Twenty Boy Summer (15 page)

twenty-two

We spend the next day with Red and Jayne, walking around Moonlight Boulevard pretending to be fascinated with beach-themed paintings, handmade wind chimes, and myriad other artsy trinkets without which no family vacation is complete.

Somewhere during the postlunch key lime pie course at Breeze, Frankie mentions Jackie's all-girls, parent-supervised, ultrachaste night of fun, which starts after dinner (of course we want to eat dinner with you, Mom! The party's not till later!). She has no trouble securing permission. Red and Jayne don't even ask to
meet
the fictitious Jackie and the fabled Samantha. They just nod and smile, thrilled that Frankie is so normal and well adjusted.

With the pier packed and Jayne's trinket-quota satisfied, we head back to the house for a cutthroat game of Frisbee on the beach with Red. The family fun continues through dinner, and soon enough, it's time to start prepping for the party.

Frankie and I spend an hour trying on clothes that will fit smoothly over our bikinis and convey just the right kind of mixed messages: casual but not sloppy. Hot but not trashy. Fun but not easy (well, not
that
easy, anyway). Hair and makeup take another hour -- a delicate dance of various chemicals applied with just the right amount of pressure for shading, highlighting, and contouring without caking, flaking, or smudging. Sam prefers the natural look, but Frankie's right -- looking natural takes a lot of science.

We pack our backpacks for our "girls' night" (cute boxer shorts, matching pink T-shirts, sweatshirts, camera, makeup, nail polish, fuzzy socks, a copy of
Celeb Style
featuring a two-page spread of Helicopter Pilot's hot, blue-eyed singer Joe Donohue and Apollo, his dachshund, and the journal I never leave home without), kiss Red and Jayne goodbye, and make our way down the beach, arriving at the Shack precisely ten minutes later than we'd promised, so as not to appear overeager.

Sam and Jake are waiting on the deck in cargo shorts and T-shirts undoubtedly yanked from piles of laundry on their bedroom floors. Sam's hair is ungelled. His cheekbones -- unblushed. His eyebrows are not tweezed, and I don't think he spent any time curling his lashes.

Despite his ignorance of haute couture, he makes my whole body buzz.

"Wow, you --
wow.
" He pulls me close to him and smells my neck, his hands finding their way into my hair. "Maybe we shouldn't go to a party. I mean, there will be other people there. Other guys.
Looking
at you."

I wait for a smartass comment from Frankie or Jake, but they appear to be vapor-locked at the mouth, unable to communicate.

"Okay, then," Sam says loudly. "We'll just start heading over to the party. You guys can catch up later."

I follow him down to the beach. The sky is dark, but there are still streaks of orange and pink, fading leftovers from the sunset.

"The key to a great party is the music," Sam says, scrolling through his iPod as we tramp through the sand. Eddie -- the guy having the party -- put Sam in charge of the playlist. "If it's too intense, no one will be able to hang out and talk. But if it's too mellow, it will turn into a snoozefest. You also have to con sider timing. There's a particular kind of music appropriate for each stage of the party -- intro, warm-up, full swing, wind down, and outro."

I didn't know there was a whole science behind party music, but when Sam talks, I
want
to know. In these moments along the shore, I don't care about anything as much as I care about the melodic string of words and breath passing from his lips to my ears, and when I nod and ask questions and laugh, his eyes light up as he looks at me and I think I could quite possibly love him forever.

I mean, not that I
do
love him.

Just that I could
possibly.

Love
him.

Forever.

"Outro?" I ask.

He smiles. "The opposite of intro."

"Right. So how do you know when to switch?"

"You just gotta feel it. I'll show you later. We'll start with some ambient techno and see when the energy of the crowd calls for something else. Here -- check it out."

When I take his iPod to scroll through his songs, Sam puts his arm around me, strong and protective and tan and a little banged up. The heat from his skin seeps into my shoulders, and I am so suddenly alive that if I don't kiss him right this second, we will both burst into flames and die. I turn around beneath the weight of his arm and pull him into a desperate kiss, pressing as much of myself against him as I can.

We get to Eddie's around nine-thirty, Jake and Frankie arriving just after us. The sky is indigo and the moon lights up the backyard like a spotlight, erasing the remnants of sunset. Crowds of people arrive behind us, chattering and whooping and bearing various gifts of an alcoholic nature. Based on the number of times Eddie says, "Cool, nice to meet ya," I guess each person he invited brought about three or four extras, coolers and pizza in tow. The house fills up fast with noise, bodies, and clanking glass bottles. At times I feel intimidated, afraid that things will get out of control, and I'm careful to stay close to Sam and Frankie. But soon Frankie hands me a fruity drink with a paper umbrella, and everything seems a little less intense.

Sam is right about the music. By eleven, his ambient techno vibe blends gracefully and seamlessly into an all-out reggae dance club, packed wall to wall with more people than the entire off-season population of Zanzibar Bay, gyrating and bouncing to Jamaican kettledrums.

The house can take it. It's like a dance hall in and of itself. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the ocean. Gigantic, in-ground swimming pool. Pool tables in more than one room. Stainless steel kitchen appliances. The place probably has ten bedrooms, too. It's like it was built for entertaining -- like one of those celebrity houses where a bunch of famous people sit around and do coke all day, whining about their lives. I half expect them to walk in any minute with their drugs and their fantasyland problems, and Eddie will just shrug and smile and say it's cool, nice to meet ya.

Sam goes to check on the music situation, and in all the commotion and space, I lose Frankie. I wander through the crowds, get lost down various corridors, and finally find her in the kitchen, camera in hand, filming Jake as he takes the door to the side entrance off its hinges.

"Frankie, what are you guys doing?"

"We need a beer pong table," she says without further explanation, zooming in on my face as if it's perfectly normal to deconstruct a house for such a noble purpose.

"Remind me again how you play beer pong?"

"Oh, you remember," she says as if we're regular pong champs. She slings the camera strap over her shoulder, still filming, and rummages through the stacks of open coolers on the counter for a pack of red plastic cups. "You set up six cups on each side like bowling pins and fill them with beer. Then you have to try to bounce the Ping-Pong ball into the other team's cups to make them drink. If you miss, you drink."

"See, Anna," Jake says over a gathering fan base lining each side of the room, "the thing about beer pong is that even when you lose, you win!" He pulls a pair of yellow Ping-Pong balls from his pocket that he apparently carries around for just such an occasion. "You in?"

I nod. "Only if we can do teams."

Frankie grabs me. "She's mine. Girls against guys."

Jake calls for Eddie to join him at the helm of the side door, which is now flat and horizontal atop two barstools, six red cups arranged in triangles at each end.

"Girls rule!" She raises her hand up for a high five.

I slap her palm and take a chug of beer. "You two are about to get housed," Jake says, but not before coming back to our side of the door to kiss Frankie one last time before the big game, eliciting a cacophony of catcalls from the fans on the sidelines.

Jake returns to home field and bounces a ball in Frankie's direction, missing completely, finishing out his turn with an over-drawn pout.

Frankie returns, surprising me as she sinks her first shot in the lead cup right in front of Eddie. He dips his fingers in to remove the ball and downs the beer.

I turn to her and stare, unable to hide my shock. "Practice, or magic?" I ask.

"I've played a few times, Anna. Remember the parties?"

"Not exactly." I must have been in the bathroom during that part of the nonexistent parties, hiding out from the vomiting hot girl while Frankie completed her beer pong apprenticeship.

The game lasts about ten minutes. Thanks to a strange combination of Frankie's dead-on skill at sinking Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer and Jake's distraction over Frankie's boobs bubbling out the top of her camisole, we win.

Unfortunately, the celebration is short-lived. Our championship title is yanked ruthlessly from beneath our overconfident feet during round two. Jake and Eddie sink every ball, forcing us to chug in record time.

"Sam's girl drinks!" Eddie shouts as he sinks the final ball in front of me, splashing my shirt.

Sam's girl.
The sound of it hits me hard and fast, spinning my head around. Suddenly, I can't feel my feet. I'm floating. I'm content.

"Sam's girl! Sam's girl! Sam's girl!" the entire kitchen chants, and I realize in that moment how many people a raucous game of beer pong can attract. I take the ball out of the cup and chug it down, letting out a loud hiccup that I'd probably regret if I was sober, which for the record I'm not.

"Don't worry, girls," Eddie says, putting his arm around me. "The good thing about beer pong is, even when you lose, you win."

Jake peels Eddie's arm from my shoulders. "Anna," he says, "where's that boyfriend of yours, anyway?"

"He's not my --"

"Here." Sam sneaks up and wraps his arms around me from behind. My hair is up and he's breathing on the back of my neck, moaning softly so no one else can hear. If I was content before, now I'm effervescent. I'm an empty-headed floating feather again, a feather who is also effervescent.
Hiccup.
Someone could douse me with beer and I wouldn't even know it.

I turn and kiss him, eliciting another round of catcalls. "I see you've been losing at beer pong," he says, smiling in front of the cups scattered all over the sticky table.

"Yeah," I say. "But the thing about beer pong is that even when you win, you win. I mean, even when you win, you -- oh, never mind. We totally lost." I wriggle loose to grab another beer, which has somehow become suddenly not so disgusting.

Frankie and Jake grab the cups off the table and restack them for the next match.

"Anna, you're up," Frankie says.

"Sorry, guys." Sam takes the beer from my hand and sets it on the table. "I'm kidnapping your MVP. She needs a time-out."

I smile and wave to Frankie as she disappears into another match. Sam navigates us through the mob in the house, which has become even more tangled in the last hour. Lots of people are still dancing, while others are strewn across various couches and floor space, some laughing, others making out, a web of arms and legs and pedicured toes with tiny silver rings.

We make our way outside, past the pool, and across the lawn. The backyard is packed but not as noisy. Surprisingly, no one is on the steps that lead down to the beach, and no one seems to be
on
the beach, either.

We sit on the bottom step listening to the ocean, my legs outstretched and draped over Sam's. In the dark, reflected only by the near-full moon overhead, the water is black and frothy like licorice soup. As we sit in silence, the party noise fades behind us and I start to regain some of the brain cells I sacrificed during beer pong.

"It's weird," Sam finally says, one hand rubbing my bare (and thankfully shaved) leg. "I've lived here my whole life, but I never stop being amazed at how different the water looks at night."

I squint and try to see beyond the immediate shoreline, past where the waves crest and foam and crash against the sand. Everything is black. If I try to walk in the water beyond the moon's sheen on the surface, I'll drop right off the earth into outer space.

"I know what you mean," I say. "I've only been here a couple weeks and already I can't imagine not waking up to this."

It's the first time I've allowed myself to go beyond the happy bubble of our vacation, beyond our lazy days on the beach and secret nights at the Shack. Beyond the ocean and the sand and the Perinos being happy and, most importantly, Sam. I think briefly about my life back home. Anna, daughter of real estate deal-closer. Anna, sad yet supportive neighbor kid. Anna, haunted by secrets.

I rest my head against Sam's chest and know as his heart pounds softly in my ear that Zanzibar is my time capsule. I want to seal myself in this place, locked in this moment with Sam on the rickety sea-washed stairs in front of the ocean, not to be opened, examined, or otherwise disturbed for a hundred million years.

"Can we go somewhere?" I ask. I don't want to think ahead of this night and am suddenly overcome with the urgent need to cram as much as possible into it.

"Sure," he says, shifting my legs so he can get up. "Want to walk out to the Vista?"

Artists' Vista is a narrow curve of shoreline that juts out on the other side of the pier beyond Moonlight Boulevard. Frankie showed it to me our first day here when we were waiting for Red and Jayne to get ice cream, but we haven't gone out there on our midnight missions. I imagine at this time of night, there's only one reason
to
go out there.

"Yes." I answer immediately, standing to brush the sand from my shorts. "Let me go tell Frankie so she doesn't freak out later."

"Good idea," he says. "And put your sweatshirt on. I'm going to grab a blanket, too."

I've lost track of time, but it must be close to two in the morning. I'm not tired, and judging from the sound bouncing out of the house as I approach, neither are the beautiful party people.

Frankie's where I left her in the kitchen, except that now she's sitting on a barstool in front of the beer pong table with her arm around another girl, both in bikini tops and shorts, interviewing her companion for the camera about the loss of her clothing.

"Heyyyyyy," she says when she sees me, stumbling from her perch in front of the door-slash-table. "Look who's back!"

"Frankie, where's your shirt?" I ask. "I lost it in strip beer pong." She speaks slowly, making an exaggerated frown.

"Sounds like this game went downhill fast," Sam says, coming in behind me.

"Hey, look who showed up!" Jake comes in from one of the mysterious corridors of the house with a bottle of Jägermeister. "Who wants to do a belly shot?"

"Off your hairy gut?" Sam asks. "No thanks."

"No, silly!" Frankie hops off the stool and nearly drags down the other beer pong shirt-loser in the process. "Me and Lisa -- I mean Leah -- are the shot glasses."

"Right," Sam says. "Anyway, no thanks."

"More for us!" Jake pulls Frankie back to her spot on the table next to Lisa / Leah, who still hasn't said more than two words but releases a dopey giggle whenever Frankie speaks or moves and, for the record, looks like she's about Katie's age -- not that it matters to Jake.

I don't know how long it will take us to get to the Vista or how long we'll hang out, so I tell Frankie not to wait up. After confirming that Jake is planning to stay the night with her, I hug her goodbye and ask her not to drink any more unless she wants to spend the whole next day throwing up.

"Don't worry,
Mom,
" she says, leaning her whole body against mine from her position in front of the door-slash-table. "I won't. And also, I love you, Anna. You are my best friend in the world. I'm not just saying that because I'm drunk, either. I mean, I am drunk, but I still love you even when I'm not."

"I love you, too, Frankie," I say. "Now please get off of me."

She laughs and leans back on the stool, her long, tanned legs dangling over the edge next to laughing Leah, the pong-turned-Frankie fan club awaiting her next move.

I grab my backpack from an out-of-the way closet Eddie tucked it in earlier and dig out my sweatshirt, leaving my fake slumber party gear, journal, and toothbrush in the bag and dropping it next to Frankie's on the closet floor.

I locate a bathroom along the hallway back to the kitchen and duck inside to put on my sweatshirt and do a quick hair and face check. As if by magic, I even find some lotion for my legs and a bowl of mints on the sink.

Butterflies are batting their wings against my rib cage as I take a final look in the mirror.

The next time I see you, Crazy Anna, you won't recognize me.