What Happens Now(2)

I lay down again and shut my eyes. Secretly, I wanted to be reading my book, a vintage Silver Arrow novel I’d just bought online. I’d made the mistake of putting it in my bag and now the thought of it kept tugging at me. But Kendall didn’t get Silver Arrow—she didn’t get any sci-fi, especially not a TV series that aired before we were even born—and I wanted us to have a good time together.

We were both at the lake on opening day, as we’d always been and were supposed to be. As if it were etched on a Dead Sea scroll somewhere.

One type of antidepressants had made me sick but the second was working. I knew it was working because the sun right here on my face felt like every good thing that had happened to me plus all the other good things that hadn’t happened yet but would absolutely, definitely happen soon for sure.

Summer.

After a minute, Kendall whispered, “Who the hell is that?”

I sighed, opened one eye, and looked sideways toward the beach. It took me a bit to lock in on who she was talking about, but then I saw the boy.

He was tall, dark-haired. Our age. Stepping gingerly around people while clutching one of those striped Navajo blankets to his chest.

That’s all it takes, sometimes. He doesn’t have to be saving kittens from a tree or making shirtless jump shots, or dropping some brilliant comment in American History class. But one moment, this person is not in the world for you. The next moment, he is. It’s exactly that simple. And also, irreversible.

He was with a blond woman who wore what appeared to be a gigantic scarf tied in eight different places. As we watched, he guided her to a sliver of shade on the opposite edge of the beach, then spread out the blanket and took a tote bag out of her hands without her asking.

“Do you know?” asked Kendall, wrinkling her nose and all her freckles with it.

“Uh-uh,” I said casually, then caught my breath and hoped Kendall didn’t notice.

He was not from our high school, we were sure of that; there were only sixty-some-odd guys in each grade and most of them we’d known since forever. A summer renter, maybe? Or from another town.

The boy—actually, at this point, I was already thinking of him as The Boy—offered a tube of sunscreen to the woman, who shook her head. We heard him say, “Mom! Cancer!” as he shoved it toward her again. She smiled at him then and plucked the sunscreen out of his hand. He smiled back. Even from where we sat, I could see each one of his carefully carved features participating in that smile. And dimples, for God’s sake.

Then he turned away and slipped out of his button-down shirt.

His shoulders were wide and solid, but the rest of him was skinny, as if some body parts were losing a contest with others. I couldn’t quite identify the color of his skin, but I could tell it was more dark than fair. More night than day.

We watched him, both Kendall and I, alert as cats as he walked across the dock to the rickety diving board at the far end. (If we’d had the right kind of ears, they would have been pricked up.) He stepped slowly to the edge, then turned to do a backward somersault into the lake, lopsided and not very good at all. The splash looked like it hurt.

And I was already halfway gone.

A week later, Kendall and I were sitting low on the beach, our feet in the water, sand seeping into the edges of our bathing suits. I’d found a bumpy rock embedded in the sand and couldn’t stop rubbing my big toe back and forth over it. My little sister, Danielle, waded nearby in her mismatched bikini—a top covered in cherries, blue-and-white-striped bottoms. She made it look like a fashion statement rather than what it really was: the result of a messy room where you could never find the proper other half to anything.

“You guys! Watch me!” called Danielle. She started to spin in circles, still holding her plastic bucket. Faster, then faster again. Until she staggered and fell hard into the water.

“Is she okay?” Kendall asked.

“She makes herself dizzy on purpose,” I replied with a shrug. “Your question is more complicated than it sounds.”

Danielle righted herself and started spinning again.

“Excuse me,” said someone nearby.

We turned to see The Boy standing ankle-deep in the water. Looking at us.

He’s shorter up close, was the first thing I thought. But still, wow.

“Hey,” Kendall said to him, Oscar-winning cool and casual.

“That rope out there,” he pointed to the line dotted with red-and-white buoys that looked almost exactly like my antidepressant pills. It marked the far edge of the swimming area. “What happens if you go on the other side of it?”

“The lifeguard yells at you,” said Kendall.

“That’s all?” asked The Boy, raising his eyebrows.

“He uses a loud, scary voice,” I added.

“There’s no giant lake squid that comes up from the deep and swallows you whole?”

Kendall and I shook our heads. Dani stepped out of her spin to stop and listen.

“No patrol boat chases you down, scoops you up in a net, throws you in Lake Jail?”

“Not that we’ve seen,” I said, laughing a bit.

“Huh,” was all he said, scanning the off-limits area of the lake, something lighting up behind his expression. He then dove into the water and sprinted out to the boundary rope.

Kendall, Dani, and I fell silent, all watching him swim a trail of white froth through the dark water. When he got to the rope, I expected him to dip underneath it into the forbidden zone. But he turned for the raft tied to the corner of the rope and hoisted himself up the ladder.