Sixteenth Summer (23 page)

As these first hatchlings started inching their way forward, a sudden flood of them followed. They almost looked like a wave of ants spilling out of a mound but, of course, a lot cuter. There were
hundreds
of them. The turtles’ legs moved stiffly and rhythmically. They began to parade with surprising swiftness toward the water.

I clapped my hand over my mouth (and clocked my chin with my new bangle) to smother a cheer.

I could tell other people were having trouble containing their excitement too. Will perhaps most of all. He threw his arm around my shoulders and jumped up and down.

“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” he hissed, trying to be quiet.

A few of the hatchlings seemed to be confused and headed toward the orange flags instead of the sea. A turtle watcher leaned over the barrier and gently nudged them in the right direction with his fingertips.

But most of the little turtles knew exactly where to go. Their flat, winglike legs churned so hard they almost hopped down the sand.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I wanted to cheer for the little turtles, but since I couldn’t, I just clasped my hands beneath my chin and grinned as I watched them.

I think every person on that beach—maybe even Ms. Humphreys, too—was feeling one simple emotion at that moment: joy.

The turtles started to reach the water. The breakers crashed into them, sending them tumbling backward and skidding sideways. Most of them immediately regained their bearings and kept on creeping.

And then the waves began to sweep them out to sea.

“They’re making it!” I said to Will, pointing at the disappearing turtles.

Will was grinning back at me when I heard the first squawk.

Seagulls.

The sound was familiar. I heard gulls every day at the beach. Or rather, I
didn’t
hear them. They were just white noise, like the waves and the soft whoosh of the breeze. I never gave them a thought.

But these gulls hovering over the beach—their wings arched out to the sides and their bills aimed downward—weren’t wallflowers anymore. They were predators. Greedy,
mean
sea rats, getting ready to strike.

“Oh no,” I muttered. Then the first seagull made its dive.

It must have been the easiest hunt of their lives. Each gull swooped down, plucked up a turtle, then flapped away, squawking in triumph.

People started making noise.

Men took off their T-shirts and flapped them in the air, trying to slap the birds away, but the gulls just dodged them and flew to the middle of the turtle pack. The only way to get at them would be to hop the orange flags and risk crushing the turtles under our feet.

I wanted to scream as I watched one gull snatch up a
hatchling by its leg. The rest of its body dangled, limp, from the gull’s hooked beak.

I found myself looking back at Ms. Humphreys, who still stood at the foot of the bridge. Her back was straight. She seemed stoic. In fact it looked like she was gazing at the surf, not at the diving seabirds. She was focusing on the hatchlings that got away, rather than the ones that died.

Maybe this was why Ms. Humphreys was so harsh. Every summer she guarded those little eggs with all the viciousness of a mama bear (since mama turtles obviously weren’t the most protective types) only to see scads of them gobbled up before they’d even had a chance to begin their journeys.

And as anybody who’s gone to school on Dune Island knows, the carnage doesn’t end on the beach. Big, toothy fish, crabs, and countless other predators nab more of the hatchlings once they hit the water. Only a tiny fraction of the turtles survive.

Those who do could live for decades. Still, as I watched the gulls feast, the odds against the sea turtles seemed devastating.

I started shaking.

The bangle bracelet suddenly felt intrusive and unfamiliar around my left wrist. I wrapped my right hand around it, squeezing it until it pressed into my skin, probably leaving a mark.

I started crying.

No, I sobbed. In big, loud, embarrassing heaves.

I turned and stumbled away from the hatchling run, heading north. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears to block out the horrible squawks of the gulls, but that seemed even more childish than running away.

So I just ran until all I could hear were the waves and, a moment later, the huffing and puffing of Will running after me.

Immediately he wrapped his arms around me. He held me while I gasped and sniffled.

But I didn’t melt into him the way I usually did. I couldn’t.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Will said. “But think of how many of the turtles made it to the water. They
made
it, Anna. And it was awesome.”

This only made me stiffen more.

Will pulled back and looked at me in confusion.

“Anna?”

“What!” I blurted. Then I cringed. I’d sounded so impatient, even hostile.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

Oh great, now I sounded sulky.

“Is this …?” Will began. “Are you …?”

He searched for the right thing to say, because he clearly had no idea what was wrong with me. I wasn’t sure I knew myself. All I knew was I was suddenly hurting so much, my body almost ached with it.

I spun away from Will to face the ocean. I imagined turtles paddling their way through the dark shallows right in front of me. I could picture their tiny bodies buffeted by the water, but doggedly swimming along. Evolution had wired them for this. But it hadn’t taught them how quickly, and brutally, everything could end for them.

This thought made me start crying
again
.

“Oh, Anna,” Will moaned. “Stop. Please stop.”

I shook my head angrily.

“I am
not
a crier,” I declared.

I heard Will stifle a laugh. I should have laughed too. It had been a ridiculous thing to say under the circumstances.

But instead I whirled around and glared at him. It was dark on the beach, and my tears were blurring my vision, but Will
still
looked beautiful to me.

I wanted to look at him forever. But since I couldn’t do that, suddenly I didn’t want to look at him at all.

Or perhaps, ever again.

Every once in a while, my sisters and brother and I spend an obsessive day building a sand fort. We pack and smooth the sand until it looks as sturdy as cement. By day’s end, part of me fantasizes that
this
fort will somehow last. It always seems impossible that something so strong, so solid, can just be washed away by the tide in less than an hour.

I realized now that I’d done same thing with Will. I’d built a happy little fortress of denial around us, filling it with blueberry picking, ice cream, and kisses. I’d convinced myself that August 29 would never
really
arrive.

But of course it would.

And when I forced myself to finally acknowledge this, it hurt like a sudden, startling muscle cramp. Like a flash of heat.

And who wouldn’t try to protect themselves from that, right?

“Will,” I said, shaking my head slowly and for too long. “I can’t do this.”

“We won’t go back,” Will agreed, glancing over his shoulder
at the loggerhead run. “Let’s just go get some coffee or something. And we can talk.”

“No!” I said. “I’m saying I can’t do
this
. Us.”

Will looked at me incredulously. And then his face shifted, subtly, to stone.

“If
I
can do this,” he asked in a low almost-growl, “why can’t you?”

“You don’t know how badly it’s going to hurt when you leave,” I said. “Do you even care?”

“It’ll hurt me, too,” Will said. “Believe me.”

“But the difference between you and me is”—I clutched at my middle with both hands, the way you do when you have a bad stomachache— “it’s hurting me
now
.”

“I don’t get it,” Will said. I saw his eyes flicker to the shiny bangle on my wrist. “Anna, I’m having the most amazing summer—because of you.”

“And then your summer
ends
,” I flung back, “and you go back to New York, to your old life where there’s not a glimmer of me. But me? I’m still gonna be here bumping into you, the memory of you,
everywhere I go
.”

“I know that,” Will said. He took a step closer to me. “And it’s not fair. But, Anna, we talked about this already. Why ruin what we have now just because we can’t have it later?”

“Because that
does
ruin it for me,” I said, backing away from Will.

“Well, if you ask me,
you’re
ruining it,” Will said. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

“You’re a shoobee, Will,” I said.

It was the first time I’d said that word to him, though certainly by then he’d probably heard it around the island. He probably also knew it wasn’t complimentary. I saw shock register on his face, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“You leave at the end of the summer,” I said. “Maybe you go home and tell your guy friends about the townie you had a fling with. The one who couldn’t pronounce ‘knish.’ The one who couldn’t keep it casual like
you
could.”

Will just shook his head in disbelief.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because we’re not the same, Will,” I said. “That’s why you don’t understand how I’m feeling. And that’s—”

I gasped, on the verge of tears again.

“And that’s why we shouldn’t be together,” I declared.

Will stared at me.

And then he closed his mouth so hard, I could hear his teeth click. He shook his head angrily.

“You know,” he said, “I get it now. You hate Valentine’s Day and you love Independence Day.”

“What does
that
mean?” I sputtered.

“You don’t want to be with
anyone
, Anna,” Will said. “Even me. Maybe
especially
me. Maybe you’ve just been looking for a way out.”

Will stopped and swallowed. He stared at the ground, breathing hard. I stood there, my hands fisted at my sides, waiting for him to speak. I was still crackling with indignation but I also felt confused.
How
had this fight happened? It felt like it had come out of nowhere. And I couldn’t make it stop.

When Will looked up again, his eyes were defeated.

“Well,” he said quietly, “you got it. You got your way out.”

He turned abruptly and stalked away with swift, sure strides.

As I watched him go in stunned silence, it occurred to me that Will was walking without stumbling. He had spent his first two months on the island struggling to get his bearings in the sand, always sinking in too deep or losing his balance in a hole. But now he was skimming over the beach like a local.

Like me.

Not that it changed the reality. He
wasn’t
a local. And
I
was stuck here on Dune Island.

And that was that.

I watched Will until he was swallowed up by the darkness. Even if I had wanted to call out to him, I don’t think I could have. My throat felt so choked, I was surprised I could breathe.

Will had gone back to taking my breath away.

This thought made me laugh. A dry, humorless laugh.

And then, instinctively, I turned to the ocean. I stared at the waves and cried—for a
long
time.

When I couldn’t cry any more, I sat at the very edge of the surf and gazed at the water some more. Only the roar of the surf, pushing, pulling, and thrashing, could drown out my thoughts about Will. About everything.

At some point I jolted out of this trance and looked around, blinking. The moon had shifted in the sky. The turtle watchers had gone home. I was all alone.

And that’s exactly how I felt—alone, which was perhaps even more shocking than what had happened between me and
Will. Never in my life had I felt lonely at the beach. Even on a weekday in winter when
nobody
was around, the sea and sand had always felt like a haven. Like home.

And now, I didn’t want to be here.

Which meant I’d lost more than Will—I’d lost a part of myself.

And the part that remained was already roiling with regret.

M
y mom always says August in south Georgia is like February in Wisconsin. The weather is so beastly and unrelenting, it’s like a cruel joke.

The ice cream is always runny, no matter how long it hibernates in the deep freeze. Our back field turns brown and crackly, littered with grasshopper husks and lost blueberries, as dry and hard as pebbles. The cicadas sound tired, their chirps thin and grating. Or maybe they’re just drowned out by the grind of the air-conditioning units, which blast constantly, or so it always seems.

In August we all retreat indoors. We can’t even stand the screened porch, where the ceiling fans just waft hot air at you, which is about as refreshing as being under a hair dryer.

My parents spend the month puttering (when they’re not at The Scoop). My dad does the taxes on the dining room table and my mom pulls out her to-do list. Then she grabs any kid within reach and assigns him or her random, awful tasks like scrubbing the bathroom grout with an electric toothbrush or spray painting all the chipped air-conditioning vents.

Every year Sophie and I have to choose between two evils—mom and her chore chart or the furnace blast that was the world outside.

This August, I decided, I would stay in.

I wandered around the house for the first couple of days, clutching Judy Blume books under my arm. In chick flicks, brokenhearted women always seem to devour pints and pints of ice cream. That, of course, was normal behavior for me so I devoured Judy Blume instead.

I kept telling myself that, yes, I felt lonely and awful now. But if I’d let the relationship go on longer—and get that much more serious—the ending would only have been worse.

I was doing the right thing, I insisted in my head. I was looking out for myself.

I was being a realist.

I was being the strong one.

And did any of these things I told myself help? Not even a little bit.

By the end of day three (or was it four?), I couldn’t stand my own wallowing any more. If I couldn’t get happy, I decided, at least I could get distracted. So, I went to my mom, who was decked out in rubber gloves, scouring something in the kitchen sink. Dinner was over, Sophie was working with my dad at The Scoop, and Benjie and Kat were running around the backyard with dryer sheets hanging out of their pockets, snatching fireflies out of the air.