It was important to Kendall to know the Five Ws of journalism about people—the who, what, where, when, and why—and whether they applied to her, too. She used to write field guides to native North American wildlife as a hobby. Now she did this.
Kendall had been my best friend since sixth grade. My only close friend, you could say, if you wanted to be mean and specific about it. But she’d been all I needed when it came to the big things. She taught me how to put in a tampon—the normal way, not like the school nurse had shown us in health class, with one leg up like you were tying a shoe (yuck). When we started high school, Kendall joined the newspaper and urged me to check out Mock Trial. So, you know, we’d have some kind of life.
After I cut myself, Kendall visited me on every one of the five days I stayed home from school. I hadn’t been able to explain to her why I did what I did, or why I hadn’t asked her for help. She pretended she didn’t want to know. Things changed between us, after that.
I lay down again and shut my eyes. Secretly, I wanted to be reading my book, a vintage Silver Arrow novel I’d just bought online. I’d made the mistake of putting it in my bag and now the thought of it kept tugging at me. But Kendall didn’t get Silver Arrow—she didn’t get any sci-fi, especially not a TV series that aired before we were even born—and I wanted us to have a good time together.
We were both at the lake on opening day, as we’d always been and were supposed to be. As if it were etched on a Dead Sea scroll somewhere.
One type of antidepressants had made me sick but the second was working. I knew it was working because the sun right here on my face felt like every good thing that had happened to me plus all the other good things that hadn’t happened yet but would absolutely, definitely happen soon for sure.
Summer.
After a minute, Kendall whispered, “Who the hell is that?”
I sighed, opened one eye, and looked sideways toward the beach. It took me a bit to lock in on who she was talking about, but then I saw the boy.
He was tall, dark-haired. Our age. Stepping gingerly around people while clutching one of those striped Navajo blankets to his chest.
That’s all it takes, sometimes. He doesn’t have to be saving kittens from a tree or making shirtless jump shots, or dropping some brilliant comment in American History class. But one moment, this person is not in the world for you. The next moment, he is. It’s exactly that simple. And also, irreversible.
He was with a blond woman who wore what appeared to be a gigantic scarf tied in eight different places. As we watched, he guided her to a sliver of shade on the opposite edge of the beach, then spread out the blanket and took a tote bag out of her hands without her asking.
“Do you know?” asked Kendall, wrinkling her nose and all her freckles with it.
“Uh-uh,” I said casually, then caught my breath and hoped Kendall didn’t notice.
He was not from our high school, we were sure of that; there were only sixty-some-odd guys in each grade and most of them we’d known since forever. A summer renter, maybe? Or from another town.
The boy—actually, at this point, I was already thinking of him as The Boy—offered a tube of sunscreen to the woman, who shook her head. We heard him say, “Mom! Cancer!” as he shoved it toward her again. She smiled at him then and plucked the sunscreen out of his hand. He smiled back. Even from where we sat, I could see each one of his carefully carved features participating in that smile. And dimples, for God’s sake.
Then he turned away and slipped out of his button-down shirt.
His shoulders were wide and solid, but the rest of him was skinny, as if some body parts were losing a contest with others. I couldn’t quite identify the color of his skin, but I could tell it was more dark than fair. More night than day.
We watched him, both Kendall and I, alert as cats as he walked across the dock to the rickety diving board at the far end. (If we’d had the right kind of ears, they would have been pricked up.) He stepped slowly to the edge, then turned to do a backward somersault into the lake, lopsided and not very good at all. The splash looked like it hurt.
And I was already halfway gone.
A week later, Kendall and I were sitting low on the beach, our feet in the water, sand seeping into the edges of our bathing suits. I’d found a bumpy rock embedded in the sand and couldn’t stop rubbing my big toe back and forth over it. My little sister, Danielle, waded nearby in her mismatched bikini—a top covered in cherries, blue-and-white-striped bottoms. She made it look like a fashion statement rather than what it really was: the result of a messy room where you could never find the proper other half to anything.
“You guys! Watch me!” called Danielle. She started to spin in circles, still holding her plastic bucket. Faster, then faster again. Until she staggered and fell hard into the water.
“Is she okay?” Kendall asked.
“She makes herself dizzy on purpose,” I replied with a shrug. “Your question is more complicated than it sounds.”
Danielle righted herself and started spinning again.