All We Can Do Is Wait(10)
“Why do you think that is?” Ms. Reeve, the school counselor, had asked Alexa once during one of their regular meetings. “That you seem to gravitate toward things where you’re alone?”
Alexa hadn’t really thought about it before. “I don’t know. I guess . . . I guess it’s just easier to do what I need to do when I’m the only person I need to rely on.”
“But don’t you think you might be able to do more things, or at least different things, if you teamed up with other kids?”
“Probably. But it just always seems easier not to.”
“Are you lonely, Alexa?” Ms. Reeve asked, sitting forward in her chair, a concerned, imperious look on her face.
Alexa shifted awkwardly. Was she lonely? She hadn’t thought of herself that way, but maybe it was true. Sitting there in Ms. Reeve’s tiny office—filled with books and stacks of papers, a miniature jungle of potted plants on the windowsill giving the room an earthy, slightly rotting smell—Alexa thought back on all the dances and parties she’d skipped or didn’t even know about in the first place. She thought about Simon, a shy and nerdy boy from Northrup’s brother school who’d gently pursued her on Facebook after they met at a track meet the previous fall. She’d basically ignored his advances, if you could even call a few messages like “Hey” and “Up to anything this wknd?” advances. Why had she done that? Simon was cute enough, nice enough. But it had just seemed so complicated, when staying inside herself, streamlined and unbothered, was easier, involved so much less risk.
“I don’t know” was all Alexa could say in response to Ms. Reeve that day, but the question stayed with her, made Alexa look at her life in a new and frankly depressing way. So when her parents announced this insane plan, this very un-Elsing idea of stillness and togetherness, something about it excited Alexa. It presented a radical change, something that Alexa thought she could maybe take advantage of, to become someone else. Or at least some different, more outgoing, less intense version of herself.
The Grey’s idea—that she could get a job at the miniature golf course/snack bar/ice cream shop/arcade in Eastham that became the focal point of her summer, and meet kids her age—came to her in a flash. She’d always liked going there as a kid, and remembered there being a bunch of cool-seeming teenagers who worked there, scooping ice cream and working the mini-golf and various other jobs that had seemed exotic and mature to child Alexa. So she called them up, talked to a manager named Nate, and she basically got the job on the spot.
“It’s not glamorous,” Nate said on the phone. “And it can be hard work. But we have fun. I think you’re my last hire of the season, so you called just in time.”
Serving ice cream wasn’t all that much fun, but everything around it was. After a few nervous days of training, she was welcomed as a full-time employee, ready to begin her summer, her entire summer, as one of the crew.
It was a job her parents didn’t understand. “We give you plenty of money,” her mother had said when Alexa told her about the job. They did give her enough, more than enough, but it wasn’t about money. Alexa just wanted an excuse to get out of her head, doing something few of the other girls at school ever did. Mostly she wanted to get to know some local kids, many of whom had maybe never heard of Grinnell or Middlebury or the Sorbonne, or wherever girls from her school were already, not even in their junior year yet, talking about applying to. (Really, they talked about these schools as if they’d already been accepted, which many of them essentially had been.)
On Alexa’s first day of training she met Laurie Gomes, whose parents, Portuguese immigrants, lived all the way in Fall River. Laurie was asked, or, really, had volunteered, to give Alexa a tour of the place, pointing out, Clueless or Mean Girls–style, who everyone was, starting with herself.
“I have a cousin who works at one of the resorts all summer,” Laurie explained. “So we rented a place together. Just us. It’s amazing.” Laurie was seventeen, Jason’s age, and wore lots of bracelets and sometimes smoked Parliament Lights in the little outside area behind the kitchen, near the tubs of fryer grease. (This seemed dangerous, and Boston Alexa would definitely have said something. But Cape Alexa just went with the flow.)
Laurie, who had a sharp accent to complement a pleasingly raspy voice, led Alexa back to a hot, barely air-conditioned break room located just past the bathrooms. She said, “Knock knock!” and then walked in, Alexa timidly following her into the stuffy room. Laurie pointed at a boy and a girl, the only people in there at the moment. They looked oddly similar, the same dirty-blond hair, the same slightly flushed cheeks and upturned noses.
“That’s Davey and Courtney Price—say hi, Davey!” Laurie said. Davey looked up and gave a little wave, while Courtney remained glued to her phone. “They’re twins, from Yarmouth. Davey’s sweet,” Laurie explained with a little conspiratorial smile. “He’s usually on mini-golf duty, because he’s good with the little kids.”
Which was true. Throughout the summer, Davey proved gentle with the younger customers. But, doofy and affable as he often was, he was also not afraid to act like a bouncer with the drunk teenagers who sometimes showed up.
“Davey’s gonna be in the navy,” Laurie told Alexa, sounding maybe a little sad about it. “He already joined up. ‘Davey in the navy, Davey in the navy,’” Laurie sing-songed in his direction, then turned to Alexa. “Like in that song?”