Eleven

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making a sand trap for our dungeon,” I told her. “If someone walks over this hole”—I demonstrated with my fingers—“then, aaaah! Down to the fiery furnace!”

  “But only the bad people,” Eliza said.

  Amanda didn’t look impressed. In fact, she looked a bit as if she thought it was dumb, which made me realize that maybe it was. She asked if I was ready to go swimming, and I said, “Sure,” and got to my feet.

  “See you,” I told Eliza.

  After splashing around for an hour or so, we dragged out the rubber inner tubes Amanda’s dad had brought from home. We swam with them past the breaking waves, and Amanda showed me how to heave myself in so that my bottom stuck through the inner tube’s hole and my arms and legs draped over the sides. Then it was like drifting around in our own portable potties, although of course we didn’t actually pee or anything. (Well, all right, I did. But only because I didn’t want to trudge all the way back to the house after working so hard to get to the exact right spot in the water. Anyway, fish pee in the ocean, so what’s the big deal?)

  The one thing we had to watch out for were the valve stems, which were the little metal things that stuck out on the inside edge of the tubes. When Mr. Wilson filled the tires with air, that’s where he attached the pump. In the water, I had to be careful how I sat, because if my thigh rubbed up against the valve stem, it really hurt. Also, I didn’t want the valve stem too near my armpit, because then when I reached back to paddle, it scraped my side.

  I was scooching myself into a better position when Amanda said, “Winnie, look! Quick, before it’s too late!”

  I swiveled my head. “What? Where?”

  “There!” Amanda said. “Those two guys. See them?”

  I breathed out. “Jeez, Amanda. I thought there was a shark or something.” I sank back into the inner tube, although I didn’t let my feet dangle quite so deep. “The guys standing by the water—are they the ones you’re talking about?”

  “The one in the red muscle shirt is so cute,” Amanda said. “Don’t you think? He’s been here this whole week, but I haven’t gotten the chance to talk to him.”

  I squinted. “His friend is scratching his ... you know.”

  “Winnie!”

  “Well, he is.”

  “That is just nasty,” Amanda said. But she giggled, which made me feel good. “Come on, let’s go over.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  She giggled again. “What do you mean, why?” She backstroked toward the boys.

  My stomach tightened, but I paddled after her. The closer we got, the more nervous I felt. What were we supposed to say once we got there?

  We squirmed off our inner tubes and lugged them to shore. By this time, Red Shirt and Nasty were ambling toward the pier.

  “Hurry, they’re getting away!” Amanda said. We chugged up the beach and dropped our inner tubes by our towels, then fast-walked back to the waterline, where the sand was harder packed. I felt sticky from salt, and the insides of my thighs rubbed together.

  “I think I’m starting to burn,” I said. “Maybe we should go back.”

  Amanda adjusted her bikini top. “Don’t be silly.”

  We climbed the steps to the pier. At the shore end was a bait-and-tackle shop, and I looked longingly at the large cooler by the door. A Dr Pepper sounded wonderful. But Red Shirt and Nasty were heading out to watch the fisherman, so that’s what we did, too.

  “We’ll walk to the very end,” Amanda said. “If they want to talk to us, they can. Do I look all right?”

  I stared at her. Since when did she care how she looked? I glanced down at my own splotchy legs and worn bathing suit. “Do I?” I asked.

  “Except for your hair,” she said. She reached over and smoothed it down. “Okay, let’s go.”

  She scampered down the pier, and I followed more slowly. Between the wooden planks were inch-wide gaps and the occasional rotted-out hole, and peering down, I saw first sand, then water. The farther out we got, the scarier it was. I knew I wouldn’t fall through—the holes weren’t that big—but the sight of the waves that far below made me dizzy.

  Halfway down the pier, Amanda stopped. Red Shirt and Nasty were leaning against the railing and studying the ocean. Up close I saw that they were older than I’d thought, like sixteen or seventeen. Bo’s age. Only Bo was sweet and kind and wonderful, while these guys were ... hairy. At least, Nasty was. Tufts of dark hair sprouted from his armpits and curled on his legs. Red Shirt had armpit hair, too, although his was blond. They both wore board shorts low on their hips.

  “Man,” Red Shirt said.

  Nasty whistled. “Wouldn’t want to get stung by those babies.”

  Amanda sauntered over, deliberately looking at the water and not at Red Shirt. Then her eyes bugged, and she said, “Oh my God.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You’ve got to see this, Winnie. Oh my God.”

  I joined her at the railing. Below us was the ocean, lapping against the barnacle-crusted posts of the pier. And floating in the water—sheez, there must have been a hundred of them!—was a colony of green-and-blue jellyfish with transparent, bulging bodies.

  I gripped the railing. My legs felt heavy.

  “Can you see their tentacles?” Amanda asked.

  I could when the water fanned them out. Slippery pale strands that were two to three feet long.

  “They’re filled with poison sacs,” Amanda said. “If a fish brushes up against them, or a person, the poison can hurt so bad it paralyzes them. People have died from getting stung by jellyfish.”

  I shuddered. “Yikes.”

  “Uh-huh. A couple of summers ago I stepped on part of a dead jellyfish. A fisherman had reeled it up, and I guess one of its tentacles got smeared onto the pier. The bottom of my foot got all dimpled like I’d stepped on a jillion little suction cups, and I was, like, hopping around and screaming because it hurt so much.”

  “Can you imagine being in the water and getting tangled up in one?” I asked.

  “Or swimming into a whole swarm of them and feeling their tentacles wrap around you?”

  We gazed at the bobbing, iridescent mass. The jellyfish were actually kind of pretty from way up here.

  “Hey,” Amanda said, straightening up. “Where’s Red Shirt?”

  I glanced around.

  “There, down at the end,” she said. She headed toward him, then turned back when she realized I hadn’t moved. She sighed. “Now what’s the problem?”

  “They’re old,” I said, my heart thumping.

  “So?”

  “So ... I don’t know.” Amanda didn’t used to care about boys. Why had she suddenly gotten interested?

  “Winnie. We’re already here,” she said. When I still hung back, she put her hands on her hips. “What, you’d rather build sand castles with your little friend?”

  I felt a hot blush creep up the back of my neck. Tears stung my eyes.

  Amanda looked away. In a tight voice, she said, “Well, I’m going over. You can do whatever you want.”

  I swallowed. I made my feet start moving and followed a yard behind her, swiping at my eyes.

  “Hey,” Amanda said to Red Shirt’s back. He and Nasty were gazing out over the end of the pier, but they turned at her voice.

  “Hey yourself,” Red Shirt said. He looked her over.

  “Are you, like, a surfer?” she asked. “I saw you surfing the other day, and you were really good.”

  Red Shirt glanced at Nasty. I could tell he was amused. He propped his weight on his elbows and said, “We do a little surfing, yeah. Are you a surfer?”

  “Ha,” Amanda said. “I wish. It would be so cool to know how to do that. Don’t you think, Winnie?”

  I stared at the floorboards. “Uh-huh.”

  “Maybe we should teach you,” Nasty said, winking at Red Shirt. “Give you your own private lessons. What do you think?”

  “Yeah!?
?? Amanda said. “That would be awesome!”

  Nasty and Red Shirt laughed. Nasty held out his palm, and Red Shirt slapped him a high five.

  “I’m serious,” Amanda said. “I’m a really fast learner, I swear!”

  This made Nasty hoot. I wrapped my arms around my ribs and wanted to disappear.

  Red Shirt grinned. “Find me in five years, babydoll.” He tweaked her nose. “Come on, bro. Let’s bounce.”

  Amanda watched them go. She was pink with pleasure. “He called me ‘babydoll,’” she whispered.

  I exhaled, grateful for the narrow escape.

  That night, things between Amanda and me were weird, only she pretended they weren’t, which made it even worse. At dinner, Mrs. Wilson asked if we’d had a good day, and Amanda said, “Oh my God, we had a super day. Didn’t we, Winnie? Mom, you should see this one shell Winnie found. It’s pale orange with darker orange stripes, and it’s soooo pretty.”

  I couldn’t figure out why she was acting so dumb. First all mean at the pier—because it was mean, what she said about me going to play with Eliza—and now all la-di-da like nothing had happened. But to tell the truth, I didn’t want to figure it out. I just wanted us to have fun like we always did.

  We went for a starlit walk on the beach with her parents, which was tolerable because they did all the talking. After that, we washed up and got settled on our sofas. My sheets smelled like mildew. For several minutes we lay quietly, then through the dark came Amanda’s voice.

  “Do you think Red Shirt likes me?” she asked. She spoke softly, so her parents wouldn’t hear from their bedroom. “It was so sweet how he asked if I was a surfer. I think that was a good sign, don’t you?”

  I made a noise that could have meant anything.

  “And Nasty obviously likes you,” she went on. “He talked to you and everything. So you can have him, and I’ll take Red Shirt, okay?”

  I shifted on the lumpy sofa. I didn’t want either of them. And I didn’t want them here between us, hovering in the salty air. “Those jellyfish were really creepy,” I finally said.

  “Tell me about it,” Amanda said.

  “Just think: They’re out there right this second, floating and bobbing along.”

  Amanda made a shivery sound. “Sharks, too, smelling the water for blood. Oh my God, I would totally freak if I ever saw a shark.”

  “I heard of this boy once who got his leg chomped off by a shark,” I said. “He had to swim back to shore with nothing but a bloody stump.”

  “Ew!” Amanda said. “That is so scary!”

  We imagined being trapped at sea with only an old plank to hold on to, and how terrifying that would be. Or what if we were caught in a hurricane with twenty-foot waves? Then we branched out to include other natural disasters, like tidal waves, floods, tornadoes.

  I warned Amanda that if she was ever on the highway when a tornado came, she should climb under an overpass and press up against one of the concrete support thingies. I’d seen a special on the Weather Channel about tornadoes, and a man had kept his children safe by doing exactly that. I drifted into a fantasy where I was caught in a tornado, me and this one little girl who’d gotten separated from her mom, and I dragged her under the overpass and zipped my jacket around her to prevent her from blowing off.

  I don’t know how much of this I had explained out loud and how much had stayed in my head when Amanda next spoke.

  “Giant squid,” she whispered. “Squelching along where you can’t even see them.”

  “Ooo, good one,” I whispered back. I pulled my sheet up under my chin, and the drone of the waves lulled me to sleep.

  Saturday was our last full day. The sky was cloudy, and Amanda was pissed.

  “Why can’t it be cloudy tomorrow?” she complained. “This is my final chance to work on my tan!”

  “You still get sun when it’s overcast,” her mother reminded her. “You actually get more, because the sun’s rays reflect off the clouds.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t feel the same.” She scowled and scooped her inner tube from the porch. “Come on, Winnie. We might as well go in the water.”

  The ocean was warmer than the air, and after swaying up and down in the waves for a while, Amanda perked up.

  “I love it here so much,” she said. “When I’m grown up, I’m going to have my very own beach house, and not just for a month every summer, but for whenever I want.”

  “That would be so awesome,” I said. Things felt okay between us, and I swirled my fingers in the water. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s buy one together and call it Winanda’s Hideaway.”

  “‘Winanda’?” Amanda said.

  “It’s our names combined,” I explained.

  She laughed and rolled her eyes like she thought I was kidding. The sun eased out from behind a cloud, and she tilted her face toward the sky. “Yes,” she said. She spread her hair over the inner tube. “I should have put lemon juice in. I want to go to school with streaky, sun-kissed hair. We start in two weeks, can you believe it?”

  “We better be in the same homeroom,” I said.

  “I know,” Amanda said. “If we’re not, I’ll die. Hey, can you fix my strap for me?” She leaned forward, and I stretched sideways and straightened her strap. Beyond her, I could see the pier.

  “We are really far out,” I said, gauging the distance by the pier posts.

  Amanda turned curiously. “Wow,” she said. “We are.”

  Something occurred to me, and I frowned. “Isn’t this how far out we were when we saw the jellyfish?”

  Together, we looked down.

  “Crap!” Amanda cried. She started backstroking. “They’re everywhere !”

  They were everywhere—pale, shimmering blobs floating all around us. Fear zinged my spine, and I drew in my arms and legs and tried to hitch my bottom out of the water. My elbow brushed against something gelatinous, and I screamed.

  “Paddle, Winnie!” Amanda ordered.

  “I can’t! What if I touch one?!”

  “You have to! Just keep your arms up high!” She was already several yards away from me.

  I kept my elbows close to my sides and paddled, using only my hands to flap at the water. I got nowhere. A wave swelled under me, then lifted Amanda’s inner tube and carried it twenty feet in.

  “Wait for me!” I yelled.

  “Winnie!” Amanda called.

  My pulse raced. I could hardly breathe. I screwed up my face and backstroked, and my entire body recoiled when I touched another jellyfish. I craned my neck and saw Amanda almost at the shore.

  “You can do it!” she yelled. She clambered off her inner tube in knee-deep water.

  I backstroked again. Then again. Each time a wave came, my heart leapt into my throat. I was terrified that a jellyfish would wash into my lap. Go, go, go, I told myself.

  “You’re almost there!” Amanda cried. “Don’t stop!”

  Stroke by stroke, I struggled toward the shore. The jellyfish thinned out, and the waves got more lively, crashing into white foam before rolling back to the sea. A two-footer broke on top of me, and I flipped off my inner tube and was dragged against sand. I stumbled to my feet and churned through the receding water, then dropped down on the beach.

  Amanda bolted over. “Winnie, are you okay?” She clutched my hand. “Can you talk? Are you in shock? Were you stung?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, although my teeth were chattering. “But I left my inner tube. I’ll go get it in a minute.”

  “You think I care about the inner tube?” she asked. “Cripes, Winnie, I thought you were a goner!”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  We looked at each other, and then we got the giggles.

  “All those jellyfish—”

  “Hundreds of them!”

  “And then that wave came, and I was like, ‘Bye, Amanda!’ ”

  “And I was like, ‘Bye, Winnie!’ Only I didn’t mean to leave you. It just happened!”

  Peo
ple were staring, but we couldn’t stop laughing. A snot bubble ballooned from one nostril, and I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. Several yards away I caught sight of someone familiar.

  “Great,” I said. “Look who’s here.” It was Red Shirt and Nasty, regarding us as if we belonged back in kindergarten. I tried to pull myself together. I tried to act mature. “You want to go talk to them? Because you can if you want.”

  Amanda glanced up. Her fingers flew to the strap of her bikini. Then she pressed her lips together and said, “Oh, please. With my best friend stranded helpless on the beach?”

  That threw us into chortling snort-laughs, and we collapsed backward on the sand.

  September

  EVERYONE SAYS CHANGE is what makes life an adventure. That when you change, you grow, and if you don’t change, you’ll shrivel up and rot like an old potato.

  Well, baloney. The people who get rah-rah over change are always parents and librarians, not kids. Because when kids change, it’s really pretty ugly. Three times out of four it means someone’s going to get her feelings hurt, or someone’s going to feel stupid when the day before she felt just fine. Three times out of four it means someone’s two best friends are out of the blue going to start acting silly and giggly and full of secret looks, and nothing that someone can do will make things go back to normal.

  It makes me want to cry.

  After all, it wasn’t my fault I did a giant cannonball at Chantelle’s neighborhood pool and drenched Amanda and Chantelle from head to toe. How was I supposed to know they wanted to stay dry and perfect for the too-tan lifeguard with the squinty eyes? We were at a pool. You’re supposed to get wet.

  And so what if Amanda and Chantelle both shaved their legs for the very first time the week before school started? Big whup. That didn’t mean they had to call me “prickle puss” for five days running, touching my legs and then jerking back like they’d been poked by a needle. Even if they were joking, it wasn’t a nice thing to do.