Thirteen Plus One (24 page)

“Like me and James having to do the long-distance thing?” she said. “Like having to go back to sucky Atlanta, city of suckville, land of no James?”

It was predawn. We were standing in the stairwell. I was about to head out for my last-ever early morning crawl patrol, since tomorrow our parents were coming to pick us up. Tomorrow morning was earmarked for packing and taking the sheets off our beds and stuff like that.

Cinnamon shouldn’t have even been awake ... except, she’d never gone to bed. She and James had cuddled on the living room’s L-shaped sofas
all night long.

“We didn’t
do
anything,” she’d told me when we ran into each other in the stairwell. “We just snuggled. And talked.” She’d looked at me plaintively. “I can talk to him about anything, Winnie.”

“You can talk to me about anything,” I replied.

“It’s different when it’s your boyfriend,” she said.
“You
know.”

I did know. Girl buds were essential. Girl buds made the world go ’round. But boyfriends
were
different. It wasn’t that they were better, because I loved Cinnamon and Dinah with all my heart.

A boyfriend, however, didn’t borrow your hairbrush; he stroked your hair instead. And a boyfriend didn’t stick his hand in your face and say, “Paint my nails.” He wove his fingers through yours and gazed at you in that melt-y way.

Except Lars hadn’t gazed at me in that melt-y way in weeks. That was because we’d been apart, of course ... only, he hadn’t talked to me on the phone in that melt-y way in a while, either. Things had been weird. One way I knew they were weird was because I
did
miss him, but not so desperately that I couldn’t wait to see him.

When we did finally see each other, what if things weren’t good anymore? What if we weren’t
us?

You’re laying here feeling sorry for yourself, afraid to tell your boyfriend you want a cupcake.
That’s what Brooklyn said that day on the porch. And yes, she used poor grammar—if she went to Westminster, she’d know that a person “lies”; a chicken “lays”—but that didn’t mean she wasn’t onto something.

A person lies ...
was I lying to myself about boys and sadness and snuggling and Lars?

A chicken lays ...
wasIachicken for not just talking to him about it? For being too wimpy to lay my stupid issues out in the open?

Omigod, I was both.

Crap.

I was a lying chicken.

I shook my head to clear it. My hands were still gripping Cinnamon’s shoulders, and she was just ... letting them. Letting
me,
as my hands were not some separate entity, gallivanting off and gripping things of their own volition.

She was one step below me, so I shuffled clockwise one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Now she stood where I used to be, and vice-versa.

“Go to bed,” I instructed, pushing her toward our attic room. “You need sleep, or you will have horrible purple circles under your eyes, and James will think you’re ugly.”

“No, he won’t.”

“You’re right. He won’t.”

“He thinks I’m beautiful. He said so. He calls me his beautiful Cinnabuns.”

Cinnabuns? Awww.
My heart grew heavy with the sweet-goofiness of it, like the sweet-goofiness I once had with Lars.

“You
are
beautiful,” I said. “But if you don’t get at least a little rest, you’ll be worthless at the bonfire.”

At sunset, we were all going to meet on the beach. We’d cook hot dogs and marshmallows and foil-wrapped packets of corn and potatoes, though not necessarily in that order. We’d have to put out the fire once it got dark, because of DeBordieu’s beachfront lighting ordinance, but there’d be plenty of Mountain Dew to keep everyone going. I had a feeling the party would last late into the night.

Cinnamon swayed. Weariness was kicking in; she had to struggle to keep her eyelids in their open and upright position.

“But it’s our last full day,” she said. “I don’t want to miss any of it.”

“It’s going to be okay, I promise.” A cloud of melancholy settled over me.
“Go.”

 

Alphonse and I didn’t speak as we patrolled the dunes. Moisture hung in the silvery air; I could smell the salt and the brine as I breathed. I wanted this scent to cling to me forever. I wanted it to stay in my hair and soak into my clothes, strong enough to overpower Mom’s dryer sheets once I got back home. I wanted to bottle it up and use it as a body lotion. I would smear it all over me and be a mermaid, only with strong, tan legs.

I must have sighed, because Alphonse turned and looked at me, a question in his eyes.

I gave him a half-smile and shook my head.
It’s nothing.

He nodded.
Okay. (If you say so.)

I clasped my hands behind my back, kicking the sand as we strolled along. A breeze whispered over my skin. I loved the way it lifted my hair and kept it aloft. Strands would touch down, tickling my upper back, and then they’d flutter up again.

People all through time have felt the wind in their hair, I thought. I am one of them ... and here I am, right now, walking along the shore. This will always be part of me, even after I leave.

And then Alphonse’s fingers were on my arm, on the bare skin of my upper arm, and the pressure he exerted said,
Be still. Be quiet.
We already were being quiet, but the sudden tension of his body language told me to
stay
quiet and not blurt, “What? What’s going on?”

I straightened my spine as I, too, went on high alert. My arms fell to my sides, and Alphonse took my hand.
Whoa, holy pickle crap, Alphonse was holding my hand. Alphonse was holding my hand?!

His grip was strong. His skin was warm. My hand felt small in his, just as it did when Lars was the one on the other end of the hand-holding. These thoughts flared in my mind—the spurt of flame as a match is struck—and would have been extinguished,
should
have been extinguished, except Alphonse didn’t let go. He stepped closer so that we were side by side, our shoulders touching. He stared intently at a scraggly scrub bush.

“Do you see?” he whispered.

“See what?” I could feel the heat of his body, and it made it hard to focus.

He pointed, his muscled brown arm extending straight and true across the line of my vision. Only his arm wasn’t what I was supposed to be looking at! I was supposed to look
past
his arm,
past
his pointing finger, to whatever he was pointing
at.

Get it together, Winnie!
I told myself.

I pulled my hand free of his, hugged my ribs, and tucked my fists in tight by my sides.
Then
I looked where he was pointing.

“Oh,” I said. My breath whooshed out of me. I swallowed, got some of it back, and said it again:
“Oh.”

I moved silently over the packed sand. He followed. Inside my chest was a balloon, but not a human-made one with its yucky rubber smell. The feeling expanding inside me was awe and amazement and fragile, fearful hope for tiny creatures so new to the world.

There were zillions of them streaming from the nest. They climbed over broken eggshells. They used their brothers and sisters as stepping stools. Dozens were at the water’s edge; dozens more were close behind. And probably lots of them were already in the water, taking their first swimmy, splashy strokes (and hopefully not being gobbled up by sharks).

“Do you know how rare this is?” Alphonse said. “To see a clutch of eggs hatch?”

I didn’t know the scientific probability of it, no. I didn’t need to. All I needed to know was that each baby turtle was the size of my thumb, with adorable flippers and an intricately patterned shell, and that we were witnessing something sacred. Knowing this had nothing to do with textbooks or research. It came simply from being graced with a soul.

The baby turtles headed from the nest to the sea in a stumbling, tumbling flow. A turtle highway. One little guy—or gal—fell headfirst into the sand and got trampled by the next couple of turtles to come along. Its flippers got buried, and it couldn’t undig itself.

“Ohhh,” I said, moving to help it.

Alphonse put his hand on my arm for the second time. “You can’t. They have to get to the water by themselves.”

“But what if they can’t?”

“They have to,” he said. “That’s how they build up their strength to swim.”

I didn’t argue, and I didn’t help the stranded turtle. But in my head, the question didn’t go away:
What if they can’t?

Alphonse gestured with his chin. “Look. He’s okay.”

Sure enough, he’d freed his front flippers and was pulling himself from the small hole. He flapped his back flippers, giving a funny wiggle to shake the sand off, and my ribs loosened.

“They remind me of the baby spiders in
Charlotte’s Web,”
I said softly. “When they came pouring out of Charlotte’s egg sac.” I glanced at Alphonse. “Did you see that movie?”

“I read the
book,”
he said, his tone indicating how much better he was than me. Alphonse was gorgeous, and for the most part he was pretty cool. But sometimes he acted like he was better than everybody else.

Maybe he realized it, because he added, sheepishly,
“And
I saw the movie. The original animated version, not the ridiculous Dakota Fanning one.”

“It wasn’t ridiculous,” I said. I’d seen it with Ty, and I’d cried at the ending. “The original was better, though.”

“Well, of course,” Alphonse said.

This time, as I rolled my eyes, I laughed. Not loud enough to startle the turtles, but enough to make Alphonse frown. I didn’t care. He needed to know how superior he sounded.

We watched the hatchlings. They were so tiny and perfect. I knew, intellectually, that some would get snatched by hungry seagulls or eaten by prowling fish. The weakest of the turtles might not even make it out of the nest. All of that would happen whether I wanted it to or not; my wishes had absolutely nothing to do with it.

But some of them would make it. They would paddle into the sea, and grow big and strong, and one day—if they were girl turtles—they’d come back to this very beach and lay their own eggs. They could live, if they were fortunate, to be
a hundred years old.
Some of the itsy-bitsy turtles waddling so determinedly through the sand could outlive me.

“Should we go to the house and get the others?” I asked. I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t want to be selfish. They should get to see, too.

“It would take too long,” Alphonse said. “The nest is almost empty.”

He was right. The baby turtles had been at it all night, waking up brand-new to the world. It was so amazing—and not just the turtles, but
all
of the incredible events that took place
every single day.
Every single minute. Every single second.

And me? I was one girl, contained inside this one body, soaking up as much of the world as I could ... which, based on how huge the world was, was practically nothing.

It didn’t make me feel small, though.

It made me feel grateful—and also as if I needed to evolve, kinda. Life was too short to get hung up on the stupid stuff. I sat down, taking care to disturb as little sand as possible. Alphonse followed suit. He leaned back on his elbows, which put his forearms within inches of me, and which might or might not have been intentional. Energy hummed between us, and I accepted the fact that this was how it was going to be. Whatever it was we shared ... there it was. It wasn’t going away.

 

I
had
to call Lars, and I had to do it now. Or at least now-ish. Yes, I’d see him in the flesh tomorrow (if it wasn’t too late after our six-hour drive back to Atlanta) and if I didn’t see him tomorrow, I’d see him for sure on Sunday. I
could
wait and talk to him in person.

But though part of me wanted to wait, I sensed that my desire to put it off was a big fat red flag telling me I shouldn’t. I needed to step up, or man up, or girl up, whatever.

I needed to call Lars.

While Dinah and Cinnamon and the others ate breakfast, I situated myself cross-legged on my bed and held my iPhone in my lap. I looked at it. I pushed the button to wake up the screen; I slid the SLIDE TO UNLOCK arrow. I went to FAVORITES and gazed at Lars’s name just sitting there, looking so familiar. But I didn’t put the call through. Not yet. Instead, I pulled up the picture I’d put on his contact page.

I’d taken it at my house, one night when he’d come over to watch a movie. Only we never got around to watching it, even though it was a total “guy” movie that he’d picked and brought over, and which promised all sorts of car chases and CIA stuff and people getting shot at. But we got to talking, and it was such a good conversation that we just kept
on
talking, even when I said, “Um, if we’re going to watch the movie, we better start it
now.”

“We can watch it another night,” he’d said. “I mean ... if that’s cool with you?”

He’d given me such tender glance that my heart swelled, and I thought,
Oh, you dear boy.

And then, because I was a spaz, I got all jittery-nervous. It scared me to feel so close to him, I guess, when we weren’t even touching. So I’d defused the moment by reaching for my iPhone and taking his picture.

“Smile!” I’d said.

But he already
was
smiling. Not a toothy “smile!” smile, just an I’m-here-and-I-like-you smile.
I’m here, and I like you, and you don’t have to run away from our closeness, but you can if you want—and you hnow what, Win? I’ll still like you.

His hazel eyes were warm and trusting. His head was sideways, propped in his palm in a way that pushed his cheek up in a slightly squishy way that was completely adorable. So why did looking at him make my chest hurt?

The ON function timed out, and the screen of my phone went black.
Bye-bye, Lars. Hello, darkness.