look down at it. It is mesmerizing. It seemingly changes color depending on how you look at it or how the light hits it. That’s when I realize what it is, and I’m so caught off guard that I reach up and cover my mouth.

  “What?” asks Nicole.

  I shake my head. “I can’t. It’s too . . . mushy.”

  “That means you have to tell us!” Sophie says. “We could stand some mushy.”

  I look at them and say, “It’s the color of my eyes.”

  I have a love-hate relationship with video chatting. I love, love, love the fact that I can see Ben even though he’s 1,347 miles away. (Yes, I figured out the exact distance between our houses because, well, you know.) But I’m not particularly fond of seeing myself in the lower left corner of my computer screen as I talk to him.

  Tonight is the second time we’ve tried it. The first time had mixed results. Halfway through the conversation I noticed that my eyebrows bounce up and down when I get excited and that there’s some strange sniffle flare that happens with my nostrils while I’m in deep listening mode. When I tried to correct these things, I overcompensated, and by the end of the conversation I felt like I was having some sort of bizarre face spasms. It was like the time I tried to examine everything I do when I surf and it made me pearl over the front of my board. I’ve solved the issue by taping a small piece of paper over the image. Now all I see is Ben.

  “Hi,” I say. “How ya doing?”

  “I’m okay, I guess,” he says. “Better now that I see you.”

  Tonight is especially tricky. I’m still walking on air because of the incredibly romantic gesture Ben made with the surfboard design, but he spent half the day in a courtroom talking to a judge about his parents’ divorce. My goal is to keep things positive and be as low maintenance a girlfriend as possible.

  “I love my surfboard! The design is . . . perfect.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” he says.

  “You don’t have to wait. I brought it for show and tell.”

  I pick up the surfboard and try to hold it in front of the computer so he can get a look. The problem is, because I’ve taped over the part that lets me see what he’s seeing, I have trouble telling if it’s in the right spot or not.

  “I’m going to try it out first thing in the morning,” I say. “I want to break it in before the King of the Beach.”

  “Speaking of which,” he replies, “have you read through the rules like I suggested?”

  “Yes,” I answer. “We all have.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . the truth is . . . none of us can figure out what you’re talking about.”

  Ever since the trip to the airport, Sophie, Nicole, and I have read and reread the rules of the King of the Beach. Ben seems to think there’s some great secret hidden in them, but we’ve given up finding it.

  “It all seems pretty cut and dry,” I continue. “We enter a team. Every surfer earns points based on how well he or she finishes in the individual competition. The team with the most points wins the title.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  There’s a pause on the other side, and I try to read the expression on his face. I can’t tell if he’s angry, frustrated, or something else.

  “I’ll just tell you,” he says, with a distant tone to his voice. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned this week, it’s that my ideas of fairness and cheating are outdated.”

  The divorce proceedings must be going even worse than I thought. He’s never said it outright, but I’ve gotten a strong indication that his father cheated on his mother. I don’t want to get lumped in with that vibe.

  “Stop right there,” I say. “Your ideas of fairness are no different from mine. I don’t want you to help us by cheating. Never in a million years would I ask you to do that.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s just been . . . bad up here. It’s kind of shaken my confidence.”

  “Well, in two days you’ll be back down here,” I say, trying to boost his spirits. “And we are going to have an amazing time. You can be confident about that.”

  There’s a brief pause, and I wonder if he’s about to deliver some bad news. I’ve secretly been worried that because it’s so late in the summer, his parents might just have him stay up there and not come back at all. Instead he says, “I’ve missed you even more than I thought I would. And that’s saying something, because I thought I’d miss you a lot.”

  I let this sink in for a moment and smile.

  “I miss you . . . so much,” I say. “And, I would never want you to go against your sense of right and wrong. I promise you, if there’s something to be found in the rules, I will find it.”

  We talk for a little bit more, but I can tell he’s worn out, so I wish him sweet dreams and blow him about a thousand kisses. When we end the call, there’s a brief moment when the image on the screen freezes and the look on his face kind of breaks my heart. He seems so troubled, and I want to be able to ease t
hat pain but have no idea how. Then it disappears, and I’m left staring at my computer screen.

  I begin to obsess over the call the instant it’s over. I’m not sure why, but I feel uneasy about it. Everything he said was positive. Not only does he miss me, but he misses me a lot. And he can’t wait to see me again. Still, there’s a knot of uncertainty in my stomach. I give myself a little mental pep talk and pull up the Parks and Recreation Web site and go to the link for the King of the Beach. It’s just past midnight and I am determined to find whatever he thinks is important in the rules.

  There are more rules than you’d expect. The King of the Beach is part of what’s known as the Summer Series. There are contests held all over Florida, and surfers earn points by competing in those contests, which count toward the series championship as well. Because of that, there are twenty-three pages of rules I have to scour through. They address everything from eligibility to how each surfer is judged to guidelines set by the series sponsor and ones specific to the contest in Pearl Beach. I read them as closely and carefully as I can, but nothing strikes me as important.

  At 12:45, I decide to print them out, and I then arrange them across the floor of my room. By 1:15, I’m convinced that because Ben doesn’t know much about surfing, he thinks something is more important than it is. I’m going to call it a night and go to bed, but then I see my new surfboard.

  The Eye of the Storm. It’s pretty awesome and inspires me to dig some more.

  At exactly 1:47 I see three words that catch my attention. I check the page numbers to make sure I have them in the right order. Then I reread the rule a few times. I go back to the Parks and Rec Web site and make sure the rules I printed are the most up to date. By 2:03, I am convinced. Those three words aren’t just significant.

  They change everything.

  What’s so important that we had to meet before the shop opens?” Sophie asks. “On my day off, I might add.”

  “Three words,” I say.

  “If those three words are ‘I love you,’ do not expect a hug.”