“Tell me everything about you,” he says.
She laughs, even though she isn’t exactly sure if he meant to be funny. “Which one are you again?”
“I’m Poe,” he says. “Where are you from?”
She tells him that she’s from Boston, that she is working as a mother’s helper. He says that he just graduated from this Emlen Academy, and that he and a bunch of his classmates have rented two of the Flower Cottages that line the curve of Beach Road, so that they can be together for one last summer, before they all go off to college.
Diana knows, from friends, and from novels, that she is supposed to listen to him, to flatter, to ask him questions and keep him talking. But this guy, Poe, wants to know about her. Does she like living in a city? （“It’s noisy,” she says, and tells him that she can’t get over how quiet it is here at night, how brightly the stars shine against the black of the sky.） What grade is she in? （Tenth, she says, and hopes he’ll think that she just finished tenth grade, when, really, it’s the grade she will start in September.） What’s her favorite subject? （English, of course.） What does she want to do after high school?
“I’ll go to college,” she says. “Maybe Smith or Mount Holyoke.” She’ll need a scholarship to attend either one, but Dr. Levy, who went to Smith, tells her it’s more than possible, and that she’d be happy to help Diana with her essays when the time comes.
“And how about after that?” asks Poe.
“I think I’d like to be a teacher.” This sounds more realistic and less arrogant than telling him she wants to be an artist or a writer. “I like kids.” She doesn’t—not really—but this seems like the kind of thing a boy would want to hear.
“I believe the children are our future,” he tells her, deadpan, and smiles when she laughs. They’ve both worked their feet into the sand while they’ve been talking. As she watches, he scoops up a handful of fine sand and lets it spill slowly from his hand onto her ankle. She stares at the trickling grains. Poe isn’t even touching her, but still, this feels like the most intimate thing a boy has ever done to her. For a minute, she’s sure she’s forgotten how to breathe.
When the last of the sand has fallen, he turns, squinting up at the sun. “I should get going.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Well, it was nice meeting you.”
“Nice meeting you, too.” She’s dying inside, her insides curling in on themselves like a salted slug at the thought that this is the end, when he says, casually, “Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow?”
She nods. “Tomorrow,” she says. She can still feel her ankle tingling. Strolling back, she feels shiny, and beautiful, tall and strong as the breeze blows her hair and sunshine warms her shoulders, and she falls asleep picturing his face.
* * *
Every afternoon for the next week, she and Poe meet at Great Hollow Beach. “Ahoy!” he calls when he sees her walking toward him, and she feels her heart rising in her chest, fluttering like a bird. One day he asks if she’s thirsty, and passes her a water bottle that says EMLEN on the side when she nods. She puts her lips on the bottle, right where his had been, one step away from kissing, and she can feel his eyes on her mouth and her throat as she swallows.
Most of their talk is banter, teasing and big-brother-y. He asks if she’s ever had a boyfriend （no）， or if she’s learning how to drive （not yet）。 When she asks him, after taking a day and a half to work up the courage, if he’s dating anyone, he tells her that he’d dated the same girl for the winter and spring of his senior year, but that they’d agreed to break up after prom, so that neither of them would be tied down when they went off to college.
“Do you miss her?” she asks. He’s piling sand on her again, handful after handful, until her feet are just vague lumps at the end of her legs.
“Sure,” he says. Then he looks at her, right into her eyes. “But I can’t say I’m sorry to be single right now.”
Diana knows she isn’t beautiful, not like Marie-Francoise, with her high cheekbones and her gray-blue eyes, not like Tess Finnegan at Boston Latin, who has a perfect hourglass figure and dark-brown hair that falls in ringlets to the small of her back. But when Poe looks at her, she feels radiant, like a sun-warmed berry, with her thin skin pulled taut over the sweet, juicy pulp of her insides.
Sometimes, she’ll realize that she doesn’t know very much about Poe. She knows that he is handsome and likes to play pranks, and that the other Emlen boys look to him as their leader. She knows, or can intuit, that he comes from money. He wears leather dock shoes, Brooks Brothers shirts, and Lacoste swim trunks, and, when she’s close, he smells like good cologne.