“I just think it’s way too hot down here. I’m desperate to move north one day, even though I know Noah will never leave his parents. Ain’t that right, kid?” She grabbed his wrist, dragging him back toward the pool. Laughing, Noah allowed himself to topple over into the water. They resurfaced, Rebecca on his back, her arms around his neck. I stood awkwardly as they groped each other. Water lapped the bottom of my pants, drenching my black New Balance sneakers, though I didn’t dare move. I attempted an agreeable smile.
“You’ll get used to it,” Sophia said, drifting closer. “They have a difficult time keeping their hands off each other.” As she spoke, I allowed myself to occupy those sky-blue irises, which, more than the blazing Florida sun, reduced me to a nervous sweat. I became conscious suddenly of how often I was blinking, of how my jaw was unhinged. “They’ve been together since sixth grade.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It is, but I’ve known her since we were four. Which means,” she paused theatrically, “I enjoy the distinct honor of serving as perpetual third wheel.”
“It’s really an issue—we just can’t get rid of her.” Noah gathered water into his mouth and squirted in Rebecca’s direction. She responded by directing tidal waves at his face. “Maybe we’ll pawn her off on you?”
Sophia smiled uneasily, pushing wet strands of hair from her forehead. Still treading in place, she looked away toward the green over the fence. Something dark, for the slightest moment, passed through her eyes.
“You wouldn’t mind, would you? I mean, she’s a beauty,” Rebecca said, lounging now on Noah’s shoulders, “isn’t she, Ari?”
My cheeks turned an outrageous red. Yes, I wanted to say, yes, she was gorgeous, unquestionably the most gorgeous human being I’d ever seen. Instead, I mumbled incoherently, refocusing my attention to the dirt on my shoes. When I looked up again, I noticed that Sophia’s gaze had returned to me. “Won’t you be coming in?”
“No,” I said stupidly. “I don’t have a bathing suit. And actually I’ve got to go soon . . . still settling into the new house—”
She laughed dismissively. “They don’t do much coed swimming in Brooklyn, I suppose.” She swept back her hair, glided toward me and, looking up daringly, presented her hand. Blinking, hesitating for a fraction of a moment, I accepted, helped her out of the pool, ignoring how outrageously close I was to her body, how water splashed from her chin and neck and stomach and hips and landed on my clothing, trying desperately not to stare as she walked to her lounge chair and dried herself, focusing my vision instead on the gold bracelet, engraved with faint treble clefs, on her left wrist. Sophia Winter was the first girl I’d ever touched.
On her chair sat a copy of Pale Fire. I’d been mailed the same copy as summer reading. “Are you liking it?” I asked, eager to veer the conversation away from my glaring social deficiencies.
“Meeting you?” She grabbed a towel from a chaise lounge and wiped her face. “I’d say it’s been perfectly unremarkable, wouldn’t you?”
“Nabokov,” I said, pointing to the book.
She seemed amused I so much as knew how to pronounce his name. “You’ve heard of it?”
“I read it last month. So yes.”
“That’s an odd coincidence.”
“Doubtful. It was for school.”
“Which school?”
“Kol Neshama?”
“Oh. I thought you were a senior.”
“I am.”
She draped her towel over her shoulders, like a cape, and adjusted her black bathing suit. “The Academy doesn’t take transfers for senior year.”
“Yeah, that’s right, actually,” Noah said. “Remember that kid Stevie Glass? He tried switching in for senior year and they didn’t let him. And he was supposed to be pretty bright.”
I shrugged. I imagined arriving for my first day of school, only to be informed that some error had been made, that I was never, in fact, accepted. “Well, I’m pretty sure they took me.”
Sophia continued to dry herself, wrapping the towel around her waist, wringing water from her hair. I knew immediately that I’d memorize every detail of her face. “So how’d you do it?”
“I applied.”
“That much I pieced together.”
“They liked my essay, I guess.” The application process had been fairly unmemorable, largely informational, with the exception of one prompt: “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” (Mary Wollstonecraft) Discuss in 2–10 pages. It was the first research project I’d ever had and I rather enjoyed writing it. I mailed in eight pages, titled: “‘Immortal Longings’: Human Yearning in Literature and in Gemara Berachot Lamed Amud Aleph.”
Sophia made no attempt to hide her shock. “So you’re telling me you not only somehow secured a place in Kol Neshama but you’re also taking AP Lit?”
“I didn’t swim much in Brooklyn,” I said, “but I did an awful lot of reading.”
Her hands went to her hips. She had a way of downturning her mouth that made my insides freeze. “Well, then. What’d you think of Pale Fire?”
Noah smirked from the pool. “Check out these scholars.”
“It was weird,” I said. “But I liked it.”
“Really? Because it tries too hard. I don’t like when books resort to beating you over the head—Kafka excluded. It’s a sign of imaginative inadequacy on the part of the author. Not to mention the whole thing is too, I don’t know, voyeuristic for my liking.” I knew she was, less than subtly, putting me in my place. “Maybe my appreciation would be deepened if I’d get around to reading Timon of Athens.”
“Timon of who?” Rebecca asked.
“Of whom,” Noah added. Rebecca socked him.
“It’s where Nabokov got the title,” Sophia said. “The moon’s an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” I said. “That’s like claiming you need to first read Hamlet to understand it.”
The slender muscles underlining her arms and shoulders contracted. “Why Hamlet?”
“What’s the line? ‘The glowworm shows the matin to be near, / And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire.’ It’s just as much of a reference, isn’t it?”
“I could be losing it in my old age,” Noah said, “but did you actually just quote Shakespeare at my pool?”
“This all seems like an unnecessary fixation with fire,” Rebecca said. “Let’s move on, maybe?”
“I’m only saying,” I said, reddening, “it’d be just as valuable to thumb through Hamlet if you’re trying to find helpful source material for Pale Fire. Which is to say, I guess, they’re equally unimportant and you’d be lost reading either.”
She looked at me so that I couldn’t tell whether she was studying me or looking beyond me entirely. “I’d be lost?”
“No, of course not,” I stuttered, “not you specifically, I meant someone would be—”