“Mind if I get one?” he asked, already pushing up to standing, steadying himself with one hand on my shoulder. If he’d been sober, he would have known he was putting enough weight on me to hurt me.
I didn’t mind. I grinned through it. “I’ll be waiting.” I watched him walk across the sand, into the shadows toward the beer stash against the sand dunes, staggering only a little.
A few seconds later a silhouette moved back toward me. That was fast. But the silhouette was too small to be Brandon, and as it moved closer I recognized the outline of girly curls. Lila. I felt like I hadn’t seen her in a year. She dashed up the stairs and scattered sand over me as she plunked down next to me. Over the noise of crashing waves, she stage-whispered, “I just heard you hooked up with Brandon Moore!”
“We did,” I said.
“No, I mean I heard you did it with Brandon Moore.”
I suppressed the urge to glance suspiciously at the parking lot behind me, beyond the bridge. I’d noticed fogged-up windows in cars when I first arrived. People could have seen Brandon and me too. I asked carefully, “Where did you hear that?”
“From Brandon Moore!”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to make of this. I hadn’t counted on Brandon kissing and telling. But he was drunk, and I forgave him. He must be happy about what we’d done, or he wouldn’t announce it. “We did,” I said again.
Lila persisted, “Wasn’t that your first time? Ever?”
“Yes. He was really sweet.”
Lila frowned at me and bit her lip. I was beginning to get a little annoyed with her. I felt good about what Brandon and I had done, but Lila’s response gave me second thoughts. I did not want second thoughts. I reminded her, “Brandon and I are good friends.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Everybody at Slide with Clyde told me all summer we should hook up.”
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “That is great, Zoey.”
“I’m happy.” I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged myself. The breeze off the ocean remained steady, but suddenly it seemed colder. “Where’s Keke?”
“Embarrassing me,” Lila said bitterly. “I will never get laid at this rate.”
I unwrapped one arm from my knees and fingered her springy red curls. “Give it time. It will happen.”
“Oh, like you’re the expert on this suddenly in the last five minutes.”
My hand stopped in her hair. Not that it mattered in the dark, but I could feel the blood rushing to my face with anger at what she’d said to me, and embarrassment at what I’d said to her. I did sound like a sex ed film from middle school PE class.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That was ugly. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know what you meant.” I tugged at her curls for a few more strokes, even though I didn’t want to, to show her everything was okay. We were quiet at first, but eventually we talked about the swim meet next Saturday and pretended nothing had happened. I yawned, terribly tired now, done with this party. I could probably sleep, even after the day I’d had, even at my dad’s house. I wished Brandon would come back with his beer. I would offer to take him home, and we would have a sweet parting of ways at the end of our first night together.
He did not come back. After a few minutes I would go looking for him, worried. My brief search would begin to feel hysterical, thinking something had happened to him, only at the very end. Then my friends would tell me Brandon had pitched over in the sand, and the guys had helped him across the next bridge down the beach, to the parking lot. Stephanie Wetzel lived in his neighborhood, and she had taken him home.
But chatting with Lila and watching the silhouettes dotting the beach, I didn’t know this yet, and I couldn’t have predicted it. I still hugged my knees to my chest, almost as if I needed comfort. I felt okay, though. In the opposite direction Brandon had headed, an unseen boy asked in an incredulous tone, “Brandon Moore and Zoey Commander?” and a girl shushed him. That was okay too. They would get used to it. So would I.
FOR THAT SHORT SCHOOL WEEK, I was almost glad Ashley was pregnant with my father’s baby. It kept me busy. Late Labor Day night when I came in from the party, I found a note from Ashley saying she had moved my bedroom. It used to be upstairs next to my parents’ room. Ashley had put me on the first floor, in what used to be the guest room. She said she wanted the baby’s room upstairs with her. She had made up the guest room bed for me with my old comforter.
I spent the rest of the week unpacking stuff I’d wanted from my mom’s apartment and arranging it perfectly. Then I volunteered to put together the high chair and baby swing Ashley and my dad had bought in Destin. All this was complicated by the bustle of workmen in the house. Ashley insisted that they finish the kitchen remodel before she and my dad left Saturday for their trip to Hawaii to get married. And my dad was having cameras installed.
They’d planned their elopement weeks ago. They hadn’t planned on a dependent minor in the house. My dad’s solution was to have cameras record everything that went on while he was gone, and he could view the video on the internet. We used to have a cat, and when we went on vacation, my mom always wanted to board her at the vet. My dad wanted to fill lots of bowls with cat food, shut her up in the house, and leave her. She’d be okay, he’d say. What could happen? I was a cat, and the vet was closed for repairs.
I hardly minded. I didn’t want to go with them to Hawaii, and I didn’t want them to miss their trip and resent me. And I appreciated all the activity in preparation. Now I understood why people went to so much trouble over funerals, with wakes and food and flowers and caskets and choices. It gave them something to do besides mourn unbearably. In my mind I hardly ever slipped back to my mother’s bedroom and tried to fix everything, until I lay in bed at night, praying for sleep.
Brandon was another bright spot in my week. It wasn’t his fault we didn’t see each other. His football practice lasted even longer in the afternoons than my swim team practice. Our classes and our lunch periods were different. Everybody had break at the same time between second and third periods, but I was hurrying between history and calculus then, and he was probably on the other end of the school. I’d never asked around or gone searching for him because that’s the kind of thing his chicks did before me, back in the summer when it was raining girls through his sunroof. My relationship with him was different because we had been dear friends first. I didn’t need to be reassured constantly that he wanted to be with me.
Besides, my friends brought him up all the time, amazed and vaguely amused that we were together, so it was almost like he sat next to me in every class. He texted me a message with cute misspellings at least once a day, which I actually found annoying because whenever I saw the light on my phone blinking, for a split second I always hoped my mother had called me. And on Thursday night when my phone rang and I threw down my fork in the middle of the nice spaghetti dinner Ashley had made with my dad’s help and scrambled into the guest room to find my phone, that was also Brandon, not my mom. He’d called to tell me he couldn’t go out with me Friday night after his game because the football team was throwing their own beach party, boys only. That was fine. I understood.
The only bad thing that happened all week was that Doug started pressing my buttons about my mother. At least, I thought so. The first two weeks of school, he’d come to swim practice on time like everybody else. Since we practiced the last period of school, he had no reason to be late. All he had to do was cross the courtyard from the liberal arts wing. But every day this week, he had been tardy. We were supposed to arrive on time, change into our swimsuits, get in the water, and warm up while Coach wrapped things up with the junior varsity team that practiced before us. As varsity team captain, I was in charge of turning in anyone who didn’t comply.
This terrified me. I hadn’t heard any rumors about my mom, so I assumed Doug was keeping mum. He hadn’t tried to talk to me about it. Whatever he’d been so desperate to yell at me at the party o
n Monday night, he’d decided it could wait. But I didn’t want to press my luck by turning him in and angering him. Each day I gently reprimanded him about being late. He snapped back at me and was late again the next day.
The swim team forced my hand. Keke and Lila asked why I showed favoritism to Doug. The boys called Doug a diva and demanded that I turn his ass in. In the end I hoped Doug would realize I had no choice, and he would not retaliate in kind.
That’s when my luck ran out.
3
“Thanks a lot, Zoey.”
I was shocked to hear Doug’s voice. I looked up at him before I could stop myself. I’d been afraid he’d have words with me tonight, after I turned him in and Coach talked with him behind closed doors in the office. That would never have prevented me from coming to the football game to cheer Brandon on and hang with the rest of the swim team in the crowded stadium. Still, I’d felt relieved when Doug didn’t show up quarter after quarter. And now here he was in the fourth, typically late, typically wandering in for free after the booster club abandoned taking tickets at the gate.
“Coach didn’t kick you off the team, did he?” I hoped I sounded surprised Doug was upset. He was the best swimmer we had, too good for Coach to kick off for minor infractions. He wasn’t in any real trouble, and I hoped by pointing this out, I would take the edge off his anger at me.
Avoiding his gaze, I turned back to the game far below us on the spotlit field. I looked for Brandon’s white 24 on his red Bulldogs jersey. He nabbed the ball and plowed his way upfield. “Go, Brandon!” I screamed. “Go, go, go—ouch!” He slammed into an enemy player even bigger than him and stopped short. Whistles blew, the refs gestured toward a penalty somewhere downfield, and the game paused. The marching band broke into “Who Let the Dogs Out?” for the third time in the fourth quarter. My excuse was gone to ignore Doug.
He stared down at me, waiting for me to give him my full attention before he answered my question with an insult. “No, Coach didn’t kick me off,” he sneered. “But that’s what you wanted, Zoey. You can pull that sweetheart act with anyone but me.”
The sneering made me uneasy. I hoped my mother’s secret was still secret. And I found it hard to remember what I’d planned to say next with Doug glaring at me.
Finally I managed, “I have nothing against you, Doug. Nothing except you’ve been late for practice every day this week. It’s my job to mark you tardy.”
“And point it out to Coach? He never would have noticed I was late if you hadn’t told him.” Doug’s voice rose as he spoke. Mike and Ian, standing on the row below us, heard him even with “Who Let the Dogs Out?” still blasting through the stadium. They turned around to look at us. Mike blushed red—which wasn’t unusual for Mike, but indicated he could hear Doug clearly. Ian, with sandy brown hair, stayed sand colored, as if he were trying to blend into his beach surroundings. But his eyes met mine for the briefest moment. This argument between Doug and me was bound to stir up talk again that something had happened between us.
My heart sped up. I could feel it knocking against my chest and hear the blood pumping in my ears. I said, clearly and reasonably, so maybe he’d think twice about raising his voice to me again, “I have to point things out to Coach. Nothing would get done otherwise. If I didn’t remind him, he’d show up late to swim practice himself.”
“Exactly,” Doug said just as clearly, imitating me. “And now Coach is watching me. You’ve got him thinking he shouldn’t give me special favors—”
“But he shouldn’t give you special favors,” I protested.
“—which is not for you to decide. He was going to recommend me for a swim scholarship to Florida State. Do you understand? This is not about your stupid team.”
Mike and Ian looked at each other. They were both on the stupid team too.
Doug didn’t glance at them or slow down. “I’d have zero chance of getting a scholarship to FSU if I got kicked off the team and I didn’t have Coach to help me. It’s not like I’m coming from a long line of Olympic athletes here, Zoey. My dad is a freaking fisherman.”
Oh. For the first time I realized what I’d almost done to him. A bigger town would have had a swim club that we all could have joined in elementary school and competed in ever since. When Doug started to show real potential last year, different parents might have moved to a bigger town with a swim club just so he could train with Olympic-caliber coaches. But Doug lived in this town with this father. The team was all he had, and I’d nearly taken even that away from him. I hadn’t been thinking of him. I’d been thinking of the team breathing down my neck.
I put my hand on his forearm. The heat of his skin surprised me. It shouldn’t have. Mid-September in Florida was still summer. Though my palm started to sweat, I kept my hand on his arm, hoping my touch would help me connect with him.
“You’re not the only one trying for a scholarship to FSU,” I pointed out. “If I keep my grades up and my extracurriculars loaded, I’ll get an academic scholarship.” Of course, no one cared about my good grades in comparison to an arrogant boy’s athletic scholarship, but I was trying to call Doug off here. I nodded at the field. “And Brandon’s trying for a football scholarship. The difference is, Brandon’s doing what the football coach tells him. If your scholarship is so important to you, why don’t you come to swim practice on time?”
Doug smiled. Maybe I should have smiled too, and laughed like I thought we’d come to an understanding. But I knew my laugh would come out nervous. So I continued to gaze earnestly up at him.
He held my gaze. I had every subject except math with him because we were both in AP, but in most classes he sat across the room. In English he sat right in front of me, so I was familiar with the deeply tanned back of his neck and the way his black hair quirked into curls. I’d never been this close to the front of him, though, without his hair tucked into a swim cap and his eyes blurry behind goggles. Funny how he could avoid me since the ninth grade, but the instant I got him in trouble, he was in my face. I could see every black hair in the day-old stubble on his chin.
His voice was so honeyed, I would have thought he was complimenting me, except for his words, and the subtlest sarcasm in his tone that I’d come to know well in the past year on the varsity team with him. “No, Zoey. The difference is that I actually need a scholarship, and you’re a spoiled brat.” He twisted his arm out of my hand and rubbed it like I’d hurt him, though I was sure I’d hardly touched him. “And I’m worried about your academic scholarship if you’re dense enough to think Brandon Moore gives a shit about you.”
Then I was staring at Doug’s back. He bounced down the stands, stepping over the seats to join some other guys at the edge of the swim team. He said something to them and they laughed. People complained to me privately about Doug, but when he was around, he was the life of the party. Now the huddle looked so conspiratorial that Ian walked along the bench below me to join it. Even Mike, who hated Doug, edged closer. I hoped they weren’t talking about me. Or if they were, I hoped they were only talking about my argument with Doug, and not about my mom.
And then in my mind I was back in my mother’s bedroom at our apartment, trying to fix everything. I held my phone to my ear with one hand, whispering to the 911 dispatcher. With the other hand, I straightened her bottles of expensive perfume on the cheap rental dresser. I rubbed imaginary dust from the glass stoppers decorated with glass jewels and glass ribbons.
I jumped and forgot the bottles as the marching band blared “Who Let the Dogs Out?” for the fourth time. In the end zone, the refs held their hands up, and Brandon’s teammates slapped his helmet. My whole purpose in coming to the game was to watch Brandon play. Now Brandon had scored, and I had no idea how it had happened.
And now Keke and Lila trudged back up the stairs. Their hands were full of Cokes and popcorn and cotton candy, junk they shouldn’t be eating with a swim meet tomorrow. If they’d stayed with me instead of going to the concession stand, Doug wouldn’t have attack
ed me like a lion on the savanna targeting the vulnerable gazelle at the edge of the herd. Or . . . the species that bounced hysterically instead of running. I confused the deerlike animals with each other. Impala. “What?”
“I said, are you seeing Brandon after the game?” Keke asked through a mouthful of popcorn.
“Zoey loves Brandon. It’s perfect and dreamy,” Lila said in a voice from TV commercials about princess dolls. She was a princess herself, with her gauzy top flowing around her in the breeze, and her red curls pinned up and cascading into ringlets around her shoulders.
“Brandon’s going to a party tonight with the football team at the city beach park,” I told them. “Male bonding.”
“The swim team should crash the party,” Keke declared.
“Yeah!” Lila skipped a few steps down the bleachers to discuss this idea with the junior girls on the swim team.
“No!” I caught Lila by the arm and dragged her back. She and Keke both waited for an explanation. I wished everyone would stop looking at me. Had I yelled no too loudly and yanked Lila back too hard? They must think I was crazy. “I was planning to go to his house tomorrow night after the swim meet and take him parking,” I said as calmly and sanely as I could.
“Oooh,” Lila said appreciatively.
“That’s ridiculous,” Keke said. “He can’t ban you from coming to his beach party. It’s not his damn beach.”
“Good point.” Lila escaped toward the junior girls again before I could grab her. She whispered to them and they squealed.
It was too easy, too good to be true. I hadn’t planned it. I hadn’t asked for it. I wouldn’t look pitiful chasing Brandon around, because crashing the party was the swim team’s idea, not mine. I’d fought resentment all day that Brandon was going out with the guys tonight instead of me, when I hadn’t seen him since Monday night. I’d thought it was okay, I’d told him it was okay, but the longer I considered it, the less it was okay. Now suddenly the problem was solved without me doing a thing? It felt dangerous. I didn’t trust it.