It’s the next morning and I’m still riding high from the date. I’m just munching away on my cereal and thinking about what a great time we had on the beach. Then my parents come into the room and start their daily comedy routine.
“Look at that,” Mom says. “Janey’s actually smiling at breakfast. That’s unusual.”
“That is unusual,” Dad says. “Janey, why are you smiling?”
I roll my eyes. “Because I just love Honeycombs.”
Dad nods. “That must be her pet name for him—Honeycombs.”
I slap my spoon down. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
Mom leans over and gives me a kiss. “If you can’t believe that, then you really haven’t been paying attention for the last seventeen years. Did you have a good time last night?”
“Yes. End of story. New subject, please.”
Dad raises his hands in frustration. “Come on. I had a whole routine worked out. I was just getting to my best stuff.”
“Sorry,” I say as I put my empty bowl in the sink. “You’ll have to save it for Kendra.”
Dad’s not happy with this. “Kendra doesn’t like my sense of humor,” he mutters.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says, putting an arm around him. “Nobody likes your sense of humor.”
Just then there’s a knock at the door.
“That’s for me,” I say. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“Wait one second,” Dad says. “You don’t start work this early.” He turns to my mother. “She’s trying to hoodwink us.”
“Hoodwink? Dad, you so need to update your vocabulary. That’s my ride because we have to drive all the way to Winter Park today. We’re doing our little Beaver-Platypus dance and handing out Magic Waters flyers at the Winter Park Art Festival.”
“Oh,” he says. “In that case, drive safely.”
I give him a kiss and head out the kitchen door. Winter Park is this great little city outside of Orlando. It’s also more than two hours away. Grayson’s volunteered to drive because he has an old Volvo station wagon big enough to hold our costumes.
“Good morning!” I say as I climb into Grayson’s car.
“Ready to go to Winter Park?”
“I’m ready for all that overtime,” I say with a smile.
He smiles too, and goes to start the car. But he hesitates for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
He looks at me. “When you start the car, the first song that you hear is crucial.”
I can’t believe my ears. Another freak like me. “You believe in Radio Karma too?”
He nods. “Absolutely. Although I’ve never heard it called that. Can I use that term? Or do you have exclusive rights?”
“Feel free. Now, go ahead and start the car.”
He gives me a nod and turns the key.
It’s Ashlee Simpson, and she’s screaming at the top of her lungs.
“You make me wanna La La In the kitchen on the floor…”
He looks at me, and we both start to laugh. “See, this is obviously going to be a very intellectual journey.”
“Obviously,” I respond.
I can tell this is going to be a fun ride.
Just as we follow the highway out of Ruby Beach, he turns to me and smiles. “Tell me your most embarrassing moment?”
“What?”
“We’ve got two and a half hours to fill. So I thought we could start with embarrassing moments.”
“I’d have to say that my most embarrassing moment is dressing up like a giant beaver every day.”
“Well, that’s understood. I’m talking about your next most embarrassing moment.”
I don’t know what to make of this guy. “You tell me yours first.”
He thinks about it for a moment. “All right. I’ll go first.”
He takes a deep breath.
“Do you know what a bidet is? One of those fancy toilet things with the hose to wash your—”
“I know what it is,” I cut him off.
“Well. I didn’t. At least I didn’t when I was ten. We were on vacation in New York City at this kind of ritzy hotel. Anyway, when we got to the room, I went into the bathroom and saw it there. And I just stared at it for a while trying to figure out what it might be.”
“This is not going to end well, is it?”
“Finally, I did figure it out. Or at least I thought I did.”
“You didn’t!”
“Oh yes, I did. I called out, ‘Mom, Dad, there’s a water fountain in the bathroom.’ They tried to rush in and stop me, but they were too late.”
“Gross,” I say, laughing and disgusted at the same time.
“Now you tell me yours.”
“I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
“You’re not going to be. You already know that I drank out of a bidet. It can’t be worse than that.”
“It’s pretty close,” I say.
I really don’t want to do this, but for some reason I start to tell the story.
“This spring I took the SAT at the community college. About halfway through the test, I adjusted the way I was sitting and—”
He cuts me off. “Oh, my God. You’re Fart Girl!”
“Fart Girl?” I say, mortified. “You mean, you heard about what happened?”
He starts laughing. “I didn’t hear about it. I heard it. I was there, in the same classroom. I didn’t know who did it, but I definitely heard it.” He laughs some more. “The whole section was cracking up.”
I am completely horrified. But, for some strange reason, I start to laugh. After all, if it had happened to anybody else, I’d think it was hilarious. And it was a serious tension breaker for everyone.
“Isn’t it great?” he says.
“What?”
“We know each other’s most embarrassing moments. That means we can talk about absolutely anything. We’ve covered the worst, so it can only go up from here.”
I think about what he’s saying and smile. It makes sense. What happens next is maybe the greatest conversation I’ve ever had. We talk about anything and everything.
I confess that I also look at him a bit differently now. I have ever since Melanie pointed out how cute he was.
He tells me things about growing up and what his school is like. And, unlike most boys, he also seems genuinely interested in talking about me.
“Why do you swim the individual medley?” he asks.
No one’s ever asked me that before. It takes me a moment to answer. “I think because it takes all four strokes—breast, back, butterfly, and free. So you can’t just specialize—you’ve got to be all around.”
He looks at me for a moment. “That’s a good fit for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re an all-around kind of girl, which is not easy to be in high school. School’s geared to specializing—who’s the best science student, who’s the best debater, who’s got the highest SATs—that kind of thing. I don’t think the all-around people really get to shine until the reunion.”
I don’t think anyone has ever said anything nicer to me.
“Do you play any sports?” I ask.
He laughs. “I’m on the soccer team. Much to my dad’s disappointment.”
“Let me guess: He wanted a football player.”
“Bingo. I may try out to be the kicker this year, just to make him happy. Although I know he doesn’t think a kicker is really a football player.”
We talk about the party at Michelle’s house, and he asks about Becca and Melanie.
“Becca’s a funny one,” I tell him. “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s really pretty.”
I look over at him, and he tries not to react too much. “Yeah, I noticed,” he says with a laugh.
“I think it makes her self-conscious. Too many guys just hit on her, so she kind of shuts them all out. She’s really withdrawn, which a lot of people take to mean that she’s a bitch. But she isn’t at all.
“Melanie’s the quietest one of the group,” I continue. “She’s just really shy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She always kind of was. But it got worse freshman year when her mom died.”
He looks over at me while we drive along the highway. “Did her mother have cancer?”
I’m stunned. “How did you know that?”
“I noticed she was wearing a Live Strong bracelet.”
Despite Becca’s belief that you can count on guys not to notice little things, he picked that out in a party in the dark with a girl he’d never met.
“She had breast cancer,” I tell him. “She was really great, Mrs. White. She was like my second mother. Her funeral was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. Becca and I were bawling our eyes out, but Melanie didn’t cry one bit.
“Pretty soon, I stopped listening to all of the things that people were saying about her mother and I just watched Melanie sit there stone-faced. I couldn’t believe it. Her expression never changed. It took me a year just to ask her about it.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me she was worried that if she started crying, she might never stop. I think her way of coping is becoming a doctor. She spent so much time at the hospital that last year.”
“Does she ever talk about it?”
“Nope. She loves to talk about her mom. But she never says anything about that year or the cancer.”
“She’s lucky she has you two as friends.”
“Thanks.” Just then I look up and realize that we’re already in Winter Park. I’ve lost all track of time. Just like the other night when I swam past midnight.
I guess that’s what happens when you’re comfortable.
We have a great time at the art festival and another incredible conversation on the way home. It’s funny, because any other year, I’d be head over heels for Grayson. He’s just the type of guy I always wanted to find. I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t met Alex.