Emmy & Oliver

by Benway,Robin

  He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. It was just . . . I haven’t had fun since I’ve been back. And that was really fun.”

  Now I was the one whose cheeks were flushed.

  “Oh. Oh, well, yeah. Of course. I like surfing and I don’t really have anyone else to go out with besides Drew, so . . .” I shrugged. “Anytime you need a buddy.”

  A buddy, Emmy? Good Lord. What is this, AA or something?

  “Go again?” Oliver said. “I think I’ve gotten my second wind.”

  I glanced at the sun. Judging from its position, it was almost five, and I had to be home (with passable dry hair) by seven. “Two more rides,” I said. “I’m on this ridiculous curfew. I’m basically only allowed outside during daytime hours. Do you have a curfew or anything?”

  Oliver shrugged. “I have no idea. I don’t really go anywhere. I could call my mom . . .” he added, but the look on his face told me that that wasn’t his favorite option.

  “Two more rides,” I said again. “C’mon, let’s go. Sunset and surfing. What more do you need?”

  Oliver needed a lot, I knew that. He needed more than anything I could provide on that afternoon. But right then, sunsets and surfing, just maybe, were enough.

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  By the time we got out of the water, I was shivering a little and Oliver’s lips were blue. “I thought this was California,” he said, his teeth chattering as he spoke. The sun was setting, a glorious firework of reds and pinks and oranges as it sank behind Catalina Island, leaving us until tomorrow. With the sun gone, now it was just cold. “I thought it was supposed to be warm in winter.”

  “It’s all relative,” I said, wrapping my towel around my shoulders and bringing the corners up to my mouth, warming my face a little. Next to me, Oliver was doing the same thing, both of us watching the waves.

  “Thanks,” he said after a minute. “Sorry I sucked.”

  I shrugged. “I was terrible the first time, too. You just have to keep practicing, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  I shivered again as a breeze blew up behind us. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, definitely.” Oliver opened his towel so that it fanned out behind him like a cape, the ends clenched in his fists. He looked so much different like this, not the skulking guy I saw in the hallway at school, not the little boy I used to go on the swings with back in kindergarten. He looked like a stranger, and then he met my glance, and it was like I had never stopped seeing him.

  I shivered again. This time, there was no breeze.

  Oliver came to stand next to me as the sun continued to set. The sand was peppered with tourists taking pictures, and locals out for walks with their dogs, and everyone looked so soft and pretty, bathed in the pink-and-golden light that only ever seemed to exist at the edge of a continent. “What island is that?” Oliver asked.

  “Hawaii,” I replied.

  “Shut up, it is not.”

  I smiled. “It’s Catalina. There’s a ferry that goes back and forth a few times a day, but I’ve never been. I’d rather go to Hawaii, to be honest.”

  Oliver nodded and I wondered if that’s where’d he rather be, as well.

  And then the last sliver of sun disappeared and the spell was broken and we were still standing in the same place, whether we liked it or not.

  “You said something about food . . . ?” Oliver nudged.

  “Yes! Food. Starving. Must eat. Do you like burritos?”

  “I like all food,” he replied.

  “Follow me.”

  We used the shower at the base of the stairs to rinse off the sand and salt. I peeled off the top half of my wet suit and tried to rinse it as best I could. The spray from the shower was cold and stinging, yet it never really managed to get all the sand off. “Ow!” I said as some salt got into my eyes. “I hate this shower, I really do.”

  At the nozzle next to mine, Oliver was wincing as the water hit his shoulders. After much hoopla that saw him hopping up and down on one foot and me laughing hysterically, he had managed to get out of the wet suit and now held it up under the shower. “That was more of a workout than surfing was,” he said, trying to keep getting hit by the wonky spray. “Is this supposed to hurt this much?”

  “They’re not the best,” I admitted, quickly pulling my dress over my wet bathing suit. “You get used to it.”

  Oliver just muttered something I couldn’t hear and winced again as the spray knocked him right in the chest.

  We managed to get the boards back up the stairs, where we threw them into the trunk of my car, and I reached into the back of my van and pulled out a pair of jeans for myself and some hoodies for both of us. “Here,” I said, tossing one at him. “Thank me later.”

  Oliver, to his immense credit, didn’t say anything about it being a “girl” hoodie and just tugged it over his head. It was enormous on me, so much so that it was still big on him, and the hood settled on the top of his head, making him look like an overgrown garden gnome. “What?” he said as I started to giggle. “What, does it not match my jeans? Is it last season?”

  “You look like a Disney cartoon reject,” I said as I tugged my jeans up under my dress. (I was definitely warmer, but wearing wet bathing suit bottoms under jeans can be filed under the category “NO FUN EVER.”)

  Oliver looked at his reflection in the passenger window, then grinned. “I’m the eighth dwarf,” he said. “Surfy.”

  “Ha! If anything, I’m Surfy. You’re . . .”

  “Newbie?”

  “Perfect.” I shucked the dress and threw it into the van before pulling my own hoodie over my head. It smelled like it had been in the van a little too long, which was definitely not pleasant, but it was warm enough that I didn’t care. “Okay,” I said, slamming the door shut. “Let’s eat.”

  “After you,” Oliver said.

  We crossed PCH and went to the Stand, a tiny outdoor restaurant that was aptly named. The menu was written underneath the ordering window, but I didn’t have to look. “You already know?” Oliver said, not taking his eyes off the menu.

  “Yep. Same thing every time. Potato and guacamole burrito, green juice. It balances out the guacamole,” I added when Oliver side-eyed me.

  “I’m not sure that’s how nutrition works, Emmy.”

  I pretended not to notice that it was the first time that he had said my name since he had come home.

  “Are you a nutritionist?” I asked, then continued before he could answer. “No, I don’t think you are, so be quiet.”

  He smirked like someone who knew that science was on his side.

  I gave them my order while Oliver stood next to me, then slid the twenty-dollar bill my dad had given me under the window. “It’s for both of us,” I told the cashier, jerking my thumb at Oliver.

  “Hey, wait, no—”

  “It’s on my dad,” I said. “He thinks we went to the movies.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, now that you’ve brought me into your web of lies . . .” He looked at the menu for another second, then said, “I’ll have the same as her.”

  “You’ve chosen wisely,” I said. “The web of lies will totally be worth it.”

  We grabbed a tiny table on the side of the restaurant, two stools and a rickety wooden table that looked like it wouldn’t survive the next rainstorm. We were looking directly at the parking lot, but if we sat up straight, we could see across the street and out to the ocean where we had just surfed a few moments earlier. “Just think, Oliver,” I said, pretending not to notice the way he winced. “You conquered that today.”

  “I think YOU conquered that,” he countered, playing with the paper-napkin dispenser. “I just sort of . . . floated.”

  “No, you did really well!” I insisted. “You stood up on your board, that’s a big deal.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. You’re the exp
ert, you would know.”

  His gaze was a little further away than it had been when we were in the ocean, though, and his voice was flat. “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Only if I can ask you one.”

  “That’s fair.” It also wasn’t the response I had been expecting, but I rolled with it. “Do you want me to call you Colin?”

  Oliver set down the napkin dispenser with a small clang! then turned to look at me. His eyes were bright—some thought or emotion burning behind them. “Why?”

  “Because you flinch every time someone calls you Oliver,” I said. I wondered if I had just waded into a conversation that was over my head. My dad was right. We should have just gone to the movies.

  The food arrived then, nestled in red plastic baskets lined with wax paper. I’m always happy to see a burrito, of course, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy for a distraction as I was right then. “Thanks!” I said to the server with waaaay more enthusiasm than the situation required, but he just nodded and left us alone again.

  “Sorry,” Oliver said. “I didn’t mean to sound, like, mad or anything. No one’s called me that name since I’ve been back, is all. It kind of startles me. Sorry.”

  I was still looking at him. His hair was falling over his forehead again and I had a sudden urge to push it back, run my fingers across his skin and ease the worry away. “You don’t have to apologize,” I said quietly. “I get it. I mean, I don’t really get it, but I just wondered if you would feel better if I called you something else, that’s all.”

  Oliver sighed a little, picking up a chip and shaking it between his fingers before popping it into his mouth. “You’re right, these are good,” he said, then grabbed a few more. I ate some, too, then took a sip of my juice. I think we were both waiting for someone to say something, anything.

  “When we first moved,” Oliver said, his eyes watching as pelicans flew over our heads in a wavy line that swooped up and down over the rooftops, “my dad said that he had always wanted to call me Colin, but my mom was the one who insisted on Oliver. So he asked if it would be okay if I started using that name instead. And I just wanted to make him happy, because y’know, he was my dad and he seemed so upset that my mom was gone, so I said yeah. And it stuck.” Oliver shrugged as he balled up a napkin in his fist. “I guess I’m just not used to hearing Oliver. I thought Oliver disappeared with my mom, only it turns out that both of those things were never really gone, soooo . . .” He looked at me and smiled. “I’m really fucked up, in case that wasn’t clear.”

  I took a page from Drew’s playbook and gave Oliver some space to think. Then he took a sip of his green smoothie. “Oh my God,” he spat, wincing. “I’m fucked up, but not as much as this smoothie. You drink these things on purpose?”

  I giggled and bit my straw. “It’s good for you!” I insisted. “It’s green!”

  He pushed it toward me, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Here, have some extra health. My treat.”

  I couldn’t tell if he actually hated it or if he was just lightening the mood, but I didn’t protest.

  Oliver laughed a little, then reached for his burrito. “You’re sure this is good?” he asked before taking a bite. “Because that smoothie ruined your credibility.”

  “See for yourself,” I told him, then took a huge bite out of mine. Lettuce and cheese spilled out and I arched an eyebrow at Oliver, who laughed and took a bite of his own.

  “Okay,” he said after a minute of chewing. “Credibility restored. And now I get to ask you a question.”

  “Hit it,” I said.

  “How come you don’t want your parents to know that you surf?”

  “Because they’re crazy overprotective,” I said, reaching for a napkin. “They don’t want me to do anything dangerous or something where I might get hurt.”

  “Why?”

  That was the question I didn’t want him to ask. But he had been honest with me, so I decided to be honest with him.

  “After you went missing,” I said carefully, wiping my mouth and trying to look anywhere but at Oliver, “everyone was so scared. All the parents went on lockdown mode, especially mine and, I don’t know, they haven’t really stopped. I think it was hard on them, you know? The kid next door, one day he’s there and the next day he’s just gone. And I’m their only kid and they just wanted to protect me.”

  “Do you ever think about telling them you come here?”

  “Sometimes,” I admitted. “But at the same time, it’s nice having it just for myself. Like, no one tells me when to surf or how to do it or whether or not it’s good enough. I can just . . . do it.” I blushed a tiny bit at the phrase. “No one’s grading me or making me taking the AP surfing test, you know?”

  Oliver laughed at that. He had a tiny bit of guacamole in the corner of his mouth, which looked endearing instead of gross. A second later, though, he wiped it away. “AP surfing,” he repeated. “That would be cool.”

  “There’s a surf team at school,” I said. “But I need parental permission and there’s lots of fees and I’d have be at the beach by five forty-five every morning and I haven’t really figured out how to explain that to my parents, so yeah.” I shrugged and ate another chip. Surfing always left me starving afterward. “On my island.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s something Caro and I say. Like, if you don’t like the way something is, you just say ‘on my island!’ As if things would be different on your own private island where you could make up all the rules.”

  “Well, on my island, no one would have ever created that smoothie-juice thing,” Oliver said, moving the cup even closer to me. “Because that’s not right.”

  “It’s all natural!” I protested even as I laughed. “Made from nature!”

  “Nature is cruel,” Oliver replied.

  “Well, we’ll just see who’s stronger and fitter when we go surfing next time,” I said without thinking, then realized that I just invited Oliver to hang out again.

  He looked at me a second longer than he had before. “Again?” he repeated before chowing down on another fry. “Yeah, that’d be cool. It’s not like I have plans or anything.”

  I twisted the napkin between my fingers. “Not to sound like I was stalking you or anything, but I saw you watching movies in your room.”

  Oliver just nodded. “Yeah, my dad and I, we used to watch movies together. He was a big film buff and he got me into it.” Now Oliver was shredding his napkin. Between the two of us, the napkins didn’t stand a chance.

  “That’s cool,” I said. “You know, there’s a film appreciation club at school, you could . . .” But I trailed off as Oliver just looked at me, skepticism in his eyes.

  “Not joining any clubs,” he said. “That’s not my thing.”

  “Not everyone is an asshole at our school,” I pointed out, “but I’m sorry you’re getting harassed. It’s just because you’re new. They’ll get over it.”

  “What makes you think I’d want to be friends with them in the first place?”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  He looked at the skyline, which had turned blue and purple to match the ocean. “Thanks for asking me to hang out today,” he finally said. “It was fun. I’m glad I didn’t die.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t die, either,” I said. “It’d be bad if you disappeared for ten years, then you died on my watch two weeks after you got back.”

  “Yes, it would,” Oliver said, smiling at me. He looked like his second-grade photograph, the one that had been plastered on MISSING signs everywhere. “I was starting to go nuts just hanging out with my mom and Rick the whole time.”

  “Well, they said we should give you some sp—time to adjust,” I said. The word space sounded mean all of a sudden, like Oliver was a shrapnel bomb set to explode.

  He just laughed. “Not enough time for that.” Before I could respond, he looked at me. “Hey, you cold? You’re shivering.”

  “A little
,” I admitted. I hadn’t even noticed until he said it. “What, are you going to do something chivalrous like give me your coat?”

  “What coat? All I’ve got is your hoodie and it smells like the back of your car,” he replied. “C’mon, finish so we can crank the heat and get back so you can lie to your parents.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, and we finished our burritos and went back across the street to the car. My hair was almost dry, but hopefully I could sneak into the shower before my parents noticed all the salt that would inevitably crust up around my hairline.

  In the car, Oliver looked at me as we sat at a light, his face highlighted in red. “Hey,” he said. “What movie did we see?”

  “Oh yeah, right. Let’s get our story straight. Um, the new one with that Australian actor guy.”

  “Okay, good. Don’t screw up under pressure, Emmy. We’ve come this far, we can’t go back!”

  “I won’t!” I laughed. “I’ve been lying to my parents way longer than you have, don’t forget.”

  “True. Hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m sorry there’s a gap in our friendship.”

  “Yeah,” I said, glancing at him. “Me too. But it’s not our fault.”

  He was about to say something, but the light changed to green and he sat back as I hit the gas, the light telling us it was time to go.

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  ..................................................................

  When we got back, I pulled the car into the driveway and cut the engine. “I’m covered in sand,” Oliver said, brushing at the leg of his jeans. “How are we supposed to keep this a secret, again?”

  “We went to the Stand for dinner after the movie because we were starving, and then we walked on the beach.” I turned in my seat to look at him. “Please do not blow this for me.”

  “I won’t, I won’t,” he said. “And, wow, you’re good at lying.”

  “We aren’t lying, per se,” I said as I unbuckled my seat belt. “We’re just protecting my parents from the truth that would kill them.”