Daniel kept to himself, swimming far out to where the big waves swelled and kicking off to ride the waves shoreward. He seemed focused, pensive, frowning a little as he spat out the seawater and pushed back his dark hair.
Katie had remained on the beach, clearly above such childish and common behavior. Good.
When we pulled ourselves from the water, I dragged my waterlogged limbs exhaustedly. Running in the morning was good; that was just exercise. But battling against the ocean’s waves was something else entirely. I was dead.
“What time is it?” Hannah asked when we had arrived back at our little piece of home on the beach, drying her hair and thumping the side of her head to get the water out.
Michael almost tripped over his feet, reaching for his bag and extracting his phone. He smiled up at Hannah, thrusting it proudly into the air. “It’s 10:59.”
“Hmm,” she muttered. “I suppose it could kinda be considered lunchtime.”
“Great,” Emma said. “I’m starving.”
Hannah pointed back and forth between Daniel and me. “Food court, guys?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
Emma turned to Blake. “You’ll be happy to know that my wonderful parents sent along some extra leftovers.”
“My favorite,” Blake told her, elated.
Michael grimaced. “Uh, Hannah, can I come with you guys?”
“Take him!” Blake exclaimed. Michael pumped his fist in the air and leaped to his feet.
“Will, the food court is the epicenter of Seaside City cuisine and a huge point of pride we have in our local way of life,” Hannah told me. “Prepare for a culture shock unlike any other.”
Daniel looked at me and rolled his eyes, smiling. I laughed softly.
“Baby,” Katie called, waving her hand at Daniel, “buy me a salad while you’re there, okay?”
“Yeah,” Daniel said.
Hannah hooked my arm in hers and started dragging me along the beach. She had a mad look in her eyes and wore a half-deranged expression. Passionate, as only food can make you.
Extracting ourselves from the beach was a chore, an obstacle course testing our balance and coordination. The task was made all the more difficult because I was being dragged like a poor, innocent dolphin trapped in a fishing net. Hannah was a woman on a mission.
The food court was about one “block” over on the boardwalk. I had passed it before but had never ventured inside. It was discreetly nestled in between two buildings, a simple banner stretching across the front, but it went quite deep. Restaurants lined the sides, with a scattering of tables in the center. A symphony of smells filled the air: spicy, greasy, sweet, salty …
“Behold the beauty of the food court,” Hannah proclaimed. “Eighteen restaurants in all, and one reasonably clean public washroom.”
Daniel nudged me in the side and whispered, “Ta-da!”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Michael asked.
“You’re coming with me,” she said, taking me by the hand. “I can’t trust you to make a proper decision yet. Since I’m the local expert, I’ll have to be your guide until you’re ready.”
As we started walking, Daniel came up behind me and whispered by my ear, “A few words of caution that my sister failed to mention in her unadulterated adoration of this place …”
“Shoot.”
“Ask for fresh ketchup packets, and they’ll give them to you from behind the counter; the ones sitting out in the sun are just plain nasty. As a general health warning, if you have a preexisting heart condition or history of heart problems in your family, this cesspool of grease will do nothing good for you. Other than that, you’re good to go,” he said with a laugh.
I smiled at him as he passed us. “Thanks.”
“No problem … Oh,” he said, turning around and walking backward, “you’ll want to take some extra napkins. They always end up blowing away in the wind.”
“Got it,” I said.
Hannah guided me to the Mexican restaurant, complete with a cashier in a sombrero and a miniature cactus on the counter. I asked for a burrito and fries. Evidently, the Seaside City idea of what a burrito was differed greatly from the rest of the world. I wasn’t sure if “go big or go home” was a thing in the small town, but in all my few encounters with Mexican food, I had never come across (or even dreamed of) what lay before me on a small Styrofoam dish.
This burrito was massive, a god among weaker tubes of meaty lard! It was precariously wrapped, tight enough so that the sides bulged dangerously. Meat and ooey-gooey cheese spilled from its ominously gaping mouth, with dollops of salsa and sour cream as the last remaining traces of Mega-Burrito’s last meal. Grease pooled in the dish, soaking through the tortilla and its paper wrapping. At its side, the fries (that I doubted I’d be able to make a dent in) seemed incredibly tame and ordinary.
Picking up my tray and struggling to hold its colossal weight, I asked the sweaty man behind the counter for some fresh ketchup packets and a thick stack of napkins.
Scratching under his off-kilter hairnet, he reached under the counter and plopped some ketchup on my tray. And as he frugally gave me a couple of extra napkins, I was tempted to ask for their entire supply; I had a feeling I was seriously going to need it.
Hannah grabbed her tray, and we picked out a table in the center of the food court. I sat down next to her, and I could have sworn that the table’s legs buckled a little bit under the combined weight of both of our trays. Hannah’s burrito was somehow much larger than mine. Secretly, I was glad that I wouldn’t be the biggest pig at the table.
Michael sat down across from us, a slice of pepperoni pizza on a plate in front of him. “I’m starving!”
“And I’m disappointed,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “Pizza, Michael? Really? How creative of you.”
“Should I have gone for the escargot instead?” Michael teased.
“Hey, guys,” Daniel said, coming from behind us and settling into his seat across the table. He smiled, but my eyes drifted down to his tray. On it sat a plastic bowl of … salad. Lettuce, cucumber, strawberries, oranges, raisins, nuts, and dressing.
I just stared at Daniel blankly.
“Oh, my brother’s a vegetarian,” Hannah told me.
“Why?” I asked, mystified.
Daniel shrugged. “How would you like to live your short and miserable life mass-produced and genetically modified by greedy corporate farmers, wading through a knee-deep pool of feces only to be murdered in a highly unsanitary slaughterhouse and reduced to nothing more than an ammonia-bleached pile of goopy meat byproduct ready to be shipped across the country and fed to young children?”
“Uh—”
“Exactly. I don’t think animals deserve that either.”
“Don’t worry, he always gets like this,” Hannah told me, sinking her viciously carnivorous fangs deep into a bite of her food. “I did try vegetarianism for a while in support of my brother’s decision. You know, because I’m an excellent sister. Anyways, I just couldn’t handle it. Tofu is just plain wrong. It’s a conspiracy, I’m telling you; soybeans masquerading as … as lunchmeats and stuff.”
“Phony baloney,” I muttered under my breath with a hidden grin.
Hannah regarded me in stunned silence for a moment before throwing back her head and roaring in laughter. She gestured toward me animatedly and turned to her brother. “Exactly! It’s phony baloney! God, I love this kid.”
Daniel screwed up his face in an effort not to smile, but in the end, my humor was just too much for him. He laughed good-naturedly, shrugging us off. “When the chickens and cows join forces in the Great Livestock War, then you’ll all really be laughing.”
Hannah took another bite out of her burrito and closed her eyes. “Yummy! I’m sorry, Bessie, but you taste damn good all ground up.”
/>
Daniel pushed forward with his argument. Hannah paid only the slightest bit of bemused attention while savoring her food. Michael played devil’s advocate, poking holes in Daniel’s case.
I, meanwhile, was sizing up the burrito and formulating a plan for the most efficient and least messy way to go about eating it. Though I sometimes forgot it, I had only known Hannah for a few days and her brother for even less. I decided to go with the good old fork and knife. Greasy burrito dribble running down your chin is a look best worn upon reaching six months of friendship, at the very least.
“Well, I’m gonna go annoy my brother while he’s on his little date,” Michael told us, picking up his trash.
“You are the epitome of maturity,” Hannah scoffed.
As he left, Michael called over his shoulder, “You’ll learn to love me!” He blew a kiss in Hannah’s direction and disappeared into the crowd on the boardwalk.
“Now that he’s gone … I have a proposition for you both,” Hannah said.
Daniel stabbed his fork into a big piece of lettuce and popped it into his mouth. He smiled at his twin as he munched on the leafy deliciousness. “What proposition, sister dearest?”
“We should go to Funland!” she exclaimed.
“Funland?” I asked, picturing a really shady daycare center for teenagers with creepy adult men wearing bunny costumes and thin mustaches. What’s wrong with me?
“It’s the amusement park at the far end of the boardwalk,” Daniel told me. He shrugged at his sister. “I’m in.”
“Sounds like fun,” I told her.
She giggled and rolled her eyes. “That’s why it’s called Funland, Einstein!”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re overly sarcastic, bordering on abrasive?” I asked.
“Yes,” Daniel said, nodding vigorously, “I have. Every single day. Since the womb.”
“Ah, the womb,” Hannah recalled fondly. “Those were good times.”
“The best.”
“Somehow I can’t picture the two of you living in such close quarters, even as fetuses,” I told them.
“I was the bitchy, kicking one,” Hannah confessed proudly.
Daniel smiled. “I was the pacifist, ever at his sister’s mercy.”
“Not entirely surprising.” I shrugged.
“Anyways,” Hannah interrupted, “we’ve gotten off topic. Daniel, why would you bring up the womb? That’s gross. You sicko.”
“My sincerest apologies.”
“Anyways,” she repeated. “Tonight. Seven o’clock. We’ll meet at the front gates.”
“Cool,” I said.
“You’re the boss.”
“Yes, I am,” Hannah said happily. “Oh, and it’s just the three of us tonight, okay? Three’s the perfect number. That’s why there’s no fourth musketeer.”
“D’Artagnan,” I corrected.
“Whatever. Because who needs the fourth wheel to a tricycle?”
“Uh, cars,” Daniel told her.
“You guys!” She groaned. “Forgive me for not being a brainiac! It’s just going to be the three of us, okay?”
“You mean I can’t invite my aunt along?” I asked sarcastically.
“No.”
Daniel smirked. “And I take it that I can’t invite—”
“Not until the Little Mermaid crawls her way onto the beach and sings a song that open the heavens and sends me a supermodel boyfriend.”
“Noted,” Daniel replied.
“It’s settled then,” she said. “Will, finish that monstrosity of a burrito. Daniel, keep on munching like the bunny rabbit you are.”
I bit my tongue to stop myself from laughing at that, because Daniel totally was a sweet, little bunny rabbit. Cute, cuddly, adorable, snuggle-able … nope. No. Moving away from comparing straight Daniel to cute, little animals.
We finished our lunches, a titanic effort on my part to cram that whole thing into my protesting stomach, and started back to the beach. Daniel carried a plastic bag with Katie’s lunch (I noticed Hannah eyeing it as if she wanted nothing more than to give it an explosive kick), and I carried my bowl of fries, munching on them because … well, they were there.
It took us much longer to get back to our spot than it had to leave because now everyone was leaving for lunchtime, and we were going against the flow of traffic. It certainly didn’t help that my stomach was distended to three times its normal size, knocking things over left and right.
When we arrived, Blake looked thoroughly irritated, and Michael wore a satisfied expression. Katie was in the exact same position she had been in when we left.
“Do you have my salad, Danny-boo?” she demanded the moment Daniel kicked off his left flip-flop.
“Yeah,” he replied, handing her the bag.
We all settled back in for our afternoon of fun in the sun.
“Ugh,” Katie moaned when she opened the cover of the bowl.
I caught Daniel’s eye as he frowned despondently. “Is something wrong?”
“You asked for chicken in my salad?” she complained. “Don’t you know how gross the food court chicken is? It’s so fatty.”
“Sorry,” he told her.
And then we all watched as she stuck up her nose and plucked each piece of chicken from the salad and dropped them onto the sand. I felt like dropping her onto the sand!
It was clear from everyone’s faces—including Daniel’s, to a degree—that they were quickly losing patience with Katie. It seemed as though the feigned politeness was wearing thin and would soon give way to an all-out brawl in the sand.
While I was plotting my strategy for said fight, imagining the satisfaction of seeing that holier-than-thou look wiped off Katie Applegate’s pretty little face, I was interrupted as a wild kamikaze seagull dove from the sky with the sole intent of feasting on my fries.
I certainly wasn’t about to be bird bait, so I did the only logical thing … I flung the bowl of fries directly into Katie’s lap. The seagulls didn’t miss a thing, and in mere milliseconds, a thick swarm of them had descended on her.
The shriek she let out popped my eardrums. Katie was literally invisible inside the flock of squabbling birds, only her well-manicured hands making the occasional appearance as she attempted to fight them off.
My friends and I were rolling on the sand, and we laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. Daniel, too, had a small grin on his face. I noticed he waited a short while, enjoying the scene unfolding before him, before waving his hands around his hidden girlfriend in an effort to get them to leave.
By the time Katie was freed, a large group of cackling beachgoers surrounded us. They had their phones out to film the event. Katie’s hair was a tangled mess, her face reddened, her bathing suit askew, her eyes wild … and she was absolutely covered in bird shit.
Whoops. Sorry.
3. Make new friends!
Chapter 13
Naming the Gorilla
What is considered appropriate attire for a night at the amusement park? This was the dilemma I faced as I stood in front of my limited wardrobe, a towel wrapped around my waist and droplets of water falling from the tips of my hair.
Taking things slowly, I thought boxers were a pretty good way to start … unless of course one is supposed to go commando to such an evening. Making an executive decision, I did indeed decide to wear underpants.
My nether regions comfortably covered, I was back at square one. I pulled out a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, but that seemed too casual. But khakis and a polo seemed too preppy.
I knew that regardless of what I selected from my rather unsophisticated collection of garments, I would probably be underdressed. I half expected Hannah to show up in a formal ball gown, demanding angrily to know why I was not dressed in black-tie.
That train of thought inevitably led t
o thinking about Daniel looking terribly handsome in a dapper suit, black jacket and pants, thin black tie, white shirt, carefully styled hair, romantic dinner set out in a secluded spot of the beach …
“Shut up, brain,” I muttered to myself, finally settling on a simple pair of jeans and a mostly unwrinkled T-shirt from the pile on my chair.
I brushed my teeth fiercely, trying to scrub out the smell of the pizza we’d had for dinner, and then towel-dried my hair and combed it down. Because I was nothing if not extremely classy, I sprayed a touch of cologne on my chest and rubbed it in.
Before I left the room, I remembered to close my laptop. I’d spent over an hour that evening Facebook-stalking Daniel, and I didn’t really want Aunt Nellie coming into my room while I was gone and seeing a screen full of his pictures.
When I came downstairs, I was careful to avoid my aunt because I knew that she would sprint after me with the camera, proclaiming my going out with some friends to be another milestone occasion she didn’t want to miss … how depressing is that thought? My social life was so meager it was a whole event!
Luckily, I snuck past her with a quick, “See you later.”
I slid on my shoes and patted my pockets, checking for my phone and my wallet.
It was slightly cooler out than it had been during the day, but the sun was only just setting, streaking orange and pink across the sky, and the evening felt very summery. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I started off toward the boardwalk.
Seaside City had a different vibe as the sun tucked itself below the horizon. The boardwalk, usually bleached and almost washed out by the bright sun, came alive with the vibrant colors of neon lights.
If possible, the crowds were even bigger and more choking. Children whipped around like wild tornadoes, pointing and shouting and demanding. Their parents indulged them because, after all, they were on vacation (and besides, they spoiled their children horribly at home anyways). Gobbling down saltwater taffy and fist-sized chunks of fudge, the children became all the more uproarious.
The Big Summer Page 12