Invincible Summer(26)

Of course, they probably just think I’m a psycho because I cannot. Stop. Laughing.

In the hallway outside the bathrooms, I run into Claudia making out with our waitress.

This is somehow not enough to make me stop laughing. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the shock. Or maybe I’m going insane from my virginity.

Claudia pulls away and smirks at me. “Oh, Chase, I’m so sorry!” she says, all her weight on one leg in a baby-slut pose.

“I didn’t think anyone would see us!”

This is hilarious. “Yes, you did!”

The waitress looks like she’d rather be anywhere else in the world, but I guess she should have thought of that before kissing a twelve-year-old.

This is ridiculous. I want to say, Claudia, you’re doing this so I will see you! You’re doing this weird creepy sexy thing because for some reason you want me to look . . . just so you can say that I did. I say, “Look at my shirt.”

Claudia stares at me.

I laugh. “I have got to do something about my shirt. I mean, look at you. You look so pretty.”

“Chase, aren’t you mad?”

I’m not old enough to be mad.

I roll my eyes. “At least you’re kissing someone.” I go into the bathroom and dab at my shirt with wet paper towels. I see myself in the mirror and smile and sign fine. t e n

S till, after thinking about it for a few days, I decide it’s a big problem that my little sister’s getting more action than I am. I guess I could try something with Joanna, but she’s started gushing about this tall surfer guy that comes in every day and buys Swedish fish from her. Like, seriously, how many Swedish fish does a guy need? One day he’s going to come in and he’s just going to have turned into a Swedish fish. She’ll probably still want him. Damn it.

The only place to reliably find girls is downtown, at night, near the arcade and the ice-cream store, but I’m getting sick of downtown after wasting all my time here every day for work. After a few weeks of this, all the teenagers and their cars look the same. But, to be honest, slumming in the sand with my siblings isn’t giving me the satisfaction I need either.

I can’t believe how long this summer’s seemed. To quote Camus, “At the other end of the city summer is already offering us, by way of contrast, its other riches: I mean its silence and its boredom.” We’re here for only a few more weeks, and I hate that a part of me is looking forward to going back home. I should feel a lot sicker than I do every time I see a commercial for a back-to-school sale.

I sit on the beach after dinner and watch the waves. I wish some mermaids would pop out of them and take me away.

It hurts even more because I know the satisfaction I need is a hundred percent obtainable, and is a hundred percent summer-approved. Melinda. Melinda Melinda Melinda.

And the satisfaction she offers is getting harder and harder to avoid, since it rains nearly every day for a week, and whenever it rains, Noah runs, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for a day and a half. Leaving me here. Alone. Tempted.

I feel like wherever I go, she’s there. Unloading groceries from her car when I’m unloading from Mom’s. Strolling past the candy kitchen while I’m on my lunch break. Strutting down the beach while I’m bobbing in the waves. I need Noah to come home and prove to me that she’s

not as alone as she seems.

“Where the hell does he go?” Claudia says.

“Exercise,” I say.

She goes, “Uh-huh.”

When he is here, he does spend most of his time with Melinda—eating ice cream with her out on their porch, taking walks on the beach in hoodies and sneakers or ponchos, sometimes. They look stupid, like tourists who don’t think to get out of the rain. This sounds so creepy, but sometimes I watch them in the evenings, just when they’re saying good-bye. She’ll be wearing some article of his clothing, and they’ll be outside in the rain, her mouth absolutely nude in the rain, pouting toward him, quivering for more Noah, stay stay stay, Noah smiling like she’s joking while he gives her a steaming kiss good-night.

Fuck my window that sees straight into her bedroom.

Fuck that Bella’s not even in there with her to distract me. To bring me back where I’m supposed to be.

Every night, Noah comes back into our room, yawns, and pulls down the blinds without even glancing toward Melinda across the street where she’s undressing or reading or crying.

Then he tells me some stupid joke.

“What’s brown and sticky?” he says. I say, “What?”

“A stick.” And he looks at me like I’m the weird one when I don’t laugh.

He sleeps like the dead.

I sleep like a virgin.

Noah’s happier than I’ve seen him in months. So I’d be an awful brother to get in the way of that. It’s not like I have some relationship with Melinda. It was just a kiss. Am I going to ruin Noah’s happiness because of a kiss?

I don’t even know if I have the power to ruin it. How do I know if Melinda just wants to f*ck with me, or if she actually wants to . . . f*ck me? God, I don’t know.

My life might be a cesspool of suck, but the rainstorm does stop eventually, so the beach becomes a part of our real-ity again. At least I have Shannon, and at least I have Claudia.

Inexplicably, she and I have gotten closer since her stupid waitress-kissing incident—one that, she assures me, was just an experiment, what’s the big deal, Chase, Jesus—and not close in a creepy incestuous way either, but in the way I assume guys are supposed to feel about their sisters. But what do I know? Clearly I don’t get how normal people relate to each other.