“Because he can see value,” Junie said, linking her arm in mine and pulling me away from my locker. “This will be great for you to be with Oliver who is a real live person instead of drooling over Cole who’s a figment of your fantasy. It’s healthy.”
“Try not to drool over Cole at the party,” Flop added.
I groaned as I shook off Junie’s hand and started down the hall towards my bike with my overpacked backpack. “There’s no way my dad will let me go to a party where there’s teen drinking and where the chance of fighting and sex are pretty much the only reason people go.” Except that maybe he would. He gave me lectures about ‘getting involved’ that went on for what seemed like forever. Getting asked out by a boy was a big deal.
“You could say you were at the movie party with Flop,” Junie offered. I stared at her until she started blushing. She was not into deception and hypocrisy as a rule. Her efforts to have a relationship were totally messing with her.
“So ask your dad, and if he lets you go, you’ll go, otherwise, it’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ at my house at eight!” Flop and Junie grabbed their bikes and we were off, much to the ridicule of Sharky and her friends in her red car with the top down.
The bike ride wasn’t long enough. I pulled up at my house, a little white house with such thin walls that you could hear the rocking washing machine from the street, still wondering why he’d asked me. I shook it off as I dismounted and dumped my bike on the grass by the front porch with twisty metal railings. My dad would never let me go. It wasn’t possible.
I was wrong. I told my dad while he sat in his favorite chair flipping through television channels. It went like this.
“A guy asked me to go to the lake with him.”
“Tonight?” He put down the remote to sit up and look at him, the surprise evident on his face.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Tonight.”
“All right, don’t stay out too late.” He shifted his attention back to the television, but his gaze kept flicking back at me.
I stood there staring at him, refusing to believe what he’d just said. “There will be drinking, and probably some fights, and it will be at the lake. You know, the big wet thing that you would never introduce me to.”
He shrugged and barely glanced at me. “You’re getting all grown up. I can’t protect you forever.”
I stared at the guy who refused to ever let me have swimming lessons out of irrational fear that I’d drown, the guy who has instilled safety first into me every morning of school up until a year before, the guy who always read the obituaries of all the teens who died in motor accidents while under the influence to me during breakfast.
“But that’s irresponsible for you to let me go to something that could end up being really dangerous. Besides that, I’ll have to take the car.”
He looked up at me, and I noticed how tired he looked behind his sad smile. “I’ve been thinking about it. I think I raised you with too much fear. I don’t want you to think that you’re not strong enough to take care of yourself. I’ve raised you up as well as I know how, but I can’t baby you forever. Kids do stupid things sometimes, but maybe doing things when you’re young and you have less to lose isn’t the worst idea.”
We stared at each other and then I went to my room with nothing else to say. What do you say when you dad betrays you? Where had this guy been when I was supposed to take swimming lessons? Seriously!
Chapter 10
I picked up Junie and drove to Ceramic Lake, listening to Junie flip through stations, none of which she wanted. I had to park at the end of a line of cars, lots of cars, next to the long grass. I wished Flop had come.
I could hear the music float over the air as soon as I got out of the car. It wasn’t even bad music. I slammed the door and started towards the beach. It was still light but the sun would be down soon enough.
“This is going to be so fun!” Junie said bouncing along beside me.
I didn’t look at her. I missed the old Junie who would bring a bagful of sacks to pick up the trash and organize whoever she could into saving the world one messy lake at a time. She didn’t even have a bag. I shoved my keys in my pocket and walked faster, trying to get the humiliation over with so that I could go home.
There were already bonfires lit with flames licking the sky while people laughed and looked alien in the flickering light. I stayed rooted at the edge of the group unable to move forward into the happy crowd, including Sharky and Cole where they sat in the middle of their group.
“There you are,” Oliver said coming up unexpectedly since I’d been staring at Cole. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”
“I’ll see you guys later,” Junie said taking off towards the bonfire where The Captain sat looking all cold and distant.
“So,” Oliver said from my side when I still hadn’t moved. “Do you want to sit down, or would you like to dance?”
“Dance?” I stared at him, and he laughed at my expression, which should have made me want to run away, but it wasn’t at all a mean laugh. “The truth is that I can’t dance either. Let’s sit.”
He took my hand and tugged me just enough to get me going towards a fire, somewhere between the football team and the swim team, where other people had come to party. It was so weird to have him holding my hand while Cole sat just on the other side of the clearing. He probably wasn’t watching me. I couldn't check while I was with Oliver; I knew that much. I sat down and he sat beside me, letting go of my hand. I wiped my palm on my jeans wishing I wasn’t so nervous. He picked a perfect spot where we could watch the sun set on the lake without being able to see Cole.
“How do you like it here?” I asked after a few awkward moments of silence.
“It’s strange.”
I looked up at him wondering if he was going to say anything else, but he kept quietly watching the lake.
“Your English is really good.”
“Do you really not know how to swim?” he asked, turning to stare at me. His eyes picked up the last lines of sun and were brilliantly green.
I mutely shook my head and stared down at the sand. A weed stubbornly grew in the sand where it didn’t belong.
“There is so much water here,” he said quietly, “Lakes, pools, you would think that you would at least know how not to drown.”
I shrugged and muttered, “Knowing didn’t help my mother.”
It didn’t seem possible that he heard me, but he asked, “Your mother drowned?”
I took a deep breath before I nodded slowly. “She was a great swimmer but one day,” I shook my head. “Anyway, so my dad just wanted to keep me away from water. Now it seems like he doesn’t care, but I don’t know. It’s a lifetime of being freaked out about it.”
“You’re afraid of water?”
I shrugged feeling stupid.
“Water is dangerous,” he said, almost like he was thinking out loud. “I’m going to get something to drink. What would you like?”
I said coke, not because I liked coke, but because it was the first thing that I thought of. I watched him walk away from me to the pile of coolers to fish something out and almost forgot that I was at the lake with Cole behind me.
“Look, it’s Watergirl.” Sharky’s really annoying voice made me flinch. “What are you doing here? Probably going to cause a tidal wave or something.” She laughed like that was sooo funny. Her cheerleader friends all giggled with her. I didn’t want to, but I looked up to see if Cole was watching. He was. His frown showed how he felt about me invading his world, a world he’d thought safe from me and my kind.
I stared down at the ground and hoped they would go away, but apparently that was the wrong move to deal with aggressive animals, because Sharky came closer.
“You know what? You look so pathetic, I’m tempted to pay Cole to give you a good time just because it’s the only way he’d ever look at you twice.”
I looked up, shocked that she would talk about Cole like that, when she flipped open the
can she’d apparently been shaking and hit me right in the face with the moldy mop smelling cheap beer.
“Oh no! It looks like you need a bath.” Her eyes were all big and innocent even as she reached out to grab me.
I pulled away gasping for breath, struggling to get the beer out of my eyes. I didn’t see the guys come up behind until it was too late. They lifted me into the air, upside down. I had a weird upside shot of Cole’s face while he drank from his can watching me with a smile. His smile paralyzed me while Sharky laughed. The players spun me around until Cole disappeared, their hands grabbing my body, squeezing my flesh while I struggled, fought, screamed and kicked, but there were too many of them. Bodies pressed against mine until I felt crushed, suffocated, unable to fight or even move.
I heard shouting then got the wind knocked out of me when one of the players fell over on top of me. My head felt crushed until I was left alone on the sand, unable to breathe or move while my mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water. I gasped as my breath came back, rolled over, and promptly got tripped over by two guys tangled together, too close for their punches to do any damage. I scrambled up, staring around at the scene of mindless violence, bodies filled with one desire, one need to destroy, to hurt, to win. I ran across the sand, ducking around people I barely recognized the music mixed with screams and shouts. I stumbled out of the firelight, leaving the beach as I spat sand out of my mouth and wiped beer out of my eyes with my shirt. I turned and stared for a moment. Cole and The Captain circled each other, both of them smiling before they moved in with shameless brutality that made me sick, or maybe my stomach still churned from being crushed by a linebacker.
The night was filled with the screams of Cheerleaders as they scratched and pulled hair, swimmers against the football players while everyone else chose a side or left the way I had. Junie stood at the edge of the sand yelling about the futility of violence while the football players and swim team rolled dangerously close to the fires, punched, and in general acted like a perfect example of why my dad should never have let me come out there. There were splashes as the fighting moved to the lake.
I turned and left it all behind, but I couldn’t stop feeling the sand under my shirt or the handprints on my skin that burned with the same heat that had my chest on fire.
I made it to the car and slumped in the driver’s seat with my head against the wheel trying to keep it together. Never in my entire life had I felt so completely stupid. I’d spent four years wanting to be with the biggest jerk at school. It was like being love-sick over someone I didn’t even know. What was wrong with me? I felt swamped and bloated with humiliation; it clogged the back of my throat until I thought I was going to throw up.
The door opened and Junie got in, slamming it behind her.
“I can’t believe I thought he wasn’t completely lame!” Junie began.
I laughed, a kind of choked sound. How could I ever have seen Cole as anything but just another jerk? I swallowed and got my keys out to start the car. My hands were so shaky; it took four tries to get it in the ignition.
“Sean didn’t want to save you; he would have let them dump you in the lake if it wasn’t for Oliver.”
I shrugged. I deserved to be drowned in the lake for being so stupid.
“He said, and I quote, ‘let them put her in the lake, you can fish her out.’ But Oliver insisted, and finally Sean gave the word and all the swimmers jumped on the football players. Did you see Bernice punch Sharky? I have to admit seeing that makes me feel torn about my stand on violence.”
“Junie?” My voice was quiet, still choked. “Could you just shut up? I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about anything.”
She nodded and let the drive pass in the silence I asked for. How could I have been so stupid to waste so much of my life on a guy like Cole? Maybe there were good guys out there, but he wasn’t one of them. The only thing Junie was ever really right about was telling Dean off and being about her cause instead of focusing on guys. At least Flop gave them all equal interest that only lasted as long as they were in front of her. She was a little bit like a guy come to think of it.
I drove, glad that I brought the car, that I hadn’t felt like just because Junie judged anyone who had too large a carbon footprint that I should ride my bike even as far as Ceramic Lake. I liked the feeling of being behind the wheel, of steering and being in control of something.
Chapter 11
When I burst through the front door into the living room, my dad said, “Isn’t it a little early…” then trailed off when he got a good look at my beer and sand soaked self. “Genevieve,” he said, abandoning his recliner to stand up, reaching a hand towards me like he wanted to say something. I stood there waiting until the hand fell to his side at the same time he exhaled, brows coming together in a worried line.
“I’m tired.” I felt a surge of guilt as I left him there, in the dim light of the living room, a foreign martial arts movie playing in the background as his only company. It wasn’t his fault I’d become obsessed with the first guy I kissed, that Sharky had it out for me almost as much as water did, and that mom had died and left both of us. Then again, it wasn’t mine either.
I went right to bed after my thorough shower and although I expected to stay up all night reliving the magic, I fell right to sleep.
The next day at work, Sheila told me all about the party that had apparently been so phenomenally violent, it had reached college circles.
I rolled my eyes and moved away to catalogue music. If excessive violence was what cool college people were into, then maybe it was a good thing that my college future was iffy at best. I was glad that it was busy enough that I didn’t have time to think too much, what with goths wanting to rate bands by grades of darkness and stuff.
I heard a bell jangle somewhere, but I was with a customer looking at show tunes so I didn’t see who came in until he touched my elbow. I jerked away before I froze, feeling my blood drain from my extremities.
“Hey, Vee,” Cole said then coughed and cleared his throat.
It had to be a dream. Any minute the music store would fill up with water and drown me.
After a few heartbeats waiting to wake up I managed, “Can I help you?” I turned away from him, clenching my fists so that my nails dug into my skin. My nails felt real.
“Can we talk for a second?”
He was still cute, but when I glanced over at him I wasn’t paralyzed the same way. I couldn’t help but see his smile while he let his friends torture me. He’d never been cruel before.
“Sorry, but I’m helping this customer. You can ask the other sales associate.”
“Right, I just wanted to apologize for last night. Sharly got carried away. I swear I didn’t know what she was up to, and on behalf of the entire football team, I’m really sorry.”
I spun around to search his face for actual penitence, but he wasn’t the guy I’d used to know. I couldn’t read the stranger staring back at me at all. I didn’t know who this football player was. I never had.
“Why?”
He gave me a blank look that jocks seemed so good at.
“Why are you here apologizing to me?”
He shrugged and looked sheepish. “Sean had me in a headlock in the water. Man, do not mess with him in water. On land, I could take him, but there was no way…”
“Sean made you come here and apologize?”
He shrugged. “He gets a kick out of humiliating his opponents. Too bad he doesn’t do football. We would completely dominate.”
I stumbled away from him shaking my head. “Get out. Four years of wanting you to be my friend and now The Captain says the word and you’re here begging my forgiveness? Just get out.”
He frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but I was done. I gave Sheila a frantic wave as I ran for the bathroom, climbing the narrow stairs to the second floor past the stacks of vintage records. At least Cole didn’t follow me.
I leaned on t
he sink and watched the water run, swirling down the drain while my head pounded so hard I thought maybe it would explode. I got dizzy, black spots filling my vision until with a gasp I realized I hadn’t been breathing. Not a good thing.
I felt dazed for the rest of the day by the most exciting discovery I’d ever had in my life: I didn’t like Cole.
After work I hung out with Flop at her house where she was laying out in her backyard with her feet in a blow up pool. I collapsed in the lawn chair beside her, pulled off my tennis shoes, stuck my feet in the pool and did some really good breathing.
“How did last night go? Did you fall in the lake?” she asked when she realized I was there.
“Nope.”
She opened her eyes and squinted at me, staring for a long time and looking surprised, but that may have been because her last eyebrow plucking was a little extreme. “Do you think Tuba’s getting hot?”
“Yeah, I kinda do,” I said which surprised her again.
But all she said was, “I hope he’s not changing for a girl.”
I didn’t tell her about Cole. I didn’t want to talk or think about that four-letter-word ever again. In spite of everything, feeling this vast amount of dislike was one of the best things that ever happened to me. All things considered, my life was actually looking up.
Chapter 12
I went shopping with Flop. Not Junie because, obviously, she’d complain the entire time about China and corporate America instead of focusing on cuteness. Yeah, me, cute, I know, but I was ready for a change. I got my hair done too, highlights with tons of chemicals. I used the same guy who always fixed Flop’s ‘beach blonde goddess’ hair so I left feeling like a princess, my hair just right instead of its usual boring brown.
“I can’t remember the last time you spent your money on something besides music and smoothies.”
I opened my eyes wide at her. “Oh no! Well, we’d better grab smoothies before we go back to your house and download a new album.”
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