Fifteenth Summer (14 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said as John’s wife said something about an extra plate. “Can you repeat that?”

I saw the customers exchange a look and shift in their seats.

It’s going to be a long afternoon,
they telegraphed to each other.

You don’t know the half of it, people,
I thought.

B
y the end of my shift, I was beyond exhausted. If Melissa thought two-to-eight was the easy shift, then she was a superhero. My feet ached and my arms were sore from lugging heavy trays. I had a greasy spot on my camisole from a salad dressing spill. I was starving, but I also had no desire to even look at food.

I was also just as bewildered by the Kiss as I’d been six hours earlier. In my few minutes of free time that afternoon, I’d sent Emma three urgent
NEED ADVICE
texts, but her phone must have been turned off. Her mean teachers at the Intensive apparently loved to snap cell phones in half if they dared to ring during class. The ballet world was so weird.

Of course, everything was seeming weird to me at that moment—customers who left tips entirely in nickels, Melanie making a gross blue and red cake in honor of the Cubs . . . Weirdest of all, of course, was Josh acting all phobic one moment, then planting the best kiss of my life on me the next.

I went to the little office off the kitchen to take off my apron and get ready to leave. I considered calling a couple other friends from back home to get their take on the Kiss, but I was too tired to explain all the backstory to them. Then I thought about talking to Hannah. With her I could speak in sisters’ shorthand. Then she’d probably do that thing where she reads between the lines of what I tell her and informs me of what I’m
really
saying. Usually I find that excruciatingly annoying, but in this case I actually kind of craved it.

You’ve got two sisters who’ve just been through all this,
Hannah and Abbie had told me before the lantern party.

I hated when they were right, but they were right. I decided to talk to Hannah right after I got home.

As I walked through the dining room, waving good-bye to Melissa, I pulled the rubber band out of my messy ponytail and held it between my front teeth. I pushed through the front door backward as I used both hands to smooth my hair back so I could make a new, neater pony.

But as soon as the door
swooshed
closed behind me, I heard the jingle of Dog Ear’s door opening and closing as well.

I glanced up. The elastic band fell out of my mouth and my hands dropped to my sides, causing my hair to poof frizzily around my face.

Josh was standing in front of the bookstore.

He looked kind of like he wanted to dive right back inside.

For once I knew we had something in common, because I kind of wanted to do the same thing.

But I also couldn’t stop staring at him. At his smooth face, his super-short hair, and his cute orange-and-green sneakers.

“Hi,” I said. My voice sounded hesitant and a little raspy after talking over the clatter of dishes all day.

“Hi,” Josh said, sounding just as nervous as I felt. Feeling clumsy, I grabbed my hair elastic off the sidewalk. Then Josh pointed behind him. “Are you walking this way?”

I nodded and started down Main. Josh fell into step beside me, and it felt . . . wonderful. He was so close that our arms almost touched, so close that I could feel the warmth radiating off his body.

I guess that was what made me turn off Main and head down
Althorp. Suddenly, instead of wanting to get home as soon as possible to shower, eat a mayo-free dinner, and puzzle out this Josh business with my sister, I wanted this walk—with Josh—to last as long as possible.

When we were a few feet from the end of the block, Josh stopped, turned, and looked down at me. He really was tall. His face looked sweetly sheepish and a little aggravated.

“Listen,” he said. “I know you must think I’m crazy. I mean, I haven’t exactly been, um, consistent. With you.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I guess it’s safe to say,” Josh went on, “I’ve been a little, how do I say this . . . taken aback.”

“Taken aback?” I asked. This did
not
sound like a positive thing.

“See?” Josh said, wringing his hands. “I never say the right thing to you. It’s like I don’t have control over my mouth.”

See?
I thought.
He all but said it—he
did
kiss me by accident!

I bit my lip, bracing myself for heartbreak.

“Chelsea,” Josh said, “here’s the thing. You tried to rescue those books from me. And you think
Coconut Dreams
is as fabulously horrible as I do. And you wear those vintage clothes, and you have that
hair
—”

“I hate my hair,” I said, my hand instinctively springing to my head to smooth it down.

“See?” Josh repeated. “I did it again.”

He looked down at the ground, suddenly even shyer.

“And then I went and . . . you know,” he said. “Earlier.”

“Yeah, earlier,” I whispered.

“So anyway, about that,” Josh said. “I’m sor—”

Josh didn’t get to finish what he was saying.

Because I grabbed him by the shoulders and sprang to my tiptoes—and kissed him!

Josh stumbled backward. I started to pull away from the kiss, but he plunged his hand into my messy mane of hair and pulled me closer.

And now I wasn’t kissing him and he wasn’t kissing me.

We were kissing each other.

My eyes fluttered closed. I let my right hand trail down Josh’s arm—which was thin but muscular and so smooth and warm—until my hand found his. Our fingers intertwined.

Josh tilted until his shoulder blades touched the brick wall behind him. I tilted along with him.

And now “melty” took on a different meaning. All the confusion and hurt I’d been feeling? All those mixed signals Josh had given me? They all melted away—canceled out by one perfect kiss after another.

M
y dad woke me and my sisters up early the next morning.

“I’m commandeering you for the morning,” he announced. “Your mother wants some time to herself, and
I
want some time with my wayward daughters.”

“Dad,” I said, shoving a curl out of my eyes as I slumped out of my bed, “me having a
job
doesn’t exactly make me wayward. You and Mom are the ones who make us earn all our own money.”

“Well, then I guess I’m only talking about Hannah,” Dad said lightly. “Anyway, be in the kitchen in five. No primping!”

I laughed as he hurried down the hall, then I whispered to Abbie, “What does he mean ‘Hannah’? What’s she been up to?”

“Didn’t you know?” Abbie said, throwing off her covers and sitting up in bed. “She had a date with Fasthands last night. She got home after you were asleep.”

“Liam?” I said.

“Yes,
Liam
,” Abbie grumbled. “When she got home, she was all giggly and floaty.
Very
un-Hannah-like.”

“Oh!” I said.

I hurried over to the closet and ducked inside it, ostensibly to throw on some clothes, but also because I had to hide my incredulous grin.

How had this happened? Instead of Hannah and Abbie doing all the dating, it was Hannah and
me
who’d been with boys last night.

That was very un-Chelsea-like, too.

Part of me wanted to dash to Hannah’s room and ask her if she felt just like I did—all dreamy and incredulous. I kept wondering if the previous night had really happened. Then I’d touch my lips and remember what
Josh’s
lips had felt like and realize, yes, it really had.

“Girls! I’ve got bagels toasting!”

It was my dad—giving me no time to dish with Hannah about Josh. What
was
this mystery outing? I quickly threw on some knee-length khakis and an A-line top with a swirly, psychedelic pattern on it. I grabbed some heavy-duty bobby pins off the dresser and piled my hair into a sloppy bun on top of my head.

In the kitchen my dad handed each of us a hot bagel wrapped loosely in a paper towel. He grabbed a coffee thermos and a stack of paper cups and shooed us toward the front door.

As we passed through the living room, I saw my mom standing in front of the built-in hutch. It was the centerpiece of the living room, its shelves filled with books, family photos, knick-knacks, and a tiny TV. The bottom of the hutch was all cabinets. Inside of these were so many of the things that made the cottage Granly’s. There were decks of mismatched playing cards and lots of battered board games. Photo albums filled an entire shelf. There was an accordion folder full of essays my mom had written in high school and college, and a dried corsage. I’d always loved Granly’s sewing basket and the box of super-loud costume jewelry that she’d worn in the sixties and seventies. My sisters and I used them to play dress-up when we were little.

My mom was staring down at those cabinets. Her hands were on her hips and her eyes looked tired, even though she was usually such a morning person.

“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly.

She jumped, startled. When she looked in my direction, her eyes were a little unfocused—until they crinkled into a beaming smile.

“Oh! Hi, sweetheart,” she said. The perkiness in her voice was set to extra high.

Maybe I should have lingered a moment and given my mom some sympathy as she got ready to sort through Granly’s cabinets.

But I just didn’t want to go there. Not when a tiny remnant of last night’s magic was still lingering inside me.

So I just said, “Well, have a good morning.”

“You too,” Mom replied. “Enjoy the fishing!”

“Fishing?” I squawked. Then I stomped outside. “Daaaad!”

He knew we hated fishing! He’d totally conned us!

Hannah and Abbie were already settled into their seats, munching their bagels. Dad had started the car. I flounced into the backseat next to Hannah and pointed an accusing finger at our father.

“Do you know where he’s taking us?” I said as my dad hurriedly put the car into reverse and skidded out of the driveway. “Fishing!”

“Daaaaaad!” Abbie and Hannah complained.

“Throw me a fish bone, will you?” my dad said, with his dadly chortle. “It’s the one father-son kind of thing I ever ask of you.”

“Oh, poor Dad,” Abbie teased. “You know you love having girls.”

“I
would
love it, if you’d just put on a happy fishing face for me,” Dad said, pretending to be grouchy about it.

“First of all, I don’t know how Americans turned fishing into a male thing,” Hannah said. “In most cultures it’s the women who gather the fish.”

“Second of all,” I piped in, “I don’t know why boys
or
girls like it. It’s
boring
. Only men would define sitting and waiting for some unsuspecting fish to eat your fake bug as a sport.”

“A
fashionable
sport,” my dad said. He opened the car’s center console and pulled out a beat-up tan hat with neon-colored lures all over it.

“Ew, it smells like fish!” Hannah said, waving her hand in front of her nose.

So much for our bagels. We put them aside in disgust, opened the windows, and teased my dad the entire drive to the South Branch Galien River.

I have to admit, it was really fun.

The river was gorgeous, all breezy and glinty in the early-morning sunshine. My sisters and I baited our hooks, plopped them into the water, and lay back on the smooth, warm, weathered wood of the dock.

But after a short while Abbie popped up.

“Daddy,” she said, “since you turned us off our bagels, can’t you please go get us some Casper’s Donuts?”

“Abbie,” Dad said, messing with a lure and his line, “I haven’t even caught—”

“Toss it in,” Abbie said, pointing at Dad’s hook. “We’ll watch if for you, I promise. Pleeease. Casper’s is so close, and those donuts are
so
good.”

“Pretty please,” I joined in the begging.

“Pretty please with cinnamon and sugar on top?” Hannah added with a grin.

“Ooh, yeah,” Abbie said. “Cinnamon sugar cake donuts. Get those!”

Dad frowned at us, then scratched his head beneath his fishy hat.

“If you promise to have a good attitude about this fishing expedition,” he said, “I will get you the donuts.”

“We promise,” Abbie said. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Oh, now I’m Dad again,” my dad grumbled. “Now that you’ve gotten what you want.”

“Bye, Daddy!” we singsonged together, laughing and waving at him.

He grinned as he drove away. The minute he pulled into the
road, Abbie planted her fists on her hips and glared at Hannah.

“You’re so lucky I got rid of him before I ask you this,” Abbie said to Hannah. “
What
is that?”

Abbie pointed at Hannah’s neck.

Hannah gasped and pulled her loose hair tightly beneath her chin.

“Do you think Dad saw?” she asked.

“Saw what?” I sputtered. “What is it?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand,” Abbie said, brushing me off with a wave. Then she jumped at Hannah and pushed her hair back, exposing a reddish-blue mark on her neck.

“Hey!” Hannah swatted at Abbie’s hand. “Stop it!”

“Ew,” I said, pointing at the splotch. “What is that?”

“It’s a hickey,” Abbie said smugly. “Only the tackiest thing a girl could ever come home with.”

Hannah looked both mortified and a little proud.

“What, you’re the only one allowed to mess around with guys?” she said to Abbie. “It’s no big deal.”

“I bet that’s what he said,” Abbie scoffed. “What else does Fasthands say is no big deal?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Hannah said. “I
am
older than you, you know.”

“Then act like it,” Abbie said.

While Hannah glared at Abbie, I jumped in.

“What did you mean, I ‘wouldn’t understand’?” I demanded. “I know things.”

Abbie and Hannah both looked at me like I was a black fly buzzing around their heads.

“What kind of things?” Abbie said in a patronizing tone.

“I kissed a boy just last night!” I blurted.

It wasn’t exactly how I’d planned to pass along this momentous information. I’d pictured a much more romantic moment—my sisters and I would be stargazing together or taking a long walk. And then I would blushingly tell them that I was deeply in like with a boy named Josh.