“Everyone wears black,” Frankie says. “And we don’t need slimming. We need something fun. Something — ew! Not that fun!” She shoves me back into the stall before any passing shoppers can associate her with the orange monstrosity in fitting room A.
“Keep trying, Anna. You’ll find the one.”
Five more try-ons, five more rejects. Okay, maybe last year’s yellow one-piece with the daisy neckline has potential.
“Frank, this is hopeless. Can’t I just wear my —”
“No,” she says, stepping out of her stall. “You are not allowed to mention that yellow suit again. I think I found one I like. Come see.”
I crack open my door. Frankie is a vision in a sheer white wrap below the artificial glow of the fitting room.
She opens the wrap to reveal a baby blue halter-style suit that ties at the neck and hips and covers just enough of Frankie to keep everyone wondering. It was made for her; evidenced by the mothers and daughters gathering around her like lost sheep seeking her guidance through the tangled pastures of Bling’s swimsuit collection.
“Oh my God, that’s it!” I emerge from my stall and hug her as though she’s trying on wedding gowns. “You look amazing!”
“Does it make me look too fat?” She tugs at the bottom and turns back and forth to look at her butt and stomach in the three-way mirror. “What about my huge ribs? I have man-ribs.”
One of the mothers laughs.
“Honey,” the woman says, “if I had that body, I’d go to the beach naked.”
Frankie smiles. The other moms agree. A little girl stares. Celeb Style, here she comes.
“Frank, it’s awesome. You have to get that suit.”
“You think? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” the lost sheep and I say. “Okay, as long as you’re being honest.”
“Oh my God, if you don’t get that suit I’m not going to California.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll get it. In the meantime, here.” She reaches into her dressing room and pulls out a hanger full of olive green something. “I think I found one for you, too. I know you’re a little more conservative about these things.”
Locked in my stall, I strip down again and prepare for another painful but predictable rejection. If this one doesn’t work out, I’m going to Alaska instead. No swimsuit required.
I pull and stretch and tie the various parts into position without looking in the mirror. As I stare at the chipped Cotton Candy nail polish on my toes, I imagine walking down the beach in my childish yellow suit with Frankie, Queen of Summer, in soft baby blue. I’ll be the sidekick. The second string. The second helping. The second choice.
My head hurts. “Well?” Frankie knocks on the door. “Do you have it on?”
I unlatch the door and push it open, still afraid to look in the mirror.
“Wow. Wow. Anna, oh my God. Wow!”
“Bad?” I whisper.
“Um, come here.” Before I can say another word, Frankie grabs my wrist and pulls me into the main fitting room in front of the three-way mirror. Thankfully, the sheep have disbanded.
“Look.” She nudges me closer. I stare at my reflection. The girl in the mirror stares back. I don’t recognize her.
“Anna, you’re getting this suit.”
“It’s eighty dollars.”
“Anna, you’re getting this suit.”
“But I —”
“Anna, you’re getting this suit. That’s it.”
I twist and turn and contort all of my appendages in search of some fatal flaw that will force me to abandon the suit, but I can’t find one. Not in the lightly padded halter top that ties at the neck like Frankie’s. Not in the boy-shorts bottom that makes my stomach look flat and slides over my hips like a second skin.
“See, I told you you’re gorgeous,” Frankie says.
“Whatever.” I’m still getting used to the idea of showing anyone my belly button on purpose.
“Oh my God,” Frankie squeals. “Anna, I just thought of the best idea ever.”
“Great. I’ll ask Mom to set aside some bail money.”
“No, listen.” She puts her arm around me and lowers her voice. “It’s about the Albatross.” Her broken eyebrow seems to be dancing as she wiggles it suggestively.
“Oh, right. Your little pet project.” I am simultaneously intrigued and afraid — a combination I’ve grown used to over the past year with Frankie.
“It’s perfect. We’re in California for twenty-three days, right?” She does some quick calculations on her fingers, looking up at the ceiling to concentrate. “If we allow three days for arrival, exploration, and strategy, that leaves us eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Twenty days, give or take.”
“Twenty days for what?”
“Twenty boys.”
I think she’s joking, but her eyes are set. I must stop this madness before she has us buying the family pack of condoms at the pharmacy.
“Frankie, I’m not sleeping with twenty guys, and neither are you!” She laughs. “Come on, Anna. I just meant that if we could meet a boy a day, and maybe do a little test-drive, certainly you could ditch the A.A. at some point, right? We can even make it a contest. Whoever gets the most prospects — wins.”
While the yellow-daisy-swimsuit Anna would never have agreed to such a scandalous contest, the crazy girl in the mirror wearing the olive bikini can’t crush Frankie’s sincere smile. It’s ear to ear, almost all the way to her bright blue eyes, and before I can even think about what a bad idea it is, our mission is in motion.
“Twenty days,” I say, overjoyed at her lasting enthusiasm. “Twenty boys. I’m in.”
Frankie wiggles her eyebrow and takes one more look at our bikini reflections, nodding her approval.
I smile and nod back, challenge accepted.
Cue the movie announcer guy.
Somewhere along the California seashore, a strange wind blows over the ocean, and twenty oblivious boys simultaneously look up from their surfboards.
six
As the days turn into the final hours before the trip, whenever I think about Frankie’s twenty-boy contest, I can’t ignore the prickly feeling in my stomach that accompanies Matt’s face, fading and disappointed.
I never saw you in a bikini, I imagine him saying.
You didn’t live long enough, I think.
But twenty, Anna? Does it have to be twenty? What about five? Or three? Or one?
What do you care? You’re dead, remember?
I shake my head and pack the last few items on my list. Unless Dad has a last-minute change of heart, we leave tomorrow morning.
“Dead boys don’t talk, Anna,” I say out loud. “Remember?”
“What?” Mom does her signature knock-while-already-opening move on my bedroom door. “Did you say something, hon?”
“Um, no, just reviewing my packing list.” I see Dad behind her and hope they haven’t been standing there long. Then I see the serious look on their faces and swallow hard, hoping they’re just here to remind me about sunscreen and lifeguards and generally being an all-around well-behaved girl for Uncle Red and Aunt Jayne.
“Can we talk for a minute?” Dad asks, making himself comfortable on my desk chair.
“Um, okay.” I remove and refold a few things from my bag to create the illusion that I’m busy.
“So, Frankie’s smoking again,” he says.
I can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement, so I play dumb. “What do you mean?”
“I came home between open houses today and saw her,” he says. Dad’s in real estate, so his schedule can be unpredictable. Frankie should know — her window faces our house. It’s been a few months since the last time he busted her, when he grilled me about my nonexistent smoking habits and made me promise I’d get her to quit.
“She just — she found — it’s just that — I don’t know, Dad.” I give up. The only excuse I can think of is the truth — she’s broken. Until someone can figure out how to fix her, what else can sh
e do?
Dad sighs. “Anna, do you think maybe the trip is something the Perinos need to do together, as a family?”
“They are going as a family,” I remind him. His line of questioning makes me nervous. When the Perinos first invited me, it took some convincing to secure Dad’s permission. Before Matt died, Dad already struggled with such “living on the edge” activities as me going outside with wet hair in the winter, taking off my sneakers without untying them, and going to bed without flossing. It only got worse after the car accident, and I really thought Dad would say no to a summer vacation across the country — especially with his comments about me spending too much time with Frankie. But after presenting a convincing argument, citing my honor roll final grades, and committing to additional housework without being asked, I won him over. After that, whenever someone mentioned California, I changed the subject. Like I told Frankie — he can still revoke permission until we’re on the plane.
“I know they’re going as a family,” Dad says. “I meant — without the neighbor kid getting underfoot.”
He says “the neighbor kid” like I’m some barnacle that even industrial-strength chemicals can’t remove from the hull of their family tragedy.
“Dad, she kind of needs me there, you know?” I force myself to keep my voice steady, thinking about Frankie’s “positive envisionation.” I am on the beach. There are drooling boys and postcards and something about beautiful mermaids….
“I understand that, Anna. It’s just that… do you ever think that part of the reason Frankie isn’t moving on is — is that you aren’t letting her?”
I look to Mom for support, but her eyes are on me expectantly, as if at any minute I’ll see their irrefutable logic and unpack my bags. I know Mom and Dad care about Frankie, but they weren’t the ones hiding upstairs with her in the weeks after Matt’s death while well-meaning relatives and friends stopped by, bearing an endless supply of cards and food in disposable foil pans and saying all the wrong things. “He’s in a better place now.” “God must have a plan for him.” “At least he didn’t suffer.” “You’re still young, Jayne. Maybe you can have another child.” “You’d stop thinking about him if you took down his pictures.” They didn’t hold Frankie as she sobbed for hours at a time without talking. They didn’t make sure she ate even when she wasn’t hungry. They didn’t do her homework when she couldn’t concentrate, or explain to our teachers why she was late for every class.
“How do you know Frankie isn’t moving on?” I ask.
“Anna,” Dad says gently, “all I’m saying is that as long as you’re around, Red and Jayne don’t really have to worry about Frankie — you’re doing it for them. And two thousand miles away on a trip that will be extremely difficult for them — that complicates things. We just want to make sure you’re ready to deal with this.”
Deal with this? Not only does he reduce my best friend’s emotional state to something akin to an annoying rash, he also plants a new seed in my already overcrowded brain.
Could I be the reason Frankie isn’t moving on?
Since Matt’s death, the earth has made more than one full trip around the sun — plenty of time to be Over It, according to the official books and therapists and school counselors that tried to talk to me about my “caretaker” role in Frankie’s life.
But Frankie isn’t over it.
I’m not over it.
And I don’t want to talk about it, because one day his name will brush against my lips in her presence, and through an involuntary blushing of the cheeks, a misting of the eyes, a breath drawn too tightly, or a single tear, the secret I’m supposed to keep locked up forever will be revealed.
“Sweetheart,” Mom says. She looks at me softly with her You Can Talk to Me face, which is only slightly more tolerable than its close cousin, the I Was Young Once, Too, face. Unlike the IWYOT face, which usually means that she knows I’m up to something and I’d better not lie about it, the YCTTM face is equal parts guilt and empathy with a dash of “are we still friends?” and “your father isn’t a bad guy” stirred in.
“Dad and I are just concerned about Frankie. We know she’s under a lot of pressure, and you’ve been managing some really tough emotions that maybe Red and Jayne should be more involved with.”
I think about Aunt Jayne’s constant whirlwind of interior decorating and shopping sprees with Uncle Red’s credit cards.
“Well, they aren’t involved.”
“We know, Anna,” Dad says. “That’s why Mom and I are concerned. California will be especially hard on them, and who knows how that will affect Frankie. You may have to be the strong one out there, okay?”
I stifle a laugh, remembering something Matt said to me in his final days. Frankie was babysitting down the street, and Matt and I were hanging out in his room sorting his books and music into “staying home” and “going to college” piles.
“I know I’m not going far,” he said, shuffling through the staying-home CDs. “But I’m worried about Frankie. I don’t want her to feel like we don’t want her around, or like she’s alone. I think it’s going to be hard on her once she knows about us. You’ll have to be the strong one, Anna.”
“Excuse me?” I pretended to be put off by his inference that us girls would just fall apart in his overprotective absence. “It’s not like you’re going off to war. I think we can handle it.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, coming closer to me on the edge of the bed and taking my face into his hands.
I looked up at him with mock hurt. Then I tackled him, pinning him to the bed with another kiss.
“Who’s the strong one now?” I asked him. “Okay, you win. You win.” He laughed. I stayed on top of him, resting my head on his chest while he played with my hair until Frankie got home.
“Anna?” Dad asks. “You okay?”
I nod, blinking away the memory. “I am the strong one, Dad.”
“I know, Anna. But —”
“Hard parts aside,” Mom interrupts, “I do think the trip will be good for you, too. It might help you — I don’t know — visit with Matt again. Does that make sense?” She looks at me with such compassion that for one second I forget she’s my mother and think she might actually know, like I wear my feelings in big words across my face and all she has to do is brush aside my hair to read them.
“Yes,” I say, hoping they don’t see my cheeks go hot. “All right.” Dad rises from the desk chair. “Finish up and get to bed. You’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”
Finally.
Pretrip fears allayed once again, I hug them both good night and recheck my bags against my list. Everything seems to be in order. There’s just one problem.
I can’t get him out of my mind.
I turn off the overhead light and flip on my reading light. Curled in my bed, I watch a fresh downpour stream along the window and make everything outside soft and blurry. I think about the ocean again and look across my room at the mason jars full of colored glass from Frankie and Matt.
Matt could have died any of a hundred ways, but whenever I look at the glass, I walk through the history of our friendship searching for things I could have done differently or said sooner to break the chain of events leading up to that day in the car, the day his heart stopped working. Hi, Matt, I’m in love with you. Let’s not go for ice cream today. Let’s just find a place to hide.
Back when we were still “just friends,” I used to write about him in my old diary, which I carried around everywhere. I’d write about hanging out with him and Frankie on the weekend, or him stopping by my locker between classes at school, or the books he gave me to read so we could talk about them later. Only sometimes did I admit my real feelings for him on paper — I was always afraid that someone would find my diary and show him all of my secrets.
I wrote my first real letter to him in the journal he gave me — though I still didn’t want him to actually read it. It was after we kissed outside my house, when I was alone in
my room with every cell in my body buzzing, still feeling him on my lips. I printed off the picture Dad had taken after the cake fight, taped it inside the journal’s purple cover under his “Happy Birthday” inscription, and wrote.
The next few weeks were a blur of happiness, secret midnight meet-ups, talking about the rest of the summer, how he’d write every day from California, how Frankie and I would drive with their parents to take him to Cornell. Every second that I was awake, I wanted to be with him. To see and know him in the entirely new light of our unfolding relationship — whatever it was meant to become — in a way different from all our years as childhood best friends.
I didn’t have time to think about what was happening, let alone write letters that he’d never read.
A few months after he died, I started writing to him again — just once in a while. Not in a communing-with-the-dead kind of way, but it did help me feel close to him, especially after a hard night with Frankie or on nights when I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Like tonight, on the eve of our departure — the too-soon family vacation that’s only missing one thing.
Dear Matt,
In less than a day, I’ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I’m so excited and scared that I can’ t sleep — even though I have to wake up in five hours!
You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They’re here in a box under my bed — all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you.
But you don’ t say anything.
Remember how you’ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that’s crazy?