Sixteenth Summer (18 page)

We swam past the breakers until the waves softened into lazy undulations. The water was calm and sleepy this morning, as if it, too, was drained after the holiday.

Caroline and I faced each other. We let our legs go slack, planting our toes in the sand and fluttering our hands to keep our balance. Then we let the waves rock us from side to side. I felt a fish flick against my calf. I sank down until my chin rested on the water’s surface.

Caroline gazed at me, her face calm now. We were both deep in thought.

“It’s kind of scary being in love,” I said after a while. “The stakes are high, you know?” I paused again. Then, even though I was sort of scared to hear Caroline’s answer, I whispered, “What are you going to do?”

Caroline lifted her legs and rolled onto her back. She floated on the bobbing water and gazed up at the almost cloudless sky.

“Maybe Sam’s right and I’m just being moody,” she said. “Maybe I should just get over myself.”

How many times had I heard Caroline say those words to me?

“Get over yourself,” she’d say when I complained about Dune Island’s dinkiness or mandatory pep rallies or the fact that I had to share a room with my sister. She’d gotten this saying from her track coach, who shouted it across the field approximately 150 times per practice.

It was, I realized now, the perfect motto for Caroline. She was a jock. She had complete faith in her own power, whether she was pushing for another ten laps or telling herself not to read too much into the changes in Sam.

So maybe I could get over myself too
, I thought. Caroline bobbed about on the water’s surface as if a sudden easing in her mind had made her body feather-light as well.
Maybe I could just
force
myself to think, ‘Yay! Eight more weeks!’ instead of ‘Only eight more weeks.’ You know, half full versus half empty
.

This was a tactic that would have worked like a charm for Caroline.

But deep down I knew I had a different interpretation of “half full.” It was halfway to
gone
. My time with Will was draining away fast, and when it was over, all I’d be left with was a big, old empty.

That’s what I was feeling, I realized.
Pre-
empty. And after the unadulterated fullness of the past few weeks, it was depressing indeed.

W
ill showed up at The Scoop the next night at exactly nine o’clock. I was working alone because it was my mom’s book club night and my dad was home with the kids. Will gave me a casual wave over the heads of the customers who’d arrived just before him. Then he went over to one of the chalkboard tables in the kids section to wait for me.

By this time of year, the summer people knew as well as the locals that The Scoop closed at nine. So around 8:50, every ice
cream addict on the island (or so it seemed) would rush their dinner checks or snatch their picnic blankets off the beach. Then, boisterous and giggly, they’d all pile into our shop. At this time of night, they tended to buy extravagant desserts. They wanted towering sundaes, chili-spiced chocolate shakes, or crepes filled with piped Nutella and hazelnut gelato.

They lingered in the booths, groaning over the ice creamy goodness.

They had all the time in the world.

Some nights this annoyed me to death. I wanted to shout at them,
Go away already! Don’t you know that Gabriel Garcia Márquez is waiting at home for me, not to mention my lime-green bathtub?

Other times I lingered along with them. I’d make myself what I called a sampler platter—tiny divots of my favorite ice creams lined up neatly in a banana split dish. Then I’d sit a booth or two away from the customers; close enough to eavesdrop without seeming to hover. I’d close my eyes while the ice cream melted on my tongue and feel the work-induced throbbing in my feet ebb.

But tonight, Will was here. Which meant I didn’t want ice cream and I didn’t want gossip—I wanted him. I wanted to scooch into a booth next to him and give him a flirty kiss hello. I wanted to make him taste my latest flavor (Root Beer Float), then cut my chore list in half so we could go for a walk on the beach.

I couldn’t allow myself to do any of those things, though. Because everything that brought me closer to Will was also another step toward certain heartbreak.

Has Will not even considered this
? I wondered as I dished up the last order.

From the way he was smiling at me, his face as open as a window, it didn’t seem he had. Or maybe he just didn’t care about what was going to happen eight short weeks from then.

I was hoping the last-minute customers would provide a buffer between us for a while, but as soon as I rang up the last order, they all drifted out to the boardwalk to perch around the extra-long picnic table out front.

I tossed my scoop into the sink and trudged to the door to flip the
OPEN
sign to
CLOSED
.

“Wow, you work hard here,” Will said, still sitting at the chalkboard table. “Your love for ice cream must run way deep if you can still eat it after scooping all night.”

“Well …,” I said, shrugging and giving him what was probably a pained smile.

I went to the little closet where we kept the cleaning supplies and grabbed a spray bottle of bleach water and a rag.

I didn’t start with the tables farthest from the kids section just to avoid Will. I
always
started there. I shot him a couple of awkward smiles as I started spritzing and wiping down the tables.

Will just looked at me for a moment. He rolled a piece of green chalk between his thumb and forefinger, then said, “I called you yesterday.”

“I know.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. Caroline needed some girl time, and then I was so tired after being up so late the night before …”

I trailed off, not wanting to allude to the barbecue.

“I called you this morning, too,” Will said.

I didn’t know what to say to that one, so I just focused extra hard on my work, making careful, straight swipes across each tabletop with my rag.

Suddenly I heard a clatter from the supply closet. When I looked up, Will was emerging from it with a broom and dustpan.

“You don’t have to do that,” I said, my voice trembling a little.

Will just shrugged and started sweeping, following just behind me to catch the crumbs I was wiping off the tables. I skipped the chalkboard tables, because Kat and Benjie were in charge of those. They got upset if anybody destroyed the artwork before they got a chance to see it.

After that Will silently helped me put the lids on the ice cream tubs, set the lights on dim, and carry the final load of sticky spoons, bowls, and coffee mugs to the industrial dishwasher in the back.

But when I started updating the grocery list, Will finally said, “You’re not really going to the store after you close up shop, are you?”

“No,” I said wanly. “It’s just, whoever closes is supposed to make a note of all the things we ran out of that day.”

“I have a feeling you never, ever skip a day of school,” Will said. He grinned and leaned against a stainless steel counter, crossing his legs at the ankle.

I didn’t laugh or joke back like I was supposed to. I just nodded, confirming that, yes, I was a total rule-following nerd.

“I also have a feeling that you’re avoiding me,” Will said. Now he crossed his arms over his chest.

I could have denied it. I could have tap-danced my way out of it.

But already Will and I were beyond that. There was no option but to be honest with him.

So I nodded again.

“Okay, that’s weird, because the Fourth of July?” Will said. “It was one of the best nights of my life.”

“Mine too!” I burst out, finally looking up at him. It was only then that I realized I’d been avoiding his eyes ever since he’d arrived. Now that I allowed myself to look at him directly, I had to stifle a quiet gasp.

After not seeing him for a couple of days, Will looked so good I wanted to throw my arms around him. His hair was getting longer. It hung in his eyes, looking painfully cute. After all these days in the sun, he had a deep tan, which made his brown eyes look kind of sparkly. He was wearing another one of his T-shirts that hung just so off his broad shoulders. I wanted to touch it, to touch
him
.

But that, I thought to myself, would hurt.

In that moment of hesitation, it also occurred to me what
I
must look like after four straight hours of working. My hands smelled like bleach after cleaning the tables, and my hair was coming out of its sloppy bun. I could feel a few tendrils grazing my cheeks. I reached up nervously to smooth them behind my ears.

“Anna, stop,” Will said, apparently reading my mind. “You’re beautiful.”

I slumped against the dishwasher so that Will and I faced each other from opposite sides of the kitchen.

“Don’t say that,” I whispered.

“Why
not
?” Will said. I could hear an edge in his voice, a kernel of exasperation.

“Because, this just keeps getting better,” I said. I was gripping the counter above the dishwasher as if I needed its support to be able to say all these things. “That’s only going to make it hurt more when you leave.”

“Leave?” Will shook his head in confusion.

“Leave!” I said. I was the exasperated one now. “At the end of the summer, remember? When you go back to your kuh-nishes and the Brooklyn Bridge and …”

I trailed off when I remembered that Will didn’t exactly have a life of glamour and happiness waiting for him back in New York. I waved a hand in front of my face as if it could erase what I’d just said.

“Just,” I revised, “when you leave
here
.”

“Oh.” Will cocked his head to the side. “Huh.”

“So you hadn’t thought of that at all?” I said.

“I guess not,” Will said. “I mean, yeah, I knew it was out there. August twenty-ninth. That’s the date on our return plane tickets. But, Anna—that’s ages away.”

“It’ll fly by,” I said glumly. “It already has.”

“So that’s a reason to ruin the time we
do
have?” Will said.

“Who’s ruining anything?” I said. I pushed myself away from the counter and stalked over to the tall shelving unit where we kept the paper products. I yanked down a stack of napkins and
pushed my way through the swinging door into the ice cream parlor. After the bright lights of the kitchen, the shop felt dark and shadowy. I stumbled a bit as I headed to a table in the kids section and began to push napkins into the spring-loaded dispensers.

I could feel Will behind me, staring at the back of my head, but I didn’t turn around.

“Just don’t think about that,” Will urged me. “Think about now. Think about the other night!”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I grumbled.

“You probably never pull all-nighters because you forgot to study for a test, do you?” Will said.

I whipped around and glared at him. My eyes had adjusted to the dusky light and he looked annoyingly handsome.

“I guess I’m just not as cool as you,” I said. “I can’t just live in the present.”

“Well, you don’t really have a choice, do you?” Will said with maddening logic. “I mean today is today. You’re
in
it, Anna. And you can be in it with me, say, walking to that dumb place down the boardwalk and getting some curly fries. Or you could just stay here and make that grocery list for a shopping trip that’s not going to happen for a week.”

I bit my lip and looked away from him. I just … I just needed a minute to think. I went to the table where Will had been sitting when he’d first come in that evening. I started to stuff a wad of napkins into the dispenser. But then a doodle on the chalkboard tabletop caught my eye.

It was a tree.

A big, messy, sprawling tree covered with familiar-looking five-pointed leaves—not to mention a pink bicycle, a bunch of pinwheels, and a snake twined around its trunk.

Also on Figgy Pudding’s trunk? One of those old-timey hearts with initials inside:
AP + WC
.

“Aw …,” Will said as he saw me staring at the chalk drawing. “I’m an idiot. I’ll just …”

He grabbed a napkin out of the dispenser and wadded it up, clearly intending to smudge out the heart, the whole thing.

“No!” I cried, grabbing his wrist before he could get near the drawing.

It was the first time we’d touched that night.

We looked at each other, wide-eyed. An instant later we were tangled up together, kissing so hard that I couldn’t breathe. Clearly Will couldn’t either because when we pulled apart, we both gasped. This made us laugh until we’d exhausted what little breath we had left. Then we were kissing some more, and giggling at the same time. It was kind of messy—but wonderfully so.

At some point during all the making out, I sat on the chalkboard table and wrapped my ankles around the back of Will’s knees. Later we’d discover that my backside had smudged Will’s drawing, ruining it completely.

“It was only gonna get erased tomorrow,” Will said with another big chuckle.

At that moment it was easy for me to shrug it off too. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t save the drawing; stash it in my vanity drawer to keep forever. It had been a moment. One of countless wonderful moments I’d had—and would have—with Will.

That was, if I let myself have them.

As Will and I locked up The Scoop and headed giddily down the boardwalk together, I told myself that I could. I could handle being with Will now, even if I had to say good-bye to him later. It was worth it.

But did that mean I could forget about that looming goodbye? About August 29?

Not really. Not, in fact, for a minute.

A
fter that, I didn’t want to waste another minute of my time left with Will. But—we barely saw each other for an entire week. What thwarted us? The most unromantic obstacle you can imagine—the
weather
.

Every day Dune Island was pummeled by tropical thunderstorms. The rain, lightning, and thunder would start rolling in around ten o’clock. It would linger on and off through the day, like a grumpy guest constantly dozing off, then snorting himself awake right in the middle of your house. The storms held us hostage.