“Yeah, I do. We’re really close. He’s like a brother to me,” she laughed. “But whatever. He’s doing something he enjoys. It’s not his fault he’s brilliant. I’m happy for him, you know? But I still hate him for leaving me back home,” Hannah said jokingly, sticking out her tongue.
“Must be tough.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters, Will?”
I shook my head. “Nope. I’m the only O’Connor child. It’s just me and Aunt Nellie.”
Hannah narrowed her eyes. “Wait, you live with your aunt?”
“Yeah.” I reminded myself that I was going to be an open book with Hannah. “My parents died when I was little.”
“I’m really sorry,” Hannah said.
“Thanks,” I replied. “It was a long time ago, though. I’ve had time to deal with it. And I’m just so grateful that I have Aunt Nellie.”
“What about your friends back home? You haven’t really talked about them.” Hannah got excited all of a sudden. “Oh my God, Will … do you have hot friends back home?”
“My friends back home are assholes, Hannah.”
She pondered that for a moment before shrugging. “I could learn to love a hot asshole.”
“Not my kind of hot asshole friends.”
“Oh,” Hannah murmured. “Is that why you came here? Because of these asshole friends?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
And so I spilled the beans and let the cat out of the bag to go eat them up off the floor. I told Hannah about how my friends treated me (or, rather, how I let them treat me), and how they showed their gratitude for everything I had done for them by throwing me in the pool and publicly humiliating me.
“You know what, Will? I don’t think I could learn to love those assholes even if they were so hot that the slightest touch set your fingertips on fire.”
“Thank you, Hannah,” I told her with a small smile. “It means so much that you think that!”
“No problem.” She laughed. “And I’ll introduce you to my friends. They’re nice enough if you know how to handle them.”
“So not total assholes?”
“They’re never more than 37 percent asshole at any given time,” she promised. Then she glanced at her phone as it lit up and said, “Shit. I’m sorry, Will, but I’ve got to ditch you. My mom needs to see me for an emergency meeting of my brother’s welcoming committee or something. But I’ll see you around, okay?”
“Definitely,” I told her, and I waved as my brand-new friend headed down her street. I continued down the boardwalk, enjoying the sunny weather. And I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I had made a friend.
Chapter 6
The Walking Wet Dream
My heart raced, I sucked in deep breaths, and my feet pumped the ground beneath me. I was running, and it felt good. Each plank of wood of the boardwalk disappearing beneath my feet was another small victory, another destination surpassed.
I had taken up running at school that year but had never gotten really good at it. Not because I wasn’t a good runner, because I was, but because my running career was extremely short lived. This was due to the fact that my ex-friends told me running was a “faggy” sport and that I should just leave the athletics to the actual athletes. Then they had a good laugh about the fact that I had even attempted it.
But I found it soothing. Concentrating on the rhythmic pounding of my feet against the ground and the sound of music blasting in my ears was a form of escape.
It was early, the sun glinting only slightly off the caps of the waves far off on the horizon. The tide was way out, the beach startlingly empty, smooth, and shimmery from fresh moisture.
On a whim, I ran down the nearest set of stairs to the sand and continued my run along the water. My shoelaces dragged in the wet sand and slapped soggily against my leg.
I’m not sure how long I’d been running for; I knew I’d doubled back once or twice on the boardwalk and that I’d gone through at least half of a fairly long music playlist. Like most teenagers, I often measure time in songs instead of minutes.
At a certain point, as one super-upbeat song reached its crescendo and then crashed to a close, I decided I had done my fair share of running for the day. The gods of gym shoes and deodorant must surely have been appeased by my sacrifice.
I slowed to a jog and then a walk and then hunched over, hands on my knees, chest heaving, coughing and feeling the sweat drip off the tip of my nose.
“I’m … dead,” I panted, my face overheated. “Oh … my … God.”
Wishing I had brought myself a bottle of water, I dragged my shirtsleeve across my face and plopped down on the sand beside a lifeguard tower, resting my head between my knees and dreading the moment I would have to stand up and make my way home.
I sat there for a while as my heart calmed down somewhat, to the point where I no longer pictured it wearing a sweatband and running on a tiny, little treadmill in my chest.
As I sat there, the sun peeked up from beyond the horizon and began its slow and lazy—You hear me, sun? Lazy!—ascent into the sky.
And as the beach was bathed in swathes of orange sunlight, I spotted a figure bobbing up and down on the waves. It was hard to make out its exact shape, but the something was slowly drawing closer.
A wave swelled, and the blob shifted into the form of a person, carefully standing up atop what must have been a surfboard. The surfer slid along the wave as it rolled toward the shore, eventually tumbling into the water and rising to the surface a few seconds later.
The surfer sloshed through the thigh-deep water and stumbled onto the sand about twenty yards away. And that was the very first time I laid eyes on him.
He jammed the surfboard into the sand and then reached a hand around to yank the zipper of his wetsuit down his back. He bent over, struggling to wiggle his arms out of the tight sleeves … and I’ll be damned if the skintight (God bless) wetsuit didn’t hug that boy’s ass like nobody’s business.
He stood back up, the wetsuit parted and flopped down, and I admired the gentle tapering and musculature of his back. And then he yanked his surfboard out of the sand, grabbed it under his arm, and turned around … and started walking toward me!
“Oh, for the love of God,” I whispered to myself.
You know that vomit-inducing, gag-reflex-provoking, oh so terribly cliché thing they do in movies and TV shows where everything goes all slow motion? Well, I can totally vouch for its validity. As the boy came close enough for me to get a proper look at him, I noticed everything about him all at the same time: the endearing way his hair curled messily, the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the way he licked the salt from his lower lip, the beads of water rolling tantalizingly down the lean and perfect muscles of his body.
The boy flashed me a dazzling smile as he reached the lifeguard tower. He grabbed a towel hanging from one of the white wooden support beams and draped it across his shoulders.
“Nice day, huh?” he asked, starting back up the beach toward the boardwalk.
“Uh, yeah,” I replied with a more sickening voice crack than I had ever known during the deeply hormonal throws of puberty. Shit!
. . .
When I arrived home, Aunt Nellie was sleeping. I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could and flopped down on my bed. My legs felt like noodles in that awkward state of half-cooked-ness, brittle enough to break into a thousand sharp shards and soft enough to be of no use whatsoever.
I felt gross and sweaty and tried to convince my pasta limbs to function and take me to the bathroom to shower, but they wouldn’t listen to me. A virtual prisoner to my own body, I lay in bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling.
Over the course of the next hour, I did eventually manage to pull myself out of bed and get in the shower. The boy from the beach still in my mind, I also took some
time to do something a little more private with myself … intimate, you might say. Get the picture? Awesome.
After my shower, I threw on a T-shirt and some shorts and headed downstairs to make breakfast for Aunt Nellie and myself.
I made sure her door was tightly closed and then turned on the radio in the kitchen. I sang along under my breath as I cracked some eggs into a bowl, whipped them into a mad frenzy, and then poured them into a skillet. When the edges bubbled, I flipped the giant egg disc over and then sprinkled some cheddar on top, folding it over on itself.
I slid half of the cheesy treasure onto a plate, buttered two slices of toast, and poured a cup of coffee. Juggling these all precariously in my hands, I knocked on Aunt Nellie’s door with the edge of her plate and opened it slowly with my elbow.
“Hmm … what?” she mumbled sleepily.
“Breakfast in bed,” I told her.
At that, she perked up slightly and slowly pushed herself into a sitting position, blinking the sleep from her eyes. I rested the plate gently on her lap and set the mug of coffee on her bedside table.
“Wow, kiddo, this is so nice,” she said with a tired smile. “And it’s not even Mother’s Day!”
“Yeah,” I said tensely.
“Oh, sorry … I … I didn’t mean—”
I put up a hand to silence her. “It’s fine. I was up for a few hours, anyways.”
“This was very kind of you,” she said, digging into the omelet and munching on the toast.
I went back to the kitchen, grabbed my half of breakfast, and then went into her room and sat on the edge of her bed.
“So what’s the plan for today?” I asked Aunt Nellie.
“I was thinking of going over to the community center to sign up for some classes. Do you want to come too?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Sure.”
“Cool,” she said. We sat in silence for a few minutes, gobbling down the delicious breakfast I had made. When she finished, Aunt Nellie said, “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed, okay?”
I grabbed the plates and started bringing them back.
“Hey, Will.”
I turned around. “Yeah?”
She smiled. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome,” I told her. “See you in a few.”
Chapter 7
The Asian Twin
The sun was baking, and that meant that the boardwalk, the shops, the beach … there were people everywhere. I ambled along next to Hannah, sampling the finest pizza that Seaside City had to offer me, its newest resident. It was delicious, but the slice was bigger than my face! Seaside City: go big or go home.
“Did you bring it?” Hannah asked, licking some sauce from the corner of her mouth.
I balanced the titanic triangle in one hand while digging the List from my front pocket. “Of course. Who am I to disappoint my wonderful new friend?”
“Who are you indeed?” she asked jokingly.
I shook out the sheet of paper and tried to press out the creases against my thigh. Handing it over to her, I bit through the remainder of my lunch.
“Well, most of these shouldn’t be a problem,” Hannah said after carefully analyzing the List, her eyes scanning the page a few times. “It’s very cute.”
I shrugged. “It’s also my last resort. I need this.”
“I know,” she murmured, suddenly serious. “And I told you that I’d help however I could.”
Having finished my pizza, I took the paper from her. It was already creased and crinkled, the fold lines distinct. It had become my guidebook, my Bible of happiness. I looked over each step, totally familiar with them all:
1. Fall in love
2. First kiss
3. Make new friends!
4. Go to a house party
5. Get drunk!
6. Play spin-the-bottle
7. Stay up all night!
8. Movie marathon
9. Make music
10. Exercise more!
11. Get a tattoo that means something
12. Have an awesome birthday!
13. Get a tan
14. Learn something new
15. Get in trouble
16. Do something stupid
17. Laugh a lot!
18. Cry with someone
19. Share a secret
20. New wardrobe?
21. Skinny-dipping
22. In the end, be happy!
I folded the List with origami-like precision, returning it to the relative safety of my pocket (I say relative because there was always the fifty-fifty chance that it could end up getting very clean in the washing machine).
Hannah had finished her meal and was sucking on her fingers to get the very last atoms of cheese and grease. She caught me staring and shot me a look that was a combination between a raccoon hovering over a garbage can and a cat caught licking its nether regions. “Just because I’ve lived here forever doesn’t mean I’ve been desensitized to the greatness of Marco’s cheese pizza.”
“I didn’t say anything!” I protested. “Besides, I’m just wondering how on earth you don’t weigh eight hundred pounds.”
She rolled her eyes. “My family has great genetics.”
“For sure.”
“Hey, guys!” came a super-bubbly voice from directly over my shoulder, scaring me half to death and definitely shaving a good portion of my golden years off my life.
Hannah, unsurprised, turned around and gave her friend a hug. “Hey, Emma.”
I tried to be discreet about checking my pulse before turning around and saying, “Hi, I’m Will.”
“Oh,” Emma said with a soft giggle, “I know. I’ve heard a lot about you from Hannah.”
“Really?” I asked, eyeing Hannah suspiciously.
She put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Only what she’s pried from my lips with a crowbar. And don’t worry; I’ve been trained to be completely resistant to most forms of torture.”
“Anyways,” I said, sticking out a hand, “it’s nice to meet you, Emma.”
She giggled again and gave a quick curtsey (which contrasted starkly with the fact that she was wearing very short shorts and a spaghetti-strap top). “A gentleman, through and through.”
“Uh, yeah …” I retracted my hand and instead ran it through the back of my hair, uncomfortable. Emma was looking at me like a sculptor regarding a block of marble she was preparing to shape with each sensuous tap of her chisel.
“Emma Yeung has been my best friend since I moved to Seaside City, and she’s the closest thing I’ve got to an adopted Chinese sister,” Hannah told me.
Emma gave Hannah a playful punch on the arm and laughed. “You’re a bitch, you know that?”
“And proud!” Hannah exclaimed, sticking out her tongue.
“So,” Emma pronounced, “I think Will needs to tell me more about himself.”
“Uh, what do you want to know?” I asked innocently.
Apparently, Emma found this to be the single most hilarious thing ever to have been said since cavemen uttered their very first grunts and moans. She grabbed me by the arm and squeezed me in a gesture that might have been considered friendly if I hadn’t had the strange feeling that it was going to be extremely difficult to get her to let go.
“He’s such a cutie,” Emma told Hannah, and I laughed halfheartedly.
Hannah looked to be choking back her laughter, bringing a hand to her mouth to keep it from erupting with volcanic proportions.
“I, uh, I … well,” I babbled, looking to Hannah for help. Though I’m sure she would have been perfectly content to watch the proceedings unfold, as my new best friend, she took mercy on me and intervened.
“Emma, you’re so creepy!” Hannah groaned. “Come on, I’m taking you home.”
“But I just got here! I want to get to know him,” she pouted.
“Yeah, and I’d like to keep him as a friend without you totally scaring him off,” Hannah told her. “Is that too much to ask?”
“Can’t we agree to a compromise?”
“How about we just agree to disagree on this one, sweetie?”
“Oh, you’re a total bitch!” Emma declared as Hannah grabbed her and yanked her off of me.
As they disappeared into the crowd of boardwalk-walkers, I heard Hannah declare, “And proud!”
Thoroughly confused at the whole situation, I was left alone. With the sudden absence of Hannah’s outgoing and slightly crazy personality, it felt very quiet. Still, I kept walking.
I was slowly becoming more familiar with the boardwalk. It was hard to memorize the exact location of each store, because so many of them were similar. It was like an old cartoon where the characters are running and the background is just on a loop. There was an almost mathematical formula, a rule and a pattern to it: pizza place, souvenir shop, hair braiding, entertainment of some kind, pizza place, souvenir shop, hair braiding, water park, pizza place, souvenir shop, ice-cream place, hair braiding …
The gargantuan pizza I had consumed mere moments earlier had already settled for the most part, and I was a little hungry. In Seaside City, I was quickly learning, the abundance of delicious (but grossly unhealthy) food meant that once a small bubble of space had made itself available in your digestive tract, it was certainly going to be filled despite any amount of protestation from feeble willpower.
I eventually came across Frosty’s. It was a chain of ice-cream shops (sorry, frozen yogurt … because there was apparently some huge difference that meant instant crucifixion for those ignorant to the distinction) that was scattered along the boardwalk. Recognizable for its bright blue signs adorned with a giant snowman made of soft-serve, it was as much a symbol of Seaside City as the traffic-cone-orange skin that afflicted at least a quarter of the city’s inhabitants.
I walked up to the counter and got into line behind a stick-thin woman with frizzy hair. A trio of loud-mouthed children buzzed around her feet, demanding triple-scoop cones with six types of sprinkles.
The Big Summer Page 6