Sixteenth Summer

by Michelle Dalton

  “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” I thought to ask when I was halfway up the ladder.

  “I’m a New Yorker!” Will scoffed.

  “There are a few tall buildings there, aren’t there?” I laughed.

  We crab-walked up the curved side of the water tower until we were in the center of the tank, which was spacious and fairly flat.

  Then we sat with our backs to the lighthouse and the ocean. We gazed out at the skinny, bent-leg shape that was Dune Island. In the moonlight, the swamp grasses undulating in the breeze looked almost mystical, like a fluttering golden cloth. The swamp pools were like tiny islands themselves, black shapes stretching out toward the mainland, looking like a work of abstract art.

  “See what I meant about the shapes in the pools?” I said to Will. “They’re better than clouds.”

  “Huh,” Will said, squinting at the landscape. “All I see are a whole lot of Jesuses!”

  I burst out laughing and threw myself at Will, hitting him so hard that he fell backward. He laughed too, and coughed a bit when he hit the tank.

  We lay there for a moment, with my top half laying on his, looking into each other’s eyes. And then we were kissing, our bodies pressed together as close as we could get them. But after a moment, the sobs that I’d held in so valiantly all day broke free. I buried my face in Will’s shoulder and cried so hard, I could barely speak. He stroked my hair, held me tightly, and didn’t try to quiet me.

  “I can’t do this,” I cried.

  It was the same thing I’d said to him the night we broke up. Then I didn’t think I’d had the strength to be with Will.

  Now I didn’t think I could be without him.

  But I had to.

  The thought threatened to set off another bout of tears, but instead I turned to Will and put my hands on his shoulders. I looked into his eyes, which were drawn downward by a new sadness now, and got pragmatic.

  My curfew was at eleven. I had ninety minutes left with Will. And I didn’t want to waste them.

  I swiped the tears off my cheeks. Then I peered over Will’s shoulder at the swamp and said, “I actually do see a shape. I think it’s a canoe.”

  Will nodded slowly. He understood what I was doing. So he looked too.

  “Um, I see a turtle over there,” he said, pointing at a round patch.

  “Oh, please,” I scoffed, “turtles are the easiest ones to spot. Hey, do you see that trombone?”

  “Seriously? A trombone?” Will laughed. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  “I know,” I said, snuggling into him, my arms wrapped around his waist.

  “I can picture you at your school in New York,” I said. “I’m seeing a blazer with a crest and a striped tie.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Will said, “but we don’t even wear uniforms.”

  After a pause, Will said, “I wonder if I’ll be different now. At school. At life. You know, after you.”

  I squeezed Will a little harder and thought of my own life before this summer. I’d held so much, and so many, at a distance lest they prevent me from breaking away from Dune Island. Would I be different?

  I hoped so, at least in some ways.

  I looked into Will’s eyes again.

  In a good way, I thought before I closed my eyes and kissed him.

  When it was too dark to see anything but Will’s watch, which said ten forty-five, we carefully climbed back to earth.

  “We forgot to the eat the ice cream,” Will said, pointing at the cooler hanging from my shoulder.

  “I know,” I said. I handed it to him. “Take it home with you. For your mom and Owen. Maybe they’re still awake.”

  We held each other for a long, long beat. Our kisses felt endless, but also way too brief. Tears streamed from my eyes, but I managed not to sob for this moment.

  Finally, Will cleared his throat.

  “I think I need to walk home by myself,” he said. “I don’t want to say good-bye with suitcases and boxes and stuff all around us.”

  Our eyes were open during our last kiss. Will’s lips were so soft, so delicious. His eyelashes fluttered with the pain he was feeling and I felt them brush my own. I pulled away and smoothed his hair back from his face so I could look at him, really look at him, one last time.

  Will kissed my forehead, softly and sweetly and so, so sadly. Then we drew away from each other, our arms outstretched and our fingers touching until we finally pulled them apart.

  I watched Will walk away until I couldn’t see him anymore. Then I went home myself, crying until I literally couldn’t anymore.

  That feeling, of having no tears left, somehow felt even worse than all the crying. I felt dry. Passionless.

  I wondered if I’d ever feel passionate about anything again.

  After every date with Will, I’d fallen into a deep, heavy, happy sleep.

  After this one, of course, I couldn’t sleep at all. I don’t think I even tried. I just lay on my back under my skylight, staring through the clear night sky at the stars.

  At two a.m. I got out of bed without even really deciding to. Suddenly I was just up and slipping into a pair of cutoffs and a tank-top. As I tiptoed across the room, carrying my flip-flops, I stared at my sister in her bed, willing her to stay asleep. Then I slipped out of our room.

  My parents slept with a machine that piped the sound of waves and gulls into their room, as if they didn’t get enough ocean sounds living on an island. So it was easy to tiptoe my way out of the house without them hearing. I didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt. I was certain I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  As I pedaled down Highway 80, I also didn’t worry about how I was going to rouse Will from his bed. I think somehow I knew he wouldn’t be in it.

  Sure enough, when I arrived at his stretch of beach, there he was. He was gazing out at the waves with his hands dug deep into the pockets of his khakis, his bare feet scuffing at the sand.

  He didn’t even seem surprised when I came up behind him and touched his shoulder. He simply wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my neck. We stood there, swaying slightly in the wind coming off the waves, breathing each other in.

  We walked along the beach for a long time. And when we were tired of walking, we lay down, Will’s arms around me, my head on his chest.

  There was nothing left to say. We just lay entwined on the sand, listening to each other’s heartbeats during the pauses between waves.

  We fell asleep like that, and didn’t wake until the sun began to rise. We sat up to watch it, all flaming, pink-orange shimmers and golden beams. I rested between Will’s legs, leaning back against his chest. He clasped his arms around my shoulders, holding me close.

  Just as the sun broke free from the horizon, Will spoke. His voice was gravelly.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen with us, Anna,” he said. “But I’m always going to love you. That I know.”

  I knew it too—that I would always love Will, even if I never saw him again.

  I knew it as I walked him back to the rickety bridge that led to his cottage.

  I knew it as we luxuriated in one final, delicious kiss and as we said good-bye for real this time. In a few hours, Will would go back to that foreign country of subways and elevators and I would remain in this lush habitat where it never snowed and you could hear the sizzle of the surf everywhere you went.

  As I pedaled my bike slowly home, I realized one more thing. I didn’t have to wonder if I’d ever be passionate or happy again. I was happy, even as I tasted tears on my lips, along with Will’s last kiss; even though part of me dreaded this day, my first without Will.

  I was happy because I knew I’d never forget Will. Even if parts of this summer faded from my memory over time, even if Will’s face grew vague in my mind, I’d never forget what it had felt like to be with him for a few short months. What it had been like to be sixteen and in love for the first time.

  I wouldn’t forget that—not ever
.

  Many thanks to …

  Emilia Rhodes, for giving me quite the summer.

  Micol Ostow, for being a lovely yenta.

  Sonya McEvoy, Katherine Moore, Laurel Snyder, Melanie Regnier, and Alissa Fasman, wonderful friends who pitched in with playdates.

  Morelli’s Gourmet Ice Cream & Desserts and King of Pops in Atlanta, for the ice cream inspiration.

  Our beloved granny nanny, Bunny Lenhard, who did too many above and beyonds to list.

  Mira and Tali, who bounced through this crazy summer with so much cheer and charm.

  And Paul, who kept me going with tremendous support, lots of housework, and most of all, inspiration for a love story.

  There’s always next summer …

  Turn the page for a peek at another summer romance.

  BY MAUREEN DALY

  I don’t know just why I’m telling you all this. Maybe you’ll think I’m being silly. But I’m not, really, because this is important. You see, it was different! It wasn’t just because it was Jack and I either—it was something much more than that. It wasn’t as it’s written in magazine stories or as in morning radio serials where the boy’s family always tease him about liking a girl and he gets embarrassed and stutters. And it wasn’t silly, like sometimes, when girls sit in school and write a fellow’s name all over the margin of their papers. I never even wrote Jack’s name at all till I sent him a postcard that weekend I went up to Minaqua. And it wasn’t puppy love or infatuation or love at first sight or anything that people always talk about and laugh. Maybe you don’t know just what I mean. I can’t really explain it—it’s so hard to put in words but—well, it was just something I’d never felt before. Something I’d never even known. People can’t tell you about things like that, you have to find them out for yourself. That’s why it is so important. It was something I’ll always remember because I just couldn’t forget—it’s a thing like that.

  It happened this way. At the very beginning of the summer I met Jack—right after graduation. He had gone to the public high school and I went to the Academy just outside of town which is for girls only. I had heard of him often because he played guard on the high school basketball team and he sometimes dated Jane Rady who sat next to me in history class. That night (the night when things first began) I drove down to the post office with my father to mail a letter and because it was rather late Dad pulled up in front of McKnight’s drugstore and said, “I’ll just stop here and keep the motor running while you run in and get a stamp.” McKnight’s is where all the fellows and girls in Fond du Lac get together and I really would rather not have gone in alone—especially on a Friday night when most girls have dates—but I didn’t want to tell my father that.

  I remember just how it was. I was standing by the drug counter waiting for the clerk. The sides of the booths in McKnight’s are rather high and in one, near the back, I could just see the top of someone’s head with a short crew cut sticking up. He must have been having a Coke, for he tore the wrapping off the end of his straws and blew in them so that the paper covering shot over the side of the booth. Then he stood up to see where it had landed. It was Jack. He looked over at me, smiled, and then sat down again.

  Of course I didn’t know him yet, he just smiled to be friendly, but I waited for a few minutes looking at magazines in the rack near the front door, hoping he might stand up again or walk up to the soda fountain or something, but he didn’t. So I just left. “You certainly took long enough,” my father said gruffly, “I might have been arrested for parking double like this.”

  The next night my sister Lorraine came in from Chicago on the 2:40 a.m. train. She has been going to college for two years and wears her hair long, almost to her shoulders, and puts her lipstick on with a brush. We drove to meet her, Dad and I. It was raining a little then and the lights from the station shone on the wet bricks. The two-wheeled baggage carts were standing in a line, their long handles tipped up into the air. We waited while the train came out of the darkness, feeling its way with the long, yellow headlight beam. When it stopped, a man jumped out and ran into the station with a package under his arm. A conductor swung onto the platform and stood waving a lantern while the train waited, the engine panting out steam from between its wheels. Dad and I walked along, peering up at the windows. A boy at one of them woke up and waved to me sleepily.

  Then we saw Lorraine half stumble down the steps with two suitcases and a black wool ram under her arm. “I fell asleep and almost forgot to get off,” she said. Her hair was mussed up and her cheek was all crisscrossed red where she had been leaning on the rough upholstery. “One of the girls had this goat in her room and didn’t want to pack it so I brought it home for Kitty. (Kitty is my sister who is ten but still likes toys.) You’ve got to hold it up straight or the rubber horns fall out.” Lorraine laughed. “I’m glad I’m home—this should be a good summer, don’t you think, Angie?” Dad kissed her gingerly—because of so much lipstick—and I took one bag to the car and he took the other and we went home.

  That was Saturday. Monday was the day summer vacation really began.

  It was just after nine o’clock and I was in the garden picking small round radishes and pulling the new green onions for dinner at noon. I remember it was a warm day with a blue and white sky. The garden was still wet with last night’s rain and the black earth was steaming in the sun, while between my toes the ground was soft and squishy—I had taken off my shoes and left them on the garden path so they wouldn’t get caked with mud—and I remember thinking how much fun it would be to go barefoot all the time. The little tomato plants were laid flat against the ground from last night’s downfall and there were puddles like blue glass in the hollows. A breeze, soft with a damp, fishy smell, blew in from Lake Winnebago about three blocks away. I was so busy thinking about the weather, the warm sun, and the sleek little onions that I didn’t even hear Jack come up the back sidewalk.

  “Any baked goods today?” he called.

  “I don’t know,” I answered, turning. “You’d better ring the back doorbell and ask my mother.” I sidled over a little and stood in the thick quack grass beside the garden path. I don’t like to have people see me in my bare feet.

  “Why don’t you ask her for me?” he called. “You know her better than I do.” I stood still for a moment hoping he wouldn’t notice my feet. “Come on, hurry,” he said. “I don’t care if you haven’t any shoes on.”

  Now, it wasn’t that I was shy or anything, but it’s awkward when a boy has on a clean shirt and his hair combed and your hands are all muddy and you’re in your bare feet. I tried to wipe off the mud on the quack grass before I went down the garden path.

  “What were you doing,” he asked, “picking radishes?” (I still had the bunch of radishes in my hand.) “That’s kind of silly, isn’t it?” he added laughing. “It’s just my salesman’s personality coming out—anything to start a conversation. Twice already this morning I caught myself saying to customers, ‘What’s it going to do—rain?’ I’ve got to be careful not to get into a rut.” He laughed again and I laughed too. It was such a warm, bright morning.

  We talked together for a while and I told him I didn’t know he worked for a bakery, and he said he hadn’t until school let out and that he was going to drive one of the trucks for his father during the summer, and when I remarked that I didn’t even know his father owned a bakery, he said, “You don’t know much about me at all, do you?”

  “I know your name,” I answered.

  “What?” he asked

  “Jack Duluth. I remember reading it in the paper when you made that long shot from the center of the floor in the basketball game with Oshkosh this winter.”

  “Good for you—just another one of my fans.” He laughed. “What’s your name—as if I didn’t find out after I saw you in McKnight’s the other night. Angie Morrow, short for Angeline, isn’t it?”

  I was glad he had asked about me, but for some reason it was embarrassing and I tried to change
the subject. “I remember when you used to go with Jane Rady,” I ventured. “She used to sit next to me in history class. She talked about you a lot. She told me about the time you drove to the city dump—”

  “Forget it,” Jack said sharply. “Forget all about it, see. All that is down the drain by now.” For a moment I thought he was angry. “Go ask your mother if she needs any bread or doughnuts or anything, will you?”

  He sat down on the cement doorstep and I opened the door to go inside. All of a sudden he turned and said slowly, with a thought in his voice, “Say, Angie, you don’t go steady or anything, do you?”

  My heart jumped a little. “No, I don’t,” I answered and then added quickly, “My mother doesn’t like me to go out much.” It wouldn’t do to say that I wasn’t often asked, either. I waited a moment. “Do you, Jack?”

  He laughed. “Of course not. None of the fellows I go around with do. Silly to tie yourself down to one girl. But, say, seeing you don’t—how about going sailboating with me tonight? Me and Swede Vincent have got a little boat we bought last fall. Do you know Swede? He’s a good guy. He’ll come with us and sail it and you and I can just—ah—well, just sit. How about it?”

  I didn’t know, I told him. I would have to ask my mother first.

  “Go ask her now,” he urged, “when you ask her if she needs any bread. I’ll wait.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that!” I could hear my mother upstairs running the vacuum cleaner noisily over the rugs and I remembered I hadn’t tidied up my bedroom yet. “Now’s not such a good time to ask but I’ll tell you by one o’clock,” I promised, trying not to be too eager. “I’ll try to fix it and if you’ll call me then I can let you know.”

  “I’ll call you at one then and let’s skip the bakery goods for today. Please try to go,” he added. “No girl has ever been out in our boat before so you’ll be the first one. Something kind of special.”