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It was still dark outside. Not even 6 a.m. But today was the day. My entire body was tingling as I looked out my window on the blue cold sky. As I showered and dressed, it began to distract and then take over me, winding me up like a cuckoo clock. It was like Christmas morning, when I was the only one awake, slipping and slinking around the house, silent as a cat.
There was my whole entire life to dwell on Anthony Travolo. But today…today was another kind of day. And since it was here, I wanted to reach for it with both hands.
I left my parents a note:
Went to the beach. On my cell if you need me.
They’d be frightened. They’d be furious. But technically, they hadn’t forbidden this. As I pulled up in front of the St. George, I knew my hopes for the hours ahead were what was giving me driving confidence. My thoughts were splintery with anticipation.
Of course I was here much too early. It was a little bit silly. Almost the moment that I turned off the engine, the need to sleep taffy-pulled at me, and eventually I succumbed to it, though for how long I don’t know, because my eyes opened to see that the sun had broken its clean gold into the sky. And there was Kai, walking out the door of the St. George, right on time.
Same green jacket, but this time he’d thrown it over a pewter-gray sweater, along with faded-to-charcoal jeans. His hair was sticking up sweetly and everywhere like a baby hedgehog, and his skin was scrubbed to a deep glow.
Kai had shown up. Why would I have doubted him? And now the reality of what this day could be sparkled. I yawned, stretched, struggled to sit up. A needle-shower of excitement, relief, and disbelief was spiking my skin as Kai opened the passenger door and climbed in.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey yourself.”
He fastened his seat belt, docked his iPod, pressed play.
No way. Although, hadn’t we been talking music that first time, out on the fire escape? I must have mentioned Weregirl. It was too obscure otherwise. “Good choice,” I mentioned after a minute or so.
“Yeah, I’m kinda fan-zoning Weregirl right now,” he said.
“I downloaded them a few weeks ago, and now I know every song by heart.”
“Me too.”
“There are no coincidences,” I joked. And while the day felt like fate, as if the stars had all lined up just for us, I hadn’t bet on anything. I hadn’t gotten my hopes up. When it came to Kai, I knew better. I just had to hold on to the tentative belief that so far nothing on the horizon pointed to this day going terribly wrong.
Coney Island was forty-five minutes out, according to my GPS. Almost the length of the Weregirl tracks twice through. Every song belonged to us. The music took Kai to the same place— I could tell by his fixed yet soft expression as he stared ahead, and by the way he sang along. His voice was low but clear, and totally unself-conscious. I loved the sound of Kai’s voice over Weregirl. I wished I could record it—I made my brain try.
The boardwalk was almost deserted. We parked and fed the meter, and as we headed up the wide-planked herringbone walk, Kai caught me off guard, picking me up and spinning me around. My eyes closed, I was transported, my fingers tested his pulsing throat, the sides of his face, as he kissed me and set me down again.
“Ooh, look…cotton candy!” Suddenly shy of the moment, I turned away and broke off from him toward the cotton candy cart ahead, trotting up the walk to buy a twist of spun sugar from the pudgy old man in the striped hat, who twinkled at me as if we were old friends. “A pretty girl, and all alone,” he said. “That’s no good.”
“No, no. I’m with him.” I pointed to Kai, but he’d drifted a ways down the boardwalk and was staring out at the sea. He looked so all by himself out there, so unattached to anyone, that I felt greedy claiming him just for myself. Especially when he didn’t seem to belong to anyone.
The cotton candy man gave me a funny look along with my twist as if he, too, thought I was mistakenly attempting to claim Kai. I took my change and bolted, running hard to catch up since he’d walked even farther ahead, so that by the time I got to him I was out of breath, and the candy was beaded up in crystallizing sugar.
We split the treat, the sticky blue staining our lips. Kai bought tickets for the Wonder Wheel—and we cranked up up up in the swinging seat until we were suspended at the top. Kai’s kiss was brine and salt and sweetness that melted on my mouth.
Then we wandered Surf Avenue, stopping for a corn dog at Nathan’s for me and a hot dog with everything for Kai.
He let me try his first—“Gorilla-style! With peppers and onion, the best!”—and then he finished it in the next three bites. “Watch out, true believers. I’m going for another one. Best hot dog in New York.”
“Only because it belongs to this day.” Though the walking, the delirious excitement was catching up with me. My reserves were beginning to ebb.
Somehow Kai knew this. He took my hand and guided me, without speaking, to the dunes, where we stretched out side by side, staring up at the sky as we laid our lives bare. When Kai spoke, I got the sense in his hesitation and his stammer that he didn’t confide in too many people.
And yet here I was, and I was listening hard.
His dad had been troubled, he told me. His few, dim memories were of a well-intentioned but angry guy who couldn’t be anchored to a sick wife and two sons. He remembered his mom more vibrantly, with her coaxing voice and her spill of curly black hair, a comforting presence until she was abruptly gone. “But it’s my aunt who’s really taken care of us all,” he said. “Mom died knowing Isabella would look out for Hatch and me. That’s why I owe it to Hatch. Pay it forward and all that.”
“You two seem close. Are you a lot alike?”
“Nah, Hatch is a practical dude. I’m the one chasing rainbows. Even if it means working sixty hours a week at El Cielo, scrounging for grants and loans for school. Which reminds me.” He slipped his phone out of his knapsack. “Let me take your picture? It’s for a project I’m working on.”
I was instantly self-protective, shielding myself from his phone lens. “Really? Now? Me? I don’t know, my hair’s all frizzed out from the Ferris wheel and the salt—and I haven’t looked in the mirror all day!” But Kai just laughed, didn’t seem to notice or care, and he seemed so happy for me to be in his lens that soon I was laughing, too, as he clicked shot after shot.
“Enough!” I put up my hand, ducking away.
