What can I tell you about him? He was a seventeen-year-old surfer from Southern California with beachy good looks, who’d spent the summer in Seattle with a cousin who happened to be a friend of one of my friends. I first saw him at a little get-together in late June, but don’t start thinking it was one of those kinds of parties with absent parents and rivers of booze and marijuana smoke drifting from beneath bedroom doors. My parents would have killed me. It wasn’t even at a house—it was at Lake Sammamish—and my friend Jodie was a friend of the cousin, who brought J along. Jodie convinced me to go, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but once I arrived, it took me all of about two seconds to notice him. He had longish blond hair, broad shoulders, and a deep tan, which was almost impossible for me to attain; my skin preferred to mimic a bright red apple when exposed to the sun. Even from a distance, I could see every single muscle in his stomach, like he was some sort of living human anatomy display.
He was also hanging out with Chloe, a senior from one of the public high schools I vaguely recognized but didn’t know, who was equally gorgeous. It was clear they were together; Nancy Drew that I was, I couldn’t help but notice, since they were making out and basically hanging all over each other. Even so, that didn’t stop me from checking him out as I sat on my towel the rest of the afternoon, in much the same way I ogled the Taylor boys at church. I admit, I’d gone a little boy-crazy in recent years.
It should have ended there, but strangely, it didn’t. Because of Jodie, I saw him on the Fourth of July—that one was a nighttime party because of the fireworks, but there were a lot of parents there—and then again a couple of weeks later at the mall. Each time, he was with Chloe and he didn’t seem to notice me at all.
Then came Saturday, August 19.
What can I say? I’d just seen Die Hard: With a Vengeance with Jodie, even though I’d already seen it once before, and afterward, we went to her house. This time, her parents weren’t home. The cousin was there, along with J, but Chloe wasn’t. Somehow, J and I ended up talking on the back porch, and miraculously, he seemed interested in me. He was also friendlier than I’d expected. He told me about California, asked me about my life in Seattle, and he finally mentioned in passing that he and Chloe had broken up. Not long after that, he kissed me, and he was so gorgeous, things just got away from me. Long story short, I ended up in the back seat of his cousin’s car. I didn’t set out to have sex with him, but probably like everyone my age, I was curious about the whole thing, you know? I wanted to know what the big deal was. Nor did he force me. It just kind of happened, and the whole thing was over in less than five minutes.
Afterward, he was nice about it. When I had to leave to meet my eleven p.m. curfew, he walked me to the car and kissed me again. He promised to call me, but he didn’t. Three days later I saw him with his arm around Chloe, and when they kissed, I turned around before he could see me, my throat feeling as though I’d just swallowed sandpaper.
Later, when I learned I was pregnant, I called him in California. Jodie got his number from the cousin, since J hadn’t given it to me, and when I told him who I was, he didn’t seem to remember me. It was only when I reminded him about what happened that he recalled our time together, but even then, I had the sense that he didn’t have the slightest clue what we’d talked about or even what I looked like. He also asked why I was calling with a kind of irritated tone, and you didn’t need a perfect SAT score to know he had no interest in me at all. Though I’d intended to tell him that I was pregnant, I hung up the phone before the words could come out, and I’ve never spoken to him again.
My parents know none of this, by the way. I refused to tell them anything about the father, or how nice he’d seemed at first or even that he’d forgotten me entirely. It wouldn’t have changed anything, and by then I already knew I’d be giving the baby up for adoption.
You know what else I haven’t told them?
That after that phone call with J, I felt stupid, and as disappointed and angry as my parents were with me, I felt even worse about myself.
* * *
While I was seated on the bench, with ears already red and my nose beginning to run, I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. Turning, I spotted a dog trotting by with a Snickers wrapper in its mouth. It looked almost exactly like Sandy, my dog back home, only a little bit smaller.
Sandy was a cross between a golden and a Labrador retriever, with a tail that never seemed to stop wagging. Her eyes were a soft, dark caramel, full of expression; had Sandy tried to play poker, she would have lost all her money because she couldn’t bluff. I could always tell exactly what she was feeling. If I praised her, her gentle eyes would shine with happiness; if I was upset, they were full of sympathy. She’d been in our family for nine years—we got her when I was in the first grade—and for most of her life she’d slept at the foot of my bed. Now she usually slept in the living room because her hips weren’t so good and the stairs were hard for her. But even though she was getting white in the muzzle, her eyes hadn’t changed at all. They were still as sweet as ever, especially when I cradled her furry head in my hands. I wondered if she would remember me when I moved back home. Silly, of course. There was no way that Sandy would forget me. She would always love me.
Right?
Right?
Homesickness made my eyes moisten and I swiped at them, but then my hormones surged again, insisting that I MISSED SANDY SOOO MUCH! Without thinking, I rose from the bench. I saw Imitation Sandy trotting toward a guy seated near the edge of the deck in a lawn chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. He wore an olive-green jacket and beside him, I noticed, was a camera mounted on a tripod.
I stopped. As much as I wanted to see—and yes, pet—the dog, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to engage in stilted conversation with the owner, especially once he noticed I’d been crying. I was about to turn away when the guy whispered something to the dog. I watched as the dog turned and trotted to a nearby garbage can, where it popped onto its rear legs and carefully deposited the Snickers wrapper.
I blinked, thinking, Wow. That’s kind of cool.
The dog returned to the guy’s side, settled, and was just about to close its eyes when the man dropped an empty paper cup onto the deck. The dog quickly rose, grabbed the cup, and put it into the garbage before returning. When another cup was dropped about a minute later, I couldn’t help myself.
“What are you doing?” I finally asked.
The man turned in his seat and it was only then that I realized my mistake. He wasn’t a man, but rather a teenager, maybe a year or two older than I was, with hair the color of chocolate and dark eyes flickering with amusement. His jacket, made out of olive-colored canvas with intricate stitching, was strangely stylish, especially for this part of the world. When he raised an eyebrow, I had the uneasy feeling that he’d been expecting me. In the silence, I felt a burst of surprise at the thought that my aunt had been right. There actually was someone my age around here, or at the very least, someone my age who was on his way to Ocracoke. The island wasn’t entirely composed of fishermen and former nuns, or older women who ate biscuits and read romance novels.
The dog, too, seemed to evaluate me. Its ears perked up and it wagged its tail hard enough to thump the guy’s leg, but unlike Sandy, who loved everyone immediately and intensely and would have trotted over to greet me, this dog turned its attention back to the cup, quickly repeating its earlier performance, once more putting it into the garbage can.