The Summer of Naked Swim Parties (24 page)

“These are cute.” Jamie held up a pair of jeans with heart-shaped back pockets.

“You can wear them,” Tammy said. “If they’ll fit you.” Jamie took her shorts off and pulled the jeans on, unzipped. She lay on the bed and sucked in her stomach as she struggled with the zipper.

“There’s no way you can do that alone!” Tammy tossed her cigarette out the window and hopped off the dresser.

She held the zipper together.

“Debbie, help.”

Debbie flicked her cigarette out and jumped down to help. She weedled the zipper up while Tammy held the two sides together and Jamie pressed down her stomach with her fingertips.

“Suck, Jamie! Suck in!” Tammy said.

“I am!” Jamie said, just as Debbie pulled the zipper to the top.

Tammy and Debbie looked at each other, heads pointed toward Jamie, eyes pointed toward each other.

“I gained some weight, okay? It’s no big deal.” Jamie struggled to sit up, then settled for pivoting off the bed and standing.

“Even your boobs look bigger,” Tammy said.

“I think you look fine,” Debbie said. “It’s just we’re used to you being smaller, you know? I mean, like, it’s not like you’re fat now, it’s more that you used to be so small and now you’re like . . . I dunno, regular?”

“I bet your boobs are going to get as big as your mom’s,” Tammy said.

“Don’t say that,” Jamie groaned. “I don’t want all those pervy boob-men hanging all over me.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if Jamie had those big, whopping boobs? I mean, like the boob shelf. Like in a magazine or something.” Tammy looked directly at Debbie as she spoke.

“Can you stop talking about my mother’s boobs?”

“I wasn’t talking about your mother’s boobs,” Tammy said. “I was talking about yours!” And at that, Tammy and Debbie fell into razor-edged laughter.

* * *

Brett and Jimmy picked up the girls in Brett’s truck.

“I’m not going to sit in the back all by myself,” Jamie said.

Tammy and Debbie had already climbed into the cab with Tammy nestled between the boys and Debbie on Jimmy’s lap.

“I’ll sit in the back of the truck with you,” Jimmy said, and he slid Debbie off his lap and slipped out of the cab.

Debbie huffed, as if her feelings were hurt, then cocked her head at Jamie and smiled.

“Isn’t he the sweetest guy in the world?” she said. Jimmy rolled his eyes and hopped into the back of the truck with one quick jump, as if he were pole-vaulting with his arms.

Jamie climbed in after him and they scooted, side by side, against the back of the cab.

“So whatcha been doing?” Jimmy said, as they rolled out of the driveway.

“Not much,” Jamie said. She looked back at the cab window and saw that Debbie was turned sideways in her seat, as if she wanted to keep an eye on them. Jamie shifted so she wasn’t sitting so close to Jimmy.

“Flip told me about the baby.”

“He did? God, I would have told you but I guess I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Yeah. It’s terrible what happened.”

“Oh. Yeah. It was terrible.”

“Flip was really broken up about it.”

“Really? He never said that to me.”

“Well, you broke up with him right afterward.” 

Jamie looked at Jimmy; the wind was blowing back his hair into a mane around his face. She thought she heard him wrong. 
“You mean he broke up with me right afterward.”

“No. He said you broke up with him.”

“Well, then Flip is a flipping liar!” To Jamie, the humiliation of having been dumped seemed far less shameful than the act of having dumped someone, over the phone, within twenty-four hours of a horrifying death.

“He said you said that you were too sad to be with anyone, and, like, right after you broke up with him he happened to run into Terry at the beach, and she was really comforting to him in his time of need, you know?”

“She was comforting? Did he actually say ‘time of need’?”

“Yeah, she lost a cousin who was a baby or something, so she really knew what he was going through.”

“I wasn’t too sad to be with him,” Jamie said. “I was so sad that I actually needed him.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And he wasn’t very comforting to me in my time of need.”

“Really?” Jimmy seemed genuinely surprised.

“Why would I lie?” Jamie turned away so Jimmy couldn’t see that she was on the edge of a cry.

“Why would he lie?”

“So he doesn’t look like such a dickhead.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, leaning over to examine Jamie’s face.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” Jamie sniffed.

Jimmy put his arm around Jamie and pulled her in close to him. She could sense that Debbie was watching through the cab window, but didn’t look up for proof.

“It’s okay,” Jimmy said. “You can cry.” And so she did.

When they pulled up at the beach, Jimmy flipped his arm down from around Jamie’s shoulder, hopped out of the truck, and extended his hand to help Jamie out.

Debbie looked at Jamie askance, then ran to Jimmy, wrapped both arms around his neck, and kissed him deep and hard.

“Uh, can we, like, go to the party now?” Tammy said.

Debbie unwound her arms, took Jimmy’s hand, and headed toward the beach with Tammy and Brett following and Jamie drifting in the back. Jamie thought that the only thing sadder than the fact that she was being left behind was the fact that she was growing used to the feeling—she almost expected it. Jamie felt she was like a hanging thread that had to be cut and recut from the unraveling sweater of her friendship with Tammy and Debbie.

Everyone, it seemed to Jamie, was at the party. It was the kind of party Renee and Lori talked about but would never dare attend. There was a crop-circle-sized driftwood fire with a small crowd standing and sitting around it. Jamie could tell who most people were by the backs of their head: Becca Price, Fran Brendan, Alex Mysko, Scott Rhett, Matty Travis, Donald Sheridan, Simon Blue, Josh Emery, Denis Rhoade, Kindall Blitz, John Stasser, Lindsay Trout, Tracy Walanz, David Greatbeck, Steve McMartin, Boo Landis, Bonnie Louise, Jilly Genna, Claire Stanfare. She wondered if anyone would know her by the back of her head. Instead of breaking into the fire circle, Jamie wandered toward the keg that was tucked into a nook on the craggy cliff wall.

Flip was standing a few feet from the keg, holding a plastic bag full of stacked plastic cups. Jamie’s stomach thumped 
when she saw him. She hoped she looked okay, she hoped he would see her and regret breaking up. She wanted Flip to beg her to come back so that she could reject him, proving herself more resilient than even she herself believed, for who could say no to the near-perfect beauty of Flip Jenkins?

“Dollar a cup,” he said, when Jamie approached.

“Can I just owe you?” Jamie asked, her voice shaky.

“Jamie!” Flip said, “I didn’t realize it was you.”

“You didn’t know it was me?” Jamie felt ill at the thought that her weight gain had made her unrecognizable.

“No, no, I just wasn’t looking. Everyone’s buying cups and I haven’t really been looking at faces.” As he spoke, Flip handed out six cups and took in six dollars, which he shoved into his jeans pocket.

“Can I have a cup?” Jamie asked.

“Yeah, my treat, I totally insist,” Flip said, as if she’d made some motion to turn him down.

Jamie took the cup but didn’t move toward the keg.

“So, what have you been up to?” Flip asked.

“Why did you tell Jimmy that I broke up with you?” Jamie surprised herself with the question. “You know that’s not true.”

“I totally never said that,” Flip said.

“Yes, you did.” Jamie realized she was out of patience for Flip—she wanted to make up for the times she’d been with him and hadn’t been blunt or confrontational out of fear that it would cause him to flee.

“Look.” Flip glanced around as he spoke, never landing his eyes on Jamie. “That was a really hard fucking time, okay? Like, it was the hardest time in my whole fucking life. 
I mean, I saw a dead baby. Not many people here have seen 
dead babies, you know? So, you’ll have to fucking excuse me for anything I might have said in the days after that.”

“I know it was hard,” Jamie said. “But why tell people that I broke up with you?”

“I gotta get outta here,” Flip said. He called to Tigger Haus, then handed him the stack of cups.

Jamie felt breathless, almost confused, as she stood alone and watched Flip walk away. Could he not even hear her out, apologize, give a reasonable excuse? Jamie thought that once you had sex with someone, once you’d cracked your body open and joined it to his body, you’d be permanently connected on some level, even if you no longer loved each other. How could Flip act as if his obligation to Jamie was finished, like a completed transaction at 7-Eleven: the money’s been handed over, the Slurpee is in the customer’s grasp, no one owes anyone anything. Not even a smile.

Jamie got in line for the keg while keeping an eye on Flip.

He didn’t go far, just to the edge of the fire, where Terry jumped up, took his hand, and pulled him down beside her.

Terry scooted onto Flip’s lap; he turned around and looked back toward Jamie. Jamie looked away before she could read his expression.

When her cup was filled, Jamie stepped away from the keg and chugged down the beer. Tammy and Debbie were nestled into the fire circle; Tammy leaned into Terry Watson’s ear and whispered something that made them both laugh. Jamie’s stomach jolted and she knew it wasn’t the beer but the fact that Tammy was so cozy with Terry. Jamie had no one to be cozy with—an embarrassment in a social crowd where attachment was the means for identification.

If she wasn’t Flip’s girlfriend or Tammy’s and Debbie’s best friend, she was essentially invisible. Jamie decided that her 
invisibility just then was a good thing: If no one saw her, then no one witnessed her humiliating ostracism.

A small crowd cheered a few feet from where Jamie stood; she wandered over and saw that they were watching Bone-Man Deugal climb the cliff. Boys pointed at him with their beer cups, wagering on how far he could go, if he could make it to the top. After only a couple of minutes, Bone-Man fell, skidding down the cliff, hands dragging as if he’d catch something and stop himself. Everyone, except Jamie, laughed.

Bone-Man stood and went at the cliff again. The crowd cheered once more. After he fell a second time, the group laughed even harder. He stood and tackled the cliff a third time. Jamie couldn’t watch—it was too much like her life, she thought, a continuum of cliff skidding as she clawed at her friends (and her sister, even!), only to slide down below them, scraped and stinging with pebbles embedded in her palms.

Jamie went to the keg for more beer.

“He’s like Sisyphus,” a tall, sturdy-looking girl said to the guy filling the cups.

“He’s got syphilis?” the guy asked.

Jamie tried to recall the girl’s name. She remembered seeing multiple pictures of her in Renee’s yearbook.

“No. Bone-Man. He’s like Sisyphus,” the girl repeated.

“Beer?” the guy asked. Jamie held out her cup for him to fill.

“He must not have taken Mr. Zigler’s mythology class in eighth grade,” Jamie said to the girl, and then she smiled, a little too hard. The girl shrugged and walked away. The guy dropped the tap hose and walked away too. And suddenly, Jamie was alone at the keg. She tossed down her second beer then refilled her cup. When she spied a pack of people with empty cups approaching, Jamie stepped aside.

Tammy was no longer whispering in Terry’s ear. Terry was still on Flip’s lap, but now she was straddling him, her big feet sticking up like a cadaver’s. They were making out.

Really making out. As if no one else were around. As if Flip wanted Jamie to know that she wasn’t even in his peripheral vision. It seemed that when he had hung up the phone the day he broke up with her, Flip had hung up his feelings as well. Jamie promised herself she would do the same; she wouldn’t avoid Flip Jenkins at school next year, she wouldn’t care enough to do that.

Jamie walked to a rock perched outside the activity. It was a low, flat rock with circular nickel-sized holes dotting the top—the holes were so perfectly round they appeared to have been drilled. If it had been light out, Jamie would have inspected the holes before sitting to make sure the sea worms, or whatever creatures that inhabited the holes, were no longer there. But it wasn’t light out; the moon was a perfect half-circle,and the greatest source of light was the fire or the occasional match being struck to light a joint or cigarette.

Jamie was drunk and she wanted to go home and eat cereal and peanut butter cups, and watch TV with no one to witness her sadness. She wondered: If she were to lose the weight she had gained, or if she were as cute as Terry Watson, would some other boy want her? Or was she un-lovable now, surrounded by the halo of a dead baby, destined to a life of spinsterhood with her mother her only friend?

Scooter Ray walked toward Jamie with a cup of beer in each hand. He sat next to her and handed her one of his beers.

“I already have one,” Jamie said.

“Then that’s your second,” Scooter Ray said, and he chugged his remaining beer.

“Okay,” Jamie said, although she didn’t want two beers.

“Ever been to that long, deep cave down there?” Scooter Ray asked. Jamie’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light and she could clearly see Scooter Ray; she had never been this close to him. He was cute the way children are cute: everything neat and clean on his face, nothing too big or exaggerated, snowy soft hair, pouty lips.

“Do you even know my name?” Jamie asked.

“Jamie.”

“Yeah.” Jamie felt a flush run through her body. Scooter Ray had recognized her even with the weight gain, even with the dead baby halo, even without her friends nearby.

“I even know your last name,” Scooter Ray said.

“I know yours too.”

“Wanna see that cave?”

“I’ve been in it. The one you can go in only during low tide, right?”

“It is low tide.” Scooter Ray’s voice was gravelly and vibrating. Jamie could feel his words on her skin.