“I think she’s nice,” I say.
“Nice?” My mother looks as though she’s just swallowed an olive pit.
“Why is that bad?” I ask.
“Nice is the enemy of interesting.”
“She talks to us like we’re grown-ups, which is pretty cool,” Becky says.
“Well, you’re not. You’re eleven,” Mum says to Becky.
“The other night at dinner she asked me whether I was excited to begin menstruating,” Becky says.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my mother at a loss for words.
“Elle,” Anna calls out now, “it’s your turn.” I sit down next to her on the living room floor and roll the dice. The wood floors smell good to me. The same butcher’s wax my mother uses.
I’m looking down the long hallway that leads to the bedrooms, trying to decide whether I should use my Get Out of Jail Free card, when a door opens. Dixon steps into the hall, naked. He scratches his balls absent-mindedly. Behind him, Andrea emerges. She arches her back like a cat, stretches her arms up in the air. “We just had such a good fuck,” she says. The light is dim, but we can see everything—her massive red bush, her frizzy Janis Joplin hair, her satisfied smile.
Dixon walks past us across the living room, squats down next to the turntable, and places the needle on an album. I can see dark hair in the crack of his behind.
“Listen to the backing vocals on this track,” he says. “Clapton is a genius.”
I stare at the miniature silver wheelbarrow in my hand, wishing I could disappear into the floor.
Becky shoves me, just a bit too hard. “Are you going or not?”
8
12:45 P.M.
“Coming in?” Peter asks.
“Five minutes. I need to recover after crossing the fucking Sahara.” I grab the cooler from him and drink from the spout.
“That’s attractive,” Peter says. “My wife was raised by wolves.”
Jonas laughs. “I know. I was one of them.”
Peter hands me the SPF 50 sun block. “Can you do my back?”
I kneel behind him and squeeze sun block into my hand. Somehow he has already managed to get sand on the tube, and I’m irritated by the feeling of grit as I rub the cream onto his shoulders. Jonas watches as I stroke Peter’s skin.
“There.” I give Peter’s back a pat for good measure. “You are officially blocked.” I wipe my hands off on a towel and crawl into the shade of the tent. “Better,” I say.
Peter gets to his feet and grabs a boogie board. “Don’t be long. I don’t want to go pruney waiting for you.”
The moment Peter leaves, I wish I’d gone with him, because now Jonas and I are alone, and I have never felt more uncomfortable in my life. We’ve been together on this beach a thousand times since we were kids, walked the tide line looking for sea urchins and toenail shells, spied on creepy naked Germans from up in the dunes, wondered what it would be like to drown at sea. But right now, right here, huddled in the shade of his tent, I feel like I’m with a complete stranger.
There’s a small mesh window in the side panel of the tent. I watch Jonas through it, sitting inches away from me but completely separate. He’s concentrating—drawing something in the sand with the edge of a shell. I can’t make out what it is from this angle.
“Where’s young Jack?” he asks without looking up.
“Protesting.”
“Protesting what?”
“I wouldn’t give him my car.”
“Why not?”
“He was being a complete asshole,” I say, and he laughs. Gina waves to us from the break, beckoning. Jonas waves back. He leans in to the mesh window. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Then will you hear my confession?”
“I’m not sure three Hail Marys are going to help much,” I say.
He presses the palm of his hand against the mesh. “Elle—”
“Don’t,” I say. But I put my hand up against his. We sit like this, silent, unmoving, palm to palm through the fine mesh.
“I’ve been in love with you since I was eight.”
“That’s a lie,” I say.
1977. August, the Back Woods.
In the tree cover above me, there’s a window. I lie on the mossy banks of a stream, gazing up at the almost perfectly-square patch of sky. One minute it’s solid blue, the next a cloud floats past like a painting on the ceiling of a church. A sea gull swings into frame. I can hear its searching, mournful cries long after it disappears from view. I reach into my pocket and grab a Tootsie Roll. This is where I come almost every day now. Occasionally my mother asks me where I’ve been and I say, “Around,” and she seems fine with that. I could be hitchhiking into town with a serial killer and she wouldn’t notice. It’s all Leo and Anna, all the time. They argue about everything. It’s been like this since Leo and Mum got married. I dread sitting down at the table for dinner. It starts out okay—Leo lecturing us about China or why the Pentagon Papers are still relevant. But pretty soon he starts in on Anna. He doesn’t approve of her friend Lindsay: she dresses like a hooker; she’s overdeveloped and under-intelligent; she thought the Khmer Rouge was a lipstick color; her parents voted for Gerald Ford. Why did Anna get a C+ in math? How can she sit there without helping while her mother serves us? Her skirt is too short. “Why are you looking, creep?” Anna says, and when he gets up out of his chair, she runs to her room and locks the door.