But something had started to change last week, on the lake’s wooden float. It was big enough across that almost ten people could be on it at once (although the lifeguards blew their whistles when more than five people were on it at a time, and always if you tried to push people in). We’d been challenging each other to races that had gotten more and more complicated as the afternoon went on. The last one—swim from the raft to shore, run across the beach, around the concession stand, back across the beach, and swim back to the raft—had left us both exhausted. We’d been lying on the raft, getting our breath back, but now I was pretty sure that Henry had fallen asleep.
To check, I’d been squeezing out the water from the bottom of my braid on him, trying to get him to wake up. And either he really was asleep, or he was really good at pretending, because he wasn’t moving. Since my braid was pretty well wrung out, I dipped my hand into the water and started letting the drops fall from my fingers onto him, but Henry didn’t even flinch. Figuring he must actually be sleeping, and feeling a little bad for tormenting him, I started to brush some of the water droplets off his face. I was brushing one off his forehead, when his eyes opened and he looked at me. We just froze that way for a moment, looking at each other, and I noticed for the first time what nice eyes he had. And suddenly, out of nowhere, I wanted him to kiss me.
The thought was so unexpected that I immediately moved away from him on the raft, and we started talking—both of us a little too loudly—about other things. But something had shifted, and I think we both felt it, because a few days later, walking our bikes home, he’d asked me if I wanted to see a movie, just me and him.
Now, sitting in the darkness of the theater, I concentrated on facing forward, trying to take deep breaths and calm my racing heart. Even though I hadn’t been following the story in the least, I could tell that things were beginning to wind down. Just when I could feel my disappointment start to take hold, the stomach-plunging sadness that I’d gotten so excited for nothing, Henry reached across the armrest and held my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine.
In that moment, I knew that things had changed. Henry and I were, in fact, on my very first date. And we were no longer just simply friends.
Chapter fourteen
“I’LL HAVE…” THE WOMAN IN THE BRIGHT PINK VELOUR HOODIE paused, squinting up at the snack bar menu. She drummed her fingers on the counter, deliberating. Even though it was cloudy and overcast and had been all morning, she had a bright white line of sunblock covering her nose. “A Diet Pepsi, small fries, and a cup of ice,” she finally said.
I turned back to where Elliot was standing by the grill, the spatula hanging slack by his side, all his attention focused on a thick paperback in his hands. “Fries!” I yelled back at him, and he nodded, setting the book aside. As I punched the woman’s order into the register, I explained, “We only have Diet Coke. And there’s a fifteen-cent cup charge for ice.”
She shrugged. “Fine.”
I glanced down at the register for a second, making sure I’d remembered to add the tax, which I hadn’t done for the first three days on the job. When Fred found out, he’d turned even redder than normal, and had to spend a day away from the fish, going over the receipts in the office and muttering. “Five ninety-five.” The woman handed me six, and I placed it in the register and slid a nickel across the counter to her, which she dropped in our nearly empty tip jar. “Thanks,” I said. “Should be ready in five.”
I turned to the soda jets behind me and started filling her cup, waiting until the foam died down before hitting the button again. I’d only been at the job about a week, but I seemed to have gotten the basics down.
I had decided that I would rather suffer Lucy’s wrath than disappoint my father, and was trying to make the best of the job. I got the hang of the scary industrial coffeemaker, essential for the senior-citizen power walkers who stopped by the beach at nine thirty sharp for decaf after their “workout.” Through trial and error, I figured out the fryer—and, as a result, now had a series of small burns on my arm, from where the grease splattered until I learned to avoid it. I learned the basics of the grill, but hadn’t had much chance to test them out yet.
“It’s the beach,” Elliot told me on my third day, when there was a lull in customers and he was showing me how the grill worked. “And the thing about food at the beach is that sand gets everywhere. And who wants sand in their cheeseburger?”
I thought about it, and made a face. “Not me.”
“Not anybody,” he said. “Trust me.” After working with Elliot for a few days I’d found, to my surprise, that I liked him. I’d been worried that he would side with Lucy, shunning me out of loyalty to her. But he wasn’t taking sides, which I was grateful for. He was patient with me when showing me the ropes, and was easy to talk to, even if he could be a little intense, especially about what he called “hard sci-fi.” Already I’d heard far more than I ever wanted to know about some show that seemed to feature an evil Muppet as the villain.
“See that?” he asked, flipping a burger with a large metal spatula, then twirling it in a way that made me think he may have watched Cocktail recently. I tried to give him what I hoped was an impressed smile. “People will get fries, because they’re protected in their little fry container. But we serve the burgers on plates. And if you’re going to set your plate down on your towel, you’re going to get sand in your burger. It’s a given.”
So I learned how to make burgers, even though I probably wouldn’t need to do it that often. I learned how much ice to put in the fountain sodas, and how to work the register, and how to open the snack bar in the morning and close it at night. But the biggest thing I learned was that Lucy could still hold a grudge.
I’d known this about her back when we were friends, of course. She had famously been on the outs with Michele Hoffman for years before someone asked them point-blank what they were fighting about and neither one had been able to remember. Lucy had always had a very distinct sense of right and wrong, but for the first time, I was on the “wrong” side of things. She pretty much ignored me, giving me instructions, when she had to, through Elliot.
It also became clear after a few shifts that she had gone a little boy-crazy. She flirted outrageously with every passably cute male customer, and had collected more guys’ numbers than I would have believed possible, had I not been a silent witness to it. Back when we’d been friends, Lucy and I had both been tongue-tied and awkward around boys. And despite the few relationships I’d had, I still sometimes felt that way. But Lucy had clearly gotten over any hint of shyness sometime in the last five years. Her camaraderie with Elliot and her friendliness toward the (particularly male) customers made our silent standoff all the more apparent. When it was just the two of us working, there was total silence, as she didn’t speak to me unless absolutely necessary. She either busied herself with her phone or read magazines, angling them away from me so that I couldn’t read over her shoulder or see what she put down as her answers on the Cosmo quiz.