The Summer I Turned Pretty

Jeremiah told me I could come hang by the pool while he lifeguarded. I’d never been inside the country club pool. It was huge and fancy, so I jumped at the chance. The country club seemed like a mysterious place. Conrad hadn’t let us come the summer before; he’d said it would be embarrassing.

Midafternoon, I rode my bike over. Everything there was lush and green; it was surrounded by a golf course. There was a girl at a table with a clipboard, and I went over and told her I was there to see Jeremiah, and she waved me in.

I spotted Jeremiah before he saw me. He was sitting in the lifeguard chair, talking to a dark-haired girl in a white bikini. He was laughing, and so was she. He looked so important in the chair. I’d never seen him at an actual job before.

Suddenly I felt shy. I walked over slowly, my flip-flops slapping along the pavement. “Hey,” I said when I was a few feet away.

Jeremiah looked down from his chair and grinned at me. “You came,” he said, squinting at me and shielding his eyes with his hands like a visor.

“Yup.” I swung my canvas bag back and forth, like a pendulum. The bag had my name on it in cursive. It was from L.L.Bean, a gift from Susannah.

“Belly, this is Yolie. She’s my co-lifeguard.”

Yolie reached over and shook my hand. It struck me as a businessy thing to do for someone in a bikini. She had a firm handshake, a nice grip, something my mother would have appreciated. “Hi, Belly,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” I looked up at Jeremiah.

He smirked. “Yeah. I told her all about the way you snore so loud that I can hear you down the hall.”

I smacked his foot. “Shut up.” Turning to Yolie, I said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

She smiled at me. She had dimples in both cheeks and a crooked bottom tooth. “You too. Jere, do you want to take your break now?”

“In a little bit,” he said. “Belly, go work on your sun damage.”

I stuck my tongue out at him and spread out my towel on a lounge chair not too far away. The pool was a perfect turquoise, and there were two diving boards, one high and one low. There were a ton of kids splashing around inside, and I figured I’d swim too when I got too hot to stand it. I just lay there with my sunglasses on and my eyes closed, tanning and listening to my music.

Jeremiah came over after a while. He sat on the edge of my chair and drank from my thermos of Kool-Aid. “She’s pretty,” I said.

“Who? Yolie?” He shrugged. “She’s nice. One of my many admirers.”

“Ha!”

“So what about you? Cam Cameron, huh? Cam the vegetarian. Cam the straight edge.”

I tried not to smile. “So what? I like him.”

“He’s kind of a dork.”

“That’s what I like about him. He’s… different.”

He frowned slightly. “Different from who?”

“I don’t know.” But I did know. I knew exactly who he was different from.

“You mean he’s not a dick like Conrad?”

I laughed, and so did he. “Yeah, exactly. He’s nice.”

“Just nice, huh?”

“More than nice.”

“So you’re over him, then? For real?” We both knew the “him” he was talking about.

“Yes,” I told him.

“I don’t believe you,” Jeremiah said, watching me closely—just like when he was trying to figure out what kind of hand I had in Uno.

I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eye. “It’s true. I’m over him.”

“We’ll see,” Jeremiah said, standing up. “My break’s over. Are you okay over here? Wait around and I’ll drive us home. I can put your bike in the back.”

I nodded, and watched him walk back to the lifeguard chair. Jeremiah was a good friend. He’d always been good to me, watched out for me.