Page 5 of Summer After Summer

“I’ve decided on sex.” Ashley stretches her arms above her head. She’s wearing a tiny bikini with black and white polka dots that I’d never feel comfortable in. My shoulders are too broad from tennis, and I have more muscles than normal everywhere else. I’m happy in my tankini that doesn’t make me feel like everyone’s looking at me.

“Bold choice since there’s no boy in sight.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Ooh, I know what we should do!”

“What?”

“Go to the beach.”

“You want to go to the beach? With the sand? And the tourists?” Ashley’s inherited her parents’ snooty attitude toward the vacationers who are just like them, minus the millions of dollars they had to buy a house in one of the new developments a mile from here.

“I was thinking more of the umbrella boys.”

“Oh.” I sit up. The public beach near the club is staffed with teenage boys for the summer. They rent out chairs and umbrellas and run the concession stand. “That’s mostly guys from the local high school.”

“So?”

“I know all of them already. Since kindergarten.”

“Maybe they’ve grown up since you switched to Hampton Prep.”

“I guess.”

Ashley checks her flip phone quickly. “It’s almost lunch time. If we go now, we can get food from the Shack.”

The thought of one of their lobster rolls does sound good. “But what about the calories?”

“It’s first week. No diets.” She stands and starts stuffing one of the club towels into her beach bag.

“You’re not supposed to take that off the property,” I say, then regret it. Ashley knows the rules, and I don’t need to be reminding her like I’m her mother. She still has one of those.

Ashley brings her Vuarnets down over her eyes. They’re pink and cat-eyed, and she brought me a pair too. “I thought you weren’t the program coordinator.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Come on, let’s go.”

I collect my things, shove my feet into my flip-flops, and follow Ashley out of the club grounds, walking single file behind her down the narrow path through the dunes. The club owns its own strip of beach, the Atlantic stretching out in front of it, the cold waves rolling in and crashing into the white-sand shore. As usual, the club’s beach is abandoned, but the public beach is full. There’s music blaring from the speaker on the lifeguard’s station, and the blue and white umbrellas they rent out are twisting in the wind.

“You sure you want to do this?” I say to Ashley, watching the sand fly up from the back of her flip-flops. They’re Lanzarote she told me, as if I’m supposed to know what that means.

She glances back. “You have a better idea?”

“I think we’ve already established that I do not.”

She grins, her straight teeth newly free of the braces that she’d hated. “Well, come on then. Your future awaits!” She points her arm to the sky, mocking herself and our mission. But she doesn’t stop and neither do I. Instead, we clamber over the berm that separates the two beaches, and plop down onto the public side as the wind whips my ponytail against my neck.

“Who looks like a good prospect?” Ashley asks as she shades her eyes from the sun. The sunnies are cute, but they don’t block out much light.

I scan the crowd. Six guys our age are standing by the umbrella station, wearing khaki shorts and white polos. I recognize five of them from middle school. Guys named Dave and Dan and Mike, who thought it was funny to pull on my braids and tear down my art projects from the teacher’s honor wall. I have no interest in speaking to them.

But there’s another boy—tall, athletic, with dark hair that curls across his forehead—I’ve never seen before.

“Ooh la la, who is that?” Ashley gives a low whistle.

“Shh!”

“He can’t hear us. Come on—let’s say hi.” Ash tugs on my arm.

---