She doesn’t know what he does at night, when she’s back at the house, reading or watching Masterpiece Theater and eating ice cream out of a mug. Maybe he’s at parties, or at the bars in Provincetown; maybe he’s meeting other girls, older ones. She wonders if he thinks about her, if he sees her as a little sister, or as a potential girlfriend, and what will happen as the summer draws to a close.
He occupies her thoughts every minute they’re not together. She thinks of him when she’s locked her bedroom door, when she’s directing the flow of water between her legs, or using her fingertips to touch herself, gently, then more urgently, until she’s gasping and trembling. The boys at home all seem like children, like outlines of the people they’ll eventually become. Poe is a finished portrait, filled in and vivid, every detail complete. In bed at night, she pictures the way his shoulders pull the fabric of his shirt taut, the dusting of hair on his forearms and the pale hollows behind his knees. She thinks about how it would feel if he were to pull her close, until her head rested on his chest; how it would feel for him to kiss her, how his lips would be firm and warm and knowing, how his touch would be possessive and sure. I love you, she imagines him whispering, and her stomach flutters and her toes curl, and she falls asleep with a smile on her face.
* * *
Too soon, it’s the last week of August. In four days, Poe will be going home, to pack up and start college orientation at Dartmouth. On Friday, she and Poe are lounging on his towels at the beach when he sits up straight and whispers, “Look! It’s the nudists!” She peers across the sand to where he’s pointed and sees an elderly man and woman, in matching white robes, holding hands as they make their way slowly around the curved lip of the beach.
“Oh my goodness,” she says. Poe has told her about them—an elderly husband and wife who walk to a deserted inlet and lie naked in the sand—but she’s never seen them before.
“They’re cute,” she says. “They look like matching wallets.”
Poe looks at her admiringly. “Good one,” he says, and she flushes with pleasure. She hopes he’ll bury her feet again, but just then one of the other boys comes trotting across the sand with a volleyball in his hand.
“Hey, lovebirds, wanna play?”
Lovebirds. Diana feels her face get hot, and she ducks to hide her smile.
“What do you think?” Poe asks.
“Sure,” she says, and lets him pull her to her feet.
Her gym class did a unit on volleyball the previous year. Over nine weeks, Diana barely managed to get her hands on the ball, but that afternoon, she is unstoppable. They play three games, and win all three. Twice, she sets the ball, and Poe spikes it, sending it rocketing over the net and into the sand. The first time, he high-fives her, but the second time he grabs her in a bear hug, lifting her up, holding her so that they’re skin to skin, chest to chest. She thinks that he’s going to kiss her, and that it will be perfect, an absolutely perfect first kiss at the end of the day at the very end of summer, but instead he sets her back, gently, on her feet.
When the game is over, he touches her hand and says, “Hey. A bunch of us are getting together tomorrow night. The last bonfire of the year before we all go off to college. Can you come?”
She nods. She has been waiting for this, waiting for him, since the day her sister gave her the yellow bikini; since the first day of that summer, since, maybe, the day she was born.
* * *
What to wear, what to wear? Diana’s antsy and distracted all day, desperate for the hours to pass. After the beach, she takes an extra-long time in the outdoor shower, shaving her legs and under her arms and at the crease of her thighs, then rubbing oil into the bare skin. Alone in her room, she towel-dries her hair and works mousse through it, from the roots to the ends, then lets it air-dry, touching the curls anxiously, hoping they’ll look right, that she’ll look right.
At dinner, which is Dr. Levy’s famous lobster Cobb salad, she casually says, “Some of the kids I’ve met are having a bonfire on the beach tonight. Is it okay if I go?”
Dr. Levy and her husband exchange a look across the table. “What would your parents say?” Mr. Weinberg finally asks. “Do you think they’d be okay with it?”
Diana knows the answer is that her parents would probably not be okay. Like her sisters, she won’t be allowed to date until she’s sixteen, and she knows what they’d have to say about a party with older boys and drinking. She puts on a thoughtful expression and says, “I think they’d tell me to be careful, and not to drink anything, and to be home by midnight.”