“How do you even know about this place?” I ask, dropping my bag and with it, the shark debate.
“My brother,” she says. “He used to come to the alcove sometimes.”
The beach is always crowded, he told me last year, a few nights before their trip. We were alone in the living room, pretending to watch a movie while Frankie dozed on the chair next to us. But there’s this one spot I like farther down. Sometimes I just go there to read and think. The ocean is good for clearing your head.
And for looking at girls, I said.
Well, sure. He laughed. But not that part. No one goes there except for occasional surfers. There’s no lifeguard. Just the water and the rocks. One time I sat there for three hours, just listening to the water and wondering what was underneath.
I look out over the water and wonder the same thing, trying hard not to think about the fact that I might be standing in the exact same spot Matt stood, looking out at the same blue sea, wondering the same endless, unanswerable questions.
What would we see if they drained it like a giant bathtub?
I curl my toes into the sand, waiting for Frankie to say something else.
“Here, help me with the blanket.” She hands me a corner and lies down on the other side.
“Okay, blanket is secure,” I say, still fighting the image of Matt on the couch that night, telling me his favorite things about California. “Now what? Just lie here all day until something exciting happens to us?”
Frankie inches and wriggles until she is strategically positioned in her most flattering pose — stomach flat, parted lips glistening, legs bent slightly, bosom heaving. “You’ll see.”
“You’re really just going to lie there?”
“That’s why they invented the beach, Anna.”
“What about the water?”
“Are you kidding? We just did our hair!”
She used to love swimming. She and Matt would tell me about it in their postcards — all the hours they’d spend in the water, skin pruned and eyes burning from the salt, swimming and riding waves and playing Frisbee with summer friends, or sometimes just floating out there on their backs.
“Frank, let’s just go in the wa —”
“Oh my God, Anna. Hotties, ten o’clock.”
“What?” I turn my head to see what she’s looking at, which is more in the direction of two o’clock, but who’s counting?
“Don’t look!” She swats my thigh. “Just act natural. Here they come.”
I lie beside her, trying to guess what “act natural” means. I decide on mimicking her position, only I keep my sarong securely fastened and my arms folded over my chest. To the average onlooker, if anyone other than the rapidly approaching boys is looking on, I probably look cold. Or extremely pissed off.
“Oh, Anna,” Frankie says in an exaggerated voice when the guys are within earshot. “I’m really hot. Pass me a water?”
Is she kidding?
She looks at me expectantly, eyes bulging, bordering on annoyed.
She’s not kidding.
I sit up and fish a bottled water from my bag. The boys are about twenty feet away, staring at us with open mouths as Frankie sucks on the water bottle in an entirely inappropriate manner.
“Hey,” one of the guys says with a swift man-nod. “What’s up?” Frankie shrugs and waves, inviting them over to our previously undisturbed patch of sand.
They exchange glances like hungry lions that have just been invited into the zebra den for dinner and jog over to our blanket, introducing themselves as Warren and Todd (or is it Rod? I’ve forgotten already). After thirty seconds of conversation, I can summarize their entire raisons d’être.
Drink beer. Meet chicks. Get tan.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
At Frankie’s insistence, they shake out their blanket and camp next to us, thankfully on her side. Rod or Todd or whatever is the loud one, unable to be serious, unable to focus on one subject for more than a minute. He’s a freshman at Berkeley, studying marine biology, and what his on-campus girlfriend doesn’t know won’t hurt her, wink wink.
Do guys really think this crap works on girls?
Frankie giggles. I guess it works on some girls.
Warren isn’t exactly the quiet one, but the fact that I’m pretending to be asleep while Frankie and RodTodd laugh at each other’s banter and trade cell phone numbers doesn’t leave him an entry.
“Dude,” Warren says after about fifteen minutes of staring at the ocean. “I gotta jet. See you later.” I open my eyes when he stands, his shadow falling on my face. Frankie is doing some sort of half-kiss thing with RodTodd — more than friends, but not quite a full-on lip-lock. I expect this sort of gratuitous behavior with foreign exchange students, but total strangers? Annoying strangers, at that? The whole scene is more than I can stomach.
“Frank, I think I see your parents.”
“That’s my cue,” RodTodd says. “Call me later, sexy.”
Call me later, sexy? I’m going to be ill. Frankie, on the other hand, is practically ready to move in with him.
The boys take off down the beach and Frankie scans the opposite shoreline for Red and Jayne.
“Where are they?” she asks. “I don’t see them, Anna.”
“I guess I was wrong. Can we go in the water now?” I’m hot, bored, and quickly getting cranky.
“Anna, that was two out of twenty already scratched off the list. Why didn’t you talk to Warren?”
“He has backne, Frank. Not to mention he’s about as interesting as wet sea kelp.”
Frankie laughs. “All right. But I’m still counting them as two. With them and the boys checking us out at Caroline’s yesterday, that makes four.”
“Yesterday doesn’t count,” I say.
“Well, it would have, if my parents hadn’t shown up.” She digs her camera from her bag and zooms in on my face. “So, Miss Reiley, will you or will you not admit specimens A and B from Caroline’s into the official count of the summer of twenty boys, per the original contract terms of the Absolute Best Summer Ever?”
I crinkle my forehead to appear serious. “After careful consideration, the court hereby consents to a compromise. We shall count yesterday’s platonic and lackluster ice-cream duo as a single boy.”
She agrees, holding up three fingers in front of the camera before turning it on herself. “Three down. Seventeen to go. Not bad for our first twenty-four hours.”
I roll my eyes and untie my sarong, ready to get into the water. If reaching our twenty-boy goal takes precedence over the high standards of good hygiene, interesting personality, and a minimum sixth-grade IQ, I’m dropping out right now.
“Can we please go swimming?” I ask.
“Oh, all right.” Frankie stashes the camera in her bag and follows me into the water, splashing and giggling in the sharkless waves near the shore.
We go in up to our shoulders, waiting to catch the stronger waves and ride them up to the shore. The water and air above it taste equally salty, stinging my eyes and coating my skin, just like Matt said in his postcards.
When you taste the water on your lips, it feels like you’ve been eating potato chips. But there’s nothing else like it, Anna.
“Ready for lunch?” Frankie asks after two hours of wave jumping. “I’m starving.”
We gather up our blanket and bags from the beach and head back toward the concession stands near the house for hot dogs and curly fries. After watching us eat, a leathery guy who looks old enough to be our father sits down next to me at the picnic table.
“Can I get you girls a milk shake? Or more fries?”
His breath smells like sour milk as it falls on my shoulder.
“Sure,” Frankie says. “I’ll have a chocolate shake.”
He smiles. “What about you, honey?”
“I’m fine,” I say, kicking Frankie under the table. I’m totally creeped out that she’s encouraging this geriatric pedophile to spend any more time with us than he a
lready has.
“Fine? You sure are. I’ll get you a cherry shake, how’s that?” Frankie answers for me. “She loves cherries.”
He winks at us and heads up to the stand to order our shakes.
“Frankie, grab your stuff,” I say. “Let’s go.”
“No way. This is the most fun I’ve had all year.”
“He’s an old man!”
“We’re getting free shakes, right?”
Her logic astounds me. “At what cost?” I ask.
“Calm down, Mom.”
Leather Man returns before I can convince Frankie to leave. She brushes her fingers against his when she takes her shake, and his eyes linger on her boobs for a very long time before he returns to my side of the table.
Just when I can’t take another shot of his alcohol breath on my skin, we’re saved by an equally leathery woman in a bright pink tank dress.
“Harold, what the hell are you doing?” She stomps a half-spent cigarette into the sand with her flip-flop. Her voice is coarse and the loose, brown skin on her arms jiggles. “Marcia’s waiting in the car.”
“Coming, my darling.” He rolls his eyes for our benefit and dislodges from the picnic table — quite a task when you’re drunk. “Enjoy the shakes, cherries — I mean, ladies.”
Mrs. Harold grabs his arm and leads him to the car, nagging him all the way.
“We’re not drinking these.” I take Frankie’s shake before she can get a sip and drop them both in the trash can. Frankie laughs.
“Okay, big brother,” she says. I almost laugh, imagining what her real big brother would do if he’d witnessed this disturbing exchange.
“So Old Man Date Rape was number what?” she asks. “Four or five?”
“We’re not counting him,” I say. “This is the Twenty Boy Summer, not the Twenty Dirty Old Man Summer.”
“Sounds like we already have a name for next year’s trip,” Frankie says, wiggling her one and a half eyebrows. She winks at me and heads up to the counter to order two new shakes, hold the roofies.
None of this makes it into the final report we present to Red and Jayne during dinner when they ask about our first day on the beach.
“We had the best day,” Frankie says, showing her parents some carefully preselected footage of our fun in the sun. After lunch, we shot a bunch of stock video of the crowded part of the beach for just this purpose. “The beach was packed, but we still had fun in the water.”
Red passes out plates of the Chinese food Jayne cooked for our first official dinner in the house after last night’s freak-out, clueless and happy that his daughter and her best friend had such a wonderful first day on Zanzibar Beach.
“I’m glad we decided to stay,” he says, beaming.
thirteen
The next morning has all the makings of our first day in California, but this time I’m prepared. While Frankie takes her shower, I get dressed and throw on just enough sparkle and bling to shut her up before our grueling death march to the deserted other side of the beach.
“If you want to meet guys,” I ask as we shake out our blanket for day two, “why are we out here like a couple of wandering nomads?” If yesterday was any indication of the caliber of boys available, I don’t want to meet more of them. I just feel safer in a crowd — especially after our encounter with Harold the Milk Shake Man.
“Anna,” she says, reconfiguring herself on the blanket like yesterday, “only the tourists hang out in the crowded part. This is where the locals come.”
“Suit yourself,” I say. “But I’m swimming, not sunning.”
I unwrap my pale body from the sarong, still not used to showing so much skin in public. I apply another layer of sunscreen just to be safe and hope no one is watching as I plod down to the water.
It doesn’t feel as warm as yesterday, but my feet adjust quickly, allowing me to inch in up to my waist. In the distance, vacationing families move up and down the shore from the water to the beach and back again, their laughter weaving softly through the moist air.
I look over my shoulder to check on Frankie. She smiles and waves, repositioning herself on the blanket so she can reach the trail mix without sitting up. “Stay where I can see you,” she shouts. “I need to get some shots of this.”
The alcove is quiet today. As the water moves back and forth over my thighs, my mind drifts to my conversation with Aunt Jayne the night we made sand angels. How much does she actually know? Did he ever tell her about us? Did she see us kissing over a sink full of dishes when we thought no one was watching? Did she just figure it out? And what did she mean when she said he got the same look in his eyes when he talked about me? Matt and I spent so much time talking about when and how and what he was going to tell Frankie — we never got to the part about telling anyone else.
A new wave of butterflies flutters in my chest as I consider this, and I have to close my eyes to beat them down. Matt’s gone, remember? Those butterflies have nowhere to go but darkness, beating and tangling their tiny wings until they break.
“Hey, virgin!”
The appellation is so sharp and unexpected that it takes me several seconds to realize it’s aimed at me. I whip around to find Frankie giggling on her blanket in the shadow of two tanned guys with stubby-looking surfboards — the perfect California cliché.
“Virgin, right?” the voice asks again. It comes from the tall one with white-blond hair falling into his eyes. Frankie is still giggling, and my entire body goes hot and red, despite the chill in the water. If Frankie thinks she’s just going to auction me off, well… I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to be witty when you’re trying to call forth a giant sea squid to swallow you up and drag you down to the depths of the ocean floor, never to be seen, heard from, or mocked again.
I drop down so the water covers my chest. “Excuse me?”
“Um, you guys have never boarded before?” Blondie sort of asks-says, holding out his arms like he’s expecting applause for his cleverness.
“Come back, Anna!” Frankie waves me in. “Meet our new friends.”
I look behind me to confirm that the aforementioned giant sea squid has ignored my telepathic plea, then refocus, willing my sarong to float itself over to the shore and drape around my body as I emerge from the surf. When that doesn’t work, I think about faking a cramp and quickly decide against it, reasoning that if I look like I’m drowning, one of them might jump in and put his hands on me. Probably not Blondie, though. He’s too busy cataloging Frankie’s measurements with his eyes.
I trudge up to the shore, which looks really sexy other than that whole middle part when you’ve cleared your upper body and have to pick up and plunk down your legs like pistons to cut through the water. The giant squid may not be interested in me, but I’ll make sure Frankie looks nice and juicy when I drag her out of bed tonight and sacrifice her to the sea gods.
“Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual as I yank my towel from beneath Frankie’s firm and purposely placed elbows. “I’m Anna.” Towel secured tightly around my waist, I hold my hand out to Blondie, whose name is Jake.
“Why, Anna Abigail, you’re so proper,” Frankie teases with a slightly off-key southern accent. I am still angry at her for going along with the whole virgin joke, and wonder briefly if a more appropriate, less proper greeting would be for me to whip off my bikini top and twirl it around my head like a lasso. Before I can respond, Frankie’s on her feet, dusting sand off her butt in slow motion. Jake stares. The other one — Sam, I learn — shakes his head and smiles at me.
“Forgive my mannerless cousin,” he says, and his smile makes me momentarily forget how annoyed I am.
“So, where are you from?” Jake asks.
“New York,” Frankie announces, not bothering to clarify that it’s the lame, upstate part.
“Seriously?” Jake asks. “That’s so cool.”
“It’s all right,” she says, examining her nails and wearing that New York thing like a badge she never earned.
&
nbsp; “What’s it like in the summer?” Jake asks.
“Oh, you know,” Frankie says. “Never a dull moment. That’s why we came to Cali — to relax.” She takes a sip of water and licks her lips, looking out over the ocean. Jake looks in awe at his new-found woman of mystery and intrigue: Frankie, New York heiress, dining with the stars, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, risking her life every day on the hardened streets. In reality, before coming to California two days ago, our summer activities included such exciting adventures as lying out in the sun doing Cosmo quizzes, making mock interviews with Frankie’s camera, experimenting with facials made of oatmeal and mayonnaise, and going with Mom and Dad to a food festival where we made five-dollar bets trying to guess which of our crazy neighbors dressed as the ketchup and mustard combo.
“What about you guys?” she asks.
“We live here,” Jake says. “Not, like, on the beach, but in town. Nothing like New York. That’s awesome.” I think about our neighbors zipping themselves into their giant condiment costumes. Awesome. Totally.
Ready to move on from our getting-to-know-you conversation, Jake turns to the water and announces loudly in Frankie’s direction that it’s “time to get wet.” She lets out an “Oh, yeah!” that’s over-blown, even for her, and repositions the triangle of her bikini bottom, letting go with a sexy snap before following Jake into the water.
Sam turns to me and smiles. For a few seconds we do that awkward conversational tango where we’re both trying to talk at the same time and just end up laughing and not saying anything at all. Frankie squeals from the water, and Sam shrugs, looking at me.
Despite my chilly demeanor on the subject of twenty boys yesterday, something about Sam gets me. With messy, dirty-blond hair streaked from the sun and green eyes, he’s definitely good-looking. Backne-free. No creepy old man vibes. Seems smart.
In other words, totally wrong for me.
“All right, Anna Abby from New Yawk,” he says, nodding at his board. “You wanna try?”
I must have said yes, because I drop my towel and follow him out to the water, paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the way his well-defined muscles move down his back, the jagged white scar on the left side above his hip, or the weird feeling I have in my stomach when he looks over his shoulder and smiles at me.