Meet Me at the Boardwalk (2 page)

J
ade is always telling me that I’m too shy and quiet. I guess I am. But keeping quiet works for me. Not that there isn’t lots I want to say. There are just plenty of things that I need to keep to myself. Because when I get nervous, I tend to blurt.

I shouldn’t have been nervous. I don’t know why I was nervous. Actually, that’s not true: I know exactly why I was nervous.

I was about to see Miles.

Confession: I have been secretly in love with my best friend, Miles Gordon, for most of my life.

So I get nervous every morning.

Every single morning before school, since the very first day of third grade, Jade, Miles, and I have met at the exact same spot on the boardwalk. The spot on which I now stood, a knot in my stomach and the wind whipping my jet-black hair.

This tradition started the way I imagine most traditions start: by accident. Nine-year-old Jade and I had bumped into each other on the beach. We were both collecting shells for show-and-tell. Jade had wandered off from her dad (he was practicing yoga), and I’d wandered off from my mom (she was schmoozing with some tourist)…and we both zeroed in on the same conch shell at the exact same time.

Two things that bear mentioning: We were already best friends at this point and we were also in a fight. Neither of us can remember what the fight was about. That’s generally been the case with us.

“Megan?” Jade had said.

“Jade?” I had said.

“Do you want that conch for show-and-tell?” Jade demanded.

“Yes,” I admitted.

She opened her mouth, but before she could answer, a boy with the blondest hair you could ever imagine scampered in out of nowhere and grabbed the shell. I vaguely recognized him from school.

“Hey!” Jade yelled. “We wanted that!”

He paused in the sand, grinning at us. “Finders keepers.”

Jade put her hands on her hips. “That’s the best you can come up with?”

“Well, no…but you wanted it for show-and-tell, right?” he asked.

Jade nodded. “Yeah. So?”

He marched over to Jade. “Sorry,” he murmured.

Jade and I gaped at him. Then we gaped at each other. Neither of us had ever heard a boy say “sorry” before. We were nine. We’d heard boys say “booger” and “wiener,” and that was pretty much it.

Miles pointed at the boardwalk. “I’ll make you a deal. If you two meet me right there every day before school, I’ll let you have this conch shell.”

“Why would we want to meet you before school?” Jade asked.

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” he replied simply. “Usually you go to school with a brother or sister, right?”

“Wrong,” Jade replied. “I mean—depending on the sister. But, okay, you have a deal.” She stuck out her hand.

He handed her the shell.

And then Jade handed the shell to me.

Every school day since then, we’ve met at the exact spot Miles pointed to on the boardwalk.

Thanks to Mom’s lame and awful interview, I was way more dressed-up than on a typical last-week-of-school day: a Swiss-dot strapless sundress, patent leather ballet flats…the works. Also, I knew that Miles had read the article. Ever since the accident, he’s always read the paper. He says it’s “distracting.” The fact that Mom used his accident to prove a point about tearing down the boardwalk made me want to send
her
to the hospital. Miles’s accident had nothing to do with people cheering. It was a fluke.

The boardwalk isn’t exactly crowded at nine
A.M.
on Tuesday after Memorial Day. When the sun clears the fog, it’s just a gaggle of old surfers and vendors. On the first day of the season, the tourists all sleep in. It’s another Seashell Point tradition, even for those who don’t
know
the tradition. I’ve always loved that. It’s as if there’s this big, unspoken, psychic connection.

I was dwelling on that when I noticed Jade. She looked as she always did. Dark and petite, she was wearing denim cutoffs and flip-flops. But today, she looked mighty pissed.

“Ugh!” she shouted. “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!”

“What?” I cried, wondering if
she’d
seen the article.

“This summer is going to be a nightmare!”

“W
hy?” Megan asked, looking understandably concerned. “Because of the whole boardwalk—”

“Guess who’s coming to town?” I cut in.

Megan shrugged. “My mom would know. Angelina Jolie?”

I almost smiled. “Turkey. And you know why?” I leaned over the rickety wooden railing and scowled at the surfers, then yanked my sunglasses out of my bag and shoved them on. “Because Dad is going to spend all summer in San Francisco, and he wants Turkey and me to ‘bond.’ ” I made air quotes around the word, imitating Dad’s gravelly voice. “She’s coming here to take time off to study for the bar exam. We’ll be alone all summer together. Turkey!”

Megan, as usual, was silent.

I started calling my older sister Turkey when Megan and I were four and Turquoise was nine. Needless to say, Turquoise hates it—which is also the reason of course why I will never, ever, ever stop calling her Turkey.

I peered at Megan over the rims of my sunglasses. Megan is tall and porcelain and drop-dead gorgeous. In Seashell Point, she stands out in a good way, since most of us locals tend to get wrinkled and tanned even in the dead of winter. But when Megan was little, her height and coloring weren’t exactly pluses, especially not with insecure turds—i.e., 99 percent of the year-round kids in our town—ragging on her.
“Hey, what’s with the fancy threads?” I asked. “
Is
Angelina Jolie coming here this summer?”

She tried to laugh. “My mom had this interview with
The Seashell Register
this morning, and she dragged me along. It’s not worth even getting into.”

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Totally,” she lied. She is by far the lousiest liar on the planet. “So why is your dad going to spend all summer in San Francisco?” she asked.

I decided not to pry. She wouldn’t have told me what was wrong, anyway. “He got a yoga-teaching gig,” I said.

“Really? That’s so awesome!” she exclaimed. “You can turn your bungalow into a big Seashell Point party house. I mean, really: Turquoise is probably going to spend all her time at the library, anyway, buried in law books. It’ll be like a vacation in your own home. It’ll be like
you’re
a tourist!”

I removed my sunglasses. “Are you on drugs?”

She sighed with a little smirk. “No, it’s just that…when I’m—”

“Nervous, you tend to blurt.” I squeezed her arm. “I know. What’s up?”

She turned back toward the water and drummed her fingers on the railing. I knew she wasn’t going to speak.

“You know what, Megan, you are totally right,” I said instead.

“About what?”

“About turning my house into a party house. About living like a tourist! I mean it’s funny because I had that
same exact idea, too, before I found out that Turkey would be coming. Seriously, Meg. Not to get all corny on you, but this is our last summer before senior year. We have to make the most of it. Think about how many times we’ve stood in this exact spot and wondered what it would be like to live like a tourist. Now we have the upper hand.
We’ll
have the crazy parties. You and me and Miles! But—wait. Okay. We have to make sure you and I are the only girls. Well, maybe not the
only
girls, but we’ll make sure that no other super-hot chicks come except you. And tons of yummy tourist boys. Ha! I love it!”

Megan swallowed. “See? I shouldn’t have opened my mouth,” she murmured.

I stared at her. Something really
was
bothering her. I knew it wasn’t the usual, either: that I needed to stop harping on how beautiful she was. But why shouldn’t I harp? When she talks about herself (almost never) in a fit of verbosity, it’s along the lines of: “
Thin, black-haired, milk-pale, and Asian? That may work for Manga or some Japanese Goth fashion magazine, but it has never worked in Seashell Point.
”

I decided to wait to let her speak.

What finally came out of Meg’s mouth was: “You’d hook up with a tourist?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, Meg. If he were a rock star, yes. Anyway,
you
got with Sean Edwards.”

Her face flushed. “I…did—I did not ‘get’ with Sean Edwards,” she stammered, but then she laughed out loud.

“Don’t try to con a con artist,” I said drily. “I saw you guys. Amusement Alley. Two summers ago. You took the little kiddie ride through the haunted house. When you went in, he had his arm around you. When the car came out, you two were sucking face.”

“I…I…” she sputtered. “I only kissed him because—”

“Hey! It’s okay. We all make mistakes. And Sean
is
pretty cute.”

“But he’s a moron!” she exclaimed.

“Sure, he’s not that much smarter than the animatronic ghosts inside the haunted house, but those blue eyes are to die for.”

“Exactly!” She sighed and shook her head. “Jeez. It’s the blurting thing again.”

“I’ll take that as a confession.” I chuckled to myself, and then dug into my bag. “Here, you look a little red. Put some sunblock on. What time was your big newspaper interview? You’ve probably been standing in the sun for hours now.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Mom.”

She stifled a laugh—then she grabbed the bottle of 45-SPF out of my hands. I only carried it around for her. Every summer, it always happens: She forgets to wear sunblock one day and ends up lobster-red. Her real mom, unfortunately, is always just a tad more concerned with how her daughter’s sunburn will affect the tourist trade.
“Honey, you don’t need to
stop by the office after work; I have clients. You might want to call the Who’s-Its and warn them about your appearance in case they have guests.”

These are actual quotes.

“You know what the funny thing is,” Megan said, handing back the lotion. “I think I will actually have to be your dad this summer.”

“Hey, I’m fine. If I need any male guidance, there’s always Miles.”

She opened her mouth, and then closed it.

“What?” I felt an unpleasant stirring inside.

“No, you’re right,” she said in a faraway voice. “There’s always Miles.”

For once,
I
decided to remain silent. I have always, always suspected that Megan harbored a crush on Miles. But I couldn’t see the two of them together. They were like siblings. We all were.

Which made me feel that much worse about what had happened last summer.

At the exact same moment, I spotted a tall blond boy down the boardwalk. A boy with sinewy tanned arms, bright brown eyes, and a slight limp—a surfer who no longer surfed—smiling and hobbling toward us as fast as he could, as he had every morning before school this year. Miles Gordon, the boy with whom I shared a terrible, awful secret.

“I
want to be a giraffe.”

That was when he had me. At that moment, I knew I would marry him.

We were both nine years old, but still—I knew. It was fourth grade. Our homeroom teacher, Mr. Browning, had just posed the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The way Mr. Browning kept yawning and rubbing his bleary eyes…well, I doubted he’d spent the previous afternoon preparing a lesson plan. Actually, I knew for a fact that he’d spent the afternoon surfing. Surfers here tend to relax after a hard day…and not by thinking about class. He was winging it.

His tired gaze swept over us. “Megan Kim?” he asked.

“Mayor of Seashell Point,” I answered quietly.

Everybody laughed.

“What? It would be fun.” I was blushing furiously.

“Dorks can have
fun
?” Brian Ashe hooted from the back.

Jade spun around in her chair. “What do you want to be, Brian, the village idiot?”

Brian Ashe is still the biggest idiot in Seashell Point—even bigger than the worst summer tourist—and with each passing day, he bears a closer resemblance to Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel from
The Simpsons.

All the other boys started cracking up, including Miles.

“Okay, class. Settle down,” Mr. Browning grumbled. “How about you, Jade? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

She shrugged.

But a few other kids were still snickering at me, and I was cringing, and before Jade could think of an answer, Miles chimed in with: “I want to be a giraffe.”

The classroom fell silent. No more snickers.

Then
I
started laughing. Nobody laughed but me.

I clamped my hand over my mouth. Miles grinned back. My hand fell away. I remember how his eyes (think caramel brown), softened then, sort of a glimpse into the way he looks now. He brushed his blond hair out of his face and jammed his hands into his shorts pockets, and then started to talk, the whole time he stared at me instead of Mr. Browning.

“No, really,” he said. “Giraffes can grab fruit out of trees that no person can reach. Or what about all those game stands on the boardwalk? How they have to use that stick-and-claw thingy to get the prizes on the high shelves? A giraffe could do that. Plus, a giraffe would be the coolest animal at Pete’s Petting Zoo. That’s where I would be—”

“That’s very nice, Miles,” Mr. Browning interrupted. “But the question was directed at Jade. Jade Cohen? Care to respond?”

“President of the I-Hate-Brian-Ashe Club,” she said.

Everybody laughed again. My hand shot up.

“Megan, I see you’d like to add to this discussion.” Mr. Browning groaned.

“No, but I changed my mind,” I announced. “I want to be boss of Pete’s Petting Zoo. I can work my way up to mayor from there. Jade will be my deputy.”

Oh, and if the giraffe thing doesn’t work out for Miles?
I thought.
I’d like to be his wife
.

Ever since then, I’ve kind of been a lost cause. And nobody—
not even Jade
—knows how I feel about the boy I will probably never have.

The weird thing is, even though Miles and Jade have no clue about my crush, the two of them have been acting noticeably bizarre toward me this year. Little silences, little looks. Did they figure out my secret? Was it something else? It was making me paranoid, and I was hoping that this summer would be our chance to clear things up.