.
The bus on the way back to the beach -was almost empty. Jo's dad wanted her to stay the night at home in Bethesda, but she didn't want to. She'd lied and said her shift started at nine- thirty the next morning and that she couldn't get there in time unless she left that night. He offered to drive her, but she said she was happy to take the bus—anyway, her mom -was going to be waiting for her at the bus stop.
It was dark and warm and comforting to feel the miles slipping away underneath her, taking her farther from the Mexican restaurant, closer to somewhere, anywhere else. It was late enough that most of the beach traffic was gone. It was so dark it almost didn't matter -where she was.
Jo curled her feet under her and put her head in her hand. She wanted to prolong the time until her mother would be waiting for her at the bus depot, waiting to see her reaction to the supposedly big news. She wanted to keep living here, in between.
When she leaned her head against the window, she noticed the person sitting in the row across from her and one up. It appeared to be a teenager—a he, not a she. Jo could only see his ear and a part of the side of his face and his shoulder. And even those parts she couldn't see well, because it was pretty dark. But sometimes you could tell, even from seeing a bit of a person, that they were going to be good- looking. This ear -was the ear of a very good-looking person, she suspected.
She had leaned over a little more to get a better angle, nearly touching the top of her head to the seat in front of her, -when he suddenly turned his face to her. She almost let out a little gasp.
He smiled at her. She sat up quickly, obviously busted. He waved. Feeling stupid, she gave a little wave back. Her heart was pounding.
His ear did not lie. He was very good- looking indeed. She guessed he was a couple of years older than she. My, what a smile. Or so it appeared in the dark.
She looked down, -wishing to cool her bright pink face, and when she looked up again he was standing in the aisle right next to her.
“Is this seat taken?” he asked gallantly, pointing to the seat next to hers.
She laughed because they were almost the only two people on the bus, amid about fifty empty seats. She laughed because they were halfway to the ocean, and nobody else would be getting on. She probably would have laughed if he had stepped on her foot, because she was feeling punchy and embarrassed. “No,” she finally said.
“Do you mind?” he asked, sitting down right next to her.
“No,” she said again. She tried to clear her throat. “All yours.”
He was very, very cute and he was sitting so close to her she could see his individual eyelashes. One minute she was alone, and now she had him. It was as though she had conjured him right out of her imagination.
“Are you going to the beach?” she asked stupidly, because that was the only place the bus was going.
“No, to Baltimore. Damn, am I on the wrong bus?”
She could see he was teasing her. Only a boy with a smile like his could tease like that. She wished some of the blood throbbing in her cheeks would rise to her brain and give her a bit of intelligence. She had a feeling she was going to need it.
She twisted an earring self- consciously. “I think you'd have more fun at the beach than in Baltimore,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you? Is that where you are going to be?”
Now she felt stupid again. She figured she could blush and look out the window at pure darkness or she could rise to his challenge.
“In fact, I am,” she said.
“Then I must be on the right bus,” he said.
She tried not to swallow her tongue. “Me too,” she said, a little more timidly than she'd intended.
To her surprise he reached down and picked up her hand. Her eyes widened and her breath stopped as he held it up and compared it in size to his own. “You have nice hands,” he said. “Long fingers.”
He continued to hold it as though it was a fascinating possession, and she was happy to give it to him. She forgot it was even hers anymore.
When he put it back on her lap, she wished he would take it again. To the rest of her body, her hand was suddenly like a stranger, a prodigal, gone off to have adventures in the big world. But maybe it was like a baby bird that had been held by a human, so it couldn't come home again.
He turned in his seat to face her. His knee touched her knee. He studied her. “You play … soccer.”
She was surprised yet again. “How did you know?”
He laughed off the mystery. “I can tell you play something. Soccer-was the easiest guess.”
She nodded, feeling in every way like the easiest guess.
“You swim,” she hazarded.
“How did you know?”
She pointed to his head. “The green hair.”
She worried for a moment that she'd insulted him, but he erupted into a huge laugh, and she knew she hadn't. She might also have told him she knew he was a swimmer by his broad shoulders, but she didn't think his self-confidence needed any help.
“I use a special product for that. Clairol makes the color. I think it's called fungus. Or seaweed. Or phlegm. Do you like it?”
She laughed. She did like it.
“So, Goldie,” he said, tugging on her sleeve. “You come here often?”
“Twice today,” she said.
“Really.”
“Yes.” Barging into her mind were abrupt and disconnected images of her dinner -with her dad, the things he'd told her. That was a million miles away from her right now, and it seemed like the right distance.
She didn't want him to ask her more about that, and he didn't. He was looking at her -with great intensity, his eyes intimate and conspiratorial. “You're cute as hell,” he said.
“You're cute as hell,” she said back, admiring her own nerve.
She felt the warmth of him as he came closer.
Was he going to try to kiss her, just like that? Was she going to let him?
She didn't feel like herself. She felt like she was playing herself in a movie. Except in the movie, she was the kind of person -who would flirt with a very gorgeous stranger on a bus and even kiss him. It was a pretty good movie, she thought, as she felt his cheek against hers, briefly, and then his lips on hers.
The first kiss was soft, like a question, and when he saw that she was neither shocked nor unwilling, he put a hand on either side of her face and kissed her more deeply. The back of her head pressed against the seat. Boldly she put her palm against his warm neck. She felt his hair tickle the back of her hand and felt his pulse in her fingertips. Or maybe it was her pulse. His breath -was like steam. Or maybe that was her breath. With her other hand she felt the softness of his shirt, sort of a knit sweatshirt- type thing with a string at the neck and a wooden toggle, the kind that skaters, swimmers, and stoners wore.
He kissed her chin and under her chin and along her neck. She thought she would surely die or explode. Explode and then die. I can't believe what is happening in this movie, she thought distantly.
She was just a bunch of nerve cells, living on the very surface of herself. His lips were warm and confident and made hers that way too. She'd often -worried about being an incompetent kisser if it ever came to it, but her mouth seemed to know what to do. His mouth had enough confidence for both of theirs.
She was faintly aware of the bus swerving off Highway 1, making the exit to Rehoboth. When the bus stopped, they broke apart. He gave her a sly look and one last hard kiss.
“This is Rehoboth Beach,” the driver bellowed.
The front door of the bus swung open. He helped her get her bag and watched her go stumbling up the aisle. She hoped he wasn't getting off here but was staying on to Dewey Beach or Bethany or Ocean City. It would be too awkward to face him outside the bus, to act like strangers or, alternatively, introduce him to her mom. She didn't even turn around to find out. She kept her gaze rigidly ahead; her limbs were shaky and her heart thumping wildly.
She felt l
ike she was drunk and also underwater. She tried to shake her head to sober up. She saw her mother waiting in the car and tried to push herself back up through miles of heavy water to the air.
What did you do? she asked herself, sucking in the moist, cool beach breeze. How did that just happen?
She wished so much she could walk home, holding on to her heady buzz, rather than get into the car -with her mom and lose all of it. Would her mom see her flushed face and her shaking hands and know immediately that something was up? She felt like she was wearing her brain inside out.
What were you thinking? she asked herself, but apparently herself didn't feel much need to answer.
“Hey Dia?”
Polly made a point of catching her mother in the short window of time between -when she woke up and -when she left the house for her studio.
Dia looked up from her large mug of coffee. Her eyes were still slightly crossed and baggy from sleep.
“Are you pouncing? No pouncing.”
That was a cardinal rule of the morning. Polly got up early and Dia slept late. By the time Dia got up, Polly was bursting -with pent- up conversation. It was hard for her to stay quiet as Dia stumbled through her morning routine.
“No. I was … I -was just going to ask you something,” Polly said defensively. She rubbed her sock feet together under the kitchen table.
“Okay. Fine.”
“Could I go to modeling camp in Gaithersburg in late July?”
“What?”
“Modeling camp. It's only half an hour away. I looked on the map. I can pay for most of it from babysitting. It's just a day camp, nine to four Monday through Friday. And it's only for two weeks. Several real supermodels went there.”
“Modeling camp?”
“Yes.” Polly broke her toast into pieces with her fingers.
“What is modeling camp?”
“It's where you … you know, learn to be a model.”
“Or just look like one,” Dia muttered.
“What?” Polly asked.
“Nothing. Where did you get this idea? Are your friends going to model camp?”
“No.” Polly had told her mother several times what Jo and Ama were doing for the summer, but she must have forgotten. “I found it on the Internet.”
“Why?”
“Why did I find it?”
“I mean, -why -were you looking? Do you seriously want to be a model?”
Polly broke her toast into smaller pieces. Going into this conversation, Polly had had a feeling that her mother wasn't going to be one hundred percent supportive. Dia was always saying how she was a feminist and how Polly was too. Dia didn't like celebrity magazines or most TV shows because she said they were degrading to -women. Polly did like those things, and she was secretly worried she wasn't a feminist.
“Well, I think it could be interesting,” Polly said quietly.
Dias face softened a little. She took a long sip of coffee. “Do you think you have the right look for it? Aren't models supposed to be really tall?” she asked.
“I'm still growing,” Polly said. “I could be tall.”
“Polly, I'm five two. You're taller than me, but you've never been tall.”
Polly wanted to ask about her father, Was he tall? But she was afraid it would only hinder her chances.
“Some models aren't tall. Like … hand models.”
“You want to be a hand model?”
“No. Well, I don't know.” Polly was an inveterate nail biter. She made her hands into fists.
Dia sighed. She looked tired. “You don't have enough to do this summer, do you?”
“No, it's not that. I just thought that this could be … interesting.”
“Polly, modeling is not interesting. You are interesting. You are too interesting for modeling, in my opinion. Do you really want to be judged just on how you look?”
“I think there's a lot more to it than that,” Polly said. “It's like … acting, actually.” She went back to work on her toast. “And you learn about fashion. Which I'm pretty interested in. And it said on the Web site you can learn about photography and fitness.”
“Polly, you are getting crumbs everywhere.”
Polly abandoned her toast and tried to dust her hands off carefully over her plate. “Please, can I please go? I can take the Metro there and back on my own. You don't need to do anything.”
Dia sighed again, more loudly this time. “I don't know,” she said, but she got the look of resignation Polly was aiming for. It used to take longer to get Dia to the resignation stage, but Polly had refined her technique.
“I'll think about it,” Dia said.
“Okay,” Polly said. She was smart enough not to allow herself any expression of triumph. I'll think about it meant yes. Maybe meant probably. No meant it would take some more work on Polly's part to convince her.
“Why aren't you eating breakfast?”
Polly stuck one of the mangled bits of toast into her mouth. “I am.”
•••
Jo woke up that morning -with a kissing hangover. Her lips felt swollen, her cheeks felt raw, and her conscience stung a little. She had heard about this kind of hangover before, but she had never had one.
“Joseph, you're on flatware this shift,” commanded Jordan, the pimply, solitaire- playing assistant manager who wouldn't have hired her. He liked to send her into the kitchen to load and unload the silverware whenever one of the dish-washers failed to show up.
Jo nodded distractedly at him and veered toward the kitchen, train of thought unbroken.
“Hola, Hidalgo,” she said to the fry cook, -who was standing at his locker.
It wasn't like she had never kissed anyone before. She'd kissed Arlo Williams several times at parties. He had been more nervous than she was.
Arlo s kissing -was different, though. It didn't cause the swelling or the stinging. Kissing Arlo was maybe like drinking one beer, -whereas kissing …
Wait a minute. Jo -winced. Kissing … -whom? What-was his name?
Oh, my God, did she really not know his name? Had he told her and she'd forgotten? No, she -would have remembered it. Had she told him hers? Had she really landed a severe kissing hangover and never even bothered to introduce herself?
Wow. She couldn't help thinking of Ama. What would Ama say? She didn't want to think about that. She pictured Bryn, whom she'd see later at the dinner shift. Bryn would understand. He was gorgeous, Jo would say, and that would be explanation enough. In fact, she was a little bit excited to tell Bryn about it, because Bryn -would be excited about it too. Maybe Jo wouldn't mention the fact that she didn't know his name. That was kind of a hoochie move, even for a person like Bryn.
Jo began unloading the clean silverware from the night before. She mindlessly sorted the pieces in the cart, glad it was still early and no one else was in the kitchen. She was happy to have some time to herself. She was grateful that her mom had still been asleep this morning -when she'd left the house for a run on the beach and then a swim in the ocean. She'd snuck into the outdoor shower to clean up and dress for -work and left without being seen.
“Did he tell you?” Those were the only-words her mother had said to her on the ride home from the bus the night before. Jo had nodded and that had been it. Jo had gone to bed not thinking about her mother or her father or -what he'd told her. She'd fallen asleep thinking of kissing on the bus.
She shut the door to the giant commercial dish-washer -with a bang and a shudder.
So she had kissed a stranger. So she didn't know his name. Everybody-was allowed a random, possibly misguided kiss once or twice, weren't they? There weren't any real consequences to a kiss.
No, there weren't. And besides that, it was over and done. She was never going to see the guy again in her life, and maybe that was for the best.
“Ama, you ought to loosen up a little.” That was what Jared had said to her after breakfast. Now, hours later, Ama was still thinking about it. Jared wasn't the first person t
o say that to her in her life. Jo had said it. Polly hadn't said it outright, but Ama suspected she had thought it. Grace didn't say it. The other kids in her accelerated math class never said it. Her parents didn't say it and her sister certainly didn't.
What did it mean, anyway? What was so good about being loose? Could you get perfect grades if you were loose? Could you master four languages? Could you get into Princeton or get a full scholarship through medical school?
Maybe looseness was one of the many things Ama couldn't afford, like movie candy and Seven jeans. Maybe being loose was like hiking—only an idea, and from a practical standpoint, completely useless.
Over the dying embers of the postdinner campfire, Ama sensed Noah looking at her. Her face burned, but she couldn't look back. She pictured her hair. I would smile at him if my hair wasn't this bad. I would talk to him. Definitely.
“We're going to be -working up toward the final rappel,” Dan, the bearded guy, was telling the yawning group. They had hiked eight miles through dense forest, and Ama had a pain and a blister for every one of them. “It's three hundred fifty feet, give or take, so we want to get you guys comfortable with the ropes and the gear, and also with that kind of height.”
Ama raised her hand. Dan looked over at her. “Ama, you don't need to raise your hand here.”
Ama pulled it down, embarrassed. It wasn't the first time she'd been told that, either. She cleared her throat. “What's a rappel?”
“It's the safest, fastest way to get down a cliff or a steep mountain face. We secure your rope to the top of the rock, and your belayer feeds you the rope as you go down. We ask that you take it slowly,” he said, looking meaningfully at Jonathan, -who was reckless.
Ama held her own hand so she wouldn't raise it again. “What's a belayer?” she asked.
“Your belayer is your trusted partner. He or she makes sure your rope is secure and lets it out slowly as you descend. Be nice to your belayer, -whoever he or she may be. He holds your life in his hands.”
Ama felt a stab of terror. Had she been nice to anyone? Whom here could she trust -with her life? She pictured herself catapulting down the mountain to a painful death.