Sixteenth Summer (14 page)

Somehow that made getting ready for
this
date that much more exciting.

W
ill and I sat a bit apart from all the other moviegoers, in a pocket of sand surrounded by a narrow horseshoe of panic grass.

Since I’d come to the movie straight from The Scoop, I’d had nothing to bring but some Italian sodas and a bag of broken waffle cones, still warm.

Will provided the picnic blanket, a classic red-and-black plaid
one. As we stretched it out between us, our eyes met, and Will smiled. His grin started out quiet and shy, then grew.

I wondered if he was feeling the same way I was. My emotions were so up and down, I felt like my head was on a seesaw.

First I thought,
I almost can’t believe it happened. We actually kissed, after all that
yearning.
And then we went right back to being normal and hanging out. Which makes it kind of hard to imagine doing the kissing again
.

This quickly led to:

If I don’t kiss Will again, and soon, my head might explode
.

Followed by:

How do you go about kissing a
second
time? The first time was this grand fit of passion. But after that it’s sort of premeditated, isn’t it? Which sounds awkward. And probably not as exciting, right?

Then I was back to:

No, seriously, my head
will
explode
.

I felt self-conscious crawling onto the blanket with Will. The sun had already set, leaving blue-gray dusk, a light in which everything looked a bit fuzzy and everyone seemed to be at loose ends, just waiting for something to begin.

For most of the folks here, that something was the movie.

For me, of course, it was that inevitable liplock. I wondered when the kissing would happen. Would Will sneak one in during the movie?

Or maybe he’d see me home and kiss me good night at the door, the way they always did on TV shows.

Whenever it was going to happen, I couldn’t stop thinking
about the fact that it
would
happen. It was just
out
there, this destination, this sure thing. I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.

The one thing I
did
know—I hoped Will would take the lead. Despite the perfection of the previous night’s kissing, I was now feeling a little shy.

I arranged my snacks on the blanket and said, “Sorry, it’s not much. I figured ice cream would get too melty.”

“It’s awesome,” Will said. “I love waffle cones. I brought snacks too.”

He reached into the backpack he’d brought with him and pulled out a familiar-looking white paper sack.

“Is that …?”

“It’s candy from Angelo’s,” Will said with a grin. “Didn’t you say that was your favorite beachmart on the island?”

I was stunned. I peeked into the bag and saw a garish rainbow of gummies, a packet of Sugar Babies, and some Good & Plenty.

“I didn’t know your favorites,” Will said with a shrug, “so I got a range.”

Clutching the bag in my lap, I gaped at Will.

I wanted to tell him that he’d somehow picked
all
my favorites. That he’d paid attention to me, and to the little things that delighted me, in a way that few people had ever done. That he’d looked into my soul—and seen high-fructose corn syrup.

But I couldn’t seem to form any words that would express all that.

So I did the only thing that
could
demonstrate how I was feeling right then.

I threw my arms around Will’s neck and I kissed him.

A
big part of me didn’t want to have another date like the one at the Movie on the Beach.

Don’t get me wrong. The snuggling on the picnic blanket was great. The candy and kissing? Even better.

I even loved the movie, despite the fact that the holey screen made little Drew Barrymore look like she had chicken pox. Watching such a kiddie flick with Will made me feel somehow grown-up. I listened to the kids around us squealing when E.T. got left behind by his spaceship, and I could remember so vividly when that was me. Mermaid-kicking, cartwheeling, boys-are-gross me.

But those days also felt very far away. In the course of just a few weeks, I felt like I’d crossed a divide from childhood into … I didn’t quite know what. A place that wasn’t quite adulthood but was way more complicated than being a kid.

All of it made me feel 80 percent thrilled, 10 percent baffled, and 10 percent freaked-out, the way I’d feel if I woke up one morning to find myself several inches taller. (Not that
that
was ever going to happen. I was more sure of that with every day in my puny body.)

I even got into the goofy date-nightness of the Movie on the Beach. I looked at the couples around us—the other young people lounging on blankets with their ankles lazily inter-twined;
the parental types in fancy folding chairs, pouring each other plastic cups of wine. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had something in common with them. Like we shared a secret.

It was just … lovely, it really was.

But, after years of mocking the Movie on the Beachers, it also made me
cringe
.

I just wanted to be a tourist in the land of cheesy dates. I didn’t want to move in.

So when we talked on the phone the next morning, I told Will, “I have to admit, I liked our little Movie on the Beach…”

“Wait a minute,” Will squawked. “‘
Little
Movie on the Beach’?
E.T
. terrified you!”

“No it didn’t!” I sputtered.

“You’re telling me you
didn’t
grab me and spill all the Good & Plenty when the government agents swooped in to grab E.T.?”

“Well,” I muttered, “guys in hazmat suits are always scary.”

I shuddered at the memory of the cute little alien trapped in an isolation tank. Then I pressed on.

“Will, that doesn’t make the whole Movie on the Beach scenario less corny.”

“So what are you saying?” Will asked, a laugh in his throat.

I chose to ignore it as I declared, “No more dates out of a romantic comedy. No tandem bicycle rides, no milk shake with two straws, no mini-golf. I
refuse
.”

“Mini-golf?!” Will exclaimed.

I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell it was lighting up like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

And
that
was how I ended up at Putt Putt Dune Island! (exclamation point not mine), strolling the Astroturf with Will, clunking my neon pink ball into holes, and—despite my best efforts—loving every minute.

What made this even more implausible was that I was possibly the worst mini-golfer in the history of mini-golf. That’s probably a pretty short history, but still …

“How is it,” I asked Will when I failed for the third time to clear the puddle (excuse me,
water trap
) on the seventh green, “that you’re so much better at this than I am? You’ve never played mini-golf in your life. I
lived
here when I was a little kid.”

“Maybe it’s an attitude thing,” Will teased me. “Or maybe it’s your stance. You keep ducking your head, afraid that someone will see you.”

“No worries,” I said with a laugh in my voice. “My crowd doesn’t come here anymore. Not since
every
single kid in the third grade had his or her birthday party here. After that, putt putt was
so
over.”

Will got that look on his face again. The one that was a cross between
who
is
this girl?
and
I
like
this girl
.

Before I knew it, he’d crossed our little putting green and wrapped me in a hug that took my breath away.

“So if we’re basically all alone here,” he said, burying his face in the crook of my neck, “I guess you won’t mind a little PDA?”

Will smelled wonderful, like clean ocean water and a little bit of coconut. I found myself wondering if he was different here on Dune Island than he was back home. Surely he couldn’t smell
like this during a New York winter, could he? And would he have been this
demonstrative
if we were on a busy Manhattan street?

I contemplated asking Will this. But when he planted a soft, smiley kiss on my lips, all contemplating ceased. All that mattered was Will in this very instant. And in this instant, he was pretty—

“Amazing.”

I startled. “Amazing” was exactly the word I’d been thinking, but the voice wasn’t mine. It was sarcastic and exasperated and
loud
, coming from behind the windmill at the next hole.

And if I didn’t know better, I’d have been sure that voice belonged to …

I pulled away from Will and said, “It can’t be.”

I stalked over to the windmill, peeked around it, and saw—Caroline! Her fists were planted on her hips and she was staring, no,
glaring
, at Sam.

“Um, hi?” I blurted.

Caroline saw me and Will and threw up her hands.

“Oh, that’s just
great
,” she sputtered. She scooped her neon yellow golf ball off the green and tossed it over her shoulder.

Sam spun around.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“What are
you
doing here?” I retorted.

Caroline pointed at Sam—just as I pointed at Will.

I coughed, trying not to laugh.

Will covered his mouth with his fist, clearly working hard to keep a straight face.

And this was the part where all four of us were supposed to
crack up, right? We’d been caught in the act of the goofiest dating ritual of all time.

But the tension between Caroline and Sam quashed it.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “What happened, y’all? Did Sam start doing the Caroline voice again?”

I rasped my way through a bad imitation of
Sam’s
bad imitation of Caroline’s voice.

At which point Will really
did
crack up.

But Caroline just looked down at the Astroturf and bit her lip.

I stopped my little comedy routine with a lurchy feeling in my stomach. Something really
was
wrong.

“Caroline?” I said, reaching out for her arm.

She sidestepped me.

“Whatever,” she said. She acted as if she was shrugging it off—whatever
it
was. But I could tell she was upset. She had those two pink spots that always flame up on the apples of her cheeks when she’s trying to keep her emotions in check.

Then she waved one hand back and forth in front of her face, the same irritated flutter she’d use to shoo a horsefly.

“I’m just …” she said. She took a deep breath and started over. “I used to be the putt putt champ!”

“I know, right?” I said with a little laugh. “Is it that we’re too tall now for these little clubs?”

“Anna,” Sam said, the defeated S-shape of his torso straightening a bit. “I don’t think you’re too tall for much of anything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a grin. “Heard it all before, Jolly Green.”

Sam always laughed smugly when I called him a giant, but this time he just gave me a weak smile. Caroline wandered away, idly swinging her putter around her ankles. The leaf-green tape on its handle was frayed and faded after years of being clutched by sweaty kid hands.

“This was supposed to be …” Sam trailed off. “I don’t know what. But whatever I thought, it’s not happening. We should just go to The Swamp or something.”

I didn’t know if he was talking to Caroline alone or if he wanted me and Will to join them. I glanced at Will, who gave me a little smile and a shrug.

“I think it’s kind of fun,” Will said apologetically.

“Well, we set the bar pretty low,” I allowed. “Seeing as you dragged me here kicking and screaming.”

“You know you love it like you love curly fries,” Will said.

“See?” I said indignantly. “I tell you my dirty secrets and you just throw them back in my face.”

As Will laughed, I realized I’d turned toward him—and away from Sam and Caroline. For a moment I’d even forgotten they were there. Feeling strangely guilty, I spun around to discuss plan B with them.

But they’d already headed for the cinder-block building—painted the same swimming pool blue as Will’s golf ball—to turn in their clubs.

“Do you want to go with them?” Will asked. “Seems like there’s something going on there. Maybe …”

I bit my lip as I regarded the foot or so of space between my friends as they walked through the course. Sam refrained
from leapfrogging the giant red mushroom at the eleventh green or jumping the stepping-stones that crossed the “rushing river” at the eighteenth hole. This was definitely out of character for him. Then again, Sam was a boyfriend now. Maybe maturity, even while playing mini-golf, came with the territory?

I didn’t know, probably because the ways of boyfriends and girlfriends were as mysterious to me as math. It wasn’t as if I’d learned much yet from being with Will. And besides, he wasn’t my boyfriend. At least, I didn’t think he was.

Wait a minute,
was
he?

Bubbles of happiness at the idea began to fizz up in my brain, but I tried to shake them away and focus on what was going on with Sam and Caroline. I couldn’t imagine their issue was anything that couldn’t be solved by a little loud music and chili-laced grub at The Swamp.

So I said to Will, “Oh, they’re fine. Sam and Caroline bicker. They always have. I think they had a little hiatus when they first started going out and now …”

“The honeymoon’s over?” Will said. “Well, we won’t let that happen to us, will we?”

He said it casually, before dropping his golf ball on the faux grass and nudging it toward the tee with his putter. I was glad he wasn’t looking at me, because I was suddenly feeling almost dizzy.

I couldn’t imagine anything more boyfriendy than what Will had just said.

I also truly believed it. Will and I were our own little island,
and nobody else’s rules applied to us, not even Sam and Caroline’s.

I suppose this was just another version of me being a loner, like Caroline always said.

The only difference was, this time I wasn’t
alone
alone. I was with Will, who seemed to fit me like my favorite T-shirt but also felt more like a wonderful surprise with each day that I knew him.