by Paul Mosier
Mom looks not too overwhelmingly uncool in her bathing suit and wrap as we head down the hill on Ocean Park Boulevard. I’m wearing a bikini top and my newly fashioned cutoffs, flip-flops, and dark sunglasses with bright green frames. Also practically a whole tube of sunscreen.
“Show me the way,” Mom says happily. “I’m so proud of you for learning to find your bearings in the neighborhood.”
We walk on Ocean Park Boulevard, down the hill, just like Summer and I have been doing.
“Look up at those blossoms!” I point to the tall stalks above us, like I’m the first to discover them. “Have you ever seen so many hummingbirds at once?”
“Wow!” Mom smiles, but I know she’s thinking about Third Street just ahead, and wondering how she’s gonna get me through it. She takes my hand. “So . . .”
“Look over there!” I say. Mom wants to distract me, but I’ll do it for her. “That’s the Ferris wheel at the pier! Me and Summer rode it at sunset. We should go there after lunch!”
“Okay!”
“And beyond, in the distance, those are the Santa Monica Mountains. They get purple when the sun goes down. Summer says there are mountain lions living there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah!”
We arrive at Main Street. “Pinkie Promise is that way. Remember how we went there on our first night in town?”
“I do.”
“We can go there at the end of the day. Summer and I have been there together. Lots of times.”
As we walk down Main Street, I look at the reflection of my legs every chance I get, but I try to make it not too obvious. There’s always something I might be looking at in the storefront windows, like shoes and purses and a dog lying at its owner’s feet in a coffee shop, but also my legs looking not too dreadfully skinny or pale. Maybe not as athletic as Summer’s legs, but looking at least like they’ve been taken out and used every now and then. Especially recently.
We arrive at the taco shop, its tables spilling onto the sidewalk.
“This is it!” I say. “Do you wanna eat outside?”
“Of course!” Mom says. “It’s too beautiful not to.”
The host seats us under an umbrella on the front patio. Mom studies the menu. I know what I want but I pretend to look at it too. But I guess I’m really looking at Mom.
“Squid tacos?” She smirks. “I think I’ll pass on that, thank you.”
“The veggie tacos have avocado. They’re so good! That’s what Summer and I had.”
She smiles and puts her menu aside. “Then that’s what I’ll have.”
We give our orders to the server. I sip my lemon water while Mom gazes across the table at me, looking happy. A breeze moves through her hair, and she turns to face it.
I feel a buzz in my back pocket. I try to ignore it.
“Are you gonna check it?” Mom asks.
“I already know who it is. It’s gonna be another sad text from Fern.”
Mom stares at me. Obviously neither one of us can say anything about anything else until I check it. I pull the phone from my back pocket.
Remember how we used to debate whether it was me or you a boy was checking out? I think the boys must have always been looking at you. Because now when I’m alone at the mall or at the pool I’m totally invisible.
Just like that I feel terrible. And I deserve to feel terrible. I stuff the phone back into my pocket.
“When are you gonna let me see Fern again?”
That pretty much wipes the smile from Mom’s face.
“Well, do you think that’s a good idea? Being boxed up at a mall and refusing to see your other friends, or make new friends, or do the things that used to be important to you?”
I frown. “I don’t have any other friends. Not at home, anyway.”
“Of course you do. You just need to reach out. And stop refusing them.”
A tray of food goes by to another table.
“What if it wasn’t Fern’s fault?” I ask. “What if it was all my fault?”
She clears her throat. “I do think it’s good for you to acknowledge your part in it.”
“But the—”
Her phone buzzes on the table, interrupting. She glances at a text message without reaching for it, and smiles at me.
She crosses her legs.
I look at her, then at her phone. I watch as she uncrosses her legs.
I begin again. “The day I missed the piano recital—”
Her phone rings this time. She leans forward and picks it up. She says, “Yes, yes, yes. Of course.” Then she puts her phone down.
I turn away to the view across the street. It’s nothing—it’s a liquor store or a little market.
I feel Mom’s hand reach to mine.
“I’m so sorry, Juillet. Duty calls.”
I’m not gonna turn toward her. Especially if my eyes are suddenly wet.
“I hate to do this. To leave you.” Her hand withdraws. “Do you mind?”
She knows I mind and that she’s gonna go whether I like it or not. So I don’t bother answering.
“I’m so sorry, Juillet.” She fishes in her purse. “Here’s some money. You can stay and eat the delicious tacos and do whatever you’d like. And please bring my order back to the cottage. You know the way back, right? Of course you do—you brought me here.” She waits in vain for me to respond, or to look at her. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
Her chair legs drag on the cement as she rises and hurries away. I count to ten before turning to watch her go, then glance at the hundred-dollar bill on the table, pinned beneath my water glass.
Money is never the problem. Hundred-dollar bills are always present.
So it’s another date with Mom cut short.
I lean away from the table and look down at my jeans cut short. I wonder what Summer will think of them.
My day gets better when Summer knocks on the door of our cottage a couple of hours later, and takes me to the beach. After chowing down on veggie burgers and sweet potato fries at the snack bar, she and I are lying on towels near the water’s edge. But even if we weren’t beached from the feast, there’d be no boogie boarding today. Summer says it would be a waste of time with the waves so choppy from the wind. We’re wearing our bathing suits just so we can get our gills wet.
Summer turns over onto her stomach. “Spray me?”
The sun is getting lower over the Pacific. It’s beginning to make everything look golden. But it’s still high enough to require sunscreen.
I take the can of sunscreen out of the canvas bag and shake it, then direct it up and down her legs, her back, her arms and shoulders.
Her right hand reaches back to a spot on her hip. “Can you spray extra right here?”
I lean in and look at the area she’s indicated. I give another layer to her lower back, right side, just above her bikini bottom, where a series of nearly white marks arcs toward her side, like a dotted line. The sunscreen makes the tiny golden hairs on her skin get shinier.
“What are these marks?” I ask.
She takes a moment to answer. “It’s a scar. The sunscreen keeps it from getting worse.”
Sitting above her, I study the line of marks on her back, emerging from her swimsuit bottom, curling toward her waist.
“How’d you get it?”
Again she doesn’t answer right away. I’m starting to worry that her reluctance has something to do with the secrecy surrounding her home life.
“Men in gray suits” comes her facedown, towel-muffled reply.
“Huh?”
Another delay. Then, “Shark.”
I draw away quickly and fall to the sand.
“A shark?”
She rolls over and sits up. “A very small shark. Barely bigger than me. And he just gave me a nibble. He bit my butt and said no thanks.”
“He bit your butt?”
“I barely even bled. Sharks like to eat fat things like sea lions. But I’m lean. See?” She jumps to
her feet and strikes a pose. “And so are you. And all humans, really, compared to sea lions. So don’t worry about it.”
“So they have to bite you to figure out whether they want to eat all of you?”
“It wasn’t even here.” She drops back to the towel. “It was up by San Francisco. It’s much more sharky up there. And down here we have the Big Kahuna to protect us. One time he punched a shark right in the nose. Did you know that?” She searches my expression. “Of course you didn’t know. But he did. A whole line of surfers saw it. Scared it right out of the bay.”
I frown. “You’re acting like it’s no big deal.”
“Are you kidding? It sucked! He ruined my favorite board. And my mom wouldn’t let me back in the water for practically a week.”
I stare at her, then look off at the ocean, watching for dorsal fins. I don’t know why I’m letting Summer drag me into her life of danger. Then I smile, a small smile, because I know that the next time the waves are decent, I’ll be back out there with her.
13
EARLY SATURDAY MORNING, Summer and I are standing by one of the lifeguard shacks with a group of mostly ancient people wearing matching aqua-blue T-shirts. She talked me into helping this group—the Beachcombers—pick up garbage on the sand. Where I come from they make prisoners pick up garbage, but maybe there aren’t enough prisoners here.
The apparent leader of the group—an old guy with a backpack of supplies—hands me an aqua-blue shirt of my very own. I smile grimly.
“Put it on!” Summer says excitedly.
It’s more the sort of color my mom would choose for me. Plus it’s got the words Beachcombers—Keepin’ It Clean!
“This isn’t exactly a cool shirt,” I say.
“Yes it is! You just don’t know it yet.”
Instead of rolling my eyes, I pull the aqua-blue shirt over the black one I’m wearing, which in turn covers my swimsuit top.
Then the old guy with the backpack raises a megaphone to his mouth and speaks. There’s something wrong with the megaphone, or how he’s using it, so instead of hearing him speak we get a series of excruciatingly loud screeches while everyone around covers their ears. After a few very long seconds he lowers the megaphone and smiles.
Summer uncovers her ears and turns to me. “Basically he said we’re gonna fan out across the beach and make our way north at the plodding pace kept by Gladys over there.” Summer points to a woman in a bikini who looks about a hundred and ten years old, with stringy hair and a walker. “We’ll pick up all the trash we see between here and the pier, and if our bags get full or our latex gloves rip, we can get new supplies from him. Also, you and me get to be at the water’s edge since first-timers get dibs on seashells. And you’re a first-timer.” She smiles.
“Is that why you’re making me do this? So you can get dibs on seashells?”
“No! This is about paying our respects to the ocean, and the surf gods. This is just part of the deal.”
“Okay.”
I follow her down to the wet sand, and we form a line with the other blue shirts that extends all the distant way to where the beach meets the grass of the park. There are a few dozen of us, spaced ten feet apart. But Summer and I stay closer than that.
The megaphone makes another unpleasant screech, sending seagulls scattering, and the beachcombing begins like a race nobody wants to win.
Summer smiles at me, then kicks at a wave that rolls across our ankles.
“How often do you do this?” I ask.
“Every two weeks. There are other groups too. Like the Crabby Scavengers.”
I reach down for a plastic bottle cap that’s dancing with the tide. “It seems pointless.”
Summer stops. “What do you mean?”
I drop the bottle cap into my bag. “People keep on littering.”
She begins walking again. “And we keep picking it up.”
This makes very little sense to me, like she’s choosing to be on the wrong side of a miserable equation.
“And,” she says, bending for a seashell, which she examines and discards, “not all of the garbage is because of litterbugs. Seagulls pick it out of the metal cans and scatter it. The wind carries it. And anyway, it doesn’t seem pointless when you’re picking it up. It doesn’t seem like a problem that can’t be solved. It feels like a problem that you are solving, right then. With every piece you pick up.”
I reach for a broken toy shovel and drop it in my bag.
Then Summer gasps, and throws her bag to the dry sand. She pulls off her latex gloves, bends down with her hands cupped together to scoop at the sand where the water has just drawn away.
I get closer to see, and I hear her speaking quietly, words I can’t make out, like she’s soothing a baby.
She picks something from her wet handfuls, then drops the sand away and lays what she’s found on her palm. She turns and stands, holding it to me.
“Look!”
I do. It’s the tiniest sand dollar ever. More like a sand dime. I’ve seen sand dollars in collections and at the lobster restaurant back home, but they were closer to pancake-size.
“So pretty,” I say.
“For you.”
I look at her eyes. “Really?”
“This is so delicate it can’t share my bag with any other shells.” She unzips a small cloth bag hanging against her hip. “And don’t bump into me!”
We make our way down the beach, all the way to the pier. Even though Gladys with her walker did her best, she dropped out a ways back. But most everyone else kept up and filled their bags with trash. We hand them in to another old guy, who does the namaste bow to us with his hands held together like a prayer. Even the old people do the namaste thing here. I guess they were probably the first ones doing it.
“See you in two weeks!” Summer tells him cheerfully.
We drink a lemonade on the pier and rest for a while, watching the sand fill up with people.
“We’ve paid our respects to the beach,” she says. “We’ve paid our dues.”
I’m too tired from the walk to add much. More the bending down and standing up than the walk. But I feel good, like Summer said I would. Like I really did do something useful.
Then Summer says it’s time to go. “We have to go back the way we came!”
“Can’t we take the bus?”
“We have to see the work we’ve done!” She takes me by the hand, and we go down the steps from the pier, onto the sand, and back to the south. “Look for garbage!”
I do. There isn’t any.
“Keep looking!” she says. “First one to find some gets to pick it up!”
I see an aluminum can standing in the sand, but a guy stretched out on a blanket reaches for it and takes a drink from it.
We walk and walk, and while the beach is filling up with people, there’s no garbage. It’s my first-ever look at a beach that’s spotless.
Finally, halfway back, Summer spots something. She bends down and picks up a cigarette butt, frowning at it. “One time I walked all the way back without seeing anything. This was probably buried in the sand and someone kicked it up.”
Then a potato-chip bag drifts by in the breeze. Summer chases it and steps on it, picks it up, then puts the cigarette butt in the potato-chip bag and keeps walking.
It makes me feel sad and a little crazy. We just walked with dozens of people, scouring the beach, and already it’s getting littered again.
But then I remember that in two weeks, Summer and the people in aqua-blue shirts will be back at it, cleaning the beach. I decide in this moment that I’ll be with them. Because I’ve bought into this—this girl and her beach, her waves. What this place has given me, and what it promises to give me . . . I’ve got a feeling it’s something I need to give back.
In the evening I’m sitting at the big table in the front room eating strawberries with whipped cream. It’s my dinner, more or less, though I’ve been eating all day. Walking and running all over this town makes me const
antly hungry. I’ve got the can of whipped cream turned upside down, reloading the strawberries, when I hear a knock. I turn and see Summer’s face entering the room through the dark window beside the door.
“Hey! Can I have some of that?”
As I recall, I asked her not to surprise me by having her head suddenly appear in the window, but at least this time she knocked first. And I suppose it’s become more difficult to scare me. So I smile as I rise from my chair and walk over to the window with the can of whipped cream, shaking it as I go. She opens her mouth and tilts her head. I turn the can over, press the nozzle, and fill her mouth. She swallows.
“Yumzers. Hey, there’s a party at the Big Kahuna’s. Wanna go?”
“What kind of party?”
“You know. A party party. Potato chips sittin’ there. Guitars playin’.”
I put the cap on the whipped cream. “What kind of people?”
“Neighborhood people. Surfer people.”
She tilts her head again. I take the cap back off and fill her mouth with the last of the whipped cream.
“What will people be wearing?”
Summer points at me. “That. But they won’t look as good as you do.”
I glance down at myself, in part to break my eye contact with Summer. I’m wearing a hoodie that identifies me as a lifeguard for the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. Below it are my new cutoffs.
“Don’t worry,” Summer says, “the actual lifeguards at the party won’t think you’re uncool for wearing a lifeguard hoodie.”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Come on!” she says. “Before the guacamole disappears. The Big Kahuna makes guac almost as well as he shreds.”
I come outside and join her in the cool night air. She’s still wearing the Beachcombers tee, but she’s put on a long-sleeved plaid shirt over it, buttoned halfway. She has cutoffs too, but I keep myself from smiling about that, about us being matchers. She grabs my hand and pulls me down the sidewalk, then across the street.