More like getting my own kicked, I type and then drop my phone into my backpack before I press Send. What’s the point?
Too soon, we’re in the Ponquogue High School teachers’ lot. Three-quarters of the senior lot spaces are empty, with seagulls waddling on the concrete before flying off. Right. While I was embarrassing myself, the rest of my grade drove to the beach.
When Dad opens the door, wind slaps my face. He looks away. He’s about to say something uncomfortable. “You don’t have to be miserable, you know. Just have to…try again.”
Tears jump into my eyes, and not of the I’m so inspired variety. “Sure.”
“Cassie managed to pass, after all. If New York State’s willing to put that girl behind the wheel–”
The bell rings inside the red brick building. Already, I imagine sneakers screeching over linoleum and lockers rattling open. Underclassmen scuttling along in the daily grind. “See you later,” he says.
Is this my future? My father driving me back and forth from whatever college I end up going to?
Cassie managed to pass, after all. Dad’s idea of an inspirational speech.
I wait until he’s disappeared through the D-Wing entrance. He’ll find out about this by the end of the day, for certain; teachers in passing will say, “Guess Savannah’s taking advantage of Senior Cut Day, huh?” and the sniveling nerds hoping for an A will tell him I missed Spanish. It will serve as breaking news. Unlike my best friend, I actually show up on a daily basis and do my homework.
But he’s the one who left the keys on the driver’s seat.
I make it down the driveway and over the bright yellow speed bumps without security noticing a vehicle heading off-campus. Soon, I’m at the light as mid-morning traffic passes in front of me, rocking the car.
The sign says I can signal right for Ponquogue Village or left for the ocean. Cars become more sporadic, making a last-ditch effort to beat the light as soon as it turns yellow. Red. On green, I exercise my right of improper judgment. I turn left.
CHAPTER TWO
AS I BUMP down Main Street, I fight the urge to duck in my seat. The paint curling off the Anthony’s Pizza (Great to Meet Ya!) sign, the flashing neon “Open” sign of Empanadas Sudamericanas–they feel like scowling witnesses. You shouldn’t be out here.
Technically Dad has returned to AP Calculus by now, interrogating my classmates as to the whereabouts of their homework. Cassie would have the windows rolled down already, ignoring the cool burn of the air, drowning out the wind with music. “God, Savs, relax,” she’d say.
I scan radio stations, catch the middle of AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” and take a deep breath. You got this. That image again–me on a balance beam–and I turn up the music louder to forget it.
I follow the hill past the mansions that overlook the ocean. Back down the hill is the rest of us. We’re the gateway to the Hamptons, neighbors on the same stretch of ocean, yet as my older brother, Richard, likes to joke, “We’re Poor Hampton.” Most of us have two parents (if we’re lucky) who work and stomachs that sink when we start tallying up how much college tuition will cost–especially now that I won’t have an athletic scholarship to cover mine.
The road smooths out, the trees flatten, and the dirt turns to sand. In front of me arches South Cross Bridge, iron and concrete. No matter how many times I’ve been here or how much I hated getting up for work at the beach on summer mornings, it always fills me with a flutter of excitement. It spans the bay, connecting the main land to the strip of barrier island and South Cross Beach. Coasting in at four miles per hour, I pass the booth where I’d spent my summer saying, “Excuse me, ma’am, you need to pay for a day pass.” It’s boarded up for the winter with a sign that says, “See you next season!” I park next to the one car that’s crooked between the lines and adorned with “COEXIST” and “My child is an honor student at Ponquogue Elementary School” bumper stickers. Cass finds the latter hilarious.
My feet sink in the sand, the wind whacks strands of my short hair against my cheeks, and I take a deep gulp of the salt air. The waves curl and crash in high tide–loud, indignant, toppling one after the other– and while it’s stupid, I can’t help feeling that they’re angry on my behalf.
I breathe better down here.
I could have the worst practice at the gym, an argument with Dad, radio silence from Richard. Then I get in the passenger’s seat of Cassie’s car, walk through the pavilion teeming with little kids and ice cream cones, and run across the sand. Something about the incessant beating of the waves against the shore can make anything feel lighter.
I watch the waves until a tiny bit of the embarrassment ebbs away. Who needs gymnastics? Who needs a license, dammit?
A gaggle of my fellow seniors tosses a Frisbee back and forth. Several girls lay out in bikini tops, either impermeable to the wind or not caring. In solidarity, Andreas Alvarez scampers around with no shirt on. “Put down the damn metal detector and have some fun already!” he shouts at Marcos Castillo, whose metal detector skims the ground near the Frisbee game. When Marcos shakes his head, Andreas fires the disc at him anyway. Classy.
Next to the rocks that jetty into the foaming water, a girl is barefoot and crouched low on the sand, pink skirt flowing around her legs as the ocean sweeps against the shore. The cold is nothing to her. Long blonde ringlets flap against her face as she raises the camera and points the tremendous lens at me. In that exact instant, I stumble over a piece of driftwood. Graceful. She should turn the camera toward herself. I’m the one who’s a mess.
“You did it!” she shouts, lowering the camera. “My baby girl is all grown up.”
“Yeah, about that.” I wipe bits of dried seaweed from my jeans.