Blue. Turquoise, electric blue. Brilliant and luminous and glowing and flickering as if it were alive inside the waves. The sand looked like it was dotted with millions of bright blue stars that had somehow fallen from the Milky Way.
“Wha . . . what is that?” I asked, staring at the shore in front of us.
“It’s called bioluminescence. It’s created by algae lighting up the water.”
“It’s amazing.” I walked toward one of the rocks on the beach and sat down. Jake sat next to me, but I didn’t look at him; I was too wrapped up in this moment. This bright-blue, luminous, lit-up moment. I’d never seen anything like it and it was, it was . . .
“So, better than Joburg at sunset?” he asked.
I nodded, searching for the words to describe this display. Mother Nature had a flare for the dramatic, that’s for sure. “It’s certainly up there,” I finally said.
“Up there?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn and look at me.
“Okay, fine. You win.” I didn’t bother to conceal the smile that was pulling at the corners of my mouth.
He jumped up. “I win?”
“You win.”
“Hell, yeah,” he said, and then tried to do a cartwheel on the beach. I burst out laughing as he tumbled down with a thud. He immediately put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. “I meant to do that?” he said, looking up at the sky.
“Sure,” I teased back. “Like you meant to jump up on a chair.”
I laughed and when it tapered off, Jake rolled to face me, his whole body propped up on the sand.
“You know you’re going to be completely covered in sand?” I said.
“I like the sand.”
“Personally, I’m not a fan. It gets into too many unwanted places.”
He smiled at this, and then for some reason, there was a tense lull in the conversation that made me feel somewhat nervous, even though I didn’t know why.
“You’re not a fan of the water either.” It was a statement, not a question.
I shook my head and looked out over the sea. “Bad experience once.”
“What happened?”
My stomach tightened. “I almost drowned.”
“In the sea?”
“No. School pool.”
“How?” he pressed gently.
I sighed. How much should I tell him? How much should I let him in? I bit my lip when I felt a squeezing in my throat. “Kids can be mean bastards,” I whispered, and this time looked directly at him.
He sat up farther on the sand and leaned in, as if totally engrossed in what I was saying. “What did they do?”
“They pushed me in. I tried to come up for air, but . . . they kept pushing my head down. Over and over again.”
“Assholes.” He said it as if he really meant it. As if he was angry on my behalf. “Why you?”
I was taken aback by the question. Couldn’t he put two and two together? Me in a swimsuit. At a pool. In front of my classmates. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
“I guess . . .” I started slowly. Feeling nervous. Feeling ashamed. Feeling . . . everything. “They teased me a lot. Because I was . . .” I paused. Use a euphemism, Lori. Don’t actually say it out loud. “Different,” I offered.
He studied me for what seemed like the longest time. If he hadn’t worked out what I meant, then I certainly wasn’t going to explain it further. And then finally, after what felt like a forever under his probing gaze, he spoke.
“Lisa and Zac are different. Different is cool. Different isn’t boring like everyone else at BWH.”
“Wait . . . .you think everyone at BWH is boring?”
“Don’t you?”
“I mean . . . for the most part. But I didn’t think you would.”
He sat up fully on the sand. “Are you saying I’m boring?”
I smiled. “No.”
“You think I’m boring. Don’t you? Cos I don’t listen to weird Swedish music.”
“No.” I smiled.
“Then why’re you smiling like that?”
I covered my mouth with my hand and shook my head. “Not smiling.”
“Yes. You are.”
I giggled this time, my hand still pressed to my mouth.
He eyed me for a while. “I’ll just have to prove to you that I’m not.”
“And how are you gonna do that?” I asked.
“I’ll think of something. Besides, how do you know I don’t listen to superunderground ukulele music?”
“Do you?”
“I don’t,” he said flatly, which made me laugh even more. “Do you?”
I shook my head. “But I know this one guy back at art school who plays in a ukulele band.”
“Of course you do.” That smile again. Atomic bomb smile. Exploding star smile. Big bloody bang smile. It made me feel stupid, and giddy, as if the rock below me was spinning, and then he broke eye contact and flopped back down on the sand.
“So why do you think everyone at BWH is boring?” I asked, once the rock had stopped spinning.
His shoulders slumped. “Maybe boring is the wrong word. Maybe it’s more that they all seem to have these perfect, oblivious lives. They don’t have siblings like we do, or a dad who goes to AA meetings, or a mom who was really depressed for a while.” He shrugged. “Not that I’m complaining, or trying to imply those things are bad, it’s just . . . I don’t know if I’m making sense?”
“You are. I know what you mean.” Because I did. My parents were divorced, my mother was a sexter, and my dad was engaged to a woman who was young enough to be my older sister. And then there was Zac. It made me feel different from everyone else, and now I realized that despite all outward appearances to the contrary, Jake felt different too.
“That’s why I love swimming,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s so silent and still under the water. Everything else disappears down there.”
I swallowed nervously and looked at my feet as the feeling of being underwater came back to me. Jake must have sensed this and changed the subject.
“So, did you finish your portrait?” he asked.
“Kind of. Although, I’m not sure it’s very good.”
“Trust me, it is!” he said, sinking his feet into the sand now.
“What are you doing next year? I mean, obviously, you’re going somewhere fancy, cos you’ve been given a big fat water polo scholarship,” I teased.
He nodded. “I have.”
“Naturally.”
“I’m going to study sports psychology.” He rolled over onto his back again, sand spilling off his feet as he did. “I want to build on what I’m doing with the kids at the Lighthouse. Every week I see how good sport is for them, not just physically, you know? They make friends, they learn to share, learn teamwork, learn to resolve conflicts. I think I’d like to work with special needs kids in the future.”
Oh dear. . . be still my beating heart. I always knew he was a good guy, but really, this had taken him to a whole new level. What was he going to say next, that he’d saved a blind, starving kitten with three legs from a well and then nursed it back to health with his bare hands and a teeny-tiny syringe?
And then Jake pointed at the sky. “Shooting star. Make a wish!”
“What?” I looked up just in time to see the last flash of light disappear into the Vantablackness.
He turned and looked up at me. “Did you make a wish?” he asked.
My cheeks went red and hot. “I did.” I reached down and picked up a handful of sand and watched the grains run through my fingers and fall back onto the beach. I did make a wish. One that I dare not ever wish for. Girls like me don’t make wishes like that. Girls like me know better than to wish for things they will never get.
But in that perfect moment, with Jake on the beach, and the blue glow and the stars and the cool sea breeze and the fluttering in my stomach and the slight, giddy dizziness I felt when he looked at me . . . I’d wished. Even though I knew it wouldn’t come true.