ON FRIDAY NIGHT, keys press into my hand as Cassie opens the passenger door. “I already had a few shots,” she says, sinking into the torn plush passenger seat. She flicks aside a Post-It note that reads, “I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”
I hesitate. The keys are warm from her palms. They signal power. Independence. Something I tasted when I drove Dad’s car to South Cross. Something that the DMV is adamant about withholding from me.
Cass scrolls through her text messages. I read the sender of the most recent: Jules. “Oh, sorry,” she says, looking up. “I brought you some fun, too. Figure we’ll break it out when we get to the bridge.” A Friday night that won’t be spent holed up in my room or driving aimlessly with Cassie–my social life has escalated.
Still, I’m wavering. “I can’t drive with someone under twenty-one.”
“That sure stopped you last time.” She presses her head back against the seat and looks up at me sideways. Her curls frame her porcelain face. Never a tan for Cass in the summer; only sunburn that fades to white. “We both know you’re a better driver than me.”
When I turn over the engine, the car rumbles to life, rattling my hands on the steering wheel. It’s a powerful surge, a little more than I expected, and I just hope I can control it. Despite bumping the seat forward, my leg strains to reach the gas pedal. The side-view mirror hangs on thanks to duct tape and miracles.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I push the gear into Drive.
As I glide down the road at approximately ten miles per hour below the speed limit, scanning from side to side for deer, Cass says, “Ready for this gem?” She holds her phone in front of my face.
I dare to let my eyes dart away from the road. “What’s that weird crop circle on the floor?”
“That,” she says, “is two thousand dollars a month.” She scrolls to the next ad. “‘Awesome bedroom in sweet building with roof deck,’” she reads. “We might be able to afford this one if we share a bed.”
“I am not sharing a bed with you,” I say. “You steal the blankets.”
“That was once!” The screen’s glow illuminates her grin. “This one is ‘the coolest brownstone.’ Wow, twenty-three hundred–what a steal.”
“We could commute,” I offer. We can sit side by side on the train, watching the scrubby pines of Long Island’s East End whisk away into growing buildings.
“We are not commuting.” Her smile vanishes. “The point is getting out of here.”
“How are we going to pay for uncool brownstones in gross buildings with no roof decks, let alone those?” See also: tuition, books, miscellaneous fees, Ramen noodles…
A text message arrives and she types back furiously. “We’ll work at the beach again next summer.”
“Are they raising minimum wage by twenty dollars an hour?”
She drops the phone into her lap. “This was your idea. I thought you were committed.”
Moving somewhere I wouldn’t need to drive had been a joke. While the idea’s appealing, for once I’m countering failure to use proper judgment. I’ve already had one future plan, Ocean State, blow up in my face.
“It’d suck if we moved to different places next year,” Cass continues. “We’d never see each other.”
I swallow. It was the one consideration that gave me pause in my recruiting journey. If I went to Rhode Island, we would still text and call, send each other silly photos and songs, but it wouldn’t be the same. We wouldn’t be able to walk the two streets to each other’s houses, go on late-night 7-Eleven runs, drive around in circles in the South Cross parking lot until we’re dizzy and laughing.
She picks up her phone when a new text message arrives. Jules. Again.
I wonder if she’s telling Juliana, Savannah’s bailing on moving to the city with me, and if Juliana is writing back in kind, Savannah is the worst.
As I ease across the intersection, the opening guitar chords of a familiar song begin playing over the radio.
“Is this what I think it is?” Cassie straightens up.
“Seventh grade summer anthem? Hell, yes.”
“Remember when we met those kids from Australia down at South Cross?” She’s already grinning. The city has been dropped in favor of silly lyrics and doofy-looking boy band members that we’d swooned over. “They were all, ‘We’re pro surfers,’ so you challenged them to a swim race?”
“You mean when you volunteered me?” I bet my friend Savannah could take all of you, she’d said, fists on the hips of her mint-green bikini bottom.
They’d eyed me over their sunglasses. Her?
The wind had sent Cassie’s hair flying, yet she’d never budged. Count of three. One…two…
Sprinting into the water, the adrenaline of competition coursing through me, Cassie shouting from the shore, You got this, Savannah! Show them how we do it in America!
“Either way, I beat their asses,” I say. They’d pretended to chase me out of the water, so I splashed through the foam and back up to Cassie. She’d thrown her arms around me despite the fact that I was soaking wet.
She nods sagely. “I was honored to know you.”
Next thing I know, we’re belting out song lyrics with the windows rolled down, screaming over the frigid air. The infectious beat on the highest volume obliterates any remaining tension. Cassie reaches out her hand and lets the wind bat it back, her curls tangling in her face, too busy singing to push them away.
“Drum solo!” I yell, forgetting my vehicular fear for a moment to bang my hands against the steering wheel.
“Someone get this girl a record deal!” she yells back.
I thrash my hair, completely destroying all of my earlier efforts to straighten it, and she laughs. “Dammit, Savannah,” she says as the reverberation begins to fade. “What would I do without you?”
“Swim against Australian surfers on your own.” She whacks my arm and we crack up again.
I wish that we could keep driving. Pass the bridge to South Cross and see where we end up. Montauk for the sunrise. New York City, the opposite direction, for the lights. The two of us, the way it’s always been.
I PARK IN the tiny lot next to the bay, where during the day fishermen cast into the water and boats push off from the launch. Tonight, the bonfire throws light and shadows against the cement underbelly of the bridge.
As soon as I shut off the engine, a Thermos is pressed into my hand like a trophy. “Driver of the year,” Cassie proclaims. “You should take my car to your next test.”
I take a cautionary sip. Hot chocolate mixed with something strong and minty. “I owed you hot chocolate,” Cass says, watching my reaction. Her eyelashes are thick with mascara, her blue eyes luminous. “And for Mr. Riley.”
“How are we getting home?” I take another sip. I can’t deny that after the wine coolers from summer bonfires, this is a significant step up.
“We’ve got hours,” she says with a wave of her hand. “And I’m not going to go wild. We can expect the usual shitty delicacies here, unless someone was really ambitious and stole a handle from their parents.”
I stare at the lid of the Thermos, debating whether or not I should have more or dump it once we’re out of the car.
“Cascade Hopeswell!” a male voice shouts.
“Call me that again and I will push you into the fire!” Cassie calls back. She’s met with laughter.
My feet sink into the sand and its coolness stings my ankles. The autumn night wind is sharp, not dreamy like the humid summer gusts, and I hug Cassie’s sweater close.
I follow her footsteps to the base of the bridge, home of the bonfire. Everyone likes to pretend that the cops won’t notice the flames and smoke down here, and truth be told, the cops like to pretend they’re not happening either. As I approach the cement pillars, I wave at the faces lit orange by fire.
They’re preoccupied elsewhere. “Cass!” One, two, three hands rise to slap high-fives with her.
“Don’t touch the Ponquogue scum,” someone says jokingly.
“Don’t be a hater just because our soccer team blew yours out of the water,” says Cassie, apparently a sports expert now. “Galway Beach can’t do it like we do.”
“What took you so long?” Juliana grabs Cass for a side hug.
Me.
“Little Cassie!” Always Late Nick (so named due to his propensity for arriving a half hour after his shift started) greets me. “You haven’t gotten any taller.”
“Your jokes haven’t gotten any better.”
“Touché.” He tosses me a Coors. “Hope you can handle the hard stuff.”
I make the rounds over the pebbled sand. Yeah, I’d been relegated to solo parking lot duty while Cassie peddled French fries with everyone else here. Doesn’t matter. I’m sure there’s plenty to learn, especially since I barely know any of them. Surely we’ll find common ground.
“Hey,” I say to Soft Pretzel Stephanie, who Cassie said was really meticulous about putting equal amounts of salt on each warmed-up-in-the-microwave pretzel. I can respect attention to detail. “How’s school going?”
“Sucks,” she says with a laugh, sipping from her Solo cup. “You?”
“Sounds about right,” I say.
We chuckle, and her eyes turn elsewhere.
On to the next.
I try Music Man Mark, who had inspired us all to try karaoke out on the deck one night after work. That was fun. He’s already too drunk to look at me with any kind of focus. “Who are you again?” he slurs.
Ouch.
I’m a quarter of the way through the Thermos and have yet to make meaningful headway. In the meantime, Cassie’s keeping this fiesta from being a total wash. Sure, there’s fire, but the light source everyone revolves around is my best friend. Her silhouette swings long and her flushed cheeks glow from the flames. Her eyes squeeze shut as she laughs, everyone around her smiling wider.
She used to call me exactly twenty minutes after practice, when she knew I’d be home and eating dinner. “Wanna hang tonight?”
“Speaking of hanging, I can’t lift my arms,” I’d say. “Tomorrow?”
She’d sigh, long and dramatically enough to make me hold the phone away from my ear. “I don’t have any friends besides you.” Not true, but she always made it out to be that way. Until this summer, when apparently grease and humidity were enough to forge bonds between the snack-bar employees. And Juliana.
“Remember how he tried to take apart the string cheese with his teeth?” Cass says now, and those around her start laughing, one girl spitting out her beer.
No, I don’t. I was the one sitting in the ticket booth, shielding my eyes from the sunlight glinting off of cars. At any given moment, I could have slipped out without anyone noticing. Like right now.
I HAVE CASSIE, but up until junior year, I’d also had Beth O’Leary on my side. We’d gone way back to kindergarten days, sat in honors classes together, and mutually bemoaned AP essays over brownies. The sort of things that Cassie couldn’t be bothered by, and it was nice to have someone else who was.
One problem: Beth’s sweet sixteen fell on the same day as Regionals, and the Cha Cha Slide was not coming between a shot at Nationals and me.
Cassie had been twisting my hair into place for the competition when Beth called me. “I’ll see if we can get back,” I’d said, “but it’s in Massachusetts–”
“I had a candle for you,” Beth had said. “I was going to talk about that AP Comp essay we wrote about Heart of Darkness and how we went through our own struggle.”
“That essay was the worst,” I’d agreed.
“What am I supposed to do now? Give the candle to my uncle or something? Everything is going to be thrown off.”
That was when Cassie had ceased twisting my hair. “Give me the phone.”
“Cass–”
She’d tickled me.
“What the hell?” I’d half-shouted, half-giggled, and she took her chance to grab the phone and enact her idea of vigilante justice.
“Beth, Savannah extends her sincerest apologies, okay? The gymnastics gods didn’t schedule this event to dick you over.” She’d listened. “Okay, you are legitimately full of it. Do you know Savannah’s start value on floor? Do you even know what that is? Well, let me tell you, it means she does flips for bonus points and can get a perfect score if she nails it.”
I’d wavered between knocking the phone out of her hand and listening to more of her loose interpretation of gymnastics rules.
“Do you know how hard she’s worked? Were you there the time she busted her lip on bars but finished her routine? Blood everywhere. Yeah, didn’t think so.
“Look, she’s going to the Olympics, okay? She’ll send you a card or something.”
“I’m not going to the Olympics.” It had been my first coherent thought, followed by, Well, that bridge is burned forever.
“I never liked her anyway,” Cassie had said, resuming her taming of my hair. Her fingers shook ever so slightly. “When I moved here, she told everyone that my mom was in a mental asylum.”
“We were seven,” I’d ventured. “I’d like to think that we’ve all evolved since then.”
“I don’t care who Beth thinks she is or how great her grades are. Nobody should guilt you like that.”
Sorry about that, I had texted Beth later, when we were on the road to Regionals and Cassie ran into the McDonald’s bathroom. I hope you have a great party! I’ll be there in spirit.
She never wrote back.
CANS POP OPEN and beer fizzes like the ocean receding. So many people here, but they don’t make the air any warmer. I take up post against the pillar, sitting on the sand and watching the fire play off the waves. They’re calm, low tide–nothing like what I plunged into on Senior Cut Day.
The moonlight glistens on the crests. Despite growing up here, reading the waves still challenges me. One could build and build and fizzle into a small swell. Another might look like it’ll fade out but there it is, towering above you until your only choice is to dive under as it crashes over your head.
“Savannah freakin’ Gregory? Is this a mirage or is this real life?”
Before I can react, a body collides with mine. The arms wrap me so tightly that I cough and drop my half-finished Thermos to the sand.
“Where have you been? Why haven’t you come to the gym? How the hell is your knee? How the hell is your life?”
“You did really well at Level Five States.” That’s the first response that comes to mind.
Emery Johnson, Level 10 Regional all-around champion, continues to squeeze me without letting up. Her dark hair is cut close to her chin and swoops across her forehead, her denim jacket smells of bonfire smoke, and her arms have lost none of their strength.
Outside of the gym, my teammates and I traveled in a herd. You could find us eating fro-yo together with leotards rolled down to our hips underneath our tank tops. We’d flip into Ally’s pool or gather around Jessica’s TV for an obligatory viewing of Stick It. Running into Emery here, on Ponquogue turf and out of context, throws me off.
“What are you doing here?” I choke out against her shoulder.
“My friend Amber’s dating that kid Mark.” She looks at me inquisitively. “Are you drunk?”
“Partially.” I reconsider. “Partially past partially might be more accurate.”
She examines me with narrowed green eyes. “You look great, but you haven’t answered my questions.”
Yeah. I look away, hoping she’ll think I was too drunk to hear that second part. “Things are things,” I say with a profundity that would make NYU admissions proud. “Trying to figure out the college…thing.”
She nods. “Ugh, I know.”
No, she doesn’t know. I’m looking up scholarships and overpriced apartments; she’s fielding e-mails and visits from college coaches. She’d never brag about it–if there’s one guarantee along with Emery being an outstanding athlete, it’s that she’s humble–but even so, I dust off the Thermos and take a quick sip, hoping it’ll quell the jealousy.
Cassie has backed away from the bonfire to stare at us.
“Hey, girl,” Emery says, stepping toward Cassie to hug her. All of my teammates at South Ocean Gymnastics knew Cass; she and her camera were a staple at my meets. “Let’s chuck her a leotard, see what she can do,” my coach, Matt, would joke.
“Hey.” Cassie offers a thin smile and keeps her arms pinned to her sides. The most touchy-feely person I know avoiding physical contact? Strange.
“When are you coming back?” Emery presses, turning to me. “Don’t give me this retirement bullshit. The team is in shambles without you.”
Right. Monica will still be using an entire can of hairspray before every meet, Ally will dangle from her knees on the high bar like a kid on the monkey bars, and Jess will be making pouty faces at herself in the mirror as she fixes her ponytail. “I highly doubt that,” I say.
Juliana appears next to Cassie and says something to her that I can’t catch. Is this going to be like the soccer game all over again, being stranded in favor of Juliana?
Emery sticks out her hand. “Hey, I’m Emery. Savannah’s friend from gymnastics.”
Juliana shakes her hand slowly, probably wondering why this acquaintance of mine is being so friendly. “Juliana.”
“You work at Pav’s, right?” Emery says. “That place is my kryptonite. I could eat my weight in burritos three times a day.”
To my surprise, Juliana smiles. “If you saw what went down in the kitchen, you might not feel that way.”
“Give me guacamole or give me death,” Emery says firmly. She’s never met Juliana, she hasn’t seen me in months, yet she fits in without any stumbles or hesitation–the way, to be honest, I wish I could.
Cassie’s eyes flick back and forth. Whenever her lips part to jump in, the banter rushes on, leaving no room for her. It’s strange to be part of a conversation that gallops along without her participation, without her dictating the ebb and flow of it.
The wind carries over the conversation taking place behind us. “Those refs at the Ponquogue game were on crack,” someone says.
“I don’t think it’s fair when you’re playing against all Mexicans,” Always Late Nick says. “I bet their whole team is illegals.”
“Seriously,” his friend says. “My cousin Tommy, he’s like the only white guy on the team. He says that Ponquogue’s gonna have to build an extension on the high school because there are so fucking many of them.”
“They should take some of ours,” Always Late Nick says.
Cassie’s eyes go wide.
Emery chokes on her drink.
Juliana’s ponytail whips against me.
I’m the one whose mouth opens. “What does that have to do with anything? Maybe your team just sucks.”
“Excuse me?” Always Late Nick’s dopey, drunk grin is gone.
Now that I have the floor, and apparently the soapbox, I can’t stop. Half a Thermos of Cassie’s magic will do that to a girl. “By the way, ‘all Mexicans’ is a gross generalization. How about Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans–”
Every other conversation has ceased. Drinks hang suspended in people’s hands. The only sounds are the wood crackling beneath fire and the waves, quiet yet relentless.
Then a hand yanks my forearm. As always.
Cassie pulls me to a thin patch of rocks. The salt air masks the smell of alcohol from the party but not from her breath. “You can’t say that kind of stuff here, Savannah.”
“He’s being an idiot.”
“I know.” Her eyes dart back to the crowd at the fire. Heads are bent together and eyes glance toward us. Nobody makes a move to follow.
“Is Cascade Hopeswell actually abiding by someone else’s set of rules?” I say a little too loudly.
Her eyes turn cold. Pissed. “Remember what I told you about Marcos and the party? Sometimes it’s better to keep your opinions to yourself.”
“I thought we were among friends,” I say, reflecting back on my one-line exchanges with the rest of the South Cross Beach summer employees. Deep and meaningful, they weren’t. “Emery’s my friend,” I add belatedly, if winding up at the same party together and calling me out on my unresponsiveness counts as friendship.
“How real of a friend is she when she didn’t even visit after your surgery?” Cassie wedges her beer into the sand. “None of those girls did. Who was there? Me.”
She’s right.
Up by the fire, Emery and Juliana are joined by Music Man Mark and his girlfriend. Even Soft Pretzel Stephanie has roamed into the mix. Emery says something that makes their shoulders shake with laughter. Making friends, as I’ve tried and failed to do. My former teammate’s laugh travels, loud and clear and free of stress.
Cassie’s gaze follows mine. “Remember what I said before. I’m the only one who’s got your back.”
I SETTLE BACK into my spot next to the pillar, leaning my head back and letting the alcohol turn my memory to mush so I don’t have to consider why Cassie thinks I should hold back from correcting assholes.
“Hey, Savannah.”
I don’t turn. I don’t look. I do my damnedest to ignore the smell of coconuts and cotton. I’m about zero and twenty with human interaction tonight.
He settles in next to me and just like when we changed my tire, the air is immediately warmer, the wind softer.
“What are you doing here?” I say to the rippling waves. “You didn’t work at the beach.”
“Juliana invited me.” He runs a hand through his curls. “Said you and Cassie would be here.”
“Cassie told me you punched a guy.” There is absolutely no thought before I say this. It slips straight out, plunks into the conversation like a stone dropped in water.
Our shoulders brush together. “Yeah, I did. It wasn’t the greatest decision, but someone had to take a stand.”
I keep my eyes on the water and try to keep my focus off the tingles I feel from his close proximity and the headiness of the smoke and the alcohol. “What happened?”
A long sigh. He drops his voice so that I have to tilt my head to hear. “A bunch of assholes from the Galway Beach soccer team showed up. They talked shit to Andreas, he of course decided to give it right back to them because he can’t shut up, and people started pushing each other.” He pauses, turns to face me all the way. He’s backlit by the fire. “I went to yank Andreas out of there and one of them clocked me in the face, so I went after him.”
“Did you really need to take a stand?” I think of Cassie’s face as she pulled me away from the fire.
He nudges my chin so that I have to look at him. “He’s my best friend. I’m not gonna let him get shredded by guys who weigh a hundred pounds more than him just because he runs his mouth.”
When he says it like this, I can imagine it. Defending Andreas’s honor. Defending Ponquogue soccer. I almost smile.
“You’re one to talk about taking a stand,” he says. “I got here when you were yelling at that guy.”
I wave my hand to preemptively shoo away the rest of the sentence. Already been chastised by Cass, thanks. I don’t need round two. “Let’s forget about–”
“Thank you.”
Up this close, I see the dark stubble lining his jaw. When I reach out to touch it, he inhales sharply. It’s rough as sandpaper beneath my fingers. Neither of us pulls away. He’s close enough that I could just tip forward and then…then what? Would he catch me? Would he lean forward too and meet me halfway?
Marcos clears his throat. I feel the vibration all the way up to his jaw. “Speaking of best friends,” he says, “why did Cassie take you away like that?”
My fingers freeze.
“What about Senior Cut Day,” he continues, “when you fell in and she just stood there watching? You could have hit your head on a rock.”
I roll my eyes. “Cass isn’t much of an athlete.” What do you mean, doggie paddling isn’t a stroke? she’d asked our swim instructor when we were eight.
“She knew I’d be fine.”
“She’s no good for you.”
“Excuse me?”
He looks taken aback by the strength of my voice. That’s right, Marcos–you can’t go around acting like the authority on my friendship with Cassie.
“You were so good at gymnastics,” he says. “Then, poof, you’re done with it.”
“You don’t know anything about my gymnastics,” I say heatedly. “You saw me do one skill, one time. Guess what? Five-year-olds can do the same thing. Nothing special.”
“Andreas found your YouTube channel.”
Goddammit, is anything sacred? Yes, my YouTube channel, made for college coaches to see my routines and skill upgrades, is publicly available. It’s fair game for anyone to view, although I never imagined people from school would watch it recreationally. I need to take it down ASAP.
“You were amazing,” he insists. “You were wearing all sorts of braces, so you’ve obviously been injured before.”
“That was the problem.”
“Yeah?” he says. “I don’t think you’re really afraid of getting injured. I think you’re terrified of failing.”
I jump to my feet, the alcohol and the anger pounding through me. “You don’t know anything about me.”
I’m not terrified of failing. You can’t be afraid of something you live and breathe every day.
Up by the smoke, Cassie sips from her drink and listens to whatever Juliana’s saying. Her eyes find me, and her eyebrows quirk. Everything okay?
Marcos rises, blocking my view. “I think you’re smart.” I can hardly hear him through the rushing in my ears. “I think that you’re a hard worker and really disciplined to get as far as you have in gymnastics. And I don’t think Cassie has your best interests in mind.”
I’ve heard enough of this bullshit. I step around him, one foot slipping into the water. He reaches out to help me. I wave him off. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to my best friend.”
Marcos doesn’t know anything. He wasn’t there in the days after my surgery, when everything I ate made me nauseous and walking to the bathroom felt like a marathon. Cassie brought magazines, crackers, ginger ale. She stuck around despite the painkillers making me nod off mid-conversation. I woke up and she was on the bed next to me, knees holding her magazine in place. “Just in time, Savs. I’ve learned who my celebrity boyfriend is thanks to this super-scientific quiz. Ready? Question one.”
Over the laughter from the fire, I hear him say, “Okay.” Fleetingly, I think of turning around.