Mrs. Short handed me a slip of paper today on a dusty football field, but that doesn’t mean anything’s changed, not even a bit, no matter what Mom believes. Maybe it’s different for Diana and Marilee and the others. I could ask them. They’ll be around for the summer at least. But when was the last time I really talked to them? Not this year. Probably not last. There’s just too many ghosts of too many promises between us. Like, we swore to each other that we’d go away to school, we’d study abroad in Greece or Spain or Egypt, we’d switch countries as regularly as we changed our tampons.
Unlikely.
Mom might think I’m only staying long enough to help them through a rough patch at the restaurant, to squeeze in more time with Dad, to make Important Decisions about my future. But for all he’ll never say it, I’m pretty sure Dad at least knows the truth.
I roll over on the bed and swallow my empanadas, one after the other, wondering how Lucas the lifeguard can help pass the time.
FOUR
The Lost Lagoon’s been open only a few weeks, yet somehow it manages to look like a park on the edge of collapse.
Part of it’s the whole Atlantis vibe. I follow the directions on the billboard on I-25, park in the half-full lot, and walk the path to the front entrance. It’s shaped like a tumbledown coliseum, fake crumbled columns and all. Inside, the ticket stand and turnstiles are bathed in dim blue light like an underwater cave. I flash my El Trampero High ID to get the student price—might as well make some use of my education post-graduation—and resurface in the park. It’s big. Not, like, Florida-theme-park big, but it’s New Mexico big. I count five waterslides soaring over the tourists, with plastic aquatic plants and vines twined around the tubes. Larger-than-life severed heads of faux-marble statues border an unnaturally blue wave pool. There’s an extra-depressing chipped figure of Venus in her seashell outside the portable bathrooms, a kid’s cherry ICEE upchucked on her toes.
Half the attractions are still fenced off with Under Construction and Coming Soon! signs on the chain-link fence, so I start my search for Lucas at Neptune’s Pool, shaped like a moat around a miniature ruined temple. The lifeguard stationed on the island points me to a sandwich shop near the front of the park, the Sunken Sub, where Lucas is apparently on his lunch break. It’s one of two eateries in the park; the other’s a seafood restaurant—the sort of place that spells all the crab on the menu with a K.
Sure enough, I duck inside the Sub—there’s no actual door, but a curtain of streamers like multicolored seaweed—and spot him and his bright red suit in a corner booth.
Turning my back, I stand in plain sight at the front of the café. I study the sandwich case as if I have a great interest in lunch meats, leaning across the glass on tiptoe for maximum length of leg and maximum firmness of ass beneath my cuffed denim shorts. My calves are starting to tremble a little by the time he finally shouts, “Savannah!” I spin around, and he waves me over.
Would it be too much to say that I sway toward him? I don’t not sway. I take my time strolling to the booth, anyway.
Lucas tips his familiar white visor. “How’s the Sub of the Day?”
How should I know? I was concentrating so hard on being looked at, I spared not a glance for anything. I lean against the wall beside the booth, painted with fishes and eels and anemones, and pop my hip to the side. “Looks fantastic. So glad I came all this way just for a sandwich.”
He grins, all white teeth. It’s going well so far—a little cliché, maybe—but then I’m distracted. Because across the booth from Lucas is a girl hunched over an overly toasted panini that Dad would’ve tossed in a bonfire before serving, crushing her french fries into mashed potatoes with her fork tines.
“Oh hey, someone I want you to meet,” Lucas says. “This is my little sister, Leigh.”
She slouches back against her seat and looks up at me, and it’s like staring at a smaller, skinnier Lucas. Leigh’s hair, ambiguously trapped between brown and blond like Lucas’s, is chopped even shorter than her brother’s—tufts of it brush her ears and ruffle across her forehead. Same strangely dark eyebrows and eyelashes and big eyes, though hers are a muddier kind of hazel. Even her clothes could be his. She crosses her arms over a baggy boy’s tank top, crisp white and high around her neck, huge around her tanned shoulders.
“Do you work here too?” I ask.
He laughs. “God forbid! We’re still hiring, but they have this policy. You gotta be eighteen, and Leigh-Bee’s only seventeen.”
“Don’t call me that.” She scowls, swatting her brother’s hand away as he digs for a surviving fry.
“We live out in Los Cerrillos, but she’ll be a senior at Santa Fe Prep,” he continues.
“She has ears.”
“You like Santa Fe Prep?” I ask Leigh.
“I don’t know yet,” she says grudgingly. “We’re new.”
“My condolences.”
Lucas looks up. “Why, is it that bad here?”
“No,” I lie, biting my cheek. I was aiming for salty, but landed on sad. “There’s lots of stuff to do if you know where to look.” I grasp for an example. “Have you been to the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid?”
He shakes his head.
“It’s a lot of locals—bikers and tourists, but it’s pretty cool. I could show you sometime.” I tug on my necklace where it falls just above the V in my V-neck.
The noise Leigh makes is like the moan of a dying animal in pain.
Lucas winces. He slides his empty glass across the table toward her and points to the soda dispenser across the cafeteria. “Go get me a refill, Leigh-Bee.”
“Why?”
“You’re eating your lunch free, is why.”
“No, it’s costing me,” she says, and takes his glass and smiles through gritted teeth. It’s not Lucas’s smile. And her eyes, they’re sharper. I don’t know where the thought comes from, but if Lucas is soft-serve, she’s more like a snow cone.
And just a guess, but she doesn’t seem impressed by me, either.
When she’s gone, he laughs, looks at me pleadingly. “Don’t mind my sister. She’s shy.”
Shy isn’t the word I’d use. She’s Karen Goodstein, is what she is. Karen was a transplant from Connecticut in eighth grade. Strange enough on its own, since nobody really moves to La Trampa, the same way none of us leave. She sat in the back of every classroom, sighing mournfully. She sighed her way through school assemblies. She sighed while meandering back and forth across the basketball court in gym. Hers was an all-purpose sigh that said: I once had a rich, full, East Coast life, and now, I have this place.
Then again, I heard that even Karen Goodstein went to the party in the arroyo after graduation.
“No problem,” I tell Lucas, sliding into the booth across from him. Meanwhile, Leigh’s already abandoned her brother’s cup by the dispenser and wandered away. Probably for the best.
“But I’m glad you came by,” Lucas says, regaining my attention. “I’m driving out to Santa Cruz Lake this weekend. There’s supposed to be a meteor shower Saturday night, and maybe you want to come up? It should be something.”
My smile slips a little. The stockroom at Silvia’s is one thing, or the back seat of a rusted gold El Camino in a school parking lot, or the semi-sheltered patch of desert behind the football field. But a trip up into the mountains with a guy I just met? It’s not like I’m Susie Safe Choices, but even for me, that’s out there.
Maybe he sees this in my face, because he hurries to add, “Leigh and I are both going. We always watched showers up there, best place in town. Or outside of it.”
“I thought you guys were new?”
“New-ish. We moved from here to Boston with our mom when I was thirteen. Leigh was eleven. Dad stayed in the area, and we just moved back to live with him when our school years ended. But I came out a few weeks beforehand, applying for jobs and visiting the college and stuff. That’s how I walked into the Lost Lagoon.”
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br /> “You were in college in Boston?”
He nods. “I started at UMass last fall, but we . . . I wanted a change, and Leigh came too. So I’ll be at UNM in September, and Leigh will be at Santa Fe. You’ll like her when she settles in. We just, uh . . .” He rubs the deeply suntanned back of his neck and glances over at Leigh, now inspecting an armless plaster statue of a mermaid by the dessert stand. We watch as she scuffs her chewed-up brown Vans, shoves her hands into the pockets of her striped red board shorts, and brings her face close to its ample shell bra.
“Neither of us know many people around here anymore,” he finishes. “We could use some friends.”
I’m not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed by our third wheel. I am definitely not relieved by his use of the word friend instead of maximally sexy soon-to-be lover.
“Maybe,” I say. Then I shrug demurely, remembering my mission now that Leigh’s not here to salt my game. “I might be busy. I’m hunting for a part-time job and I hear that can take a while, though I also heard there’s a water park hiring.”
He catches on with a lazy grin. “I guess I heard that too.”
“I have extra time, since I’m on summer vacation.” Though is it really a vacation, if it’s just your life? “I work shifts at my parents’ restaurant, but other than that, I’m not doing much. Plus I could use the paycheck.”
That part, at least, is 100 percent honest. A new cash flow would help. For a while now money has been tighter than tight, with Dad’s hospital bills and therapy bills and occasional home aide bills. I know the restaurant isn’t making as much, especially with half days, and we’ve had to hire an assistant manager to help Mom, and a new head cook to take over for Dad. Martin was his assistant, and though Dad would never say so, he must hate that the chef’s hat is outside the family for the first time. But it’s not as if I and my half-blackened grilled cheese and Campbell’s could put it on.
Martin’s good, he’s just not Dad. Martin doesn’t have Dad’s sixth sense for picking exactly the perfect jicama and avocados at the market. Martin can’t make an amazing menudo out of frozen onions and sheep’s feet. Martin can’t spin straw into gold. It sounds stupid, but to watch Dad cook was like watching a wizard in potions class at Hogwarts. The way he’d toss an unmeasured-yet-precise amount of spices onto strips of meat, the way he’d pulp soaked chilies in mere seconds, the way he’d juice lime wedges and lemon slices with one hand while stirring a simmering pot with the other. He’d tried to pass it all down to me, but honestly, he wasn’t a good teacher. He couldn’t explain how to spoon just enough filling into cornhusks, wrap them loosely and seal them just-tight-enough-but-not-too-tight with kitchen yarn to steam perfect tamales. Not when it came so intuitively to him. How would you teach somebody to sneeze? Instead, I’d watch him as he stood at the kitchen counter browning and chopping and stuffing. He probably hoped I’d absorb some skills just by being near him. But I never did.
Sometimes that makes me feel strangely hopeful.
Anyway, a little extra income definitely wouldn’t hurt my parents. If the rest of the staff at Silvia’s has second jobs, why can’t I? Besides, I like to keep busy. I like to keep moving. And anything that puts me and my swimsuit in Lucas’s path is a real bonus.
“You’re looking for something in the water?” he asks.
“Always.”
Across the booth, he pretends to size me up; at least, I think he’s pretending. “They’re full on lifeguards, but one of the attractions is hiring. They’re casting for the pool personnel next Tuesday.”
“What do you mean, casting?”
“You’ll have to show up to solve that mystery.”
Right, because wrangling foam noodles in a wave pool or packing children one at a time down a waterslide for four hours sounds delightfully mysterious.
He pops another fry. “But I think you’d be perfect. I’ll tell them about you, if you want, so you won’t have to apply for the first round.”
I don’t hear Leigh’s catlike approach until she stands beside the table, eyeing me in her seat. “A-hem.” She clears her throat. So original.
I take my cue to go. “Okay, I guess I’ll see you Tuesday.”
“Tuesday, or Saturday night?”
“Hmm.” I drum my fingertips against my mouth, pretending to deliberate whilst calling attention to my lips, like Marilee once taught me. “Let’s say Saturday night.”
“Yeah?” There’s real happiness in his gravelly voice, which pleases me, so I type my number into Lucas’s cell—deliberately not looking over at Leigh—and walk away with an extra sway in my step, just for him.
And maybe just a little bit to spite his sister.
FIVE
I sit on my front steps on Saturday evening and watch our gravel driveway glitter under the still-bright eye of the sun. The concrete is warm beneath me, and I’m sweating a little. I wasn’t sure what to wear on a first sorta-date. I went with my standard casual outfit: dark jean capris and a backless orange tank top, though I had to switch the espadrille wedges out for clean-ish sneakers. Tied around my purse strap is a big El Trampero High sweatshirt, through which you can’t even tell I have a body, but it’ll be cool in the mountains at night.
Not like I spent the afternoon tearing through my closet for just the right shapeless, sexless sweatshirt to impress Lucas. I don’t get that kind of nervous around boys. Maybe I used to, but I had a slow start. Marilee, on the other hand, kissed Taylor Naswood on a field trip to the Cochiti Pueblo in sixth grade. They went at it behind the pottery shop, with tongue, bragged Taylor. When they boarded the school bus at the end of the afternoon, she sat beside me, scrubbing a finger back and forth across her lips as if they felt different. I slumped down in my seat, jealous. Not because of the boy—Marilee found a new boyfriend for the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, and for every school trip after—but of the feeling.
Diana was always my date to middle school dances. She wasn’t allowed to have boyfriends, though she loved them from afar. She even had nicknames for them, all the boys whose last names she tried on in the margins of her notebooks. Hot Boy, Pretty Boy, Band Boy, Math Boy, Skater Boy. She was uncreative, but devoted. Every time we passed a crush of hers in the hallway, she’d drill an elbow into my kidneys.
I wonder whether she’d go wild if she ever got loose.
I guess I went a little wild the summer between eighth grade and freshman year, when I looked down and found breasts instead of eraser stubs lurking below my T-shirts. I grew two inches before the start of school, and borrowed Marilee’s copies of Seventeen, and the lady in the curling-wand kiosk at the Coronado Mall showed me a few tricks. I considered cutting back on Dad’s chorizo and bean dip or his mole poblano, but who was I kidding? I never could’ve squeezed my size-twelve hips into Marilee’s size-two bandage dresses, nor my muscled shoulders, which I had earned through years of swimming and was proud of. Max Binali liked my curves. He noticed me, and I had liked that somebody was noticing me, especially a junior.
But did I really feel different after my first kiss? My tenth?
Not much. Or maybe I did, just never for very long.
All of this is to say that the instant I hear the crunch of tires grinding over gravel, I vault off the stoop, ready to feel something new. My mood sinks slightly when I see Leigh slumped down in the passenger seat with shades on. Guess I’m riding bitch after all. Ignoring her, I poke my head through the driver’s-side window, my elbows on the hot metal. “I like your van. It’s really . . . green.” A sticky, overpowering shade of green at that.
“Sorry about the seating.” Lucas grimaces. “Leigh-Bee gets carsick. Or so she claims.”
I slide into the backseat. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“You got off at the restaurant?”
“No, Lucas, she’s just a heat mirage,” Leigh mumbles.
“I told my mom about the meteor shower,” I plough on. “I think she was . . .
surprised.”
He cranes around his seat. “Not your usual Saturday night thing?”
That’s an understatement, if ever there was one. I shake my head.
“Well, you’re gonna be impressed,” Lucas promises. “You’ll see.”
We take off in silence, sort of. There’s no air-conditioning, so the windows are all down, and once we reach the highway, wind roars dully inside the minivan. Plus every time Lucas taps the breaks, they squeal brutally, as if the van runs on piglets instead of gasoline.
Perhaps it’s the noisiness of the silence that makes it awkward, but I’m suddenly realizing how long it’s been since I’ve ridden in a car with people my own age (multiple people, that is, not just Jake on the drive to or from our latest round of couch-wrestling). It’s like I’ve forgotten everything I knew about having and making friends. How to talk without flirting. How to ask small questions of people I don’t yet know, and how to care about the answers. How to be myself, the me I am when nobody’s looking, while Lucas glances anxiously in the rearview mirror and Leigh sits stonily up front.
I scrape my billowing hair out of my face, then sit on my hands because I can’t figure out what else to do with them. Staring out the open window, I turn over the life choices that led me here, wondering: Is the glimmer of a potential hookup (with a guy I met two weeks ago but have yet to achieve any kind of play) worth being trapped in a car with strangers, half of whom want nothing to do with me? Is a crappy job in a crappy water park worth it? Is anything?
After a few miles of this, Lucas reaches down and puts on what I think is the CD player, but turns out to be a tape deck. Guitar and a Latin beat drizzle from the speakers. “You like Carlos Santana?” he calls over his shoulder. “Our dad loves him.”
“I don’t really know him,” I shout gratefully above the wind. “My parents listen to, like, Morrissey.”
He drums his thumbs on the steering wheel. “I think you’ll like him. This is Caravanserai. Totally his best. Dad used to play it every time we drove to Santa Cruz to go camping.” He laughs. “Hey Leigh-Bee, remember that time with the pop-up tent?”
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