“You’re cheating.”
“Owahhohmygod.” I whacked the Hippos arena so hard white marbles bounced off, disappearing into the green shag carpet.
“Shit. Sorry. Are you having a heart attack?”
I looked over my shoulder. Him. The Boy Behind the Counter. Horizontal, sleepy-eyed. He was lying on the couch, buried under quilts from his chin down.
I rested my head on my knees. “I’ll live.”
“I cover my face when I sleep. It freaks my mom out.”
“How can you breathe like that?”
“Exactly what my mom says.” He slid down to the carpet next to me, stretching and shaking off blankets. Instead of his tight silver T-shirt he wore a loose blue one. “You look so familiar. You’re a Trojan?”
I glanced at the gold USC on my chest. No, I’m only in high school. We talked at the rink, remember? You found something of mine...
I said none of that, and though my hood had slipped down I made no attempt to free my hair from the sweatshirt, swoosh it around to jog his memory. Later, I would analyze this decision to lie, and realize that either I wanted to punish him for making out with Pauline Knowland, I was hurt he didn’t recognize me, or both. And I liked the idea of being a college girl. It felt like normal rules didn’t apply here, in this funny place you could only discover by going through the laundry room, like finding Narnia through the wardrobe.
“Yeah,” I lied.
“Maybe I’ve seen you down there. I’m at UCLA. Grad school next year.”
I nodded as if this was news.
His cheek had a thin pink sleep line stamped into it. I fought the urge to touch it. Instead I hunted for marbles in the carpet.
He crawled around, helping. “You were cheating, though.”
“How could I when I was playing against myself?” I lobbed a marble into the box.
“You were favoring the green hippo. Pink didn’t have a chance. Found one!” He held out his palm.
“That’s a popcorn kernel.”
“Oh. Guess my eyes haven’t adjusted.” He took the lid off the Sorry! box, the only one I hadn’t gotten to. “Wanna play? You can even be green since it’s your favorite.”
For a few minutes we played silently, rolling and tapping and sliding.
“So why aren’t you...?” J.B. pointed his red plastic piece at the ceiling, at the epicenter of the party sounds. (Sheryl Crow again. I couldn’t escape her that summer.)
“I was having so much fun I couldn’t handle it.”
“Right.” He tapped my Connect Four frowny face.
“I guess I’m busted.” I smiled.
“I get it. I only came because my mom forced me. She says I work too much.”
“And you’re humoring her but catching up on your sleep.”
“Exactly. So did you go to CDL High?”
“Yeah.” Not, technically, a lie. I did go. And I’d go for two more years. “Soooorrry.” I bumped his red piece with my green, sending it skidding across the board.
“Unnecessary roughness. This isn’t air hockey.” He picked up his piece, squeezing it tight. “Hey.”
His voice had gone soft; I looked up. He leaned an inch closer, his eyes scanning mine. “Did anyone ever tell you...”
Don’t say I have beautiful eyes. Don’t say it.
“Did anyone ever tell you your eyes are sort of sad?”
“Yes, actually.”
“I’m supposed to be the one with sad eyes,” he said.
“They don’t look sad to me.” I leaned over the game board to study his brown eyes, balancing with my fingertips on his knees. I was bold, here in Narnia.
“It’s this stupid stereotype. I’m part Ohlone.” He held still, maintaining his joking-around smile. But he hitched his breath and spoke in a rush. “What’s your name?”
“Laura.”
“That’s extremely pretty.” He tucked a stray lock of hair back into the neck of my sweatshirt. His index finger remained near the corner of my jaw, making slow, tiny circles beneath my earlobe. And now I was the one who had to concentrate on breathing.
“What’s yours?” I whispered.
He answered into my neck, where he’d replaced his fingertip with his lips. I couldn’t hear him, but of course the question was another lie; I knew his name.
J.B.’s hand moved to my hip, inches from my pocket. I usually maneuvered away when hands ventured too close to that pocket. But right now I didn’t mind his hand there. I didn’t care about my lies, or how many girls he might have taken behind the rink. I closed my eyes, rested my hands on his shoulders. The softest fabric, still warm from his nap.
“Fade Into You” was on upstairs. Unmistakable after all the times Casey and Alex and I had played it on repeat. Such a strange song, languid and sad.
This could be my knee-wobbling kiss. I’d finally found it, and I wasn’t even standing.
But the kids overhead must have sensed what was about to happen under their feet. Light on the stairs, a nasal laugh. We pulled away.
“Dude, check it out.” More obnoxious laughter.
I knew that laugh. It started off snorty and ended in a cackle. It belonged to Rob Pedersen, Ollie’s son. Rob was a few years older and used to work, or pretend to work, at the hardware store.
“Hey, listen,” I whispered.
“You know her dad keeps the good beer down here.”
“Hey,” I whispered. “I have to tell you—”
J.B. clasped my hand, whispering hurriedly. “Can I get your number? I’m here all summer, I’m working a ton but—”
“Robbing the cradle, J.B.?” Rob snorted.
J.B. looked toward the two boys, illuminated by the open minifridge.
“Watch out for those high school girls,” Rob added, twisting open a beer.
“High school?” J.B. turned to me. Still smiling, still giving me a chance.
“Uh-oh, sorry to break it to you, J.B. She’s cute, though.” Rob or his friend. I couldn’t tell, they were both snorting so hard. But it didn’t matter. J.B. was already pulling his body far from mine.
“Laura, don’t worry, I’ll tell your dad you played board games all night.” Rob, then. He acted like a completely different person in front of his father.
But then, so did I.
“Shut up, assholes. What grade are you in?” J.B. said, not taking his eyes off me. “What grade?” I could tell that it hardly mattered. Now his eyes were sad.
Rob and his friend were cracking up at our little shag-carpet drama. They thought it was hysterical. I wished J.B. thought it was a little funny, too.
But he said coldly to the boys, “Take your beer and get out.”
They obeyed, clomping up the stairs with beers in their back pockets. I hoped they’d forget about the bottles. Sit down hard and need a hundred stitches in each of their butt cheeks.
J.B. still had the rosy line on his face, though it was fainter now. His hair was still messed up. I wished, more than anything, that I hadn’t lied.
I spoke quietly. “I’ll be a junior next year. At CDL.”
“So you’re what? Seventeen?”
“Sixteen.”
“Perfect. And you lied because?”
“You assumed... I borrowed the sweatshirt.”
“So it’s the sweatshirt’s fault.”
“You didn’t care how old Pauline Knowland was,” I said quietly.
“What was that?”
“I said, you didn’t care how old Pauline Knowland was. At the rink. And the other girls.”
“What are you talking about? Polly who?”
“You went behind the Dumpsters with this girl in my class. Pauline. She said. And your silver shirts. Everyone says you wear them so tight to...you know.”
“Nope. You’ll have to elaborat
e.”
“To show off. Get high school girls to make out with you or...” I trailed off, realizing how lame this sounded. Freaking Pauline. Ruining my life even now.
But I was the idiot, for believing the rumors.
“Well. If Pauline says.” He pushed the plastic lever on my Connect Four rack hard, so my sad-face design clacked down the grid and the red and black chips whooshed onto the carpet. “So the talk around town is I’m only working there to hit on girls?”
“I guess.”
“Anything else?”
“That you’re rich. Related to the owner, so the only reason you work there is... It’s stupid. Forget it.”
He stood. “So I don’t know who this Pauline chick is. But I’m at the rink to make money. When I’m not spraying out skates or handing out those crappy prizes I’m on cleanup in the snack bar, EZ-Offing sludge so there won’t be a grease fire from the next day’s corn dogs.
“With all that glamour I don’t have time to go outside. With anyone. It’s one of three jobs I have lined up for the summer. I also work at your buddy’s store when I can, doing odd jobs and deliveries. And when I’m not doing that, I’m tutoring.”
I couldn’t look at him. He wasn’t yelling. He got quieter as he went on, which felt worse.
“And that shirt you and your friends think is so hilarious? The owner of the rink is this scumbag named Andy. No relation, thank God. He’s too cheap to buy new uniforms, so I took the biggest one in the bin. My mom tried to help me stretch it. She got it wet and tried to expand it out on the line with clothespins behind her place in Green Creek.”
Green Creek was the trailer park.
The images hit. Trailer. Clothesline. Mom. I’d never felt so foolish.
“But you believe what you want.”
By the time I was able to choke out “I’m sorry,” he was already on the stairs.
* * *
“You’re quiet.” Casey sat cross-legged at the lower wall of the gazebo, attacking the mosaic with a stick. She kept a good one under the stairs specifically for tile removal.
I lay on my back, staring at the quarter moon through the lattice. The lamp in the gazebo had been busted forever, but the moonlight was usually enough for Casey to get her tile. We went no matter how cold and tired we were, or how sad and defeated we felt. Like tonight.
“I said, you’re quiet,” Casey repeated. “That translates to ‘what’s wrong’ in passive-aggressive.”
“I met someone tonight.”
“Banana slug?”
“No. The Boy. J.B., from the rink. Tight T-shirt.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“You kissed him?”
“We played Sorry!”
“Naturally. And is he all that everyone says? Did he take off his shirt?”
“He’s not like that. It’s all lies. The girls in this town are a bunch of liars. Especially Pauline Knowland.”
“Shocker.”
“Why would she make that up? So much detail, going behind the Dumpsters, taking his shirt off?”
“I have an idea. But don’t worry, I do not have a thing for Puke-bracelet. I won’t test out my theory.”
“You think? Pauline?” But it would explain a lot.
“I do think. If she wasn’t such a horrible human being I’d consider it. She’s got incredible shoulders.”
“You and your shoulder obsession.”
“Back to your guy. You really like him.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was a disaster of epic proportions. He hates me.”
“Impossible.”
I closed my eyes and listened to the scritch-scratch of Casey defacing the mosaic. Finally, she said, “Ah—got you.”
Casey held the tile up to the moonlight as we walked home down East Shoreline. “That was a stubborn one.”
“You’re a vandal.”
“Which makes you my accessory.” She handed me the tile. “Here. It can be your something blue for your wedding with J.B.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be needing it. Keep it for your collection.” I tried to hand it back but she clenched her fist.
“You never know. He may come around. Put it in your pocket with your...you know.”
I slipped the tile into my jeans pocket. It made a neat clink against the music box.
* * *
Casey fell asleep almost immediately but I couldn’t. I tossed and turned next to her warm back, trying not to disturb her, trying to find comfort in the section of my pillow that was slightly firmer than the others, because of the music box hidden under it.
I replayed the basement scene in my head, hoping to recapture the feeling. The sequence of feelings. I cataloged them: contentment, lust, frustration. Embarrassment. Regret. All in the space of an hour, when I usually felt nothing the entire night of a party.
I touched the tender spot under my jaw where his fingers had circled.
My face got hot, remembering. But it wasn’t the same.
19
41st day of camp
Two hours after lights-out
Every time she remembered setting the driftwood on the music stand, her cheeks warmed. Camp was making her into someone else. Someone bold, reckless.
She lay in the dark, waiting for Sandy to signal to her.
By now she knew her cabinmates’ nighttime symphony well: their moist, regular breathing, their snores and sleeping-bag swishes, and the trickles of their occasional shy trips to the bathroom, where they peed respectfully, without turning on the light.
She’d been lying awake for hours in her upper bunk, pinching her wrist when she felt drowsy. Her tennis shoes waited by her feet, hidden under her gray Monterey Bay Aquarium sweatshirt with the sea lion on it.
She and her mom had visited Monterey every June since she was five. They always went the day after school got out.
Her mother was a school nurse in a rough section of Daly City. Nine months of the year she tended to black eyes, kids who called her “bitch” and “cunt.” She’d always said the students didn’t mean it, that they were hurting. The job’s tough days were worth it because she was helping young people who needed her, and because she got summers off. Summers they could spend together.
They’d started the aquarium tradition the June after her dad left for good. They got up while it was still dark and drove down the coast in her mom’s wheezing old white Pontiac, singing along to Pop100 radio, both of them giddy about the weeks of freedom ahead, time ribboned out in front of them as long as the highway.
They always stayed at the aquarium until closing, lingering in the blue light of the tanks, mesmerized by the silent, floating creatures in the kelp forest. There was a large, bright orange fish called a garibaldi that they liked best. It stood out against the olive drab of the kelp, the skulking, homely eels. Last summer she’d bought her mother a key chain from the gift shop with her allowance money: a plastic garibaldi.
You can look at it when you’re having a bad day at work next year, she’d said, and her mom had hugged her.
On the drive home from the aquarium they always stopped at the same chowder shack in Pescadero, and her mother would laugh because she’d devour three packets of oyster crackers before their orders came.
This June they hadn’t gone on their pilgrimage to the aquarium. Something had happened at her mother’s job in May; something she wouldn’t talk about. A meeting with a parent that went bad.
That’s what her mother’s friend Lolly had said the afternoon this all started.
Lolly had whispered, Don’t worry, she’s fine.
She’d seen her mother’s head on the kitchen table before Lolly shut the door.
Those murmurs behind the kitchen door, the whistle of the teakettle. Her mother’s strange, humorless laugh rising up: Like tea will undo
it, Lolly.
Lolly’s soothing tone.
The untouched cups of tea in the sink after.
Her mother needed more than elephant seals and the garibaldi to make her happy this summer. She needed more than her.
So her mother chose to spend their precious free weeks apart, living with strangers at the adult camp. And here she was stuck with girls who could recite all of First Corinthians by heart.
Lolly had told them Three Pines was idyllic, a bargain. Fun for the kids, peaceful for the parents, who got four weeks of “personal retreat time” thrown into the deal.
Do this for me, her mother had said. Lolly says the adult camp’s just down the road. We can see each other all the time.
But she hadn’t seen her mother once.
In daytime, when something made her think of home, she got an ache in her throat. To make it go away, she concentrated on the parts of camp that were the most absurd, the bits that would be funny later: the way the girl next to her in morning service scrunched her eyes shut while she sang “Open My Eyes, O Lord.” The fiasco of a cross lanyard she’d made in crafts: how the strips of white plastic poked out every which way, and how Miss Cooke only smiled and said, We have extra materials if you’d like to perfect this, dear. She saved up these stories to tell her mom on pickup day.
At night, in the dark, lying on her top bunk while the others slept, she welcomed the pain in her throat. She summoned it. Thinking of certain things made it come, right away: her mother’s old laugh, from before the tea day. The denim beanbag chair in her bedroom, under the window. The garibaldi-fish key chain, a small packet of oyster crackers, her mother’s tan, fringed leather purse. Any of these images would do the trick. Alone, in the stuffy air of her sleeping bag, she let the tight feeling in her throat soften into tears.
* * *
It was after eleven when she heard rustling across the cabin, soft footsteps. Sandy stood next to the door, a flashlight in one hand, sneakers dangling by the laces from the other, their reflective stripes shining in the moonlight.
She climbed down her bunk ladder, reached for her shoes and sweatshirt, and tiptoed past the stacks of sleeping girls.
Silently, they crept out of the cabin, padding down the front steps in their socks, slipping into their shoes only when they were safely on a blanket of pine needles.
The Summer List Page 14