We Run the Tides(12)

Petra arrives at the back door at 2:30 with pink chopsticks in her hair. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says “You Wish.” I’m glad Petra is seeing my mother dressed up. She usually sees her in her nurse’s scrubs or her exercise attire. My parents give her instructions on what to feed us (pasta) and when they’ll be home (after eleven) and then they are gone—off to the art gallery to make sure everything is in order for the evening ahead. My father comes back into the house because he’s forgotten his gavel. “Can’t leave without this,” he says, and Petra smiles at him in return. There’s something about the way Petra smiles at him that always makes my chest tighten like I’m in an elevator that’s gotten stuck.

“Didn’t my mom look sexy?” I say.

“Hmm,” Petra says, and I immediately regret asking. Five seconds pass, then fifteen. “She looked very pretty, but I wouldn’t call her sexy.”

“What’s the difference?” I say.

“Well, her beauty is not a sexual one,” Petra says, and by the way she says it I can tell that Petra thinks of herself as a sexual beauty.

I head into the front room to escape. Every room in our house has a name—front room, library, foyer, lower level. (Never call it the basement.) From the front windows of our house I can see the traffic snaking to the beach. It’s not even 3, but it appears everyone’s left work early to enjoy the rare heat. “We should go!” Petra says. She’s come up behind me. She tells me some classmates from UC Berkeley—she calls it “Cal”—will be at the beach and asks if we want to invite any friends. Svea wants to invite her dour friend.

“Isn’t there anyone you want to invite?” Petra asks.

“No,” I say casually. “I’m tired of my friends.”

She stares at me with her petrifying eyes.

She knows. My parents must have told her about my week, about the fact that no one’s talking to me at school. The teachers must have called them.

The mom of the dour friend drops her off in her convertible in a matter of minutes. Her mother is single and always happy, and it occurs to me, is made even happier by the prospect of dropping off her unsmiling daughter. Maybe it means she can go on a date. “Goodbye,” she calls to us from the foot of the stairs. She waves a big theatrical wave, as though she’s on a cruise ship leaving shore.

I put on shorts and an Esprit T-shirt—not normal beach attire. Normal beach attire where we live is a parka. “Don’t you want to put on a swimsuit?” Petra asks me, Svea, and the dour friend. No, we tell her, we don’t want to put on swimsuits. “Well, I’ve got mine on underneath,” Petra says. I’m slightly relieved by this fact because it means that she’ll likely take off her “You Wish” T-shirt once we get to the beach. I can only imagine the comments it’s going to inspire.

But when we arrive at the beach and Petra takes off her T-shirt and shorts, I wish she’d put her shorts back on. Her pubic hair is black and bushy and extends beyond the elastic of her bikini bottom and onto her thighs for at least two inches.

Petra spots her friends from college and she hugs them and then they start playing Frisbee. She’s up and running along the beach, in front of the sunbathers, her pubes on full display and shining in the sunlight. I can’t look. I turn away and that’s when I spot Maria Fabiola. She’s on the cliffs, climbing—I know her climbing style. It’s swift and nimble. There’s another figure lumbering behind her and I can’t make out who it is at first. Then I see that it’s Lotta, the new girl from Holland. Lotta invited me to her house tomorrow night for a birthday sleepover party, but she handed me the invitation last week before everything else happened so all bets are off. She’s five foot seven and is wearing bright red shorts and an orange T-shirt. She started at Spragg this year and so far I’ve only seen her in a uniform. In her beach clothes she looks much more Dutch. She’s trailing behind Maria Fabiola by about twenty feet. She’s from a flat country and is no match for this terrain, and I can imagine Maria Fabiola’s exasperation with her. Maybe Maria Fabiola will miss me, I think.

There are over a hundred people on the beach today, when usually there are three. On a typical day there’s a couple writing their names in the sand and surrounding their writing with a heart. And a lone man or woman staring at the sea, contemplating the future or past. But on this late afternoon everyone’s eyes are on other people’s bodies. Men in tight swimsuits and girls in white bikinis with the dark of their nipples showing through. Weaving among them all is Petra, theatrically catching a Frisbee and hiding it behind her back. She wants someone to tackle her for it. Specifically, she wants one of her male friends with long hair and a stocky torso to fall on top of her.

On the towel beside me, Svea and her dour friend are playing a game of cards. They’re both wearing sweat suits, which I choose to view as a rebuke to Petra, and silently applaud them for their choice in attire. I close my eyes and sink into the sand. A cloud moves and the sun takes aim at my skin.

I sleep a light sleep for ten minutes, maybe fifteen. When I open my eyes I feel a body near me. It’s Keith, from Sea View Terrace. Even though he’s sitting, he’s still tall, burying his feet in the sand.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says, his eyes blue as globes. “You’re awake.”