For a small town with a graduating class of less than fifty, the crowd at Elbow Lake was already edging a hundred. Two docks led out from the shore, rickety and rusty-nailed. To the left of the beach, a forest began, and grads of years gone by had built a bunch of tree platforms in there with rope ladders up to them. Hundreds of lanterns hung from branches—unlit, spiderwebbed and rusting—and the forest bark was scarred with an alphabet of former alumni. We drove towards the scattering of tents, veering off the track and over the grass, our shoulders bumping as we hit potholes in the turf.
“What are we sleeping in?” Lacy glanced from face to face.
“We’ll sleep when we’re dead, Lace,” said Ezra, and he threw the truck into park. He shut off the engine, clambering out onto the hood. “The party’s arrived!” He reveled in the sunlight, his black hair cut short at the sides in a fauxhawk, his teeth white against his tanned face. The swim team whooped in response, swelling towards him like a tide.
“Have you brought a tent?” Lacy tucked hair behind her ear and pressed her knees together.
“Too late now,” said HP. “We’ll be fine. I have my man blanket.”
“It’s plaid,” I told her.
I pushed open my door and got out of the truck. Ezra swooped down and grabbed my arm, hauling me upwards towards him. He waltzed me around on the hood of his truck in a high-kneed cowboy swirl, the curve of his bicep pressing tight against my shoulder. He smelled of laundry soap. On the second spin I saw Lacy and HP turn their faces up at us—her brow milk-pale, his darkening.
I sat on the dock for a lot of the afternoon, dangling my toes in the water. Bugs skittered on the surface, spindly with heat. Classmates thundered behind me along the dock to launch into the cool of the lake, and from time to time HP came and sat next to me to skim stones.
“I’d push you in,” he said, “but I think you’d drown under the weight of your T-shirt. Why no bathing suit?”
“I’m not like Lacy.”
“Do you shower with your eyes closed?” He stood and turned, balancing on his toes on the dock edge. His stomach muscles were tight, and his arms wound windmills to balance. “You’re way prettier than you think, Little John. You have this whole funky-ass style thing going on and you don’t even know it. Why else would Ez be moving in on you?” I must have bunched up my eyebrows at him because he added, “Christ, you walk around with your eyes closed, too.” He teetered then backflipped into the lake.
By five everyone was hungry and HP built a fire and got out wieners, the only food anyone had thought to bring besides potato chips. The sun had freckled HP’s shoulders, and the edges of his hairline looked dusted with sand. Lacy draped around him as he tried to blow life into the fire; her makeup was impeccable and she’d piled her hair high on top of her head to avoid getting it wet in the lake. My mother would have applauded her.
A girl to my left nudged me and passed me a joint, the end of which had been sucked closed into a mulch of ten people’s saliva. I shook my head and she shrugged—a suit yourself shrug—like I thought I was better than her or something. HP caught it.
“Hey, Julia, why don’t we dip this hot dog bun in the lake and pass it around?” he said.
A bunch of people laughed and I caught HP’s eye across the fire. He was protecting me. I’d only smoked pot once and that was with him, in his room with the window open, and I didn’t leave his house for four hours in case his parents asked me a question on the walk through the living room. Julia threw the droopy joint into the fire. Some guy named Billy had brought a guitar with him, and as the sun began to slide behind the trees he strummed Pink Floyd tunes and all the girls swayed back and forth together like wheat.
“Jesus fuck.” Ezra strode out from the woods. “What is this, Brownie camp?”
He turned the key in his truck’s ignition and Korn fired up again. Billy put his guitar away as Ezra started a game of Truth or Dare, and soon everyone was shouting against the music, girls coyly avoiding questions and slinking into boys’ laps to lock lips with them.
I walked away then. I hadn’t kissed a boy yet. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t scared and I’d definitely thought about it: I wondered what it would be like to breathe in someone else’s breath and have someone’s eyes really look into mine. As a child, my mother read me nothing but Prince Charming stories at bedtime, and as much as I scorn that now, I have to agree you shouldn’t waste kisses on the wrong boys. I wasn’t like most teenagers: I gave value to true intimacy. I wanted a kiss to mean something.
Ezra must have gotten the party zone ready because every tree twinkled with lantern lights and all the rope ladders hung low. I tiptoed along the path, pausing to feel the bark of the oldest trees. I’ve always loved forests—the way the light filters, the stillness, what the trees witness and never tell. I heard a heavy footfall behind me and turned to see Ezra striding along the pine trail, his sleeveless plaid shirt flapping over a bare chest.
“There you are,” he said.
The dimple in the tanned cheek was working overtime. He hooked both hands onto a high rung of a rope ladder. I stood uncomfortably against a tree.
“Want to climb up there with me?” He nodded at the platform above our heads.
“Not really.” What was he up to?
“Want to dance?” He let the rope ladder swing him towards me.
“There’s no music.” I couldn’t decide if my heart was beating so fast because he scared or interested me. His chest was lined with muscle.
“Lighten up, LJ.” He unhooked his hands from the ladder and placed them on each side of my head. “Who needs music?”
The sweetness on his breath was more pungent than beer. He stared directly at my mouth, hesitated and shuffled his feet in closer. His arms bent so his whole upper torso pressed against me. He leaned into my lips.
“Wait.”
“Wait?”
The thing I have to admit is, Ezra was hot: he was all Italian-heritage genes and chocolate eyes and his mouth looked like he’d just been eating strawberries. Girls went nuts over Ezra—he was the other one they cried about in the washrooms.
“Let’s do this”—he kissed the side of my jaw—“and see what happens.” As he brought his mouth towards mine, I must have cringed because he stopped. “Or not.” He pushed off the tree and stretched his arms out above his head, yawning his rejection away. “Wow. Shut down. I didn’t see that coming.”
“I’m just not—”
“It’s all good, Little John. Whatever. I just wanted to try something out.”
I took the bait. “Try what out?”
“I just think it’s time you put your cards on the table.”
“What table?”
“Come on, LJ. You’re smokin’ hot but nobody can lay a finger on you and us guys, we’re all wondering why that is. You’re like a virgin island and I got to tell you—we’re ready to travel.”
I grimaced. “Who’s ‘us guys’?”
“You know . . . the guys. Kaden, Jared, Calen, Caleb, Jayden . . .” He listed weirdly identical names from the water polo team, counting them off on his fingers.
“Maybe I have taste. Or standards. Or . . . or taste.”
Ezra crouched until he was sitting on the pine-needled path.
“And more than two brain cells to rub together.” I kicked my heel back against the tree trunk.