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“Are we talking,
Do not remove the tag on this mattress under pen-
alty of law
or
Do not drink and drive under penalty of law
?” I ask. I’m trying to tease, but the way Clint’s face clenches, I know this has hit him in the way the Chelsea Keyes Star hit me.

“Even if there wasn’t a law,” he says, “you shouldn’t pick them. They’re pretty rare. Takes them sixteen years to bloom.”

“
Years
? A late bloomer,” I moan, glancing at the screen saver. “How ironic.”

Instead of an orchid, I see bilious, neon-orange letters pulsing at the top of the picture:
VIRGIN. VIRGIN. VIRGIN.
I imagine myself stepping onto the screen, throwing an enormous rock at the glowing letters.

“Where’d you go?” Clint asks. He tucks a piece of flyaway hair behind my ear. I don’t stop him, or flinch, or pull away. I just stare up into his eyes, at the irises that are every bit as dark as his pupils, their depths swirling about me like an eddy. I’m afraid to speak, afraid I might scream out the words lying in wait beneath the touch of his fingers:
I want more.
Gabe Gabe Gabe Gabe …

“Listen,” he says finally. “Since I know you don’t particularly like the idea of kayaking, I wanted to ask if you’d like to make up for a day off by going to a birthday party tonight.”

“
Yes
,” I say. His invitation reduces me to a giggly, romance-novelreading pile of girly mush. Clint

sin bin

Abirthdaypartyfora
fish
,”Chelseasays,shakingherheadindisbelief. But she doesn’t look like she really thinks it’s stupid at all. Her eyes sparkle, and her shoulders are so relaxed that the strap of her sundress keeps falling off and dangling across her upper arm. Just as I start telling myself to stop looking at her, to stop thinking about how pretty she is today, my eyes hit the bottom of her sundress. The yellow material ripples around her knees, which are as pink as the wads of cotton candy that dot the crowds.
And I bet they’re just as
sweet …

“A
fish
,” Chelsea repeats.

“Not just any old fish. A two-ton
concrete
fish. Willie’s a legend,” I remind her.

She smiles, her sandals scraping against the pavement of Baudette’s Main Street, which is overtaken today by a carnival. Booths line the curbs, advertising homemade jams and pickles, wire jewelry, door wreaths twisted out of grape vines. Runners who competed in the 104/262

morning’s 5K still wander through the crowd, easy to peg in their running shorts, numbers still pinned to their backs. Entries in the lumberjack chainsaw-carving competition are still perched on a wooden ledge outside a camping gear store: a bear, an old man’s wrinkled face, and three different versions of Willie Walleye himself. Umbrellas cover wooden tables, shading jugs of frozen root beer, plates of fried food, laughing faces. And there doesn’t seem to be a single face here that
isn’t
smiling, isn’t laughing. For the first time in my life, Willie Walleye Day sure seems like some sort of magical cure-all.

At least, it’s a cure-all for everybody except me. I just can’t make my brain shut up. Or get my nerves to calm down. I keep asking myself what we’re really doing here. I mean, it’s not like we have something to celebrate, not like the day she caught that walleye. And it’s not like this can pass as some boot camp exercise. Sure, we’re walking. But so what?

Walking
? Not even hiking. She wasn’t hurt so bad that walking would be considered a real workout.

What are you doing, Clint?

“This is nothing like the Heritage Festival back home,” Chelsea admits as she takes it all in. I nod, staring down the street, doubting that her heritage festival looks much different. But the fact that she said it, that she’s so
happy
, makes me feel insanely good. Kind of adrenaline-high good.

“Frozen lemonade,” she says, reaching for the little purse she’s got twisted around her wrist.

“No,” I say, kind of offended by the way she’s reached for her money. But why should I be? I fork over a few dollar bills. It’s not like we’re on a date here—right?

Only I
did
put on a clean shirt before I left to pick her up. I shaved. And when I swore I could still smell the lake on my skin, I took a shower. I feel like an idiot for picking out a button-down shirt that 105/262

looks like it should be in a sit-down restaurant instead of an outdoor festival. At least I put on jeans instead of khakis. I pay for her lemonade and steer her away from the booth with the flashing lemon sign. Point out the sign above a large tented area that proclaims
Beer Garden
.

“Hmm,” she says, swirling her straw through her lemonade. “That makes me feel a little silly for wanting this. If I’d known you were going to have a
beer
…”

“Just come on,” I say, pushing her toward the garden.

“Don’t make me card you two,” Pop calls from the side of the tent as he flicks the caps off two amber bottles and hands them to thirsty runners. “I don’t want to know anything about fake IDs.”

“I don’t have a fake ID,” I tell him, but Pop rolls his eyes.

“Everybody has a fake ID. I had a fake ID when I was your age. But I guess you don’t need one, do you?” Pop’s tone lets me know that he found out about the two raspberry brews Chelsea and I drank at Pike’s Perch.

What Pop’s hawking here at the beer garden is his award-winning Pike’s Porter. Dark as the backs of eyelids staring into the sun, with the same warm, red tint running through it.

“Get you two some fresh chips?” Pop asks, pointing at Mom, who’s sweating over the fryer. She tosses us a wave until she notices who I’m with. And then a grin grows. She purses her lips in this
uh-huh, I see ex-
actly what’s going on here
kind of way. I start to shake my head. But a drum steals my chance to tell her that she’s got it all wrong.

Pop points over his shoulder at the makeshift stage just behind the beer garden. “That brother of yours has whipped Clint’s friends into shape,” he shouts at Chelsea. We both turn toward the stage, where a hand-painted sign announces,
Appearing Every Night At Pike’s Perch!

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“Hope your family doesn’t mind me giving him a steady gig,” Pop tells her. “If it puts a kink in the rest of your vacation plans …”

Chelsea laughs, shakes her head. “No way. You’ve made his entire year.”

She puts her lemonade down, tugs my arm until we hit the edge of the crowd clustered for the band. This is a real treat—usually there’s no music at all until the street dance kicks into gear. I’m about to tell Chelsea this when my eye travels to the far side of the crowd, where Kenzie sips from a bottle of Pike’s Porter. She raises the bottle in greeting, but her smile tumbles when she notices who I’m with. She stares down at her hands and chews her lip before disappearing into the crowd.

“Live, from Willie Walleye Day in Baudette,” Brandon announces into his mic. “It’s … the Bottom Dwellers!”

Chelsea tosses her head back and laughs. I’d call it a belly laugh, but it seems deeper even than that. Before I can stop myself, I think
Man,
that’s a great sound.

“Your brother’s becoming quite the celebrity.”

She turns, then jerks backward a bit when she finds Kenzie about half an inch from her nose.

Kenzie’s got her long hair stuck through the hole in the back of a ball cap; her Lake of the Woods T-shirt hangs out of a pair of scruffy capri pants. She looks like she came straight from the resort. Slowly, she runs her eyes over my stupid shirt and Chelsea’s sundress. She flashes me a
come off it—just admit what’s going on here
frown.

“He’ll have groupies tagging along behind him everywhere he goes,”

Kenzie says.

“
Brandon
?” Chelsea laughs. “No way.”

“Just might have to join them,” Kenzie adds. “What do you think about that?” She says this last part to me, and just stands there 107/262

weighing my reaction. It’s some kind of crazy test. “I like his wild hair,”

she prods. “I told him so.”

I feel like climbing up onto the stage, pushing Brandon aside, and tapping his mic.
Attention, Baudette,
I want to say,
see that girl over
there in the sundress? I am not here on a date with her. I’m her train-
er. She has a boyfriend. I’m not interested.
But how am I supposed to deny what Kenzie thinks when Chelsea’s standing right here? Wait—why
can’t
I deny it with Chelsea standing right here?

I can’t because, when I glance at her, the devil on my shoulder just keeps telling me how nice it would be to know what she tastes like. I take the coward’s way out, and step to the side a little, separating myself from Chelsea—but not too much.

Kenzie’s still staring at me when Chelsea takes my hand and starts moving her feet to a decidedly garage-band version of an old Rolling Stones song, “Waiting on a Friend.” And before I can completely take my eyes away from Kenzie, before I can mouth something at her like
not my type
or
you’ve got it wrong
, Chelsea pulls me deep into the crowd in front of the stage. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m swaying with her.

“Careful,” Chelsea teases. “This seems awfully close to dancing.”

From the corner of my eye, I watch Kenzie slam her bottle into one of the metal trash cans and stomp away.

Chelsea

ball reversal

We walk up and down Main Street so many times, my arches are throbbing like they do after one of my long hikes with Clint. At some point during those slow and easy treks, he always takes out some old compass and stares at the dial—and then the horizon—and sighs loud enough to make me suspect he finds our pace
too
slow and easy. Make me wonder if I need a note from my orthopedic surgeon to convince him that
push yourself
is a relative term. But Clint’s not sighing this afternoon. He seems to revel in the fact that our stroll is punctuated by funnel cakes and fried Twinkies and kabobs and root beer. Trying on silly ball caps. Watching the kayak races. Picking lumberjacks to cheer for in the log-jumping competition. The pink watercolor shades of sunset shock me. We’ve spent hours here, but it feels like a moment. Clint’s beginning to seem a little antsy, as if the encroaching night is a floor we’ve begun painting without paying any attention to where the doors are. Like we’re about to be trapped by—what? A darker shade? Isn’t that all night is?

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Only it’s not. Night has a whole different connotation—I know that. Baudette knows that, too. The families clustered around picnic tables are giving way to hand-holding pairs. Couples that look a little like fireflies, the way they flitter about, flirting in the sweet summer air. And I’m here with
Clint
. Anyone who didn’t know better might suspect we’re dating, too. My face warms as I wonder what it would be like if I were free to take his hand. If I could wrap an arm around his waist.
Gabe Gabe Gabe Gabe Gabe …

We’re coming to the end of the booths again; it’s time for us to leave, I know it is. But I elbow Clint, delighted to find a way to stretch out our day just a little longer. “Come on,” I say, pointing to a booth where hairdressers are braiding hair, weaving ribbons into the plaits. I take a seat, close my eyes, and allow my brain to play with daydreams the way the local stylist plays with my locks, twisting them tightly around the base of my head. I imagine that I’m a Baudette girl, going to college in Minnesota. That I have all summer to spend with my boyfriend, my Clint, whose skin is the utter fire of thrill—the closest thing I’ve ever felt to launching my body into the air, shooting the ball out of sheer desperation, and triumphantly snagging the final, game-winning three-pointer.

When the hairdresser’s done, she sticks a handheld mirror in front of me. “Whaddaya think?” she says, her voice bouncing with a light accent.

I think it looks just like a little-girl hairdo. I might as well have happy faces and rainbows painted on my cheeks.

“Thank—thank you,” I stutter, my entire face growing red as I push myself out of the chair. My hair is pulled so far from my face, I have no hope of hiding my horrendous blush.

“It’s silly, isn’t it?” I say, reaching to take it down. 110/262

But Clint just wraps his warm, strong hand around my wrist, stops me from pulling out the pins. “You look really pretty,” he says, without even a dash of sarcasm.
Pretty.
The word gives me goose bumps. His stare grows intense. I start to wish, as I stare back, that I could see his unspoken fantasies reflected in the shiny pupils of his eyes. More than anything, I wish I could see that the person he’s been fantasizing about is me. His head—good God—his head leans closer to mine. My entire body beats as though I’m being dribbled against a gym floor. Clint’s grip grows painfully strong against my wrist. But instead of pulling me toward him, like I want him to, he pushes me away.

“I—I’m sorry—I—” I try, but Clint just shakes his head.

“Let me go see if Pop’s going to need any help at the beer garden. Gets kind of hectic at night,” he says, turning away from me. I’m left standing there alone. Feeling like a complete and total moron.

Kenzie catches my eye from the opposite side of the street and starts stomping straight for me. Okay, now I wish I could
stay
alone.
Please go away,
I think.
Please go away
. But she heads right for me anyway.

“You are
so
barking up the wrong tree,” she says, glaring at me from underneath her ball cap.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re working awfully hard at
pretending
to be exercising—or—whatever this little thing’s supposed to be.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know a lot.” She shrugs. “Like the fact that Clint will never fall in love with you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

My eyelids fly backward, as if the idea completely shocks me.

“That’s not—I’m not—I have a—” But somehow, this time, I can’t even say the word.
Boyfriend.
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