Sixteenth Summer

by Michelle Dalton

  “Has anybody ever told you,” Will said, grunting again as he crab-walked under the deck to join me, “that you’re really small?”

  “Watch it, bub,” I muttered with a laugh.

  As Will settled in on the other side of my little sand table, I arranged votive candles in a circle around us. We were quiet as I lit them. The party chatter over our heads was muffled by the stone deck, but the crash/sizzle of the waves seemed to echo all around us. The candlelight danced on the blond fuzz on Will’s arms and made my own hands look almost graceful as I pulled a burgundy cloth napkin off a dinner plate. It was piled with hors d’oeuvres.

  “What’s this?” Will asked, taking in the crab puffs, hot artichoke dip and crackers, spinach pies, and bacon-wrapped dates.

  “A picnic,” I said, using a toothpick to pluck up a crispy date for him. “A tremendously old-school picnic. I don’t think the Beach Club has updated their menu since before we were born.”

  “When were you born?” Will asked with a curious smile.

  That’s when I realized—we didn’t know anything about each other. I didn’t know Will’s age. I didn’t even know his last name!

  I looked down so he wouldn’t see the momentary panic flutter across my face. I busied myself with cracking open a bottle of lemony sparkling water and pouring it into two champagne flutes. I felt a little sheepish about the flutes. When I’d filched them from the bar, I thought they were sophisticated and romantic. Now they seemed way too heart-shaped-hot-tub for comfort.

  “I’m sixteen,” I told Will.

  “Seventeen,” Will said, tapping his chest with his fingertips. Then he reached for the flute of fizzing water and said, “What’s with these skinny glasses, anyway? I mean, where do you put your nose?”

  Confirmed. The glasses had been a cheesy choice. I pointed at the pool deck above us. “So much of that just baffles me,” I said. “I mean, a bathroom attendant to hand you your paper towel? Really?”

  “You’re right,” Will said, popping the date into his mouth. “That’s just dumb.”

  I skewered my own date and twirled the toothpick between my thumb and forefinger.

  “Is that what it’s like in New York?” I asked. “Poshness everywhere?”

  Will shrugged.

  “Eh, there’s a lot of posh, I guess,” he said. “Just not necessarily in my house. Especially lately …”

  His voice trailed off and he took a quick sip of sparkling water.

  “Um, what …,” I stammered. “Why…”

  I didn’t want to pry. But on the other hand, I seriously wanted to pry.

  “It’s nothing,” Will said, still looking down at his crossed legs. “Just—my parents split up in February.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t a scandal or anything. My dad didn’t slink out in the dead of night or leave my mom for a younger woman. He just moved into a studio a few blocks away.”

  “Did they fight a lot?” I asked. Which seemed very prying, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Naw,” Will said. “That was one of the things that was weird about it. One of many, many things. They just—I think they stopped seeing each other, you know? Stopped talking. I had a feeling that when Owen and I weren’t around, our apartment was just … silent. I could almost feel it when I got back home—this heaviness.”

  I thought about my own house, where the front door was always open, letting in the breezes from the screened porch. Where the floors were often crunchy with sand and dried dune grass and waffle crumbs. There was always chatter in my house, and cooking smells, clashing cell phone rings, and somebody calling up or down the stairs. Heavy, it definitely wasn’t.

  I braced myself, wondering if a barrier would rise up between us again. A wall with Dune Island on one side, New York on the other; big, happy family on one side, fractured home life on the other; inscrutable boy on one side, confused girl on the other.

  And maybe that would have happened if I hadn’t been so focused on what Will was saying. If my interest in him hadn’t drowned out my own self-consciousness.

  “After the divorce,” Will went on, “my mom and Owen and I had to move, too. We rented a two-bedroom, which meant I had to share a room with my brother for the first time since we were little kids.”

  “I share a room with my sister too,” I said. “It definitely can suck sometimes.”

  “Yeah …” Will picked up one of the triangular spinach pies. He peeled off the top layer of crispy phyllo. But instead of popping it into his mouth, he crumbled it between his fingers. I had a feeling he didn’t even realize he was doing it.

  “The truth is, and this is going to sound really dorky,” Will said, “but it was actually kind of nice to share a room with my brother. He just graduated and he’s moving out to go to NYU in the fall. So it was the last time we’d ever be living under the same roof in New York.

  “Plus”—Will crushed up another layer of the phyllo before tossing the spinach pie back on the plate— “Owen’s the only one who can understand what it’s like to be in my family. To go out for sad Chinese food with my dad on Sundays or pretend not to hear my mom crying some nights.”

  I felt a little choky just imagining such a bleak scene.

  Then I knew why I sometimes saw that melancholy dragging down on the corners of Will’s mouth.

  Of course, I hadn’t seen it since we’d ducked under the pool deck, which made me feel a little thrill as Will kept on talking.

  “My dad left right before Valentine’s Day,” he said. I had a feeling he hadn’t talked about this very much and was sort of unleashing. I leaned forward a little, not nodding or going, “Hmm.” Just listening.

  “It was Owen’s idea to take my mom out for an anti-Valentine’s Day,” Will said. “I never would have thought of it. We went over to the Bowery to watch the garbage barges. For dinner we had street meat, these disgusting gyros you buy from carts on the street. With extra onions, of course. Then we went to a horror movie.”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said with a laugh. “I hate Valentine’s Day in general. But that one must have really been awful.”

  “Why do you hate Valentine’s Day?” Will asked. He was looking at me seriously, almost sadly.

  “Oh, well …”

  Suddenly I felt stammery. How did I tell Will that I hated Valentine’s Day because nobody had ever wanted me to be his valentine? Every year on February 14, my school was overrun by cheesy red and white carnations—the bigger your bouquet, the greater your social status. I’d gotten plenty of flowers, but they’d always been white, signifying friendship. Not love.

  “Valentine’s Day is so … schmaltzy, don’t you think?” I said.

  “And you don’t like schmaltz?” Will asked. He lifted his champagne flute of bubbly water and took a giant gulp. “Could have fooled me.”

  I felt myself turn bright red.

  But then I looked at Will’s eyes, which were all sparkly in the candlelight. They were also filled with warm humor, and not a speck of judgment.

  So I decided to get over myself and just enjoy this okay-I’m-just-going-to-call-it-an-official-date.

  Because I was enjoying it. Against all odds, I really, really was.

  Will and I talked until the votive candles sputtered out. We emerged from our little cave under the pool deck and Will snuck back under the railing to return our plates and glasses.

  I waited in the sand, feeling pleasantly overwhelmed by the big, black sky after the intense coziness of our picnic.

  Or maybe I was whooshy-headed because I’d been chatting with a boy for over an hour and it had felt like five minutes. It had been as fun and easy as coasting my bike down an endless, gently sloping hill.

  Will came back to the railing. This time, instead of sliding under it, he vaulted over it. He sailed over the rail so easily that he almost looked buoyant, as if he were in the water rather than the air. He landed in the sand, stumbled, then
righted himself with a self-mocking grin.

  Okay, there’s the catch, I thought, trying not to laugh out loud. He can fly. He’s a superhero, like one of Benjie’s action figures.

  Then I did end up snorting as I imagined Caroline shaking me by the shoulders and saying, “Get a grip, Anna. Just because you finally decide to like a boy doesn’t mean he’s Superman!”

  The Caroline in my head was right. I was being an incredible dork.

  “What are you laughing about?” Will asked as he kicked off his shoes. “Or should I say, what are you laughing at? Did I just look incredibly klutzy jumping down here?”

  In quick succession, I thought:

  1. No, he hadn’t looked klutzy at all.

  2. I loved that he’d even asked. And …

  3. The fantasy Caroline in my head had been right. I liked Will. I really liked him.

  And that made me feel so overwhelmed that I had to catch my breath.

  Except that I couldn’t. I continued to feel hopelessly breathless and giddy. So I ran. I ran down to the frothy edge of the surf, which was already cooling down for the night. Plunging my feet into the churning water calmed me, as it always does.

  Will jogged up and joined me. We didn’t make eye contact. Instead we both gazed out at the violet-black horizon. One point of light was twinkling brightly and I wondered if it was a star or a satellite. I decided it was a star.

  I extricated a bit of hair that had flown into my mouth and smoothed it behind my ear. I scratched an itch on my neck. They were the completely mundane fidgets I did all the time and never noticed. But now, they felt weird because I was doing them next to this boy. Will was standing so close to me, I could almost feel warmth radiating off his arm. It felt pretty amazing.

  I wondered what Will had noticed about me. The fact that I walk just a tiny bit pigeon-toed? That my nose was peeling because I’d forgotten my sunscreen a week earlier? That I was having a pretty good hair day? I hoped he’d noticed that this silence between us wasn’t awkward in the least. It was lovely, in fact.

  “I love this feeling,” Will said, looking down at his feet, which were planted ankle-deep in water that was rushing back out to sea. “The sand sort of sweeps out from under your feet and you feel weightless for a second, you know?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, looking down at my own legs, submerged to the ankle. They looked so twiggy next to Will’s muscley calves. “I love it, too, now that I think about it.”

  “Do you know, when you walk on the sand,” Will said, “you don’t even stumble? It’s like you’re walking across a perfectly flat floor or something. How do you do that? I feel like I’m picking my way through wet cement out there.”

  He jabbed over his shoulder with his thumb, pointing at the part of the beach that was feather-soft, drifty, and seriously uneven.

  So, I guess that’s what Will had noticed about me. I smiled, feeling proud. So what if he was basically complimenting me on my ability to walk, which was a fairly basic skill.

  “I think I took my first steps on sand,” I said to Will with a shrug. “And pretty much took it from there. It’s a local thing, I guess. But don’t worry, you’ve got a whole summer to get the hang of it.”

  “Or you could just cast a voodoo spell to help me skip the pesky learning curve,” Will suggested.

  “What?!” I blurted with a laugh.

  “Oh, come on,” Will said, grinning. “You must have some spells going on at The Scoop, for instance, to lure in unsuspecting tourists. There’s no way normal ice cream can taste that good.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s it,” I said with a sly smile. “Next time you come to The Scoop, just ignore that pentagram smeared on the door with chicken blood.”

  Okay, what was that?

  That was me trying to be clever and quippy. That was my sushi comment all over again, but even more disgusting.

  The only thing different was that it was two hours later. And I wasn’t mortified by the dorky thing I’d said. I just laughed my way through it, the way I would with anyone I knew.

  Sure enough, Will didn’t recoil in horror. He just laughed and said, “Gross, Anna.”

  “You’re the one who brought up the voodoo.” I giggled.

  I cocked my head and gave Will a quizzical look.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. “Are you glad to be here? I mean, you seem pretty urban. And it’s for the whole summer.”

  “This place is a loooong way from New York,” Will admitted. He glanced over at me. “I was a little anti at first. But I gotta say, Dune Island’s growing on me.”

  I was glad it was so dark out. My blushing, I could tell from the heat on my face, was intense.

  “Besides, I wasn’t going to take this summer away from my mom,” Will said, turning away from me and gazing out at the sea. “First my dad left, next Owen’s leaving. She’s kind of a basket case right now.

  “So—the find-yourself mission,” I said with a nod.

  “Pretty much,” Will replied. “The get-back-to-your-roots, find-yourself, and forget-your-ex-husband mission.”

  “My parents have basically been finding themselves my whole life,” I commiserated.

  “Oh, they’re not from around here?”

  “No way,” I said. “They’re refugees from Wisconsin. Every Christmas, they tell these epic tales of the awful Midwestern winters. You know, snowdrifts up to the roof, digging out the driveway, clunking radiators, the whole bit. And then they go on and on about the paradise that is Dune Island.”

  “Oh my God, that’s so my mom,” Will exclaimed. “If I have to hear once more how much better all the food tastes here in the fresh sea air, I’m going on a hunger strike.”

  “Besides which,” I said, “there’s no way we have better food than you do in New York.”

  “Well, they don’t have Pineapple Ginger Ale ice cream in New York,” Will said.

  “Pineapple Ginger Ale,” I said with a sly smile. “What kind of twisted mind came up with that?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out,” Will said with a sly smile of his own.

  I looked down and nudged the sand with my bare toes so he couldn’t see how hard I was grinning.

  “So I have a question for you,” Will said, “now that we’re on a last-name basis, Anna Patrick.”

  Last names had been one of the things we’d covered under the pool deck.

  “What’s that, Will Cooper?” I asked.

  “Can I have your phone number?”

  I laughed. Because his asking for my number after this amazing date seemed so backward.

  And because I was overjoyed that Will wanted it.

  And finally because I couldn’t wait to see Will again. Yes, the night wasn’t over yet and I could still enjoy the sight of Will’s hair blowing into his eyes, the way his back muscles rippled under his shirt when he threw a clod of sand into the water, and the way the scruff on his chin glinted in the moonlight.

  But I was already looking forward to more.

  I wish I could say I dreamed about Will that night. But that would have made the date a little too perfect. Untoppably perfect. When you think about it, you really don’t want that on the first date.

  So I suppose I should have been grateful that when I got home a squeak after curfew, I stubbed my toe on the front steps because the porch lights were off.

  Then I realized I was famished because I’d forgotten to eat more than a couple of dates during my picnic with Will. And when I went to the kitchen to grab a snack, I accidentally tipped over a glass of tea that someone had left on the counter.

  After mopping up the spill, I grabbed a few crackers and tried not to crunch as I tiptoed up to my room. I didn’t want to wake anybody and have to talk about my date. It would have broken the night’s spell.

  Or worse, someone (probably Sophie) might have pointed out that there had been no spell; that it had just been an ordinary night, complete with soggy spinach pies and more than a few verbal gaffes on my part.
That I really had no reason to be so gaga.

  Luckily, I made it to my room without waking anybody. When I slunk through the bedroom door, Sophie was breathing evenly, deep in her own dreams. I went straight to the bathroom, closed the door, then sank onto the round stool at the vanity. Sophie and I both loved our antique wooden vanity, which was ornate and curvy and had a slightly pink cast to it. It had lots of tiny drawers, niches, and cabinets where we used to stash things like Barbie shoes, gumball-machine jewelry, and illegal candy.

  Now most of the nooks were taken up with Sophie’s makeup and perfumes, but I’d staked out one drawer all for myself. In it I put keepsakes that only I could decipher.

  I’d saved a piece of sea glass, for instance, that I’d picked up during my last beach walk with my grandfather before he died.

  I had my childhood hair comb, the one with the mermaid on the handle, which I’d never been able to pass on to Kat.

  There were pebbles, shells, and notes passed in class that I could sift through when I wanted to recall certain perfect afternoons, moments of hilarity, or even waves of sadness.

  Now I pulled from my skirt pocket a green plastic toothpick. It was shaped like a pirate’s sword, with a D-shaped handle and a flattened, pointed blade. It was ridiculously cheesy and pure Dune Island Beach Club. I stashed it in my little drawer, tucking it under the torn-off bits of paper and the smooth, flat sea glass.

  Then I reached across to the sink, soaked a soft washcloth, and dabbed it on my face. I felt too luxuriously dreamy to stand in front of the sink and be all efficient with my washing up. I stretched out my legs, gazed out the window, and enjoyed the feel of the cool, damp terrycloth on my hot forehead and cheeks.

  As I swabbed off my neck, I glanced at myself in the vanity’s cloudy round mirror. My skin was both summer gold and flushed from my bike ride. My hair was wind tousled. There was a speck of pale green artichoke dip on the scoop neck of my T-shirt.