Summer of '69(85)

Jessie leans back to consider just how blown away Leslie and Doris will be by this news. Of the three of them, it’s Jessie Levin who has gotten a boyfriend first. The fact that Pick isn’t technically her boyfriend doesn’t matter because Leslie and Doris will never meet him.

Also, we are going to Woodstock together in August.



Jessie crosses this out. She can imagine Leslie reporting this startling fact to her mother and then Leslie’s mother then calling David Levin to ask what on earth he’s thinking, allowing his thirteen-year-old daughter to go to Woodstock.

Blair is pregnant with twins! Due August first. She’s here on Nantucket now and she’ll have the babies at the hospital. My brother



Jessie pauses. She doesn’t want to say too much about Tiger’s secret mission, although Jessie can’t imagine that two adolescent girls in Brookline, Massachusetts, knowing about it would matter.

sends letters full of things I can’t tell anyone. Kirby



Jessie wants to mention Kirby because all of Jessie’s friends, especially Leslie, are obsessed with Kirby. But Jessie hasn’t seen or talked to her all summer. Kirby sent a package that contained a tie-dyed Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt with a card that said Miss you! Other than that, it’s like Kirby has fallen off the face of the earth.

is spending the summer on Martha’s Vineyard. I’m hoping to be allowed to go visit but my mom probably won’t let me because she’s upset about Tiger and doesn’t want to say goodbye to any more of her children, even for a couple of days.



These are the truest words in the whole letter, Jessie realizes.

That’s all for now! Write back!

Your best friend,

Jessie

P.S. Thank you again for the record album. I listen to it all the time!



White lie, Jessie thinks. She hasn’t listened to it even once, and now that she and Exalta are at odds, she can’t ask to use Exalta’s the Magnavox. Plus it’s in the den with the television that Blair watches all day, every day. But again, Leslie and Doris will never know.

Jessie seals the letters in envelopes and puts a stamp on each but she’s not allowed to leave the house, so going to the mailbox will have to wait.

She leans back in bed and thinks about kissing Pick.

I’m getting carried away.

Carried away isn’t a phrase Jessie has given much thought to before but now she sees how accurately it describes her mood. She feels like there is wind beneath her, like she is being lifted up into the air; she feels like she’s soaring.

Her life was one thing when she woke up that morning, and now it is something else entirely.



As Jessie and Exalta are walking home from tennis lessons the next morning, Exalta says, “Well, Jessica, today is the last day of your grounding. Tomorrow you’ll be free to do as you please.”

Free to do as she pleases. Jessie thinks back to the dinner at the Mad Hatter with her mother. Kate said that Jessie’s birthday present would be permission to ride her bike to the beach in the afternoons. Has Kate learned what happened with the necklace? Jessie assumes so, though Kate hasn’t said a word about it. It’s possible—no, probable—that even Jessie stealing hasn’t managed to catch Kate’s attention, which is a bad thing but also, for Jessie, a good thing.

Tomorrow, she will go to the beach with Pick.



That night, Jessie is awakened by someone yelling. It’s Mr. Crimmins, she realizes. She creeps out of bed and cracks her door so she can hear better. Not every word is distinct but Jessie gets the gist of things. Mr. Crimmins is reprimanding Pick for breaking curfew.

Curfew? Jessie didn’t realize Pick had a curfew, or rules of any kind. He seems not to need them; he sticks to a routine—beach, work, sleep. But when Jessie checks her clock, she sees that it’s three o’clock in the morning.

Three o’clock in the morning? Is Pick just getting home? Then Jessie remembers the bonfire—but that was the night before. Maybe the staff at the North Shore have a bonfire every night, the way Kirby and her friends used to. Maybe Pick has been accepted by his peers and now has a standing invitation, and maybe in another week or two, he’ll be able to bring Jessie with him. (There’s no way she’ll be allowed to go, so she will have to sneak out and will likely get caught, and the only punishment she can imagine that would be severe enough for two major infractions in one summer is being sent to boarding school.)

Jessie worries that Pick will get grounded just as Jessie’s own sentence has been lifted.

“Do you want to get us kicked out of here?” Mr. Crimmins asks.

“No, sir.”

“We’re on thin enough ice as it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jessie hears Pick’s feet on the stairs so she shuts her door and climbs back into bed. There was no mention of grounding. Jessie closes her eyes. Tomorrow she will wear her yellow bikini.



The next morning before tennis, Jessie checks Pick’s door, but it’s closed tight; he’s still asleep. When Jessie gets back from tennis, his bike is gone and his bedroom door is open.

He went to the beach, as usual.

Jessie changes into her suit and considers packing a lunch, but she doesn’t want to waste any time. She races downstairs to the den, where Blair is lounging across the sofa with a pillow crammed between her legs. The big news with Blair is that she’s wearing a new dress that Kate ordered for her from a catalog. It’s orange corduroy and has a ruffled neckline and long sleeves, and although it’s unseasonal—Blair’s sweating just lying there—it’s an improvement over the disintegrating yellow dress.