Thirteen Plus One (17 page)

“Other animals, mainly,” Erika said.

“Right. Other animals, if they saw me, might want to eat me or my eggs. So I come to shore at night, and because I’m clever, I know to always keep the moon at my back.”

I turned to Dinah to see if she was following. This time she lifted her shoulders. I turned back to Cinnamon.
“Excusez?”

Alphonse grabbed the edge of the table and rocked back on the legs of his chair. “The moon rises over the ocean. The sea turtles know this, and they know that if they keep the moon behind them, they’ll eventually reach the dunes.”

“Which is where they lay their eggs,” Brooklyn said.

Dinah’s mouth fell open. One of the things I loved about Dinah (but which I didn’t want for myself) was the fact that she was constitutionally incapable of hiding her emotions. “That is
so cool
,” she said, her tone full of wonder.

“Isn’t it?” Brooklyn said. “And the babies, when they hatch, they use the moon too.”

“How?” I said.

“That’s how they get to the ocean,” Alphonse said. His eyes met mine. “The hatchlings are born knowing to head
toward
the light of the moon. But if a house has its porch lights on, or if light’s blazing from the front room ...”

“The hatchlings could go the wrong way,” I finished.

“If they did ... what would happen to them?” Dinah asked. She searched the faces around the table.

“They wouldn’t make it,” Virginia said.

“What do you mean, ‘wouldn’t make it’?”

Virginia took a sip of wine. The rest of us were having Coke, which Ryan and Mark called “pop.”

“The baby turtles have to make the trek from the nest to the shore,” she said, “and they have to do it on their own. It’s how they imprint on the beach—so they can return one day—and it’s how they develop the strength to survive once they enter the water.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “So if they head the wrong way, like toward a house, they’ll just.... you know ...”

“Die,” Cinnamon finished.

Dinah looked at Cinnamon. Then at Ryan. Then around the table at the rest of us. “But ... no! That’s so
sad!

“So come with,” Ryan said. “Give out bumper stickers with me and Brook.”

“
Brook
lyn,”
Brooklyn said. She gave Ryan a skinny-blond-girl stare, fierce in the way only skinny blond girls can be. “Not Brook.”

Ryan held up his hands. “My bad.”

“I want to build cages,” Erika announced.

“All right, you can build cages with Milo,” Virginia said. “And Cinnamon and Mark, why don’t you put in some hours at the aquarium? I can drop you off when I go into town for groceries.” She scanned our faces. “That’s everyone, right? We’re all good?”

“All good,” we chorused.

She smiled. “In that case, let’s get this kitchen cleaned up.”

Chairs scraped the floor. Individual conversations broke out, and Ryan reached across the table and snatched the last bit of Cinnamon’s fish taco.

“Hey!” she protested.

Ryan grinned. James did, too—but not as convincingly. More like he wished he’d been the rascally taco stealer.

So this is our group, I thought. I’ll be spending the next month with these people.

Alphonse, gorgeous and exotic. James, skater dude, who maybe had a thing for Cinnamon. Mark and Ryan from Chi
cah
go, Brooklyn with the curled hair, and Erika, who’d probably never used a curling iron in her life. Except possibly as a weapon.

Add Dinah, Cinnamon, and me to the mix, and that was it. That was the ten of us. Except ... oh, man! I totally spaced Milo!

I studied him surreptitiously and couldn’t generate much of an opinion about him ... except that he was quiet, and that tomorrow he’d be building cages with Erika.

He wasn’t bad looking. His posture was hunchy, and patches of acne marred his cheeks. But his eyes were intelligent and kind.

He must have felt me looking at him, because he met my gaze and smiled. It was a quick smile, and shy, and surprisingly sweet.

I smiled back.

 

On the beach that night, while the others sat in a circle and passed around a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, Cinnamon, Dinah, and I snuck off by ourselves. We lay on our backs on the sand, Cinnamon to my right and Dinah to my left. I touched feet with both of them as I gazed at the stars. They were brighter here than in Atlanta, and so plentiful I could lose myself in them.

That was one good thing about living in the olden days, I
thought randomly
. Sure, life was tough, and they didn’t have washing machines. But they had these glorious stars.

“So beautiful,” Dinah murmured.

I pressed my big toe against hers, the foot equivalent of a hand-squeeze.

“Yay, stars!” cheered Cinnamon, who was in high spirits. “And you know what else I say yay to?”

I turned my head, enjoying the coolness of the sand. “What else do you say yay to, Cin?”

“
james
.” She rolled it off her tongue like a delicious caramel. “Cinnamon gives a
big
yay to James.”

“I thought you swore off boys,” Dinah said.

“I thought you were the Black Widow,” I said.

“Ehh,”
Cinnamon said. “It’s time for me to heal and move on—and did you see how he kept staring at me?”

“He
might
have been staring at you,” I said to tease her. “He might have been staring at the wall. Kinda hard to tell with all that hair in his eyes.”

“James is adorable,” Dinah said. “I figured you’d be more into Ryan, though.”

“Ryan?” Cinnamon said.
“Why?”

“Um ... because he reminds me of Bryce?”

“Ugh. If you say that ever again, I will be forced to bury you up to your neck and let the seagulls eat you.”

“Don’t worry,” I whispered, swiveling my head her way. “I’d save you.”

“I
heard
that,” Cinnamon said.

“I think James is cute,” I said. “But Cinnamon, for reals, don’t you think he’s a little ... ?”

“A little
what?”

“
Hmm
, how to put this.” I interlaced my fingers and used them as a pillow. “Pure? Trusting? Naive?”

“
Win
nie!” She pushed me with her foot.

“You’d eat him alive! He’s so ...
sweet,
and you’re so...”

“I’m so
what?”

“Um. Um.” I giggled. “Burly?”

“
Burly?!
”

“Okay, bad word choice. I just mean ... well ... who do you think would wear the pants in the relationship, you know? There’s kinda no doubt who it would be.”

“So?” she said. “Lucky him, I say. I’ll train him how to be a
good
boyfriend, and
not
like Bryce, and he will be my pet.”

“Your pet?” Dinah said.

“Ker-
eepy
,” I said.

“And please don’t call me fat,” she muttered. “You’re always all, ‘Cinnamon, be nice. Cinnamon, don’t tease.’ Shouldn’t the same rules apply to you?”

I was baffled. When did I call her ... ?

Ohhh.
She thought, when I said “burly,” that I was referring to her weight.

“Wait,” I said. “I didn’t mean ‘burly’ as in a big, burly football player. I meant like a
burr,
a real live burr.”

“Whatever.”

“You’re not burly, I swear. You’re just, you know, strong! You’re tough!”

“Winnie? Are you somehow under the impression that you’re making things better?”

“Yes?”

“You are sadly mistaken.”

I sat bolt upright, craned over, and gave her a loud, wet smooch, making her cringe and go,
“Ewww!”

“Now are things better?”

She
hmmph-ed,
and I grinned and leaned back on my elbows.

The waves lapped the shore, and a feeling hung in the air that was different from the feeling of being in Atlanta. Maybe it was the sand digging into my skin, or maybe the balmy breeze ruffling my hair. Or ... was I missing Lars? Was that it?

As if she’d read my mind, Dinah said, “How’s Lars, Winnie? Have you talked to him?”

I gazed at the dark water, allowing its ebb and flow to hypnotize me. “He called, but we were cleaning up the kitchen, so I didn’t answer. And he’s sent about a thousand texts.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing,” Dinah said.

“What? No.”

Dinah waited.

“If I did, it was by accident. I’m glad he’s texted. I just haven’t had time to text him back.”

“Are y’all having a fight?” Dinah asked.

I lay back on the sand. I closed my eyes and covered them with lightly clenched fists. “No, not a fight.”

“Then what?”

“Yes,” Cinnamon said. “Please enlighten us.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I need to call him back ... and I
will
... but I’ve got, like, this tangled feeling inside.”

“Hmm,” Cinnamon said. “Carry on.”

“It’s nothing. I’m just being stupid. But sometimes I just want—” I broke off.

“Sometimes you just want
what?”
Dinah said.

Oh, fine,
I thought.
It’s dumb and stupid and embarrassing, but fine.

“A cupcake,” I whispered, barely letting the word slip from my lips.

“Huh?” Cinnamon said. “Couldn’t hear ya, pardner.”

I opened my eyes, because it wasn’t just the cupcake. I was also mad at him for going to Germany, despite the fact that he hadn’t even left yet. How ridiculous was that? I blamed him for his mom’s travel plans, as if he had the option to say, “No, thanks, I’d rather stay in Atlanta with Winnie.”

Anyway, he would have chosen to stay with me if that had been an option. So what
was
my problem?
Ag!
It was just so hard to explain!

“I guess I want that giddy-crush feeling back,” I said at last.

“Ah,” Cinnamon said. “You don’t want to be a sofa cushion.”

“I don’t want to be a sofa cushion,” I agreed. “Though I have no idea what that means.”

She rolled onto her side and propped her head in her hand. “You don’t want to be the comfy place he comes home to.”

“She doesn’t?” Dinah said from the darkness.

“Yeah, I don’t?”

“Well, according to you,” Cinnamon said. “You’re the one who agreed.”

“No, I just said I don’t want to be a sofa cushion.” I paused. “Do
you
want to be a sofa cushion?”

“I wouldn’t mind being James’s sofa cushion,” she said in an eyebrow-waggle voice.

“Hey, girls! one of the guys called out to us from farther up on shore. ”Get over here—we’re going to play Chubby Bunny! “

Cinnamon twisted her head, aiming her words over her shoulder. “What’s Chubby Bunny?”

“Youse guys don’t know Chubby Bunny?” either Ryan or Mark said.

Dinah sat up and finger-combed her hair. To us, she whispered, “I don’t. Do y’all?”

“Nope, but I’m up for finding out,” Cinnamon said. She got to her feet and started over toward the rest of the group. She paused and looked back. “Dudes?”

“I thought we were talking about Lars,” I said.

“You don’t want to be a fixture,” Cinnamon said. “You want to be”—she circled her hand—“the fabulous new Wii game that he’s obsessed with, not the couch he plants his butt on.”

“Ew, and ew again,” I said. “And you’re wrong. I don’t want to be a Wii game.” I wanted to be ... the girl he adored and brought cupcakes to. The girl he wooed.

Omigosh, was that it? I wanted to be
wooed?

“Okay, you win,” Cinnamon said to me. “Now c’mon, let’s go find out about this Chubby Bubby.”

“Chubby
Bunny”
yelled either Mark or Ryan.

“That’s what I
said!”

She pulled Dinah up first, then extended her hand toward me. “C‘mon, c’mon.”

I rocked myself to a sitting position and clasped her hand. She groaned as she heaved me up.

“You’re
the burly one,” she said.

“Sorry again about that. I really didn’t mean it like you think.”

“Then come play Chubby Bubby and let me win so I look good for James.”

“Sweetie, how could you not look good for James?”

She grinned. “Now that’s the kind of talk I like to hear.”

 

Chubby Bunny turned out to involve shoving as many marshmallows into your mouth as you could, and after each new addition, you had to say “Chubby Bunny.” And it had to come out intelligible.

Cinnamon was a natural. With an astounding
thirteen jumbo-size marshmallows
crammed into her cheeks, she was the chubbiest bunny ever.

The instant Ryan lifted her arm in victory, she spit them out rapid-fire like soggy, squishy bullets. One of them hit James in the stomach, and he doubled over.

“Death by marshmallows!” he cried. Cinnamon blew exaggerated kissy sounds at him, and her lips were powdery-white, and it filled me with joy to see her turning on the ol’ Cinnamon charm. It had been too long.

And then,
very
eye-popping, I noticed that Dinah was turning on some charm of her own—with quiet Milo!!! I’d turned to her to share a yay-Cinnamon moment, only she didn’t see me because she was
waaaay
too busy sharing a moment with Milo. They were smiling at each other with matching shy smiles, and a lump formed in my throat. I looked away and swallowed repeatedly.

“You all right?” Alphonse asked, appearing by my side.

“Me? Yeah.” My gaze flitted to his face, and I gave him a wry grin. At least, I was aiming for wry. I wasn’t sure why—to impress him? The corner of his mouth curved up, so I guess it worked. Feeling suddenly awkward, I jammed my hands in the pockets of my cutoffs.

“Well ... good night,” he said.

“Good night,” I said.

“See you in the morning? Bright and early?”

“Bright and early,” I echoed.
Urgh,
I told myself. Stop
repeating him
!