The Summer I Turned Pretty

Cam came over again, and he stayed till late. Around midnight I asked him if he wanted to go for a walk on the beach. So we did, and we held hands, too. The ocean looked silver and bottomless, like it was a million years old. Which I guessed it was.

“Truth or dare?” he asked me.

I wasn’t in the mood for real truths. An idea came to me, from out of nowhere. The idea was this: I wanted to go skinny-dipping. With Cam. That was what older kids did at the beach, just like hooking up at the drive-in. If we went skinny-dipping, it would be like proof. That I had grown up.

So I said, “Cam, let’s play Would You Rather. Would you rather go skinny-dipping right this second, or…” I was having trouble thinking of an “or.”

“The first one, the first one,” he said, grinning. “Or both, whatever the second one is.”

Suddenly I felt giddy, almost drunk. I ran away from him, toward the water, and threw my sweatshirt into the sand. I had on my bikini underneath my clothes. “Here are the rules,” I called out, unbuttoning my shorts. “No nakedness until we’re fully submerged! And no peeking!”

“Wait,” he said, running up to me, sand flying everywhere. “Are we really doing this?”

“Well, yeah. Don’t you want to?”

“Yeah, but what if your mom sees us?” Cam glanced back toward the house.

“She won’t. You can’t see anything from the house; it’s too dark.”

He glanced at me and then back at the house again. “Maybe later,” he said doubtfully.

I stared at him. Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to be convincing me? “Are you serious?” What I really wanted to say was, Are you gay?

“Yeah. It’s not late enough. What if people are still awake?” He picked up my sweatshirt and handed it to me. “Maybe we can come back later.”

I knew he didn’t mean it.

Part of me was mad, and part of me was relieved. It was like craving a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich and then realizing two bites in that you didn’t want it after all.

I snatched my sweatshirt from him and said, “Don’t do me any favors, Cam.” Then I walked away as fast as I could, and sand kicked up behind me. I thought he might follow me, but he didn’t. I didn’t look back to see what he was doing either. He was probably sitting in the sand writing one of his stupid poems by the light of the moon.

As soon as I got back inside, I stormed into the kitchen. There was one light on; Conrad was sitting at the table spooning into a watermelon. “Where’s Cam Cameron?” he asked wryly.

I had to think for a second about whether he was being nice or making fun of me. His expression looked normal and bland, so I took it as a little of both. If he was going to pretend our fight from before hadn’t happened, then so would I.

“Who knows,” I said, rummaging around the fridge and pulling out a yogurt. “Who cares?”

“Lover’s spat?”

The smug look on his face made me want to slap him. “Mind your own business,” I said, sitting down next to him with a spoon and a container of strawberry yogurt. It was Susannah’s fat-free stuff, and the top looked watery and solid. I closed the foil flap on the yogurt and pushed it away.

Conrad pushed the watermelon over to me. “You shouldn’t be so hard on people, Belly.” Then he stood up and said, “And put your shirt on.”

I scooped out a chunk of watermelon and stuck my tongue out at his retreating figure. Why did he make me feel like I was still thirteen? In my head I heard my mother’s voice—“Nobody can make you feel like anything, Belly. Not without your permission. Eleanor Roosevelt said that. I almost named you after her.” Blah, blah, blah. But she was kind of right. I wasn’t giving him permission to make me feel bad, not anymore. I just wished my hair had at least been wet, or I’d had sand in my clothes, so he could have thought we’d been up to something, even if we hadn’t been.

I sat at the table and ate watermelon. I ate it until I had scooped out half of the middle. I was waiting for Cam to come back inside, and when he didn’t, I only felt madder. Part of me was tempted to lock the door on him. He’d probably meet some random homeless guy and become best friends with him, and then he’d tell me the man’s life story the next day. Not that there were any homeless guys on our end of the beach. Not that I’d ever seen a homeless person in Cousins, for that matter. But if there was, Cam would find him.

Only, Cam didn’t come back to the house. He just left. I heard his car start, watched from the downstairs hallway as he backed down the driveway. I wanted to run after his car and yell at him. He was supposed to come back. What if I’d ruined things and he didn’t like me anymore? What if I never saw him again?

That night I lay in bed, thinking about how summer romances really do happen so fast, and then they’re over so fast.

But the next morning, when I went to the deck to eat my toast, I found an empty water bottle on the steps that led down to the beach. Poland Spring, the kind Cam was always drinking. There was a piece of paper inside, a note. A message in a bottle. The ink was a little smeared, but I could still read what it said. It said, “IOU one skinny-dip.”