Chapter Twenty-one
I am a huge cliché.
I am a teenage girl at the mall.
I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits.
I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits even though she has a perfectly good one from last year that fits fine.
Worst of all, I am a teenage girl at the mall trying on bathing suits even though she has a perfectly good one from last year that fits fine and hating how she looks in every single one.
It doesn’t help that I am also a teenage girl who baked two batches of sugar cookies and a pan of congo bars last night as a chaser for dinner with Dad. I’m trying not to think about how few leftovers there were this morning. Nic must have scarfed some when he got in late, right?
Aren’t these stores supposed to want to make us look good?
Then what’s up with the cheapo overhead lighting that high-lights every single flaw and creates a few extras for good measure?
Cliché #5: I am a teenage girl with body issues.
Which get worse in bathing suits. (#6) And I’m doing this for a boy. (#7) Well, not because he asked or anything. Not that he had
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time to do anything but blush after I blurted, “Were you wearing anything under there?” and then did a bat-out-of-hell from his apartment. But Spence must have passed on the reason for my epically awkward visit to the Field House, because this morning Grandpa Ben came in from his early morning walk.
“I met the young yard boy getting to work. He had trouble starting the mower, so I showed him the tricks. He said he would tutor Emory in the swimming today at three.”
Did he say anything else? Did he mention me? Did he . . . Yes, right, absolutely. He lined up the tutoring, then said, “By the way, Mr. Cruz, I think you should know that I have reason to suspect your granddaughter was picturing me naked.”
I’ve got a perfectly adequate bathing suit but it’s a one-piece and black and bears a distinct resemblance to Mrs. E.’s beachwear. I suspect dressing exactly like an octogenarian is a fashion don’t when you’re seventeen. On the beach. With a gorgeous boy.
Who’s simply giving swimming lessons to your brother.
Out of the goodness of his heart.
I wheedled the use of Dad’s truck out of him, saying I needed it to take Emory to speech. Though, really, it was more that I felt he owed me one after last night’s bleak lecture, stark as black-and-white headlines on a newspaper. Your brother =
your future. No amount of sugar, butter, and flour can quite get the taste of that out of my mouth. Then Grandpa wanted to come along because there’s almost always a few yard sales happening on Saturdays in Maplecrest.
Which brings me to the non-clichéd part of all this.
“Guinevere! Your brother has lost his patience with this store
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and I am losing it with him. Have you gotten what you need?”
Yes, my grandfather is right outside the changing rooms.
Also . . . my little brother.
“Not yet!” I call.
I can hear Grandpa move away, trying to dicker down the price of a cast-iron frying pan. “You cannot mean to charge so much for this. It’s brand-new. It hasn’t been seasoned yet. It will take years of cooking in it and wiping down with the olive oil to be worth the price you are asking.”
Then I hear him calling, alarmed, for Emory, who I know must be doing his I’m-bored-in-this-store routine, hiding in the center of those circular racks of clothes until Grandpa spots his feet.
I’ve tried on four tankinis. I think I read once in one of Vivien’s magazines that, like, ninety percent of the guys on the planet hate tankinis. Which can’t be right. I mean, I’m cer-tain men herding goats in Shimanovsk don’t care one way or another. And if they include the men who want every part of a woman except her eyes covered, that’s unfairly skewing the percentages and— I reexamine the pile. No, and no, and Jesus God, let me for-get how that one looked.
“Almost done,” I call feebly.
Forget it. I’ll just wear the black one-piece. It’s not like it’s a date. I mean, he told me about it through my grandfather.
I wonder how long it took him to stop blushing. When I left, throwing some excuse about Fabio over my shoulder, I heard him come out from his bedroom and Spence ask, “What happened to your face?”
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Outside there’s a commotion and a “You can’t come in here!” and Grandpa Ben saying “Acalme-se, ” and thrusting this bikini in through the side of the curtain.
A bikini.
Vivien wears bikinis. Viv even wears string bikinis. She looks great in them because she has exactly that sort of body . . .
all lanky and coltish and boyish-but-not. She says she doesn’t look good because she hasn’t got enough on top, but she has to know she pretty much does, or she would stick to What the Well-Dressed Senior Citizen Will Wear, like me.
“Apenas experimente, querida, ” Grandpa calls. “Just try it.”
I don’t know if it’s because of the color, which is this mossy green, which sounds nasty, but spring moss, brighter than olive, but still deep and rich. Or because I can hear the sales-woman outside getting more and more agitated and I’m afraid she’s about to call security. Or because . . . well, I don’t know why, but I try it on.
It’s not a string bikini. It’s not an itsy-bitsy bikini. It’s sort of retro, but not in a really obvious way.
In it, I don’t look like Vivien in her bikinis. I don’t look like one of those swimsuit models posing knee deep in the Carib-bean with this shocked expression like, “Hey, who put all this water here?” I don’t look “nice.” I look, in fact, like The Other Woman in one of Grandpa Ben’s movies. The one who saunters into the room to the low wail of an alto saxophone. I look like a Bad Girl.
For the first time, that seems like a Good Thing.
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Of course, that was hours ago and I left my courage in the dressing room of T.J.Maxx.
I bought the bikini.
But here I am on the beach wearing a long T-shirt of Mom’s (Mom’s! At least I’ve bumped down a generation or two, but still!) while Cass gives Emory his first lesson.
And basically ignores me completely.
Which is fine. He’s here for Em.
He gave me this nod when we first got to the beach and I slid Emory off my back.
A nod.
A nod is sort of like acknowledging that there’s someone present with a pulse. It’s the next best thing to nothing at all.
Boys do not nod at girls they have any feelings for.
Wait—
Do I even want Cass to have feelings for me? Please, come on.
How can I possibly . . . after everything?
He’s here for Em.
I nod back. So there, Cass. I see your impersonal greeting and return it. Just don’t check my pulse.
Because . . . because even though I should be used to Cass on the island and Cass in the water, and his sooty eyelashes and curling smile and his dimples and his body . . .
Jesus God.
I close my eyes for a second. Take a deep breath.
Cass squats down next to my brother. “So, Emory. You like cars?”
Never good with direct questions, Em simply seems con-
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fused. He looks up at me for clarification. Cass bends and reaches into the backpack by his foot, pulls out a handful of Matchbox cars and extends his palm.
“Cars,” Em says happily, stroking the hood of one with a careful finger
Cass hands him one. “The rest are going to be diving into the water, since it’s such a warm day. So what I’m going to need you to do is come on in and find them.”
My brother’s forehead crinkles and his eyes flick to mine.
I nod. Cass reaches for his hand. “Here, I’ll show you.” Em cheerfully lets go of my fingers and glides his hand into Cass’s.
“What are you doing?” I ask nervously. I have this vision of Cass throwing the cars off the pier and directing Emory to dive in after them.
“Just getting him used to me, and the water,” he says over his shoulder. “It’s okay. This is what I did at camp. I know this.”
Em looks skinny and pale next to his wide shoulder, tanned skin.
I follow him, unsure. Am I supposed to hang back and let Cass do his thing, or look out for Emory? In the end, habit triumphs and I stick close.
There are only a few people on the beach, some of the Hoblitzell family, people I don’t know who must be renters. As usual, I can see a few eyes flick to Emory and then skip away with that something’s not right with him expression. It doesn’t happen often . . . he’s a little boy and people are mostly kind.
But the saleslady at T.J.’s yesterday kept talking to me or Grandpa when Emory was touching stuff. “Get him to understand that he’s not allowed to do that.” I wanted to slap her.
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