I didn’t look exactly ravishing but I felt sort of extraordinary. Not polished like one of the shoobee girls from the club or effortlessly buoyant like my sister or casually confident like Caroline. I suppose I felt like myself, only slightly shinier. Lighter. Happier.
And that was the girl who fell into a blissfully zonked, dreamless sleep that night. I didn’t completely understand why Will and I had clicked so well. In truth, I couldn’t fathom what exactly he saw in me.
But I was confident I would find out the very next day—as soon as Will called.
There was one problem with that little scenario.
Will didn’t call the next day.
Which was perfectly fine at first. Good, even. That way I could spend the morning floating around inside my own fuzzy head, replaying the entire date like it was my favorite movie. I could pause on Will’s face when I handed him that silly champagne flute. I could fast-forward through the early, awkward bits. And I could scene-scan my way through all our conversations.
I also imagined what our phone call would be like.
In detail.
It went something like this …
Will: Nobody ever made me a picnic before.
Me: Oh, it’s no big deal.
Will: True, the food was pretty bad …
Me: Hey, I’m not the one who chose the Beach Club and their antique artichoke dip.
Will: Well, at least I chose the right girl. You gotta give me credit for that, right?
Me: Oh …
Will: Anna? You didn’t really think I cared about the food, did you?
Me: Oh …
Will: Tell me you’ll have dinner with me again. A real dinner this time. Tonight.
I’d go on with my fantasy banter, but you’re probably throwing up a little in your mouth right now.
Believe me, I was just as mocking of myself. I just wasn’t a romantic. One time I found a yellowed bodice ripper in my parents’ bookshelf and reading it had made me feel like I was eating corn syrup. Yet here I was spinning so much schmaltz you’d think my brain had been replaced by a cotton candy machine.
It wasn’t that I wanted Will to be Prince Charming. I didn’t, believe me. I guess this crazy dialogue was just my brain adjusting to life on the other side. On the other side of a fabulous first date.
On the other side of falling in like for the first time.
On the other side of Will.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Dune Island? Will continued to Not Call.
He didn’t call while I was at the beach dishing with Caroline. He didn’t call during my shift at The Scoop. He didn’t call while I was in the shower or during any of the inconvenient moments when, Murphy’s Law, he was supposed to call.
By that evening I resolved to call him. He’d given me his number, too, after all.
But first I needed sustenance.
Since my parents were both at The Scoop with Kat and Benjie, it was a fend-for-yourself night dinner-wise. I shuffled down to the kitchen and tried to decide if I wanted sweet (ice cream of course) or savory.
I decided spicy was better for my pre-call state of mind. It would wake me up, whereas ice cream always lulled me into a happy stupor.
As I was sizzling up some bacon for a sandwich, Sophie strutted in from the porch. She had her hot-pink wrap knotted around her waist and her sparkly pink cell phone clamped to her ear.
“Okay, so you’re signing us up?” she was asking.
I heard a high-pitched voice on the other end of the phone. It reminded me of a mosquito’s whine.
“I thought we decided the team name,” Sophie said. “Summer Lovin’, right? I know—love it! Okay, buh-bye, babe.”
Strangely enough, I could completely translate that cryptic conversation.
“So that’s the name of your team?” I said. “For the sand castle competition?”
The Dune Island tourist bureau staged the competition every August, just when things started to get impossibly sleepy around here. My sister and a gaggle of her friends entered every summer. Castle building was one of Sophie’s random obsessions, along with gymnastics and a crocheted bracelet business she’d started with yet more of her friends. Sophie pretty much had people buzzing around her at all times. It made me claustrophobic just thinking about it, but she was one of those people who hated being alone.
I suppose that’s why she hung around in the kitchen while I poked at the bacon strips on the griddle.
“Yeah, we’re calling the team Summer Lovin’,” Sophie said. “It’s that song from Grease. Sung by Sandy? Get it?”
“Got it,” I said dryly. “It’s definitely better than Days of our Lives, from last year. Though I still think you’re flirting with copyright infringement there.”
“Um, what?” Sophie said, slouching into a chair at the kitchen table.
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Do you want a sandwich? PBJ?”
“What am I, eight?” Sophie balked.
“Not that PBJ,” I retorted. “It’s peanut butter, bacon, and jalapeño. Very gourmet!”
“Ugh!” Sophie said. She flounced off her chair and headed to the walk-in pantry to forage for something else to eat. “Your diet is so weird. I don’t know why you don’t weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.”
“The one perk of our genes, I guess,” I said. Like me, Sophie was short and bird boned. Unlike me, she preferred her food bland, predictable, and in tiny portions.
“Come on, try my sandwich,” I cajoled her. “It’s like Mom’s bacon ice cream. You think it’s going to be awful, but it ends up being awesome. And don’t worry, the jalapeños are pickled. They barely even burn.”
“Guh-ross!” Sophie squealed.
I smeared some peanut butter on a butter knife, topped it with a crispy crumb of bacon, and thrust it toward her.
“So-phiiiiieee,” I singsonged like a ghost out of one of our Caleb’s stories. “Eeeeat me! Eeeeat meeee, So-phiiiiieee.”
“Oh my God,” Sophie said, dodging my sticky butter knife. “Why are you always trying to be so weird?”
I laughed, shrugged, and turned back to the counter. After I’d assembled my sandwich, I sat at the table with Sophie, who’d decided on a (boring) bowl of granola.
“You know, I don’t try to be weird,” I said after I’d taken my first (delicious, I might add) bite of my dinner. “Everyone is weird. You’re the one who’s trying to hide.”
“Hide what?” Sophie demanded.
“You’re trying to hide your inherent weirdness,” I said. “It’s futile, you know. Nobody’s really normal.”
“See?!” Sophie screeched, slapping her cereal with her spoon and sloshing milk on the table. “That’s such an abnormal thing to say! That’s what makes you weird!”
“Fine, Soph.” I sighed. “Whatever you think.”
I glanced at my cell phone, which was perched not inconspicuously on the corner of the kitchen table. If Sophie hadn’t been there, I would have checked it to make sure the ringer was set on loud. But she was, and besides, I’d already checked the ringtone status. Twice.
“Are you waiting for him to call?” Sophie blurted. “That guy you went out with last night?”
Clearly, I hadn’t been surreptitious enough for my sister.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I’m not not wanting him to call. I’m just … well, I’ll probably just call him. Just to say hey. No big deal, right?”
“Yes big deal!” Sophie cried. Suddenly, she sat up straight in her chair. “You can’t call him.”
“Um, yes, I can, Sophie,” I said. “This isn’t the movies and it’s not 1950. You can call a boy after you’ve had a great time together.”
“So it was good, then!” Sophie said. She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes, it was good,” I said defensively. “Don’t be so surprised.”
Sophie waved off my bruised ego. She was too intent on issuing orders.
“First of all, you think the date went well,” she said. “But
you can never be sure. He could have a different story altogether. That’s why you have to wait for him to call. If he does, you know. But if you call him, you never will. Plus you’ll look desperate.”
“Why doesn’t it make him look desperate if he calls?” I sputtered.
That one stopped Sophie. She frowned, looked confused for a moment, and then got irritated (because she clearly didn’t have an answer).
“This is just the way it is!” she declared. “I can’t believe you don’t know that.”
Part of me was glad I didn’t know that. I’d always zoned out a little when Sophie or Caroline dissected the latest social dramas at our school. I knew just enough of the “rules” to get through school without humiliating myself, but not enough to play all the little games. Because I’d always hated games. I read my way through whatever school sporting events Caroline and Sam dragged me to. And I could never get through more than a few minutes of Monopoly with my family.
Sophie, of course, adored Monopoly—and she always won. Which was why it was hard for me to completely ignore what she’d just said.
So I didn’t call Will.
I didn’t sleep much that night either.
And when I left for the beach the next morning, my wrap pulled around my shoulders like a dowdy shawl, I was officially depressed.
By the time I got to the North Peninsula, though, I was officially mad. I mean, what kind of boy asks for your number, then doesn’t call? A boy who wants to mess with your head, that’s who!
That must have been why my head felt hot and buzzy and the hair sticking to my temples was as maddening as a swarm of mosquitoes.
I tossed my wrap onto the sand, then ran into the surf. I dove head-first into a seething whitecap, then swam a few frantic laps back and forth along the shoreline. The hissing and churning of the water felt like a perfect match for what was going on inside me.
Only when I could dive beneath the surface and actually feel a hint of the peace I usually got in the water did I allow myself to stop swimming and just drift.
I dove down and skimmed my hands across the sand. My fingers felt floaty. The wet sand sifted through them, weightless and velvety. As I often did while swimming, I gave in to the illusion that I was part of the island, as elemental as the sea oats or the sandbars that emerged every day at low tide.
Still sifting, I uncovered a sand dollar. I zinged it from one hand to the other before flipping it back to the ocean floor. Then I swam by pressing my legs together and undulating them like a tail. My sister and I had taught ourselves to do that when we were little, imagining that we could go faster if we swam like mermaids. I’m not sure if it worked, but the habit had stuck with me.
Swimming like that now made me remember when mastering a mermaid kick (or a cartwheel or double Dutch) had seemed to matter so much and had been so hard.
They seemed easy now compared with all the mental gymnastics it took to just sit on my butt and wait for one boy to call me.
The thought of my silent cell phone got me simmering again, and I pushed out of the water with a big splash and gasp. After blinking the ocean out of my eyes, I spotted Caroline on the beach, waving her pale blue wrap at me.
I trudged up to join her.
“Where’s Sam?” I asked her as I collapsed onto the sand. I didn’t even bother to spread my wrap out beneath me, but just let my soaked arms and legs get breaded like a fish fillet.
“Where’s Will?” Caroline retorted.
The fish fillet gave Caroline the fish eye.
“He hasn’t called?” Caroline asked with a little gulp that she quickly tried to cover up with a cough.
“So that’s bad, right?” I said. I flipped out the straw on my sports bottle and took a big gulp of sugary, minty iced tea.
Caroline started to stay something, then reconsidered and clamped her mouth shut. Then she inhaled again, but cocked her head and clammed up a second time.
“What?!” I sputtered, breaking into the debate Caroline was having with herself. “Just say it! Will is blowing me off, isn’t he?”
“That’s the thing,” she said with a helpless shrug. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if Will not calling is tragic or totally fine. I might have a boyfriend, but I haven’t figured any of this stuff out yet. I mean, Sam and I didn’t go through the mating dance when we got together because we already knew each other so well.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s different,” I said. I’d been propped up on my elbows but now I flopped flat on my back, not even caring that I’d have to scrub sand out of my hair later. “Why couldn’t I have given my number to someone I’ve known forever?”
“Because that’s the whole point,” Caroline said. She was sitting cross-legged on her wrap, picking at one of its many loose threads. “You don’t know Will at all and that’s the appeal. He’s a mystery. He’s nothing but possibility.”
“Or impossibility.” I sighed. “That’s what’s killing me. If this were Sam, I would know what was going on at his end. I’d know that he was working a double shift at the bike shop or having an emergency band practice for a gig. Or I’d know that the more caffeine he drinks at night, the later he sleeps the next day.”
“Yeah, well, you never know everything about a boy,” Caroline said before lying down herself.
I lifted my head and squinted over at her.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Is everything okay with Sam? Where is he, anyway?”
“What? Sam? Oh, everything’s fine,” Caroline said with a brusque wave of her hand. “He’s just where you said. Double shift at the bike shop.”
I plopped my head back down, then laid a hand on my stomach, which was feeling a little queasy.
“Uch,” I said. “I think I sucked in too much salt water. Let’s go to Angelo’s for some sour candy.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Caroline said. She pulled out a white paper sack filled with unnatural colors and flavors.
Angelo’s was the closest beachmart to both Dune Island schools, so naturally, it was the island’s best candy source. In fact, its bulk candy bins were legendary. During the school year, Angelo’s was like a stock market floor every afternoon, complete with jostling, negotiating, and trading.
But in the summertime Angelo’s was sleepier, so he was lazier with his stock. You might end up with nothing in your candy bag but popcorn-flavored jelly beans or Bit-O-Honeys.
“The pickings weren’t that bad today,” Caroline said. “I got a ton of sour straws. All the apple, cherry, and watermelons were gone, though. We have to make do with blue raspberry.”
“Too bad Benjie’s not here, he’d love that,” I joked, fishing a long, cobalt-blue gummy straw out of the bag. The sour sugar made my mouth smart for a moment before the man-made deliciousness of the gummy took over. I took another bite before musing, “Remember when all it took to make us happy was mermaid kicking and some blue candy?”
“Um, no!” Caroline said. She stared at me and gave her head a frustrated little shake. “Anna, that stuff has never made you happy. You’ve always been waiting for something better to come along.”
“I have?” I said. Now I sat up, feeling little rivulets of sand slide off my limbs. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Caroline said. “I mean, it’s not extreme. You don’t do that whole ‘I hate my small-town life so I’m going to dye my hair matte black and start piercing myself’ thing.”
“So cliché,” we said at the exact same time.
After we stopped laughing, Caroline got serious again.
“Sometimes it just feels like you’re not completely here,” she tried to explain. She pointed at the water. “When you swim laps out there, like you were just doing, sometimes I wonder if you want to just keep going. Like you wish you could swim all the way across the ocean or something. I mean, Anna … did you really think Dune Islanders were going to go for Cardamom Hibiscus ice cream?”
I laughed again.
“Holy non sequitur,�
�� I said. But Caroline only half smiled.
Of course, she was right about the ice cream. That lurid orange stuff had sat almost untouched in the ice cream case for two weeks before my dad had hauled the poor freezer-burned tub out and tossed it.
But just because I made some exotic ice cream didn’t mean I wanted to run away to India tomorrow.
Right?
“Maybe that’s why none of the Dune Island boys are good enough for you,” Caroline went on. She looked down in her lap and fiddled with her gummy straw. “And why you were so instantly into this guy from New York.”
“Good enough for me?” I said. “That’s so not it. Especially since Will isn’t even like that. He’s way more like us than a shoobee. I told you what we talked about the other night.”
“I’m just saying,” Caroline said, looking away from my confused face and gazing out at the water, “it is possible to go out with someone you know. Someone who would call the next day.”
My mouth dropped open. I had a million retorts to this, but also—none.
I’d never really thought about why the Landon Smiths of my world held no interest for me.
It also hadn’t occurred to me that I might like Will simply because he was different; because he was from someplace else.
Especially since right then he couldn’t have felt farther away and I definitely didn’t like that. Already our date was starting to feel hazy to me and I wondered if I hadn’t invented some of its swooniest parts. Maybe I’d been the only one who’d felt like the night had flown by in about five minutes—and left me wanting more.
I didn’t know which was a more depressing thought. That I liked Will only because I was a pathetic small towner and he was a glamorous city boy.
Or that this boy I liked so much seemed to have forgotten about me entirely.
I crammed the last of my gummy straw into my mouth, then said, “It’s hot. You want to swim?”
Caroline peered at me, one eye squinted shut against the sun.
“I promise not to make a break for England,” I said with a forced laugh.
“Your lips are bright blue,” Caroline said as we got to our feet.
Sixteenth Summer Page 7