“No, you’re right. I should lighten up.”
That’s not what I was saying.
“Let’s focus on how lucky we are to be here.” I grab his arm beside me in the shallows. “This is notoriously so hard to find!”
“Not when you’re following the live blogs as obsessively as we are. You’ve just got to be ready to jump in the car when there’s a chance.”
He walks a little way up the beach and strips off his shirt. Without worrying anymore about whether we should or shouldn’t wade in here, I pull my dress over my head, throwing it on top of the camera bags on the sand. I am literally the last person to have planned how best to Instagram this turn of events, but even I have to admit my choice of white bikini top and boy shorts against the fluorescent blue in the water tonight was inspired.
Drew runs into the ocean, flicking up the brightly colored water, sparkling with chemical reactions, and I splash after him through mystical waves. It occurs to me, briefly, that while I’m anxious about undressing in front of Oliver, I have no such problem around Drew—probably because this whole thing couldn’t be more platonic. I completely trust him.
All around us, the water lights up in eddies and swirls, as if we’re in an otherworldly animated movie or living on some distant, undiscovered planet. I spin, trailing my fingers through the water, light swirling all around me.
Drew is standing nearby, looking more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. It’s as if the phenomenon is distracting him from everything that makes his life so hard. “We need to see fireflies next,” he says.
“Yes! And the aurora, of course. Let’s start a list.”
As a wave breaks behind him, his body is silhouetted against the bright light. It’s all just so incredible and beautiful and soonce-in-a-lifetimeI start to lose the battle against composure, my eyes filling up.
“Missing your boyfriend?” he teases, and I slam some neon water at him.
For a few moments, I’d almost forgotten Oliver existed. Now I struggle to imagine him here in this scene. Drew will stay here in the water all night if I want to. He’s big on wondrous things—it’s the photographer in him. We’re kindred spirits on this stuff, and I can’t help wondering whether Oliver would rush me through it.
“Can I take your photo?” Drew asks. “Not for the exhibition. Just for you?”
He wades onto the sand, dries his hands off, and grabs my camera. Not his. I know he’d never share these photos, but this ensures it.
As he lines up the shot, I realize it’s the little things like this that I like about him, not that I’d voice that aloud—he’d think I was weird. I want to take back my initial accusation in the art studio at his school, when I lumped him in with the other boys. They would never ask for consent to take these photos. They’d take them and share them and do God knows what with them.
Knowing it’s only Drew, I come to life, scooping the shining water, spinning and dancing in it as if nobody is watching me. Not even him. Then I traipse back through the water to see what he took, laughing at the couple of failed shots where I’ve got a weird look on my face or my eyes are shut, but I’m so genuinely happy and confident in the others, I barely recognize myself.
“You are really good,” I say. “Reallygood.” I’ve told him this before, but I never think he quite believes it. He basks in the praise, reflections from the water flickering across his face in the moonlight.
“Spin around,” he says, never one to dwell on a compliment. On our mission to create the perfect shot, I twirl so many times I lose my balance and fall over, into him, pulling both of us down onto the sand, laughing, while he holds the camera aloft.
We end up sitting at the shoreline while the luminous water washes in and out on the beach. By a million miles, it’s the most precious experience of my life.
“The day I die, when my life flashes before my eyes,” I tell him, “this scene will be the finale.”
37
Drew
This is the standout night of my life. The water is luminous. But so is she. All in. Confident. She doesn’t care how she looks. Just throws herself into everything without giving a second thought to what I’m going to think. It’s this gusto for life and this freedom that I covet because my own life feels so constrained.
“Promise me, no matter how old and boring you get, or where you go, or who you’re with, you’ll never stop looking for this,” she says.
She means bioluminescence and its ilk, not the way it feels to share it with her. I try to imagine myself with someone else in the future and already know it will never measure up. A pretty tragic thought, at seventeen.
I shove a wave of water at her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence in my future personality.”
She smiles. “It’s not you personally. Won’t we all get old and boring one day? You know, when we have to worry about mortgages and bills and why our kid is being excluded from the friend group at lunchtime?”
“You speak from experience?”
She looks at me tentatively. “I was completely on the outsidewhen I moved to Saint Ag’s,” she admits. “I really didn’t have any friends until one of the teachers forced Bree to work on an assignment with me. Even now she’s my only close friend.”
“Well, thanks,” I say. “What am I then?”
