Between Us and the Moon (14 page)

THE NEXT MORNING, I WALK DOWNSTAIRS AND
text Claudia back. She sent me a message when I was out with Andrew last night, inviting me out with her and her friends for July 4th. I tell her definitely.

I slip my phone in my pocket when I get to the living room. Scarlett’s three bags are piled in the foyer. The black dress is on a hanger in the closet and I’ll make sure to steam clean it this afternoon when no one is around.

I eat cereal on the lounger, which, usually, is expressly forbidden, but Aunt Nancy is at a Daughters of the American Revolution meeting. “Beanie, go get your sister. Tell her we have to go,” Mom says from the kitchen.

I place my bowl down and head upstairs.

“So,” I say, stepping in Scarlett’s doorway, “you’ll just have to achieve MTP in New York City.” MTP is Scarlett’s acronym for “maximum tanning potential.” Nancy finds it horrifying and drones on and on about SPFs and skin cancer.

I glance around her room, trying to see what clothes Scarlett’s chosen to leave behind. Scarlett can’t take
everything
to New York . . . can she? After all, she said she doesn’t see the point in bringing her swimsuits to the city. Some of her drawers are open behind her and she’s left dozens of T-shirts and shorts.

“What did you do to your
face
? You look like a raccoon,” she says. She scrunches her nose like something smells disgusting.

“What?”

My sister is seated at her vanity and dabs moisturizer on her forehead. I bend to see my reflection. Dark smears of mascara blacken under my eyes.

“I guess I didn’t wash my makeup off,” I say and use a tissue to wipe my skin.

“Wash that off every night. It’ll clog your pores,” she says and dabs a different cream on her chin.

My skin is a little raw from rubbing too hard.

I sit down on the end of the bed next to a red summer dress. It’s very short and would probably show the bottom of my butt cheeks if I ever wore it.

“That’s nice,” I say about the dress. “Kinda skimpy.”

“Yeah, well, Curtis seems to think I should be wearing nothing all the time. He basically had this off of me in fifteen minutes last night.”

“Curtis?” I say, playing dumb. Scarlett admires her reflection and pulls at her tanned skin.

“Yeah, he works down at the fish market.” She shrugs. “We’re seeing where it goes this summer. I’m not into the dark hair, dark eyes look. But I do love his body.”

“Ugh,” I say, thinking of Curtis looking me up and down at the fish market.

Scarlett rolls her eyes. “You know, Bean, someday you’re going to have sex and you’re going to like it.”

She doesn’t get it. It’s not Curtis’s body that I think is disgusting, it’s Curtis’s entire existence. I wonder if she knows about the accident and that he was in jail for nine months. He doesn’t strike me as the most forthcoming guy. But it also strikes me as something that all of his friends talk about and if Scarlett is here during the off-season—she has to know. Either way, I don’t mention how much I know.

“Do you think he’s a . . .” I choose my words while trying to seem normal. “. . . a good person?”

“What do you mean, ‘good’?”

Nope, she’s not going to give anything away.

“A good guy,” I repeat.

“Yeah, why not? I mean he has feelings and is courteous or whatever. People aren’t either just good or bad, Beanie. They’re complex. Layered.”

I circle back to her last comment about having sex and liking it. I can absolutely imagine taking my clothes off with Andrew. I’ve never considered having sex with anyone. Not until now. I’m not about to run off and do it tomorrow but
Andrew is different—special.

“I’m not afraid of kissing or sex,” I say.

Scarlett whips around in her chair. Her jaw drops.

“Did you seriously just say that? Have you even kissed anyone besides Tucker?”

“He was my first boyfriend!” I say. She gets up and closes a drawer filled with bikinis. “Give me a break,” I add.

“Any new boys on the horizon?” she asks.

“Are you really asking me this?”

“Yeah, why not?” she says.

I narrow my eyes. “No,” I say. “No boys. But maybe you could bring one back for me from New York!”

She flips off the light but the rainy daylight blankets the room. We walk back downstairs. Scarlett doesn’t say anything else. I kind of wish we could keep talking but she joins Mom in the foyer. I don’t remember us ever talking about boys before.

She hikes her bag over her shoulder and readies her things for the bus ride from Hyannis to New York City. I finish my cereal on the couch.

Maybe she’ll come give me a hug. I check out my reflection in the window. Black eyeliner still burrows in the corners of my eyes. I wipe them again with my napkin.

“See you soon!” Scarlett calls, and it singsongs through the hall. I guess that’s a no on the hug good-bye. She’s not big on public displays of affection, especially with me.

The rain hits the panoramic windows and skylights above in a steady, increasing rhythm. I place my cereal bowl down. I cannot stop replaying last night at the
Alvin
in my mind.

Rain comes down even harder and smacks the windows. The metal of the patio furniture clangs in the wind.

The phrase
swim to the moon
has been running through my mind for days. I haven’t asked Andrew what it means, and Mom took her computer with her to go to a coffee shop after dropping off Scarlett, so I can’t look it up.

Out the living room window, the rain comes down sideways.

No star gazing tonight. I glance over at the desk in the living room with Dad’s copy of the Waterman Scholarship folder sitting on it like dead weight—the blue of its glossy cover mocks me. After I steam clean the dress, I’ll go to the library and get started on how to format my essay in proper MLA format. Thank goodness for Sunday summer hours. Maybe I’ll even figure out what Andrew’s tattoo means while I am there.

I snatch the dress to start the steam clean routine and head upstairs.

The rain splashes around my ankles and the bottom of my flip-flops, making my feet slip and slide. I run up the cement steps of the Orleans library and when I grab for the silver handle, my slicked hand slips as another hand reaches for the door.

Curtis.

“American flag string bikini,” he says. Is that what he’s going to say every time he sees me?

We step into the darkened foyer and I wring out my hair; long strands stick to my back and I shiver when icy raindrops trickle down my spine. I’m standing in the library with someone who definitely knows Scarlett. I cross my arms over my chest.

The light above us flickers and makes a blinking sound. There’s a line of windows at the back wall of the library. The sky has darkened even more.

Cumulonimbus clouds,
I think.
We’re about to have some
—

CRASH!

Thunder.

“You been having fun with Andrew?” Curtis asks.

“Yeah, he’s nice,” I say and shake my head again, sending droplets flying into the air. The white scar on Curtis’s collarbone crisscrosses up to his neck. I need to deflect the direction of this conversation and of my eyes. I don’t want him to know that I know about the accident.

“So . . . ,” I say, thinking about Andrew’s tattoo and that this is quite possibly the most expeditious thing I can do to change the subject. “Swim to the—”

Curtis leans a hand on the wall and crosses one ankle over the other.

“You’re a nice girl,” he says and draws out the word “nice” so it’s a hiss. “A good girl. Too good for me.”

I take a step out of the foyer and into the library.

A nice girl. Why does that sound dirty to me? Sexual?

The lights flicker again over the wooden tables and a sign on a desk reads
REFERENCE LIBRARIAN
. Curtis’s eyes linger on mine and his tongue sticks out the side of his mouth a little bit. But he’s smiling.

I inch backward toward the librarian’s desk and my flip-flops squeak against the floor.

“See ya, Nice Girl,” Curtis says and meanders down the aisle
toward a computer table at the far end of the library. Great. The Orleans library has only two computers. That means I have to sit next to him at the computer if I want to access the card catalog.

Another huge crash of thunder outside makes the lights above the computers shake. There is a line three-deep for one reference librarian. It’s summer! What the hell does everyone need the library for? I need to look up the MLA reference books for my Waterman essay, aka the most boring thing I have ever had the misfortune of being assigned. Andrew’s tattoo floats through my mind too. I am not letting Curtis get in my way.

I sit down next to him and pull up the Orleans library database.

“Keeping me company?” he asks.

He can’t know I’m searching the phrase of Andrew’s tattoo. I start with the location of the writing reference books.

“If you must know I’m completing an essay, so I’m researching.”

He keeps his eyes on his screen and I sneak a peek. Meeting locations: Alcoholics Anonymous of Cape Cod.

Oh.

I type a few things but exhale through my nose. My shoulders hunch a little and the muscles in my back release.

“People are damaged sometimes,” Gran always says. “But you can’t let their damage walk all over you. You gotta be there for them. Help them pick themselves up and brush off the dirt but you’ve got to protect yourself, too.”

I keep my head pointed toward my own screen and decide that Curtis is disgusting, but he is trying. He seems like he’s
brushing off the dirt. Maybe he’s just a guy who made a really bad choice.

“Andrew has an interesting tattoo on his arm,” I offer. I try to sound very casual. I write down the call number of the MLA books on a small piece of paper, which also allows me to turn my head even farther from Curtis’s computer screen.

“Oh, The Doors lyric? You a fan?”

“Of Andrew?” I ask. Curtis looks at me funny.

“Of The Doors,” he clarifies.

“Oh. Yeah. Completely. Thought you might be too.”

What the hell am I even saying?

“Nah. He’s the sensitive one.” Curtis clicks out of the browser and stands up. “See you later, Miss America.”

“See ya,” I say quietly, even though he is out of earshot. He leaves without explaining anything to me, not that he needs to or that it’s my place to know.

Still, as Curtis walks away, I have an overwhelming urge to call out to him. To tell him that Andrew misses Mike too and won’t have a drink because of what happened even though he wasn’t even in that car. I want to tell Curtis that he’s not alone in his grief. I want to tell him I’m sorry and that we all have to live with the ripple effects of our choices. Even me—a girl who lived in her sister’s shadow way too long.

I’m sorry for both Andrew and Curtis.

Sorry for their loss.

The Doors. I think I’ve heard of them or something. Within ten minutes, I’m sitting in the back of the library with three books
in front of me and all of them are about the 1960s. One is open to a picture of a band. In the center is a guy in the tightest pair of leather pants I’ve seen since Mom took me to a Broadway play in New York City.

He’s hot, too. If you like that longhaired, tight pants, amazing mouth thing. Tucker does not have any of that. Actually, neither does Andrew. Well, except for the amazing mouth.

“Jim Morrison!” Mom says later that evening. She sits next to Dad and her tea steams next to a book on résumés. “I was too young, but Gran
loved
him.”

“Gran?”
Granny Levin likes dried herbs hanging upside down in her kitchen and tie-dye T-shirts.

“Yeah, Gran went to a bunch of their concerts.”

It is necessary I speak to Gran about “swim to the moon.” I think she’ll like that phrase. I can tell her a little about Andrew. Just like I did with Ettie, I’ll leave out the part about his age.

I am supposed to call her and Gracie once a week. But because she’s been at her silent meditation retreat, I haven’t been able to. The fact that she’s spent seven days not speaking to Gracie seems impossible to me.

As I walk to the telephone to call Gran anyway, Mom’s phone chimes.

I am dialing on Nancy’s portable house phone when Mom says, “Looks like Tucker isn’t coming to the party. You’ll get your wish after all.”

I freeze and draw a quick breath. I grip the phone hard. My index finger hovers over the last few digits of Gran’s number.

So that’s it. Tucker really isn’t changing his mind about us
breaking up. I hate that in some sick way, I thought he would and I was, even for a second, excited about it. It’s like Tucker’s decision not to come to the party is another jab to hurt me. Coward. He doesn’t want to see me and have to own up to what he did behind my back. He probably thinks I’m still crying. He’s probably pitying me right now.

“Beanie? Did you hear about Tucker?” Mom says.

“It’s completely fine,” I say and clear my throat. “Totally and completely fine.”

I dial the last of Gran’s number with a slam of the keys.

“Fine, huh?” Mom says with a slight smile.

I head out to the patio and close the door so she can’t hear me.