That gets me spooked, so I turn quickly to Frankie and ask him the same question.
I can tell he’s been swimming. He’s got sand on his arms and he smells like the creek.
“Hard to say,” Frankie answers me, sitting down.
“Is he all right?” I ask quickly.
“Yeah, sure,” Frankie assures me. “Nothing bad happened.”
I relax some at that, but now I’m itching to know.
Frankie pours himself a glass from my pitcher of lemonade. After a long, slow sip, he sits back in his chair and cocks one eye at me.
“We went swimming at the Sucker Hole,” he says. “We jumped off the pilings for a while. Then we raced. Pete won every time, but Will came close once—”
“They always do that,” I interrupt. “What happened to Will?”
“Hold your horses!” Frankie says. “We’d just finished racing when suddenly a voice calls out to us. A voice from across the creek.”
He sips lemonade.
“Who was it?” I ask.
Frankie looks at me. “Anna May Fenton.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Her again? What was she doing at the Sucker Hole? Did she bring a whole pack of girls to spy on you again?”
Frankie shakes his head. “It was only Anna May. Nobody else. And she wasn’t spying. In fact, she called out to announce herself. And when we looked up, there she was on the far bank, walking backward toward us.”
“Backward?”
“Backward,” Frankie says, “so she couldn’t see us. Then she says, ‘I don’t mean to embarrass you, so I won’t turn around. I’ll stand here until you get your clothes on.’”
“Are you fibbing?” I ask. I look at him close.
Frankie puts a hand over his heart. “God’s honest truth.”
“So what happened next?” I ask suspiciously.
“Well, Will thought it was a trick, but Anna May called out again. ‘No, it is not a trick,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want to talk with me then I’ll just leave.’ Well, that did it. We got ourselves dressed real quick. But even then, Anna May wouldn’t turn around. She said, ‘I’m embarrassed for my sake now, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just stand like this until I’ve said what I have to say.’”
“And what did she have to say?” I ask.
Frankie shakes his head. “She only wanted to talk to Will, so she asked Pete and me to leave.”
“You mean you didn’t hear what they said?” I ask incredulously.
“No, of course we did,” Frankie replies. “Soon as we were out of sight, Pete and me doubled back so we could listen.”
This is the oddest thing I’ve ever heard. I imagine it: cranky old Will on one side of the creek and beautiful Anna May on the other side standing with her back to him.
“So what’d she say to Will?” I ask.
“She asked him why we hadn’t been to the Sucker Hole for a while. She said she’d been coming every week since the day she found us sleeping there, hoping to see us again.”
“Anna May came to the Sucker Hole every week hoping to see us?”
“Not us,” Frankie says seriously. “Just Will.”
My mind does a somersault. This is shaping up to be the weirdest story I’ve ever heard.
Frankie goes on, “Will asked her to turn around so they could talk face-to-face. Well, she did. But then a funny thing happened: they stopped talking. Both of them just stood there staring across the water at each other. It seemed to last forever. It was downright boring, until Anna May took a tiny step forward. That did it. The bank she was standing on was all worn away beneath her. It was nothing but baked mud. She took that step and it crumbled!”
“She fell in the creek?” I gasp, sitting up. “What’d Will do?”
Frankie laughs. “You’ve never seen a boy move so fast in your life. Will swam over and got hold of her and pulled her out.”
Will rescues Anna May from drowning—and I missed it!
“And then what?” I’m on the edge of my seat.
“She was embarrassed,” Frankie says. “And she was crying. And there’s poor Will trying to wring out the hem of her dress. It didn’t do any good because they were both soaked. Eventually she stopped crying and the two of them went back to staring at each other.” Frankie sits back. He sighs. “And then he kissed her.”
“What?”
Frankie nods.
“On the lips?”