Missy and Milo are at the register, forever, always. They’re surprised to see me.
Missy’s eyes widen.
“You cut your hair!” She rushes over and pulls at the ends. “Oh, wow, Eddie. That looks great. You can totally see your face.”
“Nice face,” Milo says behind her.
Missy keeps touching it. Cory did an okay job on my hair, I guess, after my freak-out. He thinned it out and made it short—just barely past my chin—with jagged edges and declared it a style. I can live with it. I mean, it could have been worse. In a place like CUTZ, I could’ve just as easily walked out with some kind of country music–inspired disaster.
“Thanks,” I mutter, moving away from Missy.
Nobody says anything. I look at Milo and he looks at me, but he’s not giving me an out or any help. It makes me mad. I don’t want to talk to him with her here.
So I don’t say anything.
But Missy eventually catches on and she says, “Oh, hey. You know what? I told my grandpa I’d pick up a bag of mulch from the co-op for him. I should do that while I remember. Be right back.”
“See you in a few,” Milo says.
She leaves.
Milo turns back to the register like he finds it very interesting.
I lean against one of the freezers.
Silence.
“We’re not in a fight anymore,” I finally tell him.
“I’m thrilled,” he says.
It comes out of his mouth casually, but he hates me when he says it, like I hated my mom when I spoke to her earlier and I don’t know what upsets me more, me doing that to her or him doing that to me but I feel it all on me and my face gives it away.
“Shit,” he says, alarmed. “Eddie, I’m—”
“Don’t,” I tell him. “Forget it.”
No sign of Missy yet. My father is dead. He killed himself. The studio is cleaned out. I have been kissed by a guy who is older than me and knows how to kiss. I’ve been thinking about how I want to have sex. I cut my hair. My mom tried to talk to me today and I ruined it. Beth says I ruined it. This whole summer is a bust.
“How did cleaning out the studio go?” Milo asks. I shrug. If he wanted to know, he could’ve taken me. “Who was that guy? The one that drove you? That wasn’t Beth.”
I don’t know why I like that Milo wants to know, but I like it. I like it in a weird way I shouldn’t. It makes me tingle a little bit.
“Beth uhm, bailed. He’s a photographer. A student. My father’s student,” I answer. Milo raises an eyebrow. “I know. I didn’t know about him before … He gave me a ride and helped me clear out everything. His name is Culler Evans.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty-one,” I lie. I don’t know why. “He’s nice.”
“It was nice of him to help you.”
“Yeah.”
“I really wish I could have—”
“I was serious, though,” I interrupt, because I don’t want to hear it from him. I want to hear it less and less. “What are we doing today?”
“You actually want to hang out with us?” Milo asks. “Because if you do, we’re going to Jenna’s after my shift. Jenna and Aaron, me, you, Missy. Wasting an afternoon around the pool. Sound good?”
I nod, but I wonder if he really wants me there. It’s probably easier for everyone when I’m not around.
He would freak if I said that out loud.
Jenna’s been popular ever since she got a pool, which was the sixth grade. It’s not one of those lame, aboveground pools either. Inground. Great length. It’s cool. We all flock to it and we never stop being impressed by it because rural life means being that easy. I think the nicest thing about lounging around Jenna’s pool is that you can be present, but you don’t have to engage and by not engaging, you’re engaging. Disengaging is engaging.
I drink a couple of beers with Missy and end up dozing on a towel next to the pool. Jenna’s loaned me one of her swimsuits. All she seems to own are bikinis.
Maybe I’ll get a tan.
But it’s awesome that this is all I have to do. It’s enough. Conversations happen around me and sometimes I’ll chime in or laugh when someone’s said something funny, but mostly I just enjoy the lack of expectations and the sun on my face.
This is how my summer was supposed to be.
“Hey.” Milo pokes me in the side. He’s been sitting next to me, his legs in the pool, for the last hour or so. “Switch sides or you’ll burn.”
“I always burn,” I tell him, but I roll onto my stomach and turn my head to the pool. Missy and Jenna are at the other end, talking and pretending to watch Aaron dive. He takes it really seriously, which is funny because it’s not like he’s on any teams or anything. It’s not like Branford High even has a pool. I close my eyes again.
I wonder what Culler Evans is doing right now.
“Sunscreen?” Milo asks.
“I guess.”
I expect him to hand me the bottle but he doesn’t. Just like that, his hands are on my back, smoothing the lotion into my skin, and I tense because it’s the freakiest thing.
“My mom tried today,” I tell him.
“That’s great.”
He sounds like he means it.
“I made her cry.”
“That’s not so great.”
He pushes what’s left of my hair back from my neck, and I feel him hesitate, just for a second. Noticing the difference. I wonder what he really thinks of it and if he likes it or if he doesn’t. I wonder if I care either way.
At what point is sunscreen fully absorbed into the skin? Milo touches me longer than he has to, but that’s okay. His palms smooth across my shoulder blades. I keep my eyes closed. After a while, his hands are off me, but I feel that he’s near, more than I did before. For some reason it makes me feel sad but grateful. I want to open my eyes and tell him it’s nice to know that he’s there, but I don’t. I just want to keep this moment going as long as I can.
And because that’s what I want, of course Missy swims over and ruins it.
“Getting in?” she asks him.
“Nah,” he says. “It’s nice out here.”
“It’s nice in here too.”
I almost risk cracking an eye open just to see what kind of look they’re exchanging when Aaron’s voice drifts from the other side of the pool.
“Ready for this?” he calls.
“Aaron, you asshole, get down from there,” Missy yells. “You’ll break your neck.”
I open my eyes. Missy and Milo are turned away from me. It takes me a minute to spot Aaron. I look to the diving board first, but he’s not there.
He’s on the roof.
He climbed out there through Jenna’s window. The visual makes my heart jump, spastic beats, horrible beats—an ugly fear running through my veins even though I know it’s not what it looks like. Aaron is going to jump off the roof and into the pool. The ultimate dive. It’s stupid and it’s dangerous, but it’s not impossible. I’ve seen this happen at Jenna’s house before.
No one has ever died doing it.
“I’m fine,” Aaron shouts.
“He’s fine,” Jenna echoes. “He’s done this a hundred times.”
Missy and Milo are quiet, eyes trained on Aaron, and before anyone can blink, Aaron launches himself off the roof and the time it takes him to fall seems like one of those forever kind of seconds—the kind you feel every inch of yourself present for, the kind where you can absorb every detail and recall it easily later, but also the kind that’s gone so quickly you wonder how it’s even possible to have walked away with that much of it carved into your soul.
He hits the water with a loud splash. I flinch.
And then it’s over.
But some things—they just ruin your day.
Like, completely.
“Asshole,” Milo mutters. His voice is strained. I close my eyes. “She see it?”
“No,” Missy says. There are wet splashy sounds and I realize Missy is hoisting herself out of the pool. I imagine how jiggly that must look; she’s in a bikini too. “I’m going in to get a beer. Come with me.”
“Sure,” Milo says. He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. His hands are trembling. I shrug him off because I can’t stand how that feels. It doesn’t feel nice, his touching me—not like before. He leans close to my ear. “Hey, wake up. We’re going inside for a second. Coming?”
“No,” I say.
“You want anything?”
“No.”
He squeezes my shoulder again and then they go. I lay there for a minute and then I open my eyes. Aaron is doing laps around the pool. He really is an asshole, but it’s not his fault, I guess. It’s not like my dad died so he can never jump off roofs in front of me again.
“What’s the roof feel like?” I ask, when he gets close to me.
He pauses and treads water. His black hair is plastered against his forehead. He pinches his nose and says, “It’s sort of hot. Makes sense, though, right? Closer to the sun.”
“Were you afraid?”
“I’ve done it before.”
“You could bash your head off the side of the pool. Brains everywhere,” I say, and he lets out a nervous laugh. “How can you be sure that’s not going to happen?”
“It’s really not that far,” Aaron says, gesturing to the roof. Jenna’s window is wide open, where he climbed out. The roof slopes down, closer to the pool than it isn’t. “Just get a little momentum and you’re good.” He studies me. “Gonna do it?”
“Jump off a roof?” I ask. “You mean, like my dad?”
Aaron’s eyes get round, but he doesn’t say anything. I get to my feet and pad across the hot concrete. I pull open the sliding glass doors that lead into the kitchen. Missy, Jenna, and Milo are gathered around the island. I spot limeade, tequila and beer. Missy catches my eye.
