All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(66)

Leslie had a crush on a lifeguard at the city pool. Miss Goody-Goody even broke the rules and drove by his house when we were supposed to go to the library. Then she ditched her one-piece swimsuit and bought a bikini so small she had to shave off most of her pubic hair. The lifeguard was a year older and more popular than Leslie, but by July, I started to think she had a chance with him. On his breaks, he let her climb up the chair ladder to bring him a can of pop.

Then Wavy came. Wavy, with her eyes that weren’t any particular color except dark. Even after Mom told her to take it off, she wore eye shadow that made them look smoky. She didn’t like to swim with all the people, so she sat on a lawn chair, wearing a cowboy hat, a wispy skirt, her motorcycle boots, and a tight white T-shirt with no bra. A year before it would have been a costume for a weird little girl, but that summer it seemed strangely sophisticated. Wavy relaxed in the chair and crossed her legs, swinging her foot back and forth.

When Leslie’s lifeguard went on break, he climbed down and bought two cans of pop. He walked over to where she was tanning in her skimpy bikini, looked past her at Wavy and said, “Who’s your friend?”

“She’s my cousin,” Leslie said.

“What’s her name?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Leslie should have said, “She’s only thirteen.” That might have worked to shut him down. What didn’t work was him asking Wavy her name, because she just shook her head. A year before, it might have passed for shyness. That summer it was an alluring mystery.

“Oh, come on. You won’t even tell me your name?”

Wavy looked through him.

“You want a coke?” He held out the can to her. She took it and rolled its cool, sweating surface over her arms and across the back of her neck. Then she set the can down next to her chair. Done with his offering. Done with him.

He sat on the deck chair next to hers and for the rest of his break, he sweet-talked her. In response, he got a big, fat nothing.

All he managed to do was break Leslie’s heart.

He wasn’t Wavy’s only suitor, either. The way she strolled up and down, her skirt swishing around the tops of her boots, her narrow hips jutting out, it was like throwing chum into a pool of sharks. The old guys were the worst. Guys who had to have been twenty-five or thirty. They were more persistent, too, offering her cigarettes and beers.

“She can talk, right?” Leslie’s lifeguard asked me one day.

“If she wants.”

“How do I make her want to talk to me?”

By then, I knew the answer: “You need to be Jesse Joe Kellen.” Besides being one of the few people she would talk to, Kellen was one thing Wavy would talk about.

Leslie’s friend Jana came over to our house with this book, Forever. She got it at summer camp and she said, “Oh my god, you have to read it.”

We read it. Jana’s sister Angela even read the dirtiest parts out loud to make us laugh. Angela was pretty, with gray eyes and a dimple in her chin. She had a boyfriend, but I don’t think she’d done anything but hold his hand. As for me, I thought, I’m never doing that with a boy. Never.

Wavy found the book worth three words: “Not like that.”

“Oh, you think you know so much. I bet you’ve never even kissed a boy,” Leslie said.

Wavy gave us the smoldering look that had stolen Leslie’s lifeguard and said, “A man.”

“What man?” Angela said.

“Kellen.”

“You really kissed him? Like a real French kiss with your tongue?” Jana said.

“More.”

“How much more?”

Wavy flicked her finger against the Judy Blume book.

“Oh, bull. You’re lying,” Leslie said. “I wish you guys could see him. He’s huge.”

Wavy grabbed at her crotch like a guy and gave Leslie a nasty smile.

“He’s so disgusting. Seriously, he’s fat and he has all these gross tattoos.”

Jana and Angela weren’t listening to Leslie. They were staring at Wavy.

“So, you really touched him?” Jana said. “You touched his—his penis? What was it like?”

“Hot. Hard. Desperate.”

Leslie scowled, but Jana, Angela, and I broke up laughing. The dirty-minded Wavy was fun, but I assumed most of it was an act to upset Leslie. Ken in a dress.

“Do you really go all the way with him?” Angela said.

Wavy nodded, but Leslie said, “No, she doesn’t!”

I didn’t know what to believe. I was older than Wavy, but something had happened to her in the last year. She seemed a lot more grown up than I felt. She seemed more like Aunt Val, and not just her clothes, but the way she held her head, the way she walked.

“She’s not even fourteen. She doesn’t either go all the way,” Leslie said.

Wavy shrugged and flashed her ring at us. I’d thought it was costume jewelry, but that day she let us look at it up close, so we could see it was a real ring. Not some gumball prize that would turn your finger green.

“You wouldn’t! He’s so grody,” Leslie said.

Anyone else might have been offended, but Wavy wasn’t. She opened her backpack and took out a photo album. In the front were pictures of Aunt Val and Donal. After that were pictures of Kellen. Playing cards with some men. Holding Donal up to feed a giraffe. Standing next to Wavy, her in a pretty green dress. The last one showed him astride a motorcycle on a sunny day with his shirt off, tattoos all over. He smiled, his gold tooth glinting.