by Anne Dayton
The big events in my life always seem to take place on a beach. It was here, just off this beach, where I first learned to surf, and, many years later, where I washed up onshore; I woke up with a whole new understanding of the fine line between heaven and earth. Freshman year I fell off those cliffs, just a little ways south of here, and began to understand that I’m fallible, and that my friends will be there for me anyway. Sophomore year I met Tom in the parking lot at State Beach. And then there was the whole Mavericks thing with Ben. For better or for worse, this is the scenery of my life—the steep, high cliffs, the rough sand, the crushing power of the waves, the vast expanse of silver sky stretching out toward the horizon. It feels right to be here now, celebrating the end of twelve long years.
It’s Senior Skip Day. Every year the graduating students at Marina Vista gather on the Friday of the last full week of class and hang out on the sand, then have a big bonfire once the sun goes down. There’s no official notice, but somehow everyone seems to know the plan. The sun is shining, and everyone is joking, laughing, enjoying the last few weeks of childhood.
Well, almost everyone. Ben isn’t here. He’s helping out with Ravi today. He never did have much patience for anything that reeks of school spirit.
I’m chatting with some of the girls on the squad, reminiscing about a colossal screw-up at homecoming freshman year, when I catch sight of a familiar face picking her way down the path toward the beach. She’s wearing sunglasses, clutching a big white beach bag, and her long dark hair is flowing out behind her.
“Be right back, guys,” I say. Ashley squeezes my shoulder, and I smile before I pull away from the tight cluster. I jog toward the approaching figure as Zoe catches up to her on the other side, her face incredulous.
“Ana?” I squint to make sure I’m seeing things right. It can’t be her. Ana has never cut a class in her life. The girl lifts up her head and pulls her sunglasses down, and I laugh out loud at the guilty look on her face. “You do know this is Senior Skip Day, right?”
“As in, we’re technically supposed to be in school?” Zoe skips down the beach, leading Ana down to the patch of sand where we’ve stowed our things.
Ana laughs and inhales deeply. “So this is what it’s like,” she says. “The sweet scent of rebellion.”
She drops her bag onto the sand next to Christine, who’s sprawled out on a beach blanket sketching in the front cover of someone’s yearbook.
“Watch it,” Christine calls without looking up, but I can see she’s smiling as I drop down on the blanket beside her.
“So what you’re saying is your parents have no idea you’re not at school,” Zoe says. She meets my eyes above Ana’s head and stifles a laugh.
“Three months from now I’ll be on my own.” She lowers herself down onto the blanket and starts to pull things out: sunblock, a floppy hat, a copy of Crime and Punishment. “They can’t possibly ground me beyond August. Besides, this is kind of fun. Who knew?”
Christine snorts. “And the award for Most Improved goes to”—she raps her pen on the edge of the page in a makeshift drumroll—“God Girl!”
Ana smacks Christine’s arm and laughs. “Hey now. I know I used to be kind of uptight—”
I snort.
“Okay, fine. I was insane.” Ana pulls the sunglasses off her head, folds them carefully, and puts them on the blanket. I pick them up and slip them onto my face. The world suddenly goes three shades darker. “But I’m here now.”
“I’m glad,” Zoe says, pulling Ana into a side hug. “You’ve changed. We all have.”
“You guys won’t forget me when I’m three thousand miles away, right? You’ll come visit?”
“Actually . . .” Christine closes the cover of the yearbook, puts it down on the blanket, and stretches her legs out in front of her. “I kind of have to tell you guys something.” She mumbles this last part, and I see Ana’s eyes widen. Christine always clams up when she has something important to say.
“What’s up?” I try to make my voice light. Zoe leans in closer.
“I didn’t tell you guys because I thought you were all set on USC, but I kind of secretly applied to NYU.” She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them. “I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be a secret, but then I didn’t want to break up the SoCal party, and then I was wait-listed, so I thought, oh whatever, I won’t say anything. But yesterday I found out I got in.” Christine intertwines her fingers around her knees.
“Christine!” Zoe throws her arms around her. “Oh my gosh! New York!”
“New York is only an hour away from Princeton,” Ana says, clapping her hands.
“Wow.” I blink a few times. “Christine, that’s fantastic.” I try to imagine Christine on the streets of Greenwich Village. “You’re . . .” I cough. New York. That’s so far away. “You’re really going to go?”
I accepted that Ana is moving across the country, but I had kind of gotten used to the idea of going down to see Christine in LA on weekends. I didn’t think I would lose her too.
“Yeah.” She bobs her head. “I am. I realized . . . I don’t know. I’ve always known I’m artistic. But recently I started thinking that my art skills are a gift, you know? Something my mom passed down to me.”
I smile at her, hoping she’ll go on. She used to never talk about her mom, but she’s getting better about it as time goes by.
“My mom always thought of art as a way of giving back to God,” Christine says slowly. “I don’t know that I see it exactly like that, but she’s been in my dreams a lot recently. I don’t know what she’d say about New York, but I do know she wouldn’t have wanted me to waste my talent.”
“But what about Ellis? I thought you didn’t want to leave him.” I’m growing more panicked by the second. I hold my breath, and somewhere in the back of my brain it registers that I’m not really asking about her brother. “And what about Tyler?”
“Tyler’s moving to New York too.”
“What?!” Zoe claps her hands, and Ana’s eye widen.
“For real?” I let my mouth hang open.
She nods. “I know. It’s crazy, right? But it was his decision. He’s going to get a job and a cheap apartment somewhere, and . . . I don’t know. We’ll see.” She smiles, and if you didn’t know her, you might miss it, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s excited; she’s optimistic; she’s in love. But she’s also scared out of her mind.
I pull her into a hug and lean my head against her shoulder. It’s strange to think that after all this time, all the guys that have come in and out of our lives in the past four years, Christine and Tyler are the ones who made it.
Soon Ana’s leaning against Christine’s other side, and Zoe slowly puts her arms around all of us. We stay like that, intertwined, listening to the sounds of the waves and the voices of our classmates behind us. The surf pounds, slowly wearing away at the mighty cliffs, grinding the solid rock into smaller and smaller pieces, spreading it out, bit by bit, across the shore.
51
I stand at the edge of the track and look down the field. The long rows of bleachers edging up the sides of the stadium make the walls seem higher than I remember, and the giant scoreboard is kind of haunting. The stadium, built to contain thousands of screaming fans, is desolate when it’s empty.
I walk around the bottom curve of the track. The spongy rubber feels good under my feet, and I follow the track around for a while to the middle of the bleachers. I stop in front of the band section, right where we always stood to cheer. How many hours have I spent in this very spot? How many Friday nights did I stand here, soaking in the noise and the action and the excitement, thrilled to be part of it all?
Tomorrow I’m supposed to stand out there in my cap and gown, in the middle of that enormous field, and say something the rest of my classmates will remember for the rest of their lives. I shake my head. It’s impossible. What could I say to explain what these four years have meant to me? How in the world am I supposed to bestow wisdom
and insight when I have no idea what I’m doing?
I reach for the railing at the bottom of the row of bleachers and pull myself up, carefully threading through the bars. I sit down on a bench in the first row and smooth my skirt down.
It doesn’t look any different from up here. I lay back on the bench, feeling the warm metal press against my back, and stare up at the vast blue sky.
I should probably go back to Ms. Lovchuck and tell her she made a mistake. Ana didn’t have any trouble coming up with her salutatorian speech. I’ll go back and tell them that she should give the speech and I’ll sit with the rest of the class and toss around a giant beach ball until it’s time to collect my diploma.
But then I remember the look on Ms. Moore’s face when they told me. Something about it—pride? satisfaction?—makes me feel like I have to do this. She’s always had this weird way of understanding things no one else picks up on, and I can’t let her down now. But that doesn’t make it any easier to come up with—
“So this is what it looks like.” My eyes fly open, and I sit up quickly. Ben is standing on the track below me, looking around the stadium. I brush my hand over my hair to smooth it down. “Weird.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never been into the stadium before,” I say.
“Okay,” Ben says, pulling himself through the bars to the bottom step of the bleachers. He sits down without another word.
“Seriously? You’ve never bothered to walk twenty feet out of your way and poke your head in here?”
“Nope.” He shrugs, then turns and looks out over the field. His thin blue shirt looks nice against his golden skin. My stomach warms. “It is pretty impressive.”
“What are you doing here now?”
“Looking for you. It figures you’d be in the very last place I check.” He slings his bag around and pulls a decal out of the front pocket, then rests his bag on the ground. He inches closer to me so our knees are just barely touching and holds out the sticker. “I brought you a good-luck charm.”
The decal shows a blond girl wearing a graduation cap, but the gown is strapped around her shoulders like a cape.
“Also, I wanted to say thanks. For everything with Asha, and, I don’t know, everything.”
“I only wish I had done something sooner.”
“You did more than anyone else would have done. She hasn’t stopped talking about how you knew exactly what to do in the bathroom that day. And then the whole babysitting thing. She doesn’t really understand how awesome that is yet,” he says, grinning. He watches me for a minute, his dark eyes dancing. He lets his arms rest on his leg, a few inches from mine. “So have you figured out what you’re going to say tomorrow?”
“Not really.” I let out a long breath. “I mean, I guess not at all. I don’t really have any idea where to start.”
“I know what you should say.” Ben grins and inches his hand closer, brushing his fingertips against my leg. Goose bumps rise on my flesh, even though it’s got to be close to eighty degrees out here today.
“What’s that?” I’m careful not to move, afraid he’ll pull his hand away.
“You should finally admit that you like me.”
I freeze, but Ben slides his hand across my leg and plants his palm on my knee.
“I don’t know if that’s what the crowd really wants to hear,” I say, trying to keep my voice as even and normal as possible.
“It’s what I want to hear, and right now I’m the crowd.” He rubs his thumb across the top of my knee. “I’ll help you practice. All you have to say is, ‘I, Riley McGee, finally accept and acknowledge that I find Ben Nayar to be the sexiest man alive.’ ”
I laugh and smack him.
“It’s all very standard. Basic contract stuff.” He pulls his hand off my knee and leans in closer. “I know you’ve been hurt in the past. But I’m not that guy. I’m not going to use you or cheat on you or lie to you. All I want is to be with you.”
Before I know what he’s doing, Ben takes my hand and interlaces his fingers with mine. I don’t pull away. He rubs his thumb over the back of my hand.
“Ben, this is never going to work.”
“Maybe it won’t,” he says. “I can’t really promise you it will. But I can promise you I’m willing to try.”
“You’ll be off at school—”
“Berkeley is fifteen minutes from the city. I think somehow I can manage the commute.”
“You’ll have classes and activities and friends I won’t be a part of.”
“I’ll be back every weekend to help Asha with Ravi.”
“There will be college girls all over the place.”
“I won’t even notice them.”
“Ben, be serious—”
“I am being serious, Riley.” He pulls my hand close to him and lays his other palm on top. “I couldn’t be more serious. I’ve been in love with you since the first time I saw you. I know you like me too, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend it’s not true because you’re afraid of what may happen in the future.” He moves closer so his leg is pressed against mine.
I shake my head. “Next year—”
“Will you stop worrying about the future?” He pulls his hand away. “This moment. This is all that matters. Just you and me, sitting in the sunshine on a beautiful afternoon.”
He waits and I nod, keeping my eyes on the empty bleachers on the other side of the stadium.
“I have no way of knowing if we’ll stay together forever or if this will all fizzle out next week.”
I turn my head; Ben is closer than I realized. His face is only a few inches from mine, waiting, watching me.
“All I know is that I can’t imagine what my life is going to be like if you’re not in it.”
I take a breath and smell his soap, and sweet cologne, and the faintest hint of freshly mown grass.
I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the day after, but I know that I like sitting with him, watching him, feeling his hand on my skin. I tilt my face up, just a little, and he moves a fraction of an inch closer. He rubs his hand across my legs, brushes his fingers against the inside of my knee. I reach my arm up and rest my hand on the back of his head, twisting my fingers through his silky hair, and then, slowly, I pull his head down, and just like that, his lips are on mine. He sighs and pulls me close, pressing against me, daring me to pull away. Soon I’ve forgotten all about tomorrow, about the days to come, and all I want is for this moment to go on forever.
52
The band is playing “Pomp and Circumstance” as my classmates walk two at a time up the narrow green aisle between the rows of folding chairs. Ashley Anderson is already seated in the first row. I check my pocket under my gown for the hundredth time. Good, I still have it.
Mrs. Lewis, the gym teacher, nods at Zoe and Jordan, and they start to march.
I was up all night trying to write this stupid speech. How am I supposed to say something meaningful and inspiring under this kind of pressure?
Mrs. Lewis nods at Christine and a swimmer named Emily. Christine turns around and flashes me a thumbs-up before she starts to march up the aisle.
I think I looked up every online graduation speech in the history of graduation speeches for inspiration, and around four a.m. I scrawled out something about holding onto your dreams. It won’t be brilliant, especially next to Ana, who has been practicing her speech in the mirror all week, but at least I probably won’t get booed off the stage.
I’m next in line. Mrs. Lewis nods at Dean and me. He holds out his fist, and I bump it; then together, we walk out onto the grass.
As we start the long march up the field, I keep my eyes on the grass in front of me. If I look up, I’ll see how huge the crowd really is and how many people are going to hear that I have nothing important to say. I try to block out the noise and rack my brain. Surely there’s some wisdom buried in there somewhere that didn’t make it onto my paper.
Dean branches off and turns left to file into
his row, but I keep going toward the front. Ashley cheers for me, and I give her a weak smile as I walk past her to the stage.
The steps that lead up to the stage are thin and rickety, but Mrs. Canning, the school counselor, holds out her hand to help me up. I take a few shaky steps and drop gratefully into the empty chair in front of Ms. Moore, next to Ana.
“I had no idea there were this many people in our class,” Ana whispers. “Who are all these people?”
It is kind of amazing, seeing it all from this perspective, watching as the last few students walk up the aisle. Before us, in this huge sea of garnet, are the people who have made up my life for the past four years. The people I’ve cheered with and for, the people I’ve seen in class every day, the people I’ve passed around campus but never bothered to get to know.
I scoot my chair closer to Ana, and it scrapes across the plywood stage. The last few students take their seats, and Marcus Farcus, the band’s drum major, signals for the music to fade out. After a few squeaks and groans, they stop, and the stadium goes silent.
I hold my breath and touch my pocket again. It’s still there. “You ready for this?” I whisper. Ana bites her lip and shakes her head. “Me neither.”
Ms. Lovchuck steps up to the microphone and welcomes everyone to this momentous occasion. I snort, but Ana elbows me. As our principal goes on about how proud our teachers are of what we’ve accomplished, I let my eyes drift up to the stands.
I drop my head. There are a lot of people here. The whole stadium is full, and there are still people coming in through the gates.
“Breathe,” Ana orders. I nod and try to obey. “You can do this.”
I peek up at the stands again, and suddenly I’m not sure I can. It’s not the thousands of people sitting there watching every move we make. I’ve never been shy, and it’s not like me to freak out at the sight of a crowd. It’s the fact that I feel like a fraud sitting up here. How can this school possibly let Riley McGee, class screw-up, address her peers?
Ms. Lovchuck introduces the members of the school board and the district superintendent. I reach for Ana’s hand. She’s shaking too. And then, just like we practiced, Ms. Lovchuck introduces Ana and calls her up to the microphone. I squeeze her hand, and she stands up and walks to the front of the stage while the crowd cheers for her. The noise quiets down as she adjusts the microphone, but there are still a few people cheering and clapping in the stands. I scan the bleachers and see it’s Ana’s family—her entire extended family who came up from Mexico. Ana’s mom is standing up and clapping, and even from here, I can see the pride in her face.