I might find you here. What are you doing, crazy? You were headed straight for Seal Rock. Head-first.”
I have inadvertently gulped in a mouthful of brackish water and am coughing. “I – ”
He thumps me hard on the back, dislodging another series of coughs. I dive back under, come up, flicking back my hair, then notice that he’s freckled with large spatters of white paint. Jackson Pollack Nic.
“What?” he asks as I frown at him.
I twitch my finger from his bespattered face to his speckled shoulders. He looks down. “Oh. Yeah. We were doing old man Gillespie’s garage ceiling. Then I went to check out the island job. Didn’t have time to clean up.” He scrubs his hand through his mop of sandy hair, much of which is also coated with paint. “Maybe I should have?” he offers. “Is this not a professional look for a job interview?”
I’m treading water, trying not to let myself be dragged away by the rushing creek current.
“How’d that go?”
“Aw . . . you know.” Nic cups his hands in the water, splashes it on his face, slapping his cheeks. “It was what’s-his-face, the island president. In his shorts with the blue embroidered whales and his effing pink shirt. He acted like it was all competitive. But I know from Aunt Luce that no one wants that painting and repair job. Too much aggravation. Almost as bad as yard boy. We’ve got it in the bag. Hoop’s pissed.”
“You’ve got a steady job all summer and Hooper’s mad?”
Nic dunks under, bobs up. “He doesn’t want to work for ‘those summer snobs.’ Painting, we could’ve headed around the state, maybe camped out on Block Island or something, whatever – gotten the hell off island, for Chrissake. Hoop’ll come around, though. Anything’s better than working for Uncle Mike.”
Yeah. These past few years Nic has done anything and everything to avoid working for Dad. Or, lately, even having dinner with him.
My cousin whacks me on the shoulder and starts doing a fast crawl to the rocky shore. I used to be able to beat Nic every time, but since swim team, and especially since he’s been training for the academy, no contest. He’s nearly drip-dried; shaking the last drops off his shaggy hair, by the time I clamber up next to him and throw myself down in the sand. He tosses himself down next to me.
We lie there for a while, squinting at the evening sun filtering through the trees, saying nothing. Finally he stands up, reaches out a white-splotched hand to pull me to my feet. He glances around the shore.
I know what he’s searching for. A skipping stone for Vivie. I study the sand for a thin, flat rock, but Nic’s eyes are better trained, longer attuned. He finds one – “Here’s a keeper” – slips it into the pocket of his soggy shorts, jerks his head toward the sandy roadside. “Hoop let me take the truck home. Party on the beach tonight. We’re going to start this summer off with a bang.”
Great, both Cass and a party on the first real day of summer. Talk about Kryptonite.
After we stop at the bridge for my clothes, we head down High Road and pass the Field House, where the mowers are stored – and where the yard boy’s summer apartment is, right over the garage. But for sure Cass wouldn’t be staying there – he’d be going home to that sailing ship of a house. Just in case, I scrunch lower in my seat, the peeling vinyl scraping my thighs.
Nic shoots me a look, but says nothing. I sink farther down, yawning for extra authenticity. Soon I’ll be skulking around my own island in a wig and a trench coat.
“So the bonfire’s on Sandy Claw tonight,” Nic says. “Bo Sanders. Manny and Pam and a few more. Hoop wants to hit it, but he doesn’t wanna drive home, so Viv’s picking us up.”
“You can drop me off at the house.”
“No way, cuz. You’re coming. The recluse bit is getting old. You know you love these things.”
And I do. I mean, I always have. Just . . .
“You’re coming,” Nic repeats firmly.
“Yes, sir, Master Chief Petty Officer, sir.” I salute him.
“You mean Admiral, Ensign,” he corrects, elbowing me in the side. “Show some respect for the uniform I don’t have yet.”
I laugh at him.
No one can say Nic is unambitious. Since career night freshman year, he’s had One Big Dream. The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. He’s got pictures of it – their sailing team, their wrestling team, on the wall of the bedroom he shares with Grandpa Ben and Emory, the Coast Guard motto – WHO LIVES HERE REVERES HONOR, HONORS DUTY – scrawled over his bed in black Sharpie, he does the workout religiously, obsesses about his grade point average . . . basically a 180 from the laid-back Nic of old, the guy who could never find his homework binder and was always looking up with a startled “Huh?” when called on in class. It’s the same raw focus he’s had with Vivien since childhood. One can only hope that that discipline someday extends to picking up and washing his own clothes.
“Seriously, Gwen. If I have to drag you. I can bench nearly my body weight now.” He cracks his knuckles at me threateningly, then shoots me his sidelong, cocky grin.
I elbow him back. “For real? Does Coach know? How long till you can bench him ?”
“Only a matter of time,” Nic says smugly.
I burst out laughing. Coach is huge. “You really need to work on your inferiority complex, Nico.”
“Just calling it like it is, cuz.” Nic’s smile broadens. It’s quiet for a second. Then his face sobers. “I want that captain spot so bad I can taste it. It’s gotta go to me, Gwen.”
“Instead of Cass or Spence, who always get what they want?” A note Nic hits a lot. He was by far the star swimmer before they transferred in last September.
Nic shrugs.
I bump his shoulder with my own. “You leave them both behind every time, Admiral.”
We ditch Hoop’s truck in his pine-needle-covered driveway and reach our house on foot just as Vivien pulls up in her mom’s Toyota Corolla. She beeps at us, waving Nic over. He leans through the window, kisses her nose, then her lips, hands slipping down to gather her closer. I look away, squeeze the dampness out of the fraying hem of my shorts.
Viv. The first serious Nic Cruz Goal I can remember.
We were eleven and twelve. I decoded the scribbly cursive in his I Will notebook, this goal journal he kept hidden under his mattress – not a safe spot when your cousin is hunting for Playboys, wanting to bribe the hell out of you. But the I Will journal proved even more useful than porn, most times.
Kiss Vivien.
I figured Hoop had dared him. Despite the wedding ceremony when we were five, I didn’t think of them as a couple. It was thethreeofus. But there it was, spelled out in red pen right in the middle of his other goals: Be next Michael Phelps. Own
