Letting Ana Go (6 page)

Rob: C’mon. It’ll be so romantic under the stars.

Jill: Until my mother catches me and tosses you overboard.

Rob: I’m a good swimmer. I’ll risk it.

Jill had laughed and went back to . . . well, sipping Pellegrino. I swear that’s all she consumed last night. It might be all she had yesterday, period. I realized she took a hot dog with no bun and cut it up into tiny pieces, and pushed it around in big pools of ketchup and mustard. She fed a couple pieces to Rob, who remarked that her plate looked like a battle reenactment, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t actually have anything to eat. At all.

And come to think of it, when we stopped for coffee and lunch and snacks for the guys on the way out here, Jill always ordered a drink, but I can’t remember her actually eating anything. At Starbucks she got a Venti iced coffee with two Splendas and poured a dollop of nonfat milk into it.

The thing is, she’s still on her phone checking CalorTrack at least once an hour, and I’m curious. What is she keeping track
of? I know she’s really working hard in ballet and last night her mom mentioned seeing Misty Jenkins and her boyfriend Todd when she was coming out of the grocery store back home. Jill rolled her eyes and moaned.

Jack: What?

Jill: I will not dance behind her in
The Nutcracker
one more time.

Rob: My sister says she has a mustache. Last week Misty came into the salon where I worked and had her lip and cheeks and arms waxed.

Me: Her arms?

Jack: That’s one hirsute ballerina.

Jill: Hirsute?

Rob (laughing): You think
your
vocab quizzes were hard this year? Just wait until Frau Schroeder gets ahold of you this fall.

Jack: You’ll beat Misty out for Clara this fall, Sis. I know it.

Jill: If I don’t, I’m not dancing.

Susan: Well, you’ve never been in better shape, honey.

Me: No kidding. You haven’t eaten a carb since Christmas.

Susan: You know, they say that carbs are killing us.

Rob (stuffing an entire brownie into his mouth): Bring it on.

James: You deserve to be Clara because you’re a fantastic dancer. Just because that girl is a stick figure doesn’t mean she can sell it.

Jill: Thanks, Daddy.

Susan (raising her chardonnay): To Jill in the role of Clara.

Rob: And to mustachioed Misty. She’ll make a great Sugar Plum
Hairy
.

Everybody laughed, and drank, and then Jill excused herself, headed in the direction of the bathroom down the stairs from the top deck. As she went, I saw the glow of her phone on her face.

Jack just climbed up the ladder on the side of the boat and told me I should jump in. Maybe he’s right. I’ve been sitting here writing while he and Rob jump off the top of the boat into the water, then climb back up. Jill is lying here with her darkest sunglasses on pretending not to pay any attention to Rob, but I know she’s watching him. He and Jack are both already completely tan from the pool and as they climb up the ladder their board shorts cling to their legs, pulling the waistbands lower and lower and . . .

Well . . .

Frankly . . .

It’s distracting.

Jill brought a
scale
onto the
boat
.

I repeat: a
scale
on
vacation
.

We just went downstairs to get more sunscreen and water. I went into the bathroom and when I came out, Jill was standing on the scale in our room.

Me: What are you doing.

Jill (looks down at scale, back at me, blinks): Is this a trick question?

Me: You brought a scale with you on vacation?

Jill: My body doesn’t know it’s on vacation. It doesn’t magically stop turning calories into pounds because we’re on a boat for a week.

Susan poked her head in the door at this precise moment. She went up to the roof deck holding a bottle of water and a paperback book with a very shiny cover, all legs and sunscreen and visor and sunglasses. She smiled at us, then asked Jill how things were coming along.

Jill: Doing well. Holding steady.

Susan: I’m very proud of you, Jilly Bean.

Jill: Every time you call me that I die a little bit inside.

Susan (laughing): You’ll always be my little bean, darling. I’m glad to see you fighting for what you want. That Misty doesn’t stand a chance.

Susan turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at me: And
you
are a
good friend
. Jill tells me you’ve been keeping track of your calories, too. It’s always easier when you’ve got
support. It certainly has paid off. You’ve never looked better.

I opened my mouth to explain that I was keeping track of my calories in the opposite direction—making sure I got
more
calories, not fewer—but something about the look on Susan’s face stopped me. The beaming smile, the admiration, it felt warm on my skin like the sun up on the top deck.

I smiled back at her and shrugged: What are friends for?

Susan winked at me and said she wasn’t the only who had noticed.

Jill:
Mom!
Please!

Susan: What? Of
course
Jack would notice. I mean, look at the figure on this one. All this calorie counting and running is working out very well.

Susan put down her water bottle and book and draped an arm across my shoulders. She said she knew things must’ve been hard around home lately. I didn’t really want to think about what was going on with my parents, much less talk about it, but Susan has this way of looking at you like you’re the only person in the world who matters. Something about her smile makes you want to tell her everything. She should be a talk show host. Or a detective.

Me: I guess heartbreak is good for the abs.

Susan (laughing): That it is, sweetheart, that it
is
. But you hang in there, and keep doing what you’re doing. All that baby fat has disappeared, and if you keep at it, you’ll be turning every
head in the hallway come fall. Jack will have his work cut out for him.

Jill must’ve seen me blush because she stepped off the scale, handed Susan her book and water bottle, and began pushing her out of our room.

Susan (laughing): Okay! Okay! I’m going.

Once she was gone, Jill turned to me and apologized.

Jill: Sorry about that.

Me: It’s not a problem. She was just being sweet.

Jill: I haven’t lost a single pound in the last two days.

Me: Is that a problem?

Jill: Yes. I’ve plateaued. You, on the other hand, look fantastic. When was the last time you weighed yourself?

Me: Not since our chocolate chip IHOP debacle.

Jill stepped off the scale and pointed to it. I sighed and stepped onto the square glass platform. The digital display flickered, then froze at 126.7. Jill screeched.

Jill: I can’t believe it. You’ve been practically gorging yourself to keep running.

Me: Not so much lately. I haven’t been hitting my calorie goals. I’m supposed to eat at least 2,500 to 2,800 calories on the days I run, and 2,000 to 2,500 on the days I don’t.

Jill: Dear God. That’s like an entire extra meal. Hope you’re hungry.

Me: Well, I don’t want to balloon out while I’m on the boat. I mean, I’m not running at all this week.

Jill said she was limiting her calories this week to 1,700 per day, and pointed out that it wasn’t too far off from my 2,000-calorie “rest day” goal. She grinned and asked me if I thought I could do it with her.

I didn’t know exactly what to say. Not being around my mom and dad and the unending sadness at our house for only two days had brought back my appetite. I hadn’t been able to eat much for a week, and now that I could actually eat again, the idea of controlling it just because I could felt exhilarating. Besides, it was only three hundred calories less than I’d have been eating anyway, and I’d only be doing it to help Jill.

I nodded: Sure. Let’s do it.

Jill: Excellent. You know, this is exactly what successful people do when they come up against hardships in their lives.

Me: Wait . . . what do they do?

Jill: They take
control
.

Me: Of three hundred calories?

Jill: It’s a start.

Weight:
127

Jill is hard-core about the scale and the calorie tracking. I guess I knew she was doing it, but being on this boat with her and sharing a room is pretty intense. She insists we weigh ourselves before we go to bed, and again after we get up.

Sorry, scratch that. When we get up,
after
going to the bathroom. She made me redo it this morning because I hadn’t pooped yet.

Jill: That’s just extra weight that’s going to come out of you anyway.

Me: I’d really like to not talk about my bathroom habits with you.

Jill: Go do your business and come back.

Me (fingers in my ears): LA-LA-LA-LA-LA.

In the end she was correct. I weighed less afterward.

You wouldn’t think three hundred calories would make that much difference, but it
does
. It was the difference between eating dessert last night and just having some tea while Jill and I watched Jack and Rob scarf down s’mores they made over the grill.

Tonight we’re docking and going ashore for dinner at this restaurant in the marina. I had two hard-boiled eggs and a cup of strawberry yogurt for breakfast this morning. According to CalorTrack that’s 412 calories. For lunch the guys made
deli sandwiches and Jill and I had turkey-and-cheese roll-ups. Each turkey slice had twenty-five calories and each cheese slice had eighty, so I used half a cheese slice with each piece of turkey and had six roll-ups for a total of 390 calories. That means if I stick to our plan of 1,700 calories per day, I’ve only got 898 calories left, which should be plenty for dinner tonight.

The problem is this: I’m hungry
now
, and it’s only
two in the afternoon
. How am I going to hold out for another
five hours
until we get to the restaurant at seven tonight?

Jill and I are drinking so much water we’ve already run through a whole case of water bottles and we’re going to stop to get more at the grocery store in the marina tonight. After lunch we were all floating on these big rafts tethered to the boat and Jill kept going inside to use the bathroom. Jack was making fun of her for not just peeing in the lake.

Jack: You have a bladder the size of a small walnut.

Jill: I will not pee in this lake.

Rob: Why not? The fish do.

Jack: So does Rob.

Rob (pushing Jack off the raft into the water): We won’t tell anyone, I promise.

Jill: As a thinking vertebrate possessing the power of speech,
limbs with which to climb a ladder, and a noted absence of gills, I will not be relieving myself in the water.

Jack climbed back onto the raft next to me as Rob followed Jill up the ladder to get a Coke and switch playlists on the iPhone playing through the speakers on the deck.

Jack: You having fun?

I smiled and nodded: It’s beautiful here.

Jack: Did you know Lake Powell is man-made?

Me: No. Really?

Jack: Yep. Glen Canyon Dam was built across the Colorado River and flooded Glen Canyon.

As I stared up at the sheer cliffs, bright and orange, towering above us against a cloudless blue sky, I couldn’t believe it. “Man,” it seems to me, is so bad at coming up with truly beautiful things on a grand scale—especially in nature. My mom is forever talking about the Beautiful New Shopping Center, or the Beautiful New Hospital Wing, or that Beautiful New Condo Development, but none of those things seem very beautiful to me. I suppose they are nice in a certain way. I guess the new outdoor mall with the dancing fountains beats the old indoor mall from the eighties with the brown glazed brick and the orange-tile waterfall in the middle that smelled like chlorine and dirty feet.

Still, as I gazed around at the canyon walls I couldn’t believe that someone had planned something so perfect and serene, so vibrant and brilliant, full of color and texture and endless sky. Something so . . .

Romantic, isn’t it?

(That was Jack.)

I was blown away that he’d said that word just as I was thinking it. I blushed, but I don’t think he could tell because my cheeks are a little pink anyway from the sun.

Me (softly): Yeah. It is.

Jack was lying on his back, one hand under his head. I’d been trying not to watch the drops of water that were slowly trickling off his chest and pooling in the little indentations between his abs.

I rolled over onto my back on the raft. The cool water against my legs and the sun warming the wet fabric of the new bikini top stretched across my chest gave me goose bumps. I felt Jack reach out with his free hand and grab my raft, pulling his over. I turned my head to glance at him through my sunglasses but he was staring up at the sky.

We lay there in silence letting the sight of the cliffs against the sky and the heat of the sun on our skin wash over us. There was something electric in the air that I’d never felt before—like someone or something had sucked all the air out of my lungs
with a vacuum and I couldn’t get a good deep breath.

I realized, floating there under the wide blue sky on rafts tied to the boat, that it was the feeling of anticipation. It felt like something was about to happen.

It felt like something
should
happen.

And then something did.

Jack: They named Lake Powell after John Wesley Powell.

Me: Who was he?

Jack: A one-armed Civil War vet. He explored the Colorado River and this canyon in a wooden boat.

Me: With one arm?

I felt Jack’s hand against mine. His fingers were sure and steady as he threaded them through my own. This time when I turned my head, he was looking right at me, a sweet smile on his lips and a twinkle in his blue eyes, as clear and endless as the sky above us.

Jack: Better hold hands while we’ve still got ’em.

So we did. All afternoon. Even when Jill and Rob came back, Jack didn’t let go. Finally, Susan called over the side of the boat from the upper deck and said it was time for us to get cleaned up so we could eat at the marina. We swam to the boat and as Rob and Jill climbed the ladder ahead of us Jack asked if I would be his date to dinner.