How to Meet Boys (3 page)

Some people would say I’m directionally challenged.
Some
people.

“It’s so good to see you, Nana!” I gave her a warm hug.

“You too,” she replied. “Claire dropped by about an hour ago, looking for you. I told her to stop back a little bit later.”

I smiled. I couldn’t wait to catch up in person with Claire Bannon. I’d known her for years, because she lived in the house down the road from my grandparents’ farm. She lived year-round in Bridgeport, which had a much smaller winter population, but we usually hung out whenever I was visiting.

I’d been in touch with her
and
my grandparents a lot lately, getting the details for the summer nailed down—or trying to. My grandmother wasn’t big on details. You had to pull things out of her, like what the cabin was like, and when your first day at work would be, and—

Speaking of which, I had a question for her. “Nana. Is Jackson Rolfsmeier working here this summer?”

“Yes, he is.” She tapped a few numbers into the adding machine on her wooden desk and smiled at me. “He started today, just for a couple of hours. Breaking him in gently.”

What was he, a horse? “Today? Really?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Bit rough around the edges, when it comes to apple varieties. Confused a Cortland with a Mac today. But, he’ll learn. They always do.”

“I can’t believe this.
That’s
what you’re concerned about? He got some variation wrong?” I asked her. I had bigger questions in mind, like: What was he thinking, applying for a job to work here, side by side with
me
? This was my grandparents’ store. My home base in Bridgeport, whether I was visiting for a day or a week. Why did he want to be part of it?

Nana looked stunned. “I don’t understand. Am I not supposed to care? We tout ourselves as the ones who know apples!”

“Nana, please. I mean, I’m sorry,” I said. “This isn’t about apples.”

“It’s not?” she asked. In her mind, everything went back to apples somehow, or at least that’s how she made it seem.

“No. It’s about you hiring him. You
know
Jackson and I—we aren’t—I mean, we don’t—I mean, it’s weird—I mean, I can’t believe—”

“Actually, Luce, I don’t know
what
you mean,” my grandmother said, taking hold of my shoulders. “What’s the problem?”

Oh, nothing. It’s just that my very own grandparents betrayed me.
“Jackson and I—we have this history,” I said. “Not, you know, a very
good
history.”

Her eyes widened. “Such as? Lucy, you’d better tell me right now.”

“Sorry, it’s not that bad.” I put my hand on her arm, wanting to put her at ease, even though it
was
pretty awful, from my perspective. “We just—it’s awkward between us now. Really, incredibly awkward. I don’t want to go into details, but we used to be friends,” I said. “Good friends. But we honestly haven’t spoken in about three years.”

“Well, how were we supposed to know you had a falling-out?” My grandmother sat back down and resumed punching numbers into the adding machine. “His grandparents said he needed a job. He’s reliable, a good kid—his references are impeccable. I remembered you used to be friends—seemed like a perfect plan to me.”

“When we were little kids, Nana,” I said. “Little! Like, tiny!”

“When was that?” she asked.

“Eighth grade,” I said. “Okay?”

My grandmother looked up from the adding machine, over her reading glasses, at me. “I hardly think you were a little kid in eighth grade. In fact I distinctly remember you telling me, ‘Nana, I’m in eighth grade, you don’t need to follow me around the carnival. Nana, I can stay up until midnight, I’m fourteen.’”

“So I wasn’t
little
little,” I admitted. “That’s beside the point, Nana. I was only fourteen.”

She gazed at the ceiling and rolled her eyes, like being seventeen was not all that different from being fourteen.

But come on. It
is
. Even
she
knew that, but she was just trying to tease me.

“So you’re not close anymore, so what? You don’t need to be best buds, you just need to work together. Anyway, you two are practically adults. You’ll work it out,” she said crisply.

“I doubt it,” I said under my breath.

“And Lucy? I don’t want to hear any more complaining about it. Jackson’s family lives in this town and so do we,” Nana said. “One fact you should know about a small town is that sometimes people just have to learn to get along, like it or not.”

Not. Very much not. A hundred times not.

“Now, if you don’t mind, how about doing some actual work? I’ve got crates and boxes in the back room I need you to unload.”

“I didn’t think I was starting today,” I said. “I don’t have my shirt—”

“Excuses, excuses. We’ll get your shirt while we’re back there. And are you saying you can’t move crates in a tank top?” She smiled and I followed her into the cold storage, rubbing my arms as the chill hit me. I thought about suggesting that the uniforms should be hooded sweatshirts instead of T-shirts.

I decided not to mention it. She was already annoyed with me and this was only Day One.

Someday she’d understand why seeing Jackson had upset me so much. Maybe not upset me—thrown me for a loop. In fact, the first day Jackson and I worked together, it would be fairly obvious that getting along was pretty much impossible—considering what had happened way back then, not to mention the fact we hadn’t talked until a couple of minutes ago, and that was only saying hi.

“Nana, is the schedule posted back here?” I asked.

“No, it’s in my office—bulletin board behind my desk. It’s also a shared calendar online. Not much to it, though,” she said. “Jackson works nine to five, you work ten to six. He gets Wednesdays and Sundays off, you get Sundays and Mondays off. Of course, sometimes that’ll change, depending on our schedules.”

“Terrific.” So we’d only be working together
four
days a week. That was still four too many.

I hefted a wooden crate from the shelf above me. The half bushel of Rome apples nearly fell on my head.

“You need your apple muscles,” Nana said. She flexed her biceps. For a sixty-seven-year-old, she’s kind of fit. At least as fit as I was, which was beyond embarrassing. Why hadn’t she told me that I needed to be in shape for this job? Not that I wasn’t in shape . . . for soccer, anyway. Maybe she’d have apples I could kick around at some point.

I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen to see if I had any texts from Mikayla about how her check-in was going. I couldn’t wait to tell her what had happened and how I’d seen Jackson. She wouldn’t totally get it, since I’d met her after the thing with him happened—but she’d definitely be able to commiserate with me. She had a good shoulder to cry on. I’d had to use it before.

“Now, let’s get your T-shirt,” my grandmother said. “Try this on—it’s a small.”

As I held up the T-shirt to check whether it would fit, a picture of Jackson in the same exact shirt flashed in my mind. He’d changed so much even since the last time I’d seen him. Of course, the last time I’d seen him I’d crossed the street to avoid him, so I couldn’t be sure what had changed about him from year to year. All I knew was, he was tall and his voice had dropped. If I’d gone through that much of a transformation, I certainly didn’t
feel
like I had.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the thing with Jackson had kind of squashed any more risk taking on my part—not just when it came to boys but in other ways, too. I did things when I knew they’d turn out well, for the most part.

But there I was, Day One in Bridgeport. I’d taken a slight, teensy, tiny risk moving here for the summer instead of staying back home and doing the coffee shop gig again, and look what had happened. It couldn’t just go easily, no, of course not. I couldn’t work with an old friend like Claire; or some good-looking guy I’d never met; or someone I’d become good friends with, the way I was with Mikayla. No. I was getting Jackson, the boy who’d pretty much humiliated me in eighth grade. I had the worst luck.

“Well, are you going to try it on or not?” my grandmother asked.

“Sure, of course.” I walked quickly to the restroom in the back corner of the store and closed the door. I pulled the T-shirt on and looked at myself in the small oval mirror above the sink. Okay, so a few strands of my long, dark brown hair were out of place, a teeny bit of mascara had flaked, and I could use a fresh coat of lip gloss. But at least I hadn’t looked completely terrible when I’d run into Jackson.

I made a face at the mirror, scrunching my face up into a frown. The summer wasn’t supposed to start like this—at all. I felt like I’d been dribbling the soccer ball down the field effortlessly, making all the right moves, about to score a goal—and someone had just stolen the ball from me, leaving me standing there, looking ridiculous.

I needed to catch my balance and get back on goal—fast.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“That’s a sauna?” I asked.

Sarah, the assistant manager at Bridgeport Beach Club, was giving me a tour and a rundown of the Club’s policies and procedures. Her friend Henry was tagging along, even though he’d already worked at the Club for a couple of years. The two of them were both in college and home for the summer—Sarah had just finished her sophomore year, while Henry had completed his junior year.

“It is,” Sarah told me. “You like saunas?”

“I’ve never tried one,” I said. “Which is kind of why I didn’t recognize what it was.” I laughed, somewhat nervously. “If you hadn’t told me, I’d have guessed it was a coat closet.”

“You can wear a coat, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” Sarah laughed. “It’s, like, a hundred and twenty degrees in there.”

“No, thanks,” Henry said. “I can’t stand anything over eighty.”

“Neither can I.” Henry and I had already bonded over how hot it had been in Minneapolis the summer before. I had no trouble talking with Henry. He was already spoken for—he’d told me within five minutes of meeting him that he was missing his boyfriend, Charles, who’d gone home to New York for the summer and was working at an art gallery, while Henry had to swap out pool towels.

“Charles and Henry—what are you, both part of the royal family or something?’ I teased him.

“No, but we both have complete Anglophile parents,” he said.

“So, Mikayla, speaking of, uh, parents,” Sarah said. She looked around the lobby where we were standing, as if to make sure no one else was in earshot. The only person I saw was a middle-aged woman covered head to toe in designer sportswear—down to her matching tennis racket cover and sunglasses. “Some of the members here can be a little bit on the snobby side.”

“A
little
?” Henry cried. “Some of them think they really
are
royalty. Well, actually, some royals from Norway did stay here last year, so they earned it.”

“But the kids—who you’ll be spending your days with—are great. If you get a parent who’s extremely demanding and not in a nice way? Just buzz me. We all have our own walkie-talkies. And anyway, what are you complaining about?” Sarah asked Henry. “If the people are so difficult, then why do you keep coming back to work here every summer?”

“I like the abuse?” he said.

Sarah laughed and pushed him gently with her hand. “Shut up.”

Henry smiled and laughed. “See? I love that.
More
, please.” He turned to me. “Also, I can’t stand being anywhere truly hot for the summer. Bridgeport can be downright chilly—you know that, right?”

“I’ve been warned,” I said.

“So can I ask you something? What happened to your forehead?” Henry asked.

“I had a little spill on my bike on the way in. Kind of almost ran into a car.”

“You ran into a
car
?” Sarah asked. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“It’s nothing,” I assured her. “So will there be a group orientation I need to attend? Or am I the only new person here this year?” I asked.

“Not all of us have worked here before,” Henry said. “But, well, most of us. How did you get in, anyway? Who did you have to bribe to land a job here?”

I laughed. “My friend’s grandmother made a call and put in a good word for me. I think that’s pretty much it.”

“Yeah, connections are everything around here,” said Henry. “My grandfather’s in charge of deciding who gets a food booth at the Apple Fest every September. It’s cutthroat. People offer him actual bribes. Speaking of which, her uncle runs the Walleye Mafia.” He pointed to Sarah.

The first time I’d heard about the Walleye Mafia, I pictured gangsters in pinstriped suits hanging out on the docks, shooting up walleye fish with submachine guns, but it’s just the name of a popular restaurant in Bridgeport that happens to have the best deck in town. “So do you work there, too?” I asked.

“Been there, done that. I still help out sometimes, but I needed a change,” Sarah said. “I’m majoring in event management so I wanted to get a manager position. And my aunt will never budge from
her
job.” She smiled. “I worked here part-time last summer, so the managers, Angie and Terry, offered me this position. Anyway, not everyone has a connection somewhere that helps them get a job here, and even people with connections aren’t hired automatically. Angie and Terry are picky,” said Sarah. “They typically recruit people for their skills, so you must be really good at something.”

She was right, but I didn’t want to brag. I didn’t do that, as a rule. “No, not really,” I said.

Sarah folded her arms and looked at me. “Let me guess. You’re about five feet nine, and you play basketball, small forward, volleyball—but not beach volleyball, real team volleyball—and you have a killer serve in tennis that you don’t usually let people know about until they agree to play a set, and by then it’s too late for them to back out.”

“Five ten, actually.” A small grin spread across my face. “Did you read my job application? I thought that was confidential.”

“That’s all true?” she said, laughing. “I was mostly just making it up. I think Angie mentioned the volleyball thing, to be honest.”