I still couldn’t believe Seth actually liked me. Sometimes when I saw him from a distance—glimpsing him at the tennis courts, or spotting him out in a boat, or catching his gaze across a bonfire—I thought to myself,Who is that?And then it would hit me: he is mine.
In those days, cell service in Locust was practically nonexistent. As a result, we all made plans via landline or in person, and we often left our smartphones by the wayside when we got together. You couldn’t Google anything anyway, and there was no reason to document or Instagram the action. In many ways, this gave us what amounted to an old-fashioned youth. We had to talk to our friends’ parents on the phone when we called their houses; we had to wait for one another to arrive without having an exact ETA. As a result, we moved more slowly and with more patience. We lingered longer. And when the moment was good, we relished it, knowing there was nowhere else to be.
One afternoon, we all gathered at the Seaveys’ dock to swim. Some came in motorboats, some in canoes, some by car, and one kid named Mick had waterskied behind Sully’s boat. We alternated lazing in the sun and leaping into the water, and at one point, Chloe’scanoe was capsized so we could turn it into a cavern. This was a game we had all played since childhood—flipping a canoe so that it retained an air bubble big enough to let you breathe freely if you swam underneath it.
“Meet you in there?” said Seth, winking at me before he dove into the water and disappeared. I had always found this canoe game a bit claustrophobic, but I followed, slithering under the side of the canoe and bobbing up into the cavity within. It was dark, but a few streaks of light reflected off the water, creating stripes on the bottom of the boat and across Seth’s dripping face. I pushed my hair back and found my footing in the silty bottom of the pond.
“Hey,” I said, wincing as I realized how loud my voice was as it reverberated off the walls of the boat. In a whisper, I tried again: “Hey.”
“Hey.” Seth moved closer to me. Our chins touched the water, and there were just a few inches of space between the tops of our heads and the floor of the canoe. It felt like being in the belly of a whale—both intimate and scary.
He pulled me toward him and kissed me. In the darkness, in the water, it felt as if we were suspended in a netherworld of our own making. I laced my fingers together behind Seth’s neck as I felt his hand move up my thigh. Feeling bold, I reached for the waistband of his swimsuit, but just then, we heard a scream. Then another.
We ducked out into the open to see what was happening. On the lawn, Greg and Chloe were inspecting something. Greg had a stick in his hand, and I could tell that whatever he was poking at was alive—and likely scared. I splashed my way out of the water, and as I neared them, I saw that the object of their interest was a green-and-black garter snake that had become entangled in a piece of duct tape. Greg lifted it with the stick and then dropped it back onto the grass.
“Stop it!” I yelled. “Why are you poking it?”
“I’m seeing if it’s alive,” said Greg, as the snake whipped its tail in an effort to escape the tape.
“It’s obviously alive,” I said, as Seth caught up with me. “You’re hurting it.”
Greg shrugged. “Chill. It’s a snake.”
“It’s a sentient being.” I looked around for a way to free the animal, but it was well-adhered, and some of its skin had begun to come off on the tape. “Can someone find a box?”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to do CPR on a snake,” Greg said. “Just throw it in the water and let nature take its course.”
But Seth was already jogging toward the boathouse, and when he returned with an empty cooler, I gently lifted the snake, tape and all, into it. Its scales had a delicate softness that I knew well. I had volunteered at a local animal sanctuary the previous summer, where I helped rehabilitate quite a few snakes (not to mention birds, rodents, and even a fox).
Chloe looked into the cooler and squealed. I thought I saw the reptile fix one of its tiny black eyes on me, conveying a clear call for help.
“Will you pull my boat around?” I asked Seth, who took off in the direction of the dock where it was tied up. I carried the cooler to the end of the dock, and as Seth slowed, I hopped into the front of the boat. We took off across the pond at full speed, like EMTs on a mission.
By the time we reached my boathouse, I had a plan. We docked and carried our patient up to the porch, but when my mother—who was in residence for the week—saw us trying to come inside with a snake, she said, “Oh no you don’t.” So Seth waited with the cooler while I went inside to look for something I could use to loosen the tape’s grip.
I returned with a jar of coconut oil, and set to work inching my fingers along the snake, carefully dabbing oil in the places where the tape met its scales. Slowly, my diligence began to pay off. The tape gave way a millimeter at a time, taking none of the snake’s skin with it.
“It’s working!” said Seth, watching with rapt attention.
“Getting there,” I said. “Come on, little Coconut.”
“You can do it, Coconut,” whispered Seth, embracing the name I had spontaneously given the snake.
Our patient was surprisingly compliant, and it stayed perfectly stillas I navigated the final section of its tail. When I finally lifted the tape off, it was mostly free of scales.
“Nice,” said Seth, relieved. “He’s going to be okay.”
“I think so, but see how that part of the mid-body is a bit swollen? We need to keep him contained for a day or two so he can recuperate in safety,” I said with a sense of authority I didn’t know I could muster.
I found a suitable box, and Seth gathered some grass and rocks, which we added to the makeshift enclosure for ambiance. Finally, we left a small bowl of water, lest Coconut get thirsty. When we were confident that our patient was comfortably resting, we finally looked at each other.
“Nice work, Dr. Campbell,” said Seth. “I’ll be your vet tech any day.”
It was thrilling to have someone I loved see me at my best—and to reflect back both who I was and who I could become. Somehow, Seth’s love for me ignited a feeling of love toward myself. When he delighted in me, I delighted in myself. When he laughed at my jokes, I believed in my own hilarity. If I ever had abest self, she flourished that summer—and Seth was the primary witness.
A few days later, when I had nursed Coconut back to health and released him in a safe place on our property, I decided it was inevitable: of course I was going to be a vet someday. If Seth believed it, so did I.
Chapter 17
