I’m on it, she replied.
It was easy enough to locate Morgan and Company, because there were about a zillion of them clumped up by the playground, doing that awkward in-between thing tweens do. Oh, eleven.
Then again, what the hell age wasn’t in-between? Twenty-five, Alexa decided. When you were twenty-five you must feel as though you were exactly the age you were meant to be. Alexa couldn’t wait to be twenty-five. She’d live in a funky bungalow in L.A., and she’d decorate it with succulents and tasteful throw pillows, and she’d press her own juice, which she would drink standing on her deck that would overlook some sort of canyon.
Aside from Morgan and Katie, she couldn’t pick any of the other girls out by name. They all had similar sandy blond hair and short shorts and skinny prepubescent colt legs. The big lights around the baseball field next to the park were all on, so it was practically as bright as daylight in this area even though the sun was almost down.
Then Katie saw her and waved and Alexa couldn’t help it, that warmed the cockles of her heart, which Alexa had learned in anatomy and physiology junior year were actually just the heart’s ventricles, and which could not actually be warmed by emotion.
Then she saw Tyler coming toward her down Merrimac Street, weaving in and out of the crowds and the vendors. He saw her; she could tell by the way he picked up his pace. Ugh. No. She didn’t want to see Tyler.
Her feelings about what had happened at the water stop on Tuesday were complicated and difficult to unwind. She was ashamed that it happened, and she was ashamed that Cam had seen it happen. To make things even more confusing she was ashamed that she was ashamed, because she knew that that was exactly the sort of reaction that kept girls from speaking up when they were sexually assaulted. But the spitting was not assault exactly (was it?wasit?). It was just so strange and so hard to categorize, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so she’d packed the whole thing up in a box and stuffed it into the closet of her mind.
She addressed the knot of girls. “Hey,” she said to them in general, but more to Morgan than anyone else. She sensed their attention shift. The more fashionable among them took in her outfit approvingly. She was wearing white cut-offs and her Free People Beacon tank, though she brought along a sweatshirt because she knew the mosquitoes would be wicked in about ten minutes. “When the lights go out and the fireworks start, I wantyou to stay right here,” she said. “So that I can find you when it’s over, and walk you back home, okay?” She was talking to Morgan but looking mostly at Katie. Katie and Morgan nodded and then went back to what they were doing, which was pretending to be engrossed in their phones while stealing furtive glances around at their friends.
Then Tyler was upon her. He leaned toward her, and she backed away from the girls. “Hey,” he said beerily. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
The box in the closet of Alexa’s mind began to creak open. “When you spit on me?” she said.
“That’s not what happened!” He furrowed his brow. He was either perplexed or pretending to be perplexed. A confusing thought crawled out of the box. What if Tyler was right and Alexa was wrong? What if she’d misunderstood? Maybe he didn’t spit on her. Maybe he... sweated on her. And she got confused. But if he didn’t spit on her, what was he apologizing for?
He had her by the arm and he was pulling her behind a tree where she couldn’t see the eleven-year-olds.
“Tyler!” she hissed. “I’m supposed to be watching Morgan and her friends. What are you doing?” She turned her head to peer around the tree.The bad men,she thought. There was a thrum of noise and energy running through the park. She needed to make sure Morgan and Company were all together before the fireworks started. She especially needed to keep an eye on Katie.
Tyler put one hand on either side of her head and turned it so she was facing him again. “I just can’t stand the thought of you with anyone else, Alexa. It just makes me. So. Mad.” With every syllable he squeezed her face a little harder.
His face was very close to hers; she wasn’t sure if he was going to kiss her or bite her. “Tyler,” she said. “Stop it. Let go. You’re hurting me.” Was nobody seeing this? She was surrounded byhundreds, thousands, of people, yet she felt completely alone.The bad men,she thought.The bad men, the bad men, the bad men.
Then the floodlights near the baseball field went out. The world plunged into darkness. There was apoppoppopcoming from the river. Abangbangbang. The crowd let out an appreciative ooooooooh. Tyler dropped his hands from Alexa’s face, and as suddenly as he’d appeared, he was gone.
60.
The Squad
The first two weeks of August always go by in the blink of an eye. That’s just the way summer is. You start July thinking the season will last forever, wondering how you’ll fill the days, and then the next time you turn around the nights are longer, the days are shorter, and there are back-to-school advertisements everywhere.
61.
Rebecca
Alexa was lying on one of the loungers on the back patio in her black strapless bikini. There wasn’t much sun left—evening was coming—and the air was cumbrous with humidity.
“Put some clothes on,” said Rebecca. “And shoes. We’re going out for dinner. I’m buying. Bob Lobster.” She poked Alexa’s leg with her toe. “Come on.” She had exactly one item on her agenda. She’d been holding on to her knowledge of Alexa’s YouTube channel for two weeks now, waiting, as Daniel had advised, for the right time to bring it up. And now was the right time.
Alexa groaned and said, “Why do you want to go all the way out there?” Bob Lobster was on the turnpike leading to Plum Island.
“I just do,” said Rebecca. “I like their clam rolls, and I haven’t had one all summer.” She moved toward Alexa like she was going to tickle her, and that got her going. No seventeen-year-old wanted to be tickled by her mother. “Come on. Morgan is at Katie’s. It’s just the two of us.”
Alexa groaned again and pulled on ripped jeans shorts and a tiny, tiny T-shirt. “Tourists love Bob Lobster because it’s ‘quaint’ and ‘no-frills,’” she said. “But whenIgo on vacation? WhenI’ma grown-up? I’m going in the opposite direction. I’m going to go tothe Royal Villa of Grand Resort Lagonissi in Athens, which costs fifty thousand dollars a night. I’m looking to embrace the thrills, not avoid them.”
Is that because you are a YouTube personality?wondered Rebecca. But what she said was, “That will be nice for you, one day. For now we’re going no frills. I’ll drive.”
The sky over the Merrimack was a delicate pink bordered here and there by orange. There was the sense of summer coming to a close, of days and nights diffusing and re-forming as nostalgia. They rolled down the windows of the Acura and took in the briny, summery smell along the turnpike. They passed the weathered wood-shingled Joppa Flats Education Center, where Alexa had once attended a summer day camp, learning all about the native birds and marine life, and then they passed the Plum Island Airport, where Rebecca had once bought Peter a piloted ride on a WWII fighter plane for his birthday. He’d emerged looking green about the gills, but he claimed to have loved it.
They ordered their food—the clam roll for Rebecca, chicken Caesar wrap for Alexa—and, once they had it, repaired to one of the outside tables, where they tried to ignore the buzzing flies and concentrate instead on the loveliness of the sky. Alexa was facing away from the road and Rebecca toward it; she could see the light playing on the Pink House. She kept her eyes trained across the street so she wouldn’t have to meet Alexa’s when she said, “I watched your YouTube channel.”
Alexa put down her wrap. Her voice shook a little. “You what?”
