Sharks & Boys
Copyright © 2011 by Kristen Tracy
All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-5312-2
ALSO BY KRISTEN TRACY
A Field Guide for Heartbreakers
For Stephen Colbert—my comedy hero.
Thanks for showing me that laughter is the way.
We had, each of us, a set of wishes.
The number changed. And what we wished—
that changed also. Because
we had, all of us, such different dreams.
from “Fable,” Louise Glück
“Enid, it’s just a shoe,” Wick says.
“I know. But it’s my mother’s.”
“When you tell her the story of what happened to it, I’m sure she won’t care that you lost it,” Wick says.
“But I’ll care.”
I don’t know why, but my mother’s shoe has taken on all this extra meaning. I sit and wait. The shoe bobs merrily along. Eventually, it drifts so close that Landon is able to lean ov
er the side and pluck it from the sea.
“Enjoy,” he says, tossing it to me.
I try to slide the shoe on, but my foot is swollen. It hurts. I decide just to hold it.
“Thanks,” I say
.
“Any time,” Landon says. “But I wouldn’t expect to come across your other pump. Cherish the one you have.”
I press it to my chest and lean back into Wick’s arms. I think that I’m going to stay awake and be respon-sible and totally look for passing ships, but I feel myself dozing off instead.
Three days earlier
Seeing
yourself on TV changes you. It just does. Even if you only make the local news. Even if you’re part of an unfocused snippet that leads into the afternoon weather update. Three hours ago, when I first saw the story and accompanying footage, I was a butt shot, a footnote, and a blur. I was the sole girl in a line of men on a slow news day in Vermont. Then the segment got rebroadcast relentlessly on all three local networks. I’m in the process of becoming a small-town hero.
“Is that really what my thighs look like?” I ask.
Because Wick and I have been dating for a year, I have asked him questions about my body before, weight-related in particular. He’s used to it.
“Your thighs? I can’t even see them. You’re covered in mud,” he says.
“So you’re saying I look fat.”
I’m standing at the kitchen counter, molding marzipan. We’re watching a small television set that my father mounted beneath the cupboard circa 1999. As it turns out, poor pixel quality makes me look comically squat.
“The llama makes you look thinner,” he says.
I’m rolling the green marzipan into balls now. I have to make eighteen sea urchins for a wedding cake. The bride-to-be has decided to go with a beach theme.
“That llama doesn’t look fat,” I say. “It looks malnourished.”
“That’s just because of the mud. It’s flattening down its fur,” he says. “Can I help? Do you want me to shape the sharks?”
Wick Jarboe is horrible at sculpting marzipan. If I turn the sharks over to him, they’ll be indistinguishable from the dolphins.
“How about you make the shoes?”
Wick shoves his hands in his pockets.
“The shoes are for the bride and groom. They’re what sit directly on the cake. They’re, like, almost the most important part of the whole thing.”
He pulls his hands out of his pockets, and I think he’s going to reach toward me or the marzipan, but he doesn’t. His skin is rough and tanned. He’s been biking a lot this summer, so his arms and the majority of his legs have turned an attractive bronze shade. My skin will never turn that color. I’m a burner. When I stop staring at Wick’s arms and glance at his face, I notice that he isn’t even watching the llama news clip anymore. He’s looking out the window.
“What do you see?” I ask.
Sometimes my neighbor, an elementary-school teacher still in her twenties, likes to garden in her bikini. Wick turns his attention to me again. He’s standing in a shaft of sun, making his brown hair appear almost golden.
“What sort of shoes should the groom wear?” Wick asks.
“Black tuxedo shoes,” I say.
Wick joins me and tears a piece of black marzipan from a large ball. I watch his long, lean arms drape over my kitchen table, blue veins branching at his wrists. He’s wearing a green rubber bracelet. It’s meant to raise awareness for nonspecific environmental issues. We bought a pair of them together at a shop on Church Street. But I lost my original months ago. I have small hands. It must have just slipped off and fallen into the gutter or something. The one I’m wearing now, my replacement bracelet, is a slightly brighter shade than Wick’s.
“You’d think a person wouldn’t want to wear a bikini and groom her magnolia tree at the same time.”
I stop sculpting sea urchins and frown at him. “So you were watching her?”
He shrugs. “It was a glance.”
It does not comfort me to think that my boyfriend is a
glancer
. I exhale loudly and resume sculpting. Wick gets back to work too. He may be a thin guy, but his thumbs are thick. He’s able to mold the shoes into oblong chunks, but they don’t quite resemble tuxedo shoes.
“What is the bride wearing?” he asks.
“You choose. Make them white. And nothing strippery.”
“Strippery?”
“No stripper footwear.” I make sure to keep my voice light and playful so he knows I’m kidding around.
Wick winks at me, then reaches for a gob of white marzipan. He takes a much smaller amount than he did of the black. I guess he assumes that all brides’ feet are Cinderella-like and dainty.
“
Stay tuned to watch the amazing story of a local llama rescue
,” a reporter says.
I watch Wick’s face. He looks bored.
“Aren’t you impressed at all that I jumped in that mud hole with a bunch of construction workers?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says.
But I want more. It’s like I need more assurance than Wick is equipped to give me. It’s as if in recent weeks all the insecure feelings inside of me have grown too big for my body. I feel like I could break open.
“I saw an animal in trouble, and I didn’t even hesitate,” I say.
“Are you calling me out?” he asks. Wick drops the marzipan shoes. “You know, somebody had to call the proper authorities for help.”
This is terrible. He thinks I am criticizing either his judgment or his masculinity. But I wasn’t trying to do that. I just wanted him to reaffirm my own bravery. Again. “I’m not calling you out. You were awesome. You told the neighbor to dial 9-1-1.”
“We were in a very remote area. I didn’t realize that one of the construction workers had cell phone reception. I had no idea the fire department was already on its way.”
“I know. I know,” I say. I reach across the table and gently take hold of his arm. “You’re missing my point. I’m saying that I saw an animal in trouble, and I recognized that there were two sides. Side death or side llama—and I chose side llama, and I stayed committed to that side.”
“I think we were all on side llama,” Wick says.
He’s worked the bride’s shoes into long strings. They’re almost formless. They look like noodles. I consider saying something, but then I notice that his fingers are sweating. This is awful. For sanitation reasons, he’s going to have to start over.
“You can’t sweat on the marzipan,” I say. “People are going to eat it.”
Wick rolls his eyes. “Nobody eats the bride and groom.”
“When they’re made out of plastic, you’re right. But these are made specifically to be eaten.”
“Did the bride request an edible version of herself? That’s wrong on so many levels. I mean, who’s going to eat her?”
“I think the groom,” I say.
Wick flicks one of the shoe-noodles with his finger and sends it rolling across the table.
“Are we still talking about marzipan?” he asks with a tone of mock boredom.
“Yeah. Do you want to talk about something else?”
I’ve finished shaping the sea urchins. It’s time to add some vibrancy. By hand-brushing the candy with varying shades of powdered green food coloring, and leaving five pairs of white bands, I’m making the round shells look incredibly lifelike. Wick flicks the other shoe-noodle. This one sails across the counter and sticks to the television screen. They’re showing it again. A group of five construction workers and I are pulling an exhausted llama from a mud hole. The llama’s owner videotaped it. Wick leans over and turns off the television.
I dip the brush in the dark green powder and press the color into the round top of the ball. My mother assures me that it’s these small details that have given her such a bang-up reputation as a decorator.
“I wonder if this will become a national story? Who doesn’t want to see a llama escape the maw of a deadly mud hole?” I say.
“The maw?” he asks. He’s peeling the marzipan from the TV screen with his fingernail.
“It means mouth,” I say.
“I know. I played the tuba,” he says. “It’s what my teacher called the bell.”
It seems odd to be bringing this up, because Wick hasn’t touched a tuba since junior high.
“How many times do I need to congratulate you about the rescue? Please, Enid, just give me a number.”
Wick stands up. I don’t.
“A boyfriend is supposed to be a support system,” I say. “Not part of the time, but all of the time. And you, well, you’re so sporadic.”
“You’re calling me sporadic?” He points to himself and releases a noise I’ve never heard before. It’s a cross between a sound of surrender and a sound of disgust.
I point at him too and repeat, “Sporadic.”
“Is this about the e-zine?” Wick asks. “It’s been three months. Are you still hung up on that?” He folds his arms across his chest.
I’m not too surprised that we’re here again. We haven’t had a fight over the e-zine catastrophe in over a week.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he says.
Now I stand. Sitting feels too passive. “Your brother drew the cartoons!” I say. I don’t know who came up with the initial idea to write, illustrate, and circulate a group of poorly rhymed sonnets that mocked several high school girls during exam week. But I do know who executed the idea: Burr Riggs and his brother, Skate. And Dale Jarboe.
“But I didn’t make the e-zine!” Wick says. He throws his hands up in the air, making his defense look more dramatic.
“You knew they were up to something,” I say. “Burr and Skate have been acting like maniacs. And your brother is hardwired to be a terrible and inappropriate person ninety-four percent of the time.”
“It
was
terrible. They shouldn’t have done it. But you need to get to a place of forgiveness about this. Skate and Burr are grieving. Their parents just died. They exercised poor judgment. You’re being way too hard on them,” Wick says.
Even if Wick is right, I am still so humiliated by the sonnet that was written about me, and the demoralizing cartoon depiction that was drawn beside it rendering me with a pig nose, hairy chest, and no neck, to get beyond it. At one point, I was friends with all of them except for Dale. I can’t believe I was one of their e-zine targets.
Wick’s face is pink, and he’s running his fingers through his hair. I’m not sure how he got so upset. I’m the one who’s earned the right to be upset. Can he not see that? It must be a guy thing. I don’t get the male mind. I have a twin brother, and it’s still a complete enigma.
“What they did was vulgar,” I say.
“When you get upset about something, you’re like a dog with a bone,” Wick says.
“So now you’re calling me a dog,” I say. “Great.”
“You know I’m not calling you a dog.”
He’s right. I know that. I see him glance out the window again, and I cringe.
“Can you lay off ogling my neighbor while we fight?” I say.
“Why are you so angry at me?” he asks.
He raises a good question. But I don’t think that I’m
that
angry with him.
I reach for his hand, but he pulls away.
“Let’s not argue anymore,” I say. I’m sick of the tension. I want to be getting along again.
“I need to tell you something,” he says.
These are not the words a girl wants to hear her boyfriend say during a fight.
“What?” I reach out to take his hand again. This time he lets me.
“I want to go to the party,” he says.
I hear myself gasp.
“Skate and Burr’s parents were killed six months ago, Enid. They’ve been acting a little crazy, but I’m not going to write them off. I’m not a jerk.”
Is the implication here that
I’m
a jerk?
I shake my head. Doesn’t Wick understand that this feels like a betrayal? The final quatrain of the sonnet titled “Enid Walking Home” flashes through my mind.
Enid stomps home like a boot-skirt sage
Her tight butt clenched in a fit of rage.
Never tell Enid she’s wrong not right
Her cheeks might rupture, for they are that tight.
I repeat the last quatrain for Wick.
“They didn’t mean it. It doesn’t even make sense. Seriously, Enid. It’s nonsense.”
As he talks he backs up a little and turns his body. His sneakers are aimed away from me.
“You can’t go,” I say. Burr and Skate have been planning their postgraduation party for months, even before the accident. I heard Burr talking about it in biology. It’s at their uncle’s house in Maryland. “There’s no need to commute that far for a party unless you have very devious plans.”
“I can’t go? Enid, it’s not like we’re married,” he says, pointing to the marzipan.
“It’s not like you’re single,” I say, pointing to myself.
Wick is so frustrated that he squeezes his lips together, erasing their pinkness, turning them white. “High school is supposed to be about having fun,” he says.
“Well, if that’s true, pretty much the entire educational system needs to be overhauled.”
“Enid, we’ve been dating for a year.”
I feel a pain beneath my breastbone. I have been in love with Wick Jarboe since the moment I saw him. I was six. He was seven. He was holding an iguana. I thought it was a dinosaur. He wanted me to pet it. But I ran off screaming instead. Love.
“You’re thinking about the iguana, aren’t you?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I guess I’ve brought up the iguana more than I realized. “I just don’t know where you’re going with this.”
“Your brother’s coming,” he says.
“What?” I don’t believe this.
“Sov and Munny will be there too,” he says. “And Dale.”
With my palm, I smash a sea urchin flat as a pancake. I can’t believe the Paddingtons are letting their sons go.
“Skate and Burr and your obnoxious brother should not be corrupting Sov and Munny. They’re, like, the most innocent Cambodian twins I’ve ever met.”