Fifteenth Summer

My dad woke me and my sisters up early the next morning.

“I’m commandeering you for the morning,” he announced. “Your mother wants some time to herself, and I want some time with my wayward daughters.”

“Dad,” I said, shoving a curl out of my eyes as I slumped out of my bed, “me having a job doesn’t exactly make me wayward. You and Mom are the ones who make us earn all our own money.”

“Well, then I guess I’m only talking about Hannah,” Dad said lightly. “Anyway, be in the kitchen in five. No primping!”

I laughed as he hurried down the hall, then I whispered to Abbie, “What does he mean ‘Hannah’? What’s she been up to?”

“Didn’t you know?” Abbie said, throwing off her covers and sitting up in bed. “She had a date with Fasthands last night. She got home after you were asleep.”

“Liam?” I said.

“Yes, Liam,” Abbie grumbled. “When she got home, she was all giggly and floaty. Very un-Hannah-like.”

“Oh!” I said.

I hurried over to the closet and ducked inside it, ostensibly to throw on some clothes, but also because I had to hide my incredulous grin.

How had this happened? Instead of Hannah and Abbie doing all the dating, it was Hannah and me who’d been with boys last night.

That was very un-Chelsea-like, too.

Part of me wanted to dash to Hannah’s room and ask her if she felt just like I did—all dreamy and incredulous. I kept wondering if the previous night had really happened. Then I’d touch my lips and remember what Josh’s lips had felt like and realize, yes, it really had.

“Girls! I’ve got bagels toasting!”

It was my dad—giving me no time to dish with Hannah about Josh. What was this mystery outing? I quickly threw on some knee-length khakis and an A-line top with a swirly, psychedelic pattern on it. I grabbed some heavy-duty bobby pins off the dresser and piled my hair into a sloppy bun on top of my head.

In the kitchen my dad handed each of us a hot bagel wrapped loosely in a paper towel. He grabbed a coffee thermos and a stack of paper cups and shooed us toward the front door.

As we passed through the living room, I saw my mom standing in front of the built-in hutch. It was the centerpiece of the living room, its shelves filled with books, family photos, knick-knacks, and a tiny TV. The bottom of the hutch was all cabinets. Inside of these were so many of the things that made the cottage Granly’s. There were decks of mismatched playing cards and lots of battered board games. Photo albums filled an entire shelf. There was an accordion folder full of essays my mom had written in high school and college, and a dried corsage. I’d always loved Granly’s sewing basket and the box of super-loud costume jewelry that she’d worn in the sixties and seventies. My sisters and I used them to play dress-up when we were little.

My mom was staring down at those cabinets. Her hands were on her hips and her eyes looked tired, even though she was usually such a morning person.

“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly.

She jumped, startled. When she looked in my direction, her eyes were a little unfocused—until they crinkled into a beaming smile.

“Oh! Hi, sweetheart,” she said. The perkiness in her voice was set to extra high.

Maybe I should have lingered a moment and given my mom some sympathy as she got ready to sort through Granly’s cabinets.

But I just didn’t want to go there. Not when a tiny remnant of last night’s magic was still lingering inside me.

So I just said, “Well, have a good morning.”

“You too,” Mom replied. “Enjoy the fishing!”

“Fishing?” I squawked. Then I stomped outside. “Daaaad!”

He knew we hated fishing! He’d totally conned us!

Hannah and Abbie were already settled into their seats, munching their bagels. Dad had started the car. I flounced into the backseat next to Hannah and pointed an accusing finger at our father.

“Do you know where he’s taking us?” I said as my dad hurriedly put the car into reverse and skidded out of the driveway. “Fishing!”

“Daaaaaad!” Abbie and Hannah complained.

“Throw me a fish bone, will you?” my dad said, with his dadly chortle. “It’s the one father-son kind of thing I ever ask of you.”

“Oh, poor Dad,” Abbie teased. “You know you love having girls.”

“I would love it, if you’d just put on a happy fishing face for me,” Dad said, pretending to be grouchy about it.

“First of all, I don’t know how Americans turned fishing into a male thing,” Hannah said. “In most cultures it’s the women who gather the fish.”

“Second of all,” I piped in, “I don’t know why boys or girls like it. It’s boring. Only men would define sitting and waiting for some unsuspecting fish to eat your fake bug as a sport.”

“A fashionable sport,” my dad said. He opened the car’s center console and pulled out a beat-up tan hat with neon-colored lures all over it.

“Ew, it smells like fish!” Hannah said, waving her hand in front of her nose.

So much for our bagels. We put them aside in disgust, opened the windows, and teased my dad the entire drive to the South Branch Galien River.

I have to admit, it was really fun.

The river was gorgeous, all breezy and glinty in the early-morning sunshine. My sisters and I baited our hooks, plopped them into the water, and lay back on the smooth, warm, weathered wood of the dock.

But after a short while Abbie popped up.

“Daddy,” she said, “since you turned us off our bagels, can’t you please go get us some Casper’s Donuts?”

“Abbie,” Dad said, messing with a lure and his line, “I haven’t even caught—”

“Toss it in,” Abbie said, pointing at Dad’s hook. “We’ll watch if for you, I promise. Pleeease. Casper’s is so close, and those donuts are so good.”

“Pretty please,” I joined in the begging.

“Pretty please with cinnamon and sugar on top?” Hannah added with a grin.

“Ooh, yeah,” Abbie said. “Cinnamon sugar cake donuts. Get those!”

Dad frowned at us, then scratched his head beneath his fishy hat.

“If you promise to have a good attitude about this fishing expedition,” he said, “I will get you the donuts.”

“We promise,” Abbie said. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Oh, now I’m Dad again,” my dad grumbled. “Now that you’ve gotten what you want.”

“Bye, Daddy!” we singsonged together, laughing and waving at him.

He grinned as he drove away. The minute he pulled into the road, Abbie planted her fists on her hips and glared at Hannah.

“You’re so lucky I got rid of him before I ask you this,” Abbie said to Hannah. “What is that?”

Abbie pointed at Hannah’s neck.

Hannah gasped and pulled her loose hair tightly beneath her chin.

“Do you think Dad saw?” she asked.

“Saw what?” I sputtered. “What is it?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand,” Abbie said, brushing me off with a wave. Then she jumped at Hannah and pushed her hair back, exposing a reddish-blue mark on her neck.

“Hey!” Hannah swatted at Abbie’s hand. “Stop it!”

“Ew,” I said, pointing at the splotch. “What is that?”

“It’s a hickey,” Abbie said smugly. “Only the tackiest thing a girl could ever come home with.”

Hannah looked both mortified and a little proud.

“What, you’re the only one allowed to mess around with guys?” she said to Abbie. “It’s no big deal.”

“I bet that’s what he said,” Abbie scoffed. “What else does Fasthands say is no big deal?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Hannah said. “I am older than you, you know.”

“Then act like it,” Abbie said.

While Hannah glared at Abbie, I jumped in.

“What did you mean, I ‘wouldn’t understand’?” I demanded. “I know things.”

Abbie and Hannah both looked at me like I was a black fly buzzing around their heads.

“What kind of things?” Abbie said in a patronizing tone.

“I kissed a boy just last night!” I blurted.

It wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to pass along this momentous information. I’d pictured a much more romantic moment—my sisters and I would be stargazing together or taking a long walk. And then I would blushingly tell them that I was deeply in like with a boy named Josh.

“What! When? Where?” Abbie and Hannah asked.

“After I got off work,” I said, sticking my chin out. “On Althorp Street.”

“Well, who is this boy?” Hannah said.

“He’s . . .” I drifted off as I gazed out at the river. Josh’s face was floating before my eyes again, with those dimples and those smiling eyes, and those lips.

My eyes refocused when I noticed a skimming motion on the river. I put my hand over my eyes to block the sun.

It was a long, skinny boat, sort of like a canoe, but it was as long and sharp as a needle. The person rowing the boat was bending forward and back, his long oars flashing as they skimmed over the surface. His back was to us, but I could see he was tall and skinny.

And he had very short brown hair.

He was . . .

“Josh!” I exclaimed. “That’s him!”

“What?” Hannah said. “That’s the guy you kissed. In that boat?”

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “What do I do?”

Abbie cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered, “Josh!”

Josh was so startled, one of his oars missed the water and hit his canoe or whatever with a thwack. He peered over at us.

“Abbie!” I whisper-shrieked. “I hate you so much.”

“Chelsea?” Josh called.

“Um, yeah,” I yelled. “Hi.”

Even when you’re yelling across a body of water, it’s possible to sound nervous, I noted with a cringe.

“Hi!” Josh said. He was at least fifty feet away, but I could still see his teeth because he was grinning so hard. Then he waved so energetically, he almost tipped himself off his boat.

“Hi!” I yelled back. I was up on my tiptoes, leaning against the rail, my voice catching because I felt so giddy.

“I don’t have your number!” Josh yelled.

I inhaled sharply and glanced back at my sisters. They raised their eyebrows, impressed.

“I don’t have yours either!” I yelled. Then Josh and I both laughed like idiots. And then the current took him so far past the dock that we couldn’t yell to each other anymore.

I turned to my sisters, my giddiness quickly replaced by insecurity.

“I’m such a spaz,” I said. “But that was good, right? I mean, him wanting my number and me wanting his? That’s good?”

“That’s great!” Abbie said. “Most boys are all about the arm’s length. They’ll do anything to avoid getting your number. But here yours doesn’t just ask for it; he yells for it from the middle of a river!”

I grabbed Abbie and gave her a squeeze.

“Abbie! I love you so much.”

Then all three of us squealed and jumped up and down.

“Chelsea has a boyfriend, Chelsea has a boyfriend,” my sisters chanted while I covered my mouth with my hand and shrieked.

“Chelsea has a boyfriend?”

My dad’s voice brought us down to earth with a thud. He was standing behind us, looking kind of disheveled and pathetic with his grease-stained brown paper bag and a quart of milk.

“Milk, Dad?” Abbie said, eyeing the carton. “What are we, ten?”

Dad got a look on his face that seemed to say, I very much wish you were.

A year ago I might have agreed with him. I was wearing braces then and had just gotten my first underwire bra. Every time I tried to drink coffee, it gave me the shakes and tasted awful. I was pretty much convinced that growing up meant being physically uncomfortable at all times.

But now my teeth were straight, I liked coffee (albeit with so much cream that you could barely call it beige), and I had (maybe?) a boyfriend!

I still liked milk, though, so I sidled up to my dad, gently took the carton from him, and said, “Milk is perfect for cinnamon sugar donuts. Thanks, Daddy.”

He started to smile at me, but then we heard an ominous sound: Zzzzzzzz.

Dad glanced at his fishing rod propped against the dock railing, and shouted, “Girls!”

The pole was bending dangerously over the railing, and the line was zipping into the river so fast, the little handle on the reel thingy was a blur.

“Oops. I guess you got a bite, Dad,” Abbie said.

“You guess?” Dad bellowed. He thrust the food into my hands and rushed over to his rod. “You girls were supposed to keep an eye on it!”

“Chelsea had her eye on something much more interesting,” Hannah explained with a glint in her eye.

“Shut up!” I said cheerfully.

“No, you shut up!” she shot back with a grin.

My dad rolled his eyes as he wrestled with his fishing rod and called out, “A little help here? I need my net and my emergency line and a donut, stat!”

Giggling, we got him everything he needed, and he eventually reeled in his fish. It was huge! Well, big enough that Dad didn’t have to throw it back the way he usually did.

“I am hunter!” Dad said, beating his chest with one hand while he used the other to hold up the poor dead fish. “Hear me roar! And take my picture, somebody!”

“Ohmigod, Dad,” Hannah burst out. “How reactionary can you be?”

Dad faux-scowled at her.

“You know, when we found out you were going to be a girl, everybody congratulated me,” he said. “They said, ‘Oh, daughters and fathers. She’ll think you hung the moon.’ ”

“And I did think you hung the moon,” Hannah shot back, “right up until you killed that fish!”

“Ha-ha!” Dad said. “You’ll thank me at dinnertime.”