She grinned and splashed water on the crotch of my trunks as I waded in, which made me mad. Then she turned and swam away. Afraid of what people would think if I didn’t, I followed her out to the raft, where I sat while the other kids jostled me, taking turns doing cannonballs and baby spankers. My head began to throb. Too much sun. Too much motion. I didn’t see Keith anywhere, but when I asked Phoebe, she pointed, and I spied him and Charlie on the other side of the pond. They sat together on a boulder half-submerged in water. Their knees were touching. My head kept throbbing.
Two hours of swimming did nothing to reduce the humidity. Or bugs. On our way back from the pond we stopped for ice cream in an area the girls referred to as “uptown Concord.” The place itself was called Winston’s. We didn’t go inside, just ordered from the sidewalk at the walk-up window. I wanted a plain strawberry cone, but Phoebe insisted I get it with something called “jimmies.” A Boston thing, apparently. My southern instincts told me there were probably racial undertones to the term, but I ordered them anyway. Jimmies turned out to be chocolate sprinkles. They looked like ants and fell all over my shirt when I tried to lick the ice cream. Phoebe and Charlie laughed, but Keith made me the maddest. He kept calling me Winston, which was my middle name, and I didn’t like it.
“Stop saying that,” I told him.
“Why? It’s a stuck-up name for a stuck-up kid.”
I didn’t understand where this was coming from. “I’m not stuck-up!”
Keith sneered. “Oh yes you are, dear Winston. The little tennis star. Mr. Four Point Five. Do you know how much it’s costing Mom and Dad to send you to that fancy club?”
Now Anna laughed, too. I felt my cheeks redden and stalked off a few storefronts down Thoreau Street, where I dumped my ice cream into a garbage can. Then I kicked the curb so hard it felt like I’d broken half the bones in my foot. My chest heaved and my eyes stung. I didn’t understand how Keith could be so mean. He knew how homesick I was. This was definitely Charlie’s fault, it had to be, with her snotty attitude and those stupid long animal legs. I hated her.
Phoebe joined me. We stood next to each other on the street, facing traffic. I wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t talk. Wished she’d just go away. The butt of her shorts was all wet from her swimsuit underneath. So embarrassing.
“Come on,” she said finally, her lips ringed with so many jimmies it looked like she had bugs crawling out of her mouth. “We’re leaving.”
chapter
fifteen
matter
“So do you like girls or what?”
Jordan doesn’t answer me right away. Instead she fingers away the label on her second beer and watches the fire. She’s been doing that for a while now, the fire watching, and I don’t get what’s so interesting. We’re not close enough to see the creeping embers, and someone just threw a new log on, so there’s all this smoke and ash. But maybe it’s more exciting than looking at me.
“Why are you asking me that?” she says finally.
“I was just wondering.”
“From what I know about you, Win, that seems very out of character. Wondering. But whatever.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to like it when Lex kissed you earlier.”
Jordan lets out a laugh. It’s a loud one, like she’s buzzed already or might think I’m slow. “So that makes me a lesbian? Okay. Sure. Fine. Because there couldn’t be any other possible reason why I wouldn’t like Lex kissing me.”
I focus on keeping my nerves steady, but a shudder of wrath works its way through my bones.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have let him do that.”
She shrugs. “He’s just drunk.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Except when it is.” Jordan tips her bottle in my direction.
I watch her drink. More.
She side-eyes me back.
“What?” she asks.
“Why were you looking at me in the chapel the other day?”
She puts her bottle down. “Is that why you want to know who I like? To find out if I like you?”
I say nothing.
Jordan’s head bobs. “Hey, maybe you’re not as different as I thought you were.”
“Different than who?”
“Everyone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, just, sometimes you’re kind of weird, you know?”
“Mmm.” Yeah, I know. Trust me.
She leans back, elbows on rock. “Let me guess, Win. When you run out of better options tonight, you gonna try and get me naked?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
This gets Jordan’s head to turn. The weight of her gaze is intense, but when I’m honest, I’m honest. I always stand by my words.
I don’t look away.
After a moment, she grins.