It smelled of sand and salt and wet. They couldn’t fit shoulder to shoulder so he had to turn sideways toward her to fit, his knees at his chest. Maybe that had made all the difference, being that close to her and having to look. She smiled at him and her face opened up. He’d seen this smile before, when she found a particularly good haul of shells or when he caught a firefly in a jar and finally agreed to let it go.
She said, “I don’t care how mad they get,” just as Wyatt heard Travis’s voice no more than two feet from the cupboard. So he did it: he placed his fingers on her lips to quiet her. A normal person, he thought many times after, would have placed a finger on his own lips to convey the same message. But he’d chosen to touch hers. It wasn’t much, but it was the beginning of everything.
5
Sam
The beach was for bare feet. If Sam had any guiding principle around which she lived her life, it was that. For nine months in Manhattan she was bound up in socks and sneakers. Even during swim season when she raced for the YMCA, she had to wear flip-flops around the pool so she didn’t get a wart. But the second they went through the Midtown Tunnel in mid-June, Sam kicked off her shoes.
The beach was for getting up and putting on a bathing suit first thing. It was for grabbing a Pop-Tart and eating it as you raced through the dunes into the ocean while the sun was still low and the gulls were just starting to heat up their wings. Sam was baffled that at fifteen Travis wasted the entire morning sleeping, while she wandered in and out of the ocean, swimming south down the shore and collecting shells. If she found a particularly compelling shell, she’d tuck it under the elastic of her bathing suit and swim the rest of the way to the wooded cove at the south end of the beach. She brought her best shells there, the standouts, and placed them at the base of her favorite linden tree. She knew from experience that if she brought something too interesting home, it would end up as part of one of her mother’s art projects. And the beach was for keeping something for herself.
At the beach, she had her own room. It was the most luxurious thing she could imagine after twelve years in the bottom bunk with Travis snoring right over her head. She could stay up and read as long as she wanted without anyone complaining about the light. Sometimes she slept naked just because she could and luxuriated in the feel of the sheets touching every inch of her skin.
Sam was happy to spend time with whoever showed up at the beach each day. If Wyatt was up early, he would come with her as she swam down to the cove. She liked swimming with Wyatt because he was a year older and faster than she was. He followed her out of the water when she wanted to stop and look for shells and waited silently as she inspected whatever had washed up. Sam liked how Wyatt didn’t talk unless he had something to say.
“Help me arrange these so they look like they just landed here,” Sam said one morning when they’d made it to the base of the linden tree. She’d pulled four shells out of her bathing suit and was pacing the length of the tree, deciding where to put them in relation to the ones she’d placed yesterday. “They’re starting to look too organized.”
“This is so weird, Sam,” Wyatt said, trying to find a patch of sun in the woods where he could dry off.
She was on her hands and knees, turning the shells so they caught the light in different directions. She stood up and admired her design, which was at best abstract but did look as if all of those shells had washed up on a single wave. “Maybe. But it’s beautiful.” She smiled at him with hands on hips, daring him to disagree. The beach was for following crazy ideas wherever they led.
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Race you back.” And they ran the length of the cove back into the ocean.
At twelve years old, Sam’s body was magic. She was a strong swimmer in the pool, but in the ocean she could just let her body go without having to remember to turn around every fifty meters. It seemed like, at the beach, her body knew exactly what to do. The bottoms of her feet toughened as the sand heated up each week. Her body temperature knew how to acclimate as she placed her feet and then her shins in the icy Atlantic. By the time she was fully submerged, she felt indistinguishable from the ocean. Her body felt so right in the summer that it stretched and grew until the straps of her bathing suits left deep marks on her shoulders.
When Wyatt reached over and touched her lips at the end of that summer, she felt something different. She was curious about why his fingers felt so good on her mouth. She almost asked him to keep them there, but the point was to try to be quiet.
6
Wyatt
Wyatt started high school that fall, and it all hit the fan. He knew he couldn’t read, at least not like other kids, but he’d faked it by listening to audiobooks or by paying enough attention in class to get by without reading the textbook. His middle school teachers had remarked that he wasn’t a strong writer, a generous assessment that he’d earned by being a strong charmer. But in the ninth grade there was no more faking it. His history teacher suggested he be tested, and it all started to fall apart.
In January, he started at a boarding school for kids with learning differences. It was called the Center for Untapped Potential, which Wyatt found patronizing and also a little off. He was skeptical about the idea that his potential was hidden in rural Illinois behind thick brick walls. He knew that, to the extent he had potential, it would be found outdoors, someplace where there was surfing.
He settled into his single room and made friends with the boys on his hall. But by mid-February, when the sky was low and it was dark at four p.m., he stopped trying. He was no longer interested in playing cards. He stopped going to class. He stopped crossing the frozen quad to eat the too-creamy food. By the time the administration figured out that he’d stopped getting out of bed, it had been three days. His parents were called and agreed that he needed counseling.
“Sweetie, it’s probably just the weather,” Marion said on the phone. “Seasonal affective disorder, it’s so common. I’m sending a special light for your room to help with that, and in the meantime you need to go see Dr. Nick. Otherwise, they’re going to send you home.”
“Promise?” Wyatt said. Florida in February was suddenly a threat?
“I know. I know you want to come home. But this school is the best in the country for helping kids like you. Learn what you can, so that you can come home and finish high school here. Finish the semester, we’ll have a fun summer, then we’ll talk about another year.”
Wyatt slept through his first appointment with Dr. Nick. He was sleeping all the time. But on the morning of his second appointment, the headmaster banged on his door and dragged him into the hall and across campus in his pajama bottoms to the Student Health building.
“So what’s been going on?” Dr. Nick was deliberately casual and approachable in jeans and a Van Halen T-shirt. There was an acoustic guitar leaning on his desk. The whole thing looked like a costume to Wyatt, and he imagined Dr. Nick going home and changing into a tweed blazer after work.
“I stopped dealing.”
“With what?”
Wyatt looked out the window; he didn’t even feel like dealing with the stupid questions about what he wasn’t dealing with. “Learning, doing, being, eating. Talking.”
“Is there anything you like doing?”
Wyatt took in the endless field of dirty snow. “Surfing. Picked a great spot for it, right?”
He was due back the next day and showed up of his own volition to avoid the spectacle with the headmaster.
“Do you like music?”
“Everyone likes music.”
“I see you eyeing my guitar, do you play?”
“No. I just like to listen to music. Like anyone.”
“What’s that like?”
Wyatt rolled his eyes. “What’s it like to listen to music? Same as it is for anyone. I close my eyes and listen. I can see the different instruments coming in and out of the song. I like to pick it apart, I guess.”
“That’s not the same as it is for anyone.”
Wyatt let out a breath. “Great, we’ve discovered a new area where I’m a freak.”
Over the course of two weeks, they talked about how he thought Michael was partying too much. How he thought his parents either were scared of Michael or had given up on him. They talked about Sam and Travis and how their family was perfect, how easy everything was for them. Wyatt described the braid Sam made in the front of her hair, the ease of it.
“I have no idea why I told you that.” Wyatt eyed the guitar.
“Listen,” said Dr. Nick. “Between you and me, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. I think you’re a surfer stuck in the middle of the country in February. I think you might be a little in love with this Sam person.” He held up a hand against Wyatt’s protest. “But that’s your problem, not mine, to fix. I’m going to release you from these sessions, if you agree to my terms.”