Suddenly I felt a pleasant electricity, and I turned to see that Seth had sidled up in time to hear Greg’s punchline. He smiled at me and shrugged, taking a can from the cooler. “Well, I like light beer.”
“Me, too,” I said, feeling a sense of relief. I still didn’t know Seth well, but I wanted to. In the few weeks since I had first met him at the tennis court, he had become an object of fascination to me. Privately, I was cultivating what I hoped was a shared connection, but what could easily have been a humiliatingly one-sided crush.
What I knew about Seth: he was a year older than Greg and me, which meant he would be a senior in the fall. His mother and Greg’s mother were sisters, though I heard there had been some kind of feud between them. Something about money—one of them having too much of it, the other not enough. Seth was not a “summer person” like most of us were. He lived in the Adirondacks year-round, though a bit farther north in the direction of Lake Placid. His parents were divorced. We had only spoken a handful of times at gatherings like this, but he always seemed relaxed, unconcerned with how he was perceived and uninterested in the teenage drama that embroiled the rest of us. I noticed that he only laughed when he was actually amused; and he seemed to treat everyone with easy equanimity.
I didn’t realize I was staring at Seth until his eyes turned to me. I looked down, but before I could come up with anything to say, the moment was punctured by a scream. Greg had thrown Chloe over his shoulder and was lumbering toward the end of the dock.
“Greg! Don’t you dare!” she yelped, half annoyed and half thrilled to be the target of his antics and the center of attention. I happened to know she had spent an hour choosing her outfit and putting on makeup, something I never did. Tonight, she had painstakingly applied tiny gemstones to the outer corners of her eyes. That’s not the kind of thing Greg would have taken into consideration as he barreled toward the water. We all thought he was going to dump her in, but he stopped just short of the edge of the dock and put her down, his point made. She slapped his shoulder and walked back toward the firepit, shaking her head. We all understood that this kind of interaction constituted flirtation.
As it was the longest day of the year, the sun disappeared around 8:45P.M.that night, but the sky did not fully darken until closer to 10:00P.M. By then, everyone was tipsy and looking for boundaries to test and trouble to stir up. Our friend Sully had grown tired of toasting marshmallows over the firepit and was experimenting with roasting a full Snickers bar. Another kid had hopped on a Jet Ski and was tearing back and forth between the boathouse and the far bay. Greg made another attempt to drag Chloe into the water, and this time, he meant it. They both tumbled in, and others jumped in after them. Soon the shallows were frothing with teenagers, their shrieks and cackles echoing through the warm summer air. Those who were still dry began sprinting toward the end of the dock. I was near the back of the pack, and before I got very far, I felt a hand slip into my palm and pull me out of the fray.
“Shhhh.” Seth held his finger in front of his lips, and we scurried around the boathouse and into the woods along the shoreline. As I navigated the uneven forest floor in my sandals, I felt a fiery pressure within—excitement and fear comingling. Was this really happening? And if so, whatwasit, exactly, that was happening? Seth seemed to have a destination in mind, and he led me with confidence past the darkening trees. We could still hear the whoops and splashes from the dock, and I was elated to have broken from the group, to be on a stealth adventure with Seth.
We passed first one, then another of the guest cabins, and finally wended our way through the woods to an enormous boulder that saton the shoreline, partially submerged in the pond. It was twice my height and big as a whale.
“Are you okay to climb this?” Seth asked.
“Of course,” I said, as I looked for a foothold.
“I’ll give you a boost.” Seth knit his fingers together, and I stepped into them. He lifted me high enough to start my ascent. It only took a few seconds for me to summit the boulder, but when I reached the top, my heart was pounding.
“Have you ever been up here?” Seth asked.
I shook my head, and we made our way to the edge, where the rock sloped sharply down to the water below. Seth sat and let his calves hang down, and I followed suit. He pulled a beer out of his pocket, cracked the tab, and offered me the first sip. From our perch, we could see our friends cavorting on the far dock, their restless shapes backlit by the fire.
“Do you have FOMO?” Seth asked.
“Not at all.” I had been to a version of this party dozens of times, and I knew that the most exciting things happened around the edges of the action.
We passed the beer back and forth in what felt like an unrushed rhythm, and I was relieved to have something between us to absorb the pleasant tension that was growing.
“Why haven’t you spent the summer here before?” I asked.
Seth shrugged. “I usually work at one of the tennis clubs near Saranac. But my mom thought I should take a job here this year.”
“And she didn’t want to come with you?”
“She has to work. She can’t really take much vacation. But she thought I should spend some time with this part of the family. Maybe so she doesn’t have to.”
“You’re her proxy?”
“Something like that.”
It made me wonder if my parents did the same—used my sister and me as a shield, a means of avoiding their own marital stagnation. To me, that strategy seemed more complicated than it was worth, but I knew adults had the capacity to twist themselves into knots rather than face the hard truths of their lives. I hoped that would never happen tome, that my loyalty would always be to reality, no matter how painful it might be.
“My mom is cool, though. You would like each other,” said Seth. I appreciated this vote of confidence, which had a forward-looking quality to it.
“What about Greg?” I asked, feeling bold. We both knew it was a leading question. “I know he’s your cousin, but do you actuallylikehim?”
Seth smiled. “He’s my cousin.”
“Such diplomacy.” I grinned in the darkness.
“If you’re asking whether I would be his friend if heweren’tmy cousin, well, probably not. But we get along. I understand him, even when I don’t agree with him.”
“That’s fair.”
A familiar song carried over the water from the dock. I looked down into the black expanse and heard the lazy lap of water against the boulder beneath us. This time, when Seth took the beer from me, he set it down and looked into my eyes. On fire but paralyzed, I had to summon all my courage to hold his gaze.
