would have kept us at home; the senior class had graduated the previous night, and most of them would be at the beach today, nursing hangovers and kicking off their last summer of freedom before college with sunburns, volleyball and an endless rehash of grad-night parties.
Lucy was fiddling with the radio, which was notoriously temperamental, and Cath was still half-asleep behind an enormous pair of sunglasses, her long dark hair riffling out the open window. I was curled in the backseat, my bare feet propped on the stack of beach towels, and was watching out the rear window as the crowded lanes of the parkway unwound behind us.
The summer stretched ahead, and I wasn’t sure I could face it yet. Cath would spend the weeks sleeping until she couldn’t take the heat in her attic bedroom any more, and then haunt the library and the record store downtown most afternoons. Lucy’s job at the day camp would begin next week, and she had already informed us that she intended to paint her bedroom, too. Both Cath and I knew that she would also plow through every book on the senior reading list, and probably volunteer at the children’s hospital in Mountainside, as well. Lucy, a one-girl compendium of achievements, had anticipated college applications for two years now.
And for the first time since I was twelve, I not only needed to find something to fill the months before school started again, I also had to consider applying to college. To study what, I had no idea. Nothing appealed to me. College didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to spend the summer in bed, with the blinds drawn against the sun and the fan spinning in lazy circles above my head. Secretly, spending the rest of my life just that way didn’t sound awful.
I looked down at my knee as Lucy pulled in to the crowded parking lot at the beach, and examined the scar that cut through it. It was still angry, a jagged pink arrow pointing to the fact that my life had changed irrevocably in one afternoon. My parents liked to remind me that I was lucky to be able to walk, but I didn’t care much about that. If I was going to be curled up in bed for weeks at a time, hypnotized by daytime TV and drinking diet soda by the gallon, two functional legs probably wouldn’t be necessary.
“We’re here,” Lucy said, jerking on the emergency brake as the car shuddered to a halt. “Cath, wake up.”
“I’m up,” Cath mumbled, shoving her sunglasses on top of her head and squinting out at the sparkling water. “God, it’s bright.”
I climbed out of the back when Cath got out, stretching her arms over her head before lighting a Marlboro, and threw the others their towels. I was hauling my backpack over my shoulder when Lucy nudged me.
“Look at that,” she whispered, cocking her head toward Billy Caruso’s Jeep, parked just five spots away. “Who is he?”
“He” was beautiful, tall, with dark, slightly unruly hair and large dark brown eyes, his lean body delicately corded with muscle. I swallowed and felt the blood rushing to my face when he glanced up and saw me looking at him.
Westfield wasn’t a small town, but there was only one high school. By the time you arrived there, you either knew everyone, or someone you knew had gone to grammar school or one of the two junior highs with the people you didn’t. For Billy, a freshly graduated and enormously popular senior, to show up at the beach today accompanied by a strange boy who looked the way this one did was a social error of fantastic proportions. He was fresh meat, a new face, a walking possibility.
Lucy wasn’t waiting, either. She and Billy had been on the newspaper together, and his social credentials didn’t faze her even slightly. Tucking her gingery hair behind her ear and pushing her glasses up on her nose, she hefted her beach bag and marched toward him. I followed, nabbing Cath by the hem of her black T-shirt as I did.
“Congratulations on graduating, Billy,” Lucy said, raising up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, her lips landing on the hard line of his jaw, instead. “The paper won’t be the same without you.”
“I’m sure you’ll marshal the troops, Luce.” His voice was light as he inclined his head at me and Cath. He was every inch the suave upperclassman, his baggy plaid shorts riding low on his hips, his Ray-Bans perched on top of his cropped blond hair. “Tess. Cath.”
“Who’s your friend?” Lucy asked, sticking her hand out to the stranger, who was watching the interchange with amusement.
“This is Michael Butterfield,” Billy said, busy scanning the people down on the sand. “Just moved in next door to me.”
“Hi.” Michael shook Lucy’s hand as he nodded all around. “Caruso said the beach was the place to be today.”
“You from the city?” Cath said, eyeing Michael’s H.S. 475 T-shirt.
“Yeah.” He shrugged when the short answer was met with three pairs of curious eyes, his hands jammed in the pockets of a pair of faded cutoff jeans. “My dad died, and my mom wanted to join a practice out here. School ended last week.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. The words sounded inconsequential in my ears, useless and small, but Michael smiled at me. A real smile, his eyes going warm and even darker. I felt my cheeks heating up again and tried not to bite my bottom lip.
“Well, I guess we’ll head down,” Lucy said abruptly, turning and marching for the worn wooden steps that loped over the dunes. “You guys coming?”
She’d done her duty and satisfied her curiosity at the same time, and if I suspected that she wished Michael had given her the smile he’d given me, she would never say so. Cath was, as usual, oblivious to anything that wasn’t shouted, and she dawdled as we trudged across the hot sand, struggling to light another cigarette in the breeze.
But she noticed when Michael spread his towel out next to mine, and arched a plucked eyebrow in reaction. The safety pin in her left ear gleamed in the sun, and she left on her shirt and the black leather collar around her neck when she lay back on her towel. She was going to have one strange tan, not that she would care.
Michael seemed fascinated by a game of Frisbee farther down the beach, and for a minute I wondered if he’d realized where he’d chosen to sit. I pulled off my plain white T-shirt and pretended I didn’t know he was there, as I smoothed oil on my legs and stomach.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, when I rolled onto my stomach to change the station on the radio, that he even moved.
“Do you want some on your back?” he asked, picking up the greasy bottle of Hawaiian Tropic. He held up his other hand to shade his eyes, and I avoided his squint before I blushed again. It was so hot by then that I was probably bright red already, and I had to resist the impulse to dab sweat off my forehead and chest with the corner of my towel.
“Sure.” I gave him a noncommittal shrug, and hoped I wasn’t trembling as his hands worked the oil into my back in long, firm strokes. His fingers were strong, but equally gentle, and everywhere he touched felt strangely alive, vibrating with a teasing echo of his hands. I was suddenly painfully unsure what my plain bikini bottom covered and what it didn’t, what the curve of my spine looked like and if my shoulder blades were anything more than bony wings.
When he finished, I propped myself on my elbows to rummage in my bag for a piece of gum. My mouth had gone dry, and I was just unwrapping a piece of Juicy Fruit when he leaned closer still. My heart was already beating hard as he waited for me to return his gaze. And when I did, he licked a drop of sweat from my upper lip without any warning.
“Hot,” he said.
I blinked, and I think I nodded, riding out the potent
