Picture Perfect

by Catherine Clark

  “And won’t we be?” I asked, wondering what exactly he had in mind.

  “Sure, of course. I just meant…they might not like the concept of us all going scuba diving or something like that.”

  “Great idea—I’ve always wanted to try that,” said Spencer.

  “Me too,” added Heather. “Love those fins. Dead sexy.”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll go scuba diving. We’ll totally do that,” I said.

  “Why not? It’s a great idea,” Spencer said.

  “It’s not a great idea. Trust me. You’ll have a mysterious accident somewhere off the pier,” I said. “You’ll end up on Dateline NBC.”

  “No, you will,” Spencer said. “As a…a fun predator. Someone who tries to find and then kill all the fun.” He stared at me, and I felt very uncomfortable all of a sudden.

  “Me? I’m no fun-killer,” I said. “You’re the one who hates lighthouses and refuses to get in the picture.”

  “I’m just thinking ahead. I can see you Photoshopping me into something really embarrassing.”

  I took out my camera and turned it back on. “I hadn’t thought of that yet, but thanks for the suggestion.” I started to focus on Spencer again, noticing the small scar near his left ear where he’d gotten cut when we had a winter reunion once and he sliced his face with an ice skate in a bad fall. This will probably sound weird, but I loved that scar. I could look at it forever. It reminded me of being kids together and how easy it was to just play all day long, without ever having to talk or delve into anything deeper than whether we wanted fries or onion rings with our lunch. (Me: fries; Spencer: onion rings; Heather: celery sticks; Adam: ketchup.) And in another way, something about it was sort of sexy, too.

  “Quit it!” Spencer said, pushing my arm to try to get the camera, which I was still pointing at him, lost in memory—or something like it. “What about you, why don’t you get in the picture?” We were suddenly wrestling for my little camera, and I was so worried it would fall to the ground and break that I wrapped my arms around his waist and tried to trap him by the edge of the lighthouse wall.

  “Okay, you guys, lighten up. We don’t need someone falling off the edge.” Adam grabbed my arm and separated us.

  “What is with you guys? Let’s quit arguing and focus, here. Suppose we do get a car.” Heather took a pack of gum out of her pocket and popped a square piece into her mouth. “Which is a great idea, but like it or not, we’re going to be traveling as a pack. Where should we go?”

  “I’ve studied the guidebook, and there are lots of possibilities,” said Spencer.

  I sighed. “I’m sure my mother’s already planned group outings to all of them.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t go twice,” Spencer argued. “We’d see things differently. You guys are too pessimistic.”

  “No, more like realistic.” Heather offered the gum to the rest of us.

  “I’m thinking of another r word, actually,” Spencer said as he took a piece.

  I looked over at Heather. “He must mean ravishing.”

  “Or else really, really, r—”

  “Revolting?” suggested Adam.

  “Rigid.” Spencer stood ramrod straight, arms at his side.

  “You guys fight like two old married couples,” my dad commented as he passed by us.

  The four of us looked at each other, and Spencer made an exaggerated shiver.

  Oh, yeah, like it was such a horrible thought. He could be so arrogant. How could I even have cared about him or his stupid scar, once upon a time?

  “Excuse us,” said Heather. “We have to get back to our actual life.” She dragged me toward the spiral staircase. “Everyone knows that if you want to find out where to go in a place, you ask the locals. So, let’s find some.”

  I followed her down the winding stairs, noticing that there were some okay-looking guys on their way up, and wondering if we should turn around and follow them.

  We stopped outside the lighthouse door and surveyed the parking lot.

  All I saw was a steady stream of tourists, mostly of the middle-aged variety. Cars with Ohio, Illinois, and New York license plates cluttered the parking lot, and several people who passed us looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun in months—or a lighthouse, judging from their excitement.

  “Do they look local?” I asked, pointing to a couple of guys on bicycles coasting into the parking lot. We watched as they rode up to an ice-cream vendor parked in the lot.

  “Who cares where they live?” said Heather, and she dragged me over to where they stood in line, casually slipping into place behind them. Before I could think of a way to meet them, of anything slightly witty or interesting to say, Heather tapped the taller one on the shoulder. He turned around, a confused look on his face.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hey.” Heather smiled up at him—he was at least a foot and a half taller than her. “I was just wondering, um, where are you guys staying? Because we totally want to rent bikes, too, but we don’t know where.”

  “They’re not rented,” he said. “They’re ours. We live here.”

  “Oh, you live here? Really? How cool,” Heather said.

  “Really cool,” I added before I could stop myself from saying something so ridiculously redundant. They both looked at me as if I were a bit short in the IQ department.

  “We could give you the names of a couple of rental places,” his friend suggested.

  “That would be great. Thanks. So, where do people go here in Corolla?” Heather asked. “I mean, for fun.”

  “It’s pronounced Cur-all-a. Not Corolla, like the car,” the taller one said. “Not that anyone cares,” he muttered to his friend.

  Somehow I didn’t think we would end up going anywhere with these guys. They already thought we were idiots.

  “We care,” Heather told him. “We’re going to college in this town in Michigan that nobody can pronounce—Pishnachaumegon.”

  “Bless you,” the taller guy teased, and we all laughed.

  “See? We understand,” Heather said. “So can you tell us—where should we go? I mean, where do people here go at night?” Heather pressed. “Or, I guess we’re staying in Kill Devil Hills, a little south. So what’s down there?”

  They started rattling off names of places, clubs, and it struck me they were probably old enough to go to bars, whereas we weren’t even close.

  Heather must have had the same thought, because she stopped jotting down names on her arm, and said, “You know, I almost forgot. There’s this party tomorrow night. Not at our house, but next door.”

  My eyes widened. What was she doing?

  “Seriously?” asked the taller one.

  She nodded. “We’re staying on the beach—come find us, we’ll hit the party.” She quickly jotted down the address on the edge of a lighthouse brochure, then added her cell phone number and handed it to him. “My name’s Heather, and this is Emily.”

  “Hey. I’m Dean,” he said. “This is Chase.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Call us if you’re in the neighborhood, okay?” Heather said, smiling up at Dean.

  “Cool.” He nodded, and sounded genuine when he said, “We will.”

  “See you later!” Chase held up his cone in a kind of toast motion to us, then they got back onto their bikes and rode off. They managed to hold their ice-cream treats in one hand and steer with the other, something I’m sure I could never accomplish, and definitely not with people watching me.

  Heather and I laughed as she grabbed our ice creams and we walked over to where the guys were waiting for us, outside the van.

  Spencer was leaning against the van, foot propped behind him. “Don’t tell me you just tried to pick up a couple of guys at the ice-cream truck. That’s so middle school of you.”

  “We didn’t,” Heather said.

  “Good.” Spencer nodded.

  “We didn’t try, I mean.” Heather smiled, then we both burst out laughing again. “We
succeeded,” she said.

  “Yeah, right,” Adam scoffed. “That’s why they rode away at top speed.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said. “They’re coming to the party tomorrow.”

  “What party?”

  “The one next door at Blake’s. I invited them,” Heather announced.

  “I hate to have to point this out, but…that’s not your party,” Spencer said. “How could you invite them?”

  “Oh, come on. You know how these beach things are. Totally casual, laid back. Haven’t you ever watched a surfer movie? So,” Heather said, turning to me. “Which one do you want?”

  “Which one? Um, how about the sherbet—”

  “Not that, silly. The guys.” Heather handed me the cup of rainbow sherbet. “Do you want the one with the blue shirt or the one with the orange shirt? Chase or Dean?”

  “Wow, you guys are picky,” Spencer commented drily. “I thought you only dated guys with red shirts.”

  I raised my eyebrows and looked at him wearing a Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream T-shirt. “Well, I don’t know, but green shirts are definitely out of the question.”

  “Ouch. Ouch!” Adam pretended to dab blood from Spencer’s nose.

  We were arguing about whether it was ethical to invite people to a party that wasn’t yours when our parents marched up. My mother stared at me. “Ice cream? Honey, you’ll ruin your lunch.”

  “It’s not ice cream. It’s sherbet,” I said.

  “But we’re going to Awful Arthur’s. Home of the Happy Oyster,” she said.

  “Well, then. Forget this,” I said, tossing my nearly empty container into a trash can. “Not that I like oysters or have ever tried one or wanted to try one.”

  “Is it true what they say about oysters?” Spencer asked.

  “What?” My mother put her hand on her throat. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

  “They’re supposed to have an aphrodisiac effect,” said Spencer. “Do they?”

  Heather stared at him, then scrunched up her face. “You mean they make you afraid to leave the house?”

  “No, that’s agoraphobic,” Spencer said as we all laughed.

  “Let me get this straight. You got into Linden, and I didn’t,” Adam said to Heather. “Really?”

  “You know how they want a very diverse student body,” Heather said. “Well, I’m diverse.”

  “As diverse as they get,” Spencer muttered.

  “So what does it mean?” Heather asked.

  “It means we should be going,” my mother said as she opened the van’s side door. “Quickly. Climb in, everyone!”

  Spencer got into the van. “Heather, it means that eating oysters makes you have certain thoughts. About members of the opposite sex.”

  “Really. Interesting,” she commented. “Maybe we should look into that.”

  I felt myself blushing at the very suggestion as I sat in the second row back.

  “Maybe you don’t need to, Heather,” Adam said, laughing as he dropped into the spot beside her.

  “Hey, I saw you checking out that girl in the gift shop—” Heather began.

  “Me? I was not.”

  “Yeah, she was too busy asking for my number,” said Spencer, tapping his cell phone in front of my face as if that proved anything.

  “Oh, right. You?” I scoffed.

  “Why not me?” he said. Our eyes met, and he—unlike me—didn’t seem uncomfortable at all. On the one hand, I was glad he’d forgotten our encounter—on the other hand, I hated that he had. Was he so arrogant that he’d just brushed aside the incident as a harmless crush? And how had I ever had a crush on him?

  “Check it out.” Spencer started to show us a picture on his phone.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh. That’s my neighbor’s dog at home. She just had puppies, so…”

  We all laughed.

  “I knew you were making up that gift-shop girl story,” Adam said to him. “Since when has anyone ever asked for your number?”

  “All the time,” Spencer replied. “Constantly. Just like you’re constantly going out,” he said to me.

  Touché, I thought. “Yeah, well, you take really bad pictures,” I said, looking at his phone. “Of cute puppies.”

  “It’s a phone,” he said, snapping it closed.

  After lunch, the four of us gathered on the beach outside the house. Adam hadn’t stopped trying to convince us to play a sport—any kind of sport, he pleaded desperately, as if he were suffering withdrawal being around us.

  “Two-on-two, come on,” he urged. “Just like beach volleyball in the Olympics.”

  “All right, fine,” Heather sighed. “But you’re being really obnoxious.”

  “And you’re bound to be disappointed because I’m not very good at this, okay? And by ‘not very good,’ I mean, the last time I played I was probably a foot shorter,” I said.

  “Come on, just try for fifteen minutes,” Adam said. “If you hate it, we’ll stop and…I don’t know. Play cards or something.”

  Spencer tossed the ball to me. “Look at it this way, Em. If the next-door Neanderthals can play it—”

  “You haven’t even talked to them,” I said. “How can you insult them?”

  “It’s easy. They’re a type.”

  “You’re a type. A really judgmental and rude type.” I tossed the ball into the air and took a whack with my fist. I ended up spiking the ball, and it slammed into the sand right beside Adam, who jumped.

  “Did you see her vertical leap?” He stood back in amazement. “You should have been playing basketball all these years, not ballet.”

  Spencer stared at me. “Were you aiming at me? Because you missed.”

  “I call Emily for my team. In perpetuity,” Adam said.

  “Purple what?” asked Heather.

  “He means forever. For all time,” I explained.

  “Adam. I didn’t know you felt that way about Emily,” Heather teased.

  “Shut up. It’s a game. I care about winning,” Adam said. “Now get over there and play.”

  I found myself wishing that Blake and his friends would see us and come out, to prove Spencer wrong. Apparently Heather had the same thought, because she said, “Hold on a second, let’s see if we can get some more players. Come on, Emily—come with me!”

  “Great idea,” I said, joining her. We ran up to the steps to their deck and looked around for Blake, Trevor, and the other guys. The place looked deserted. We went down to the pool on the bottom level, and even knocked on the back door.

  “Not home. Too bad,” she said.

  “It was still a good idea. Except then they’d have to see me play,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t have to actually play, just pretend while you made small talk,” Heather said.

  “Oh, is that how you do it?” I teased her, and we jumped off the bottom step back onto the beach.

  “So? Are they coming?” asked Adam, looking impatient.

  “Nope. Not home,” Heather announced.

  “Probably out riding dune buggies and Jet Skis and trampling the earth,” Spencer commented.

  “Yeah, okay, Al Gore. Or maybe they’re on a walk,” I said.

  “I’m just saying—did you see how much trash they left on the deck?” Spencer asked.

  “They’re probably separating stuff for recycling,” I said.

  “Come on, you don’t really think—”

  “Quit stalling, Spence,” Adam interrupted. “Are we here to argue or to play?” He launched the volleyball across the net, and his serve nearly popped Spencer in the face.

  “Game on!” Spencer said as he managed to get it back across the net to me.

  As I leaped for the ball, I thought, Please don’t let Blake come back right when I do something incredibly stupid. Please!

  Before getting into bed that night, I walked out onto the tiny balcony just outside my bedroom. I didn’t see or hear much of anything from Blake’s house, b
ut the moon was amazing. It wasn’t a full moon, but it was close—maybe a day or two away. I went back inside to get my camera and tried to get some shots of it.

  I’d taken a few photos when I heard some guys talking. I looked down below and saw Blake, Trevor, and some other guys heading across the parking lot, in the direction of the main drag.

  “There goes your friend,” a voice suddenly said in the darkness.

  “Ack!” I let out a little scream—or maybe it was a big scream—as I nearly toppled over the edge of the balcony’s railing.

  Blake and Trevor turned around and peered back at the house, trying to see where the dying-animal noise had come from. I stepped into the shadow as much as I could, but also gave a pathetic friendly wave, in case they could see me. Thankfully, they didn’t seem to notice me, and they turned around and kept walking, heading toward town.

  Spencer leaned over the balcony that was diagonally downstairs from mine and peered up at me. “Good evening,” he said in a creepy, fake-Dracula voice.

  “That was you? Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Embarrass me like that,” I said. “How did you know I was out here?”

  “I heard your door slide open. Light emerged. Et cetera.”

  “Well, next time give me some warning or something!” I pleaded.

  “Oh, sure. I’ll just yell, ‘Hi, Emily, what are you doing out here, are you looking for the guys next door, because they’re right there!’ Or, you know, something like that.”

  If I’d had anything to throw at him, besides my camera and a plastic deck chair, I would have. “What were you doing out here, anyway?” I asked as I sat down and propped my feet on the railing.

  “Oh. Well, I was thinking of sleeping out here.” He leaned on the railing, looking up at me.

  “Really? Isn’t it kind of hot?” A couple of motorcycles accelerated from a stop sign out on the road. “And occasionally loud?” I asked.

  “I want some privacy,” he said. “My parents and I have a suite. So even though I have my own room, I kind of don’t have my own room. You know what I mean?”