Love and Other Words

Boys suck.”

The wind whipped across us where we were hunkered down at Goat Rock Beach again, preparing for a weenie roast with our families, flag football, and New Year’s Eve fireworks over the ocean.

“Do I want to know?” Elliot asked, not even looking up from his book.

“Probably not.”

In all fairness, I didn’t have strong feelings for any boys at my school, but it seemed like—since we began high school four months ago—none of them had any feelings whatsoever for me. Danny, my best guy friend, told me that his friends Gabe and Tyler both thought I was cute but, as he put it, “A little too, like, into books.”

I couldn’t escape it; everyone was starting to “go out with” everyone else. I hadn’t even so much as kissed a boy.

Guess I’d be going to the ninth-grade dance with Nikki.

Elliot glanced over at me. “Can you tell me more about how boys suck?”

“Boys don’t want girls who are interesting,” I complained. “They want girls with boobs and who wear slutty clothes, and flirt.”

Elliot slowly put his book down on a patch of beach grass beside him. “I don’t want that.”

Ignoring this, I went on, “And girls do want boys who are interesting. Girls want the shy geeks who know everything and have big hands and good teeth and say sweet things.” I bit my lips closed. I might have said too much.

Elliot beamed at me, metal finally gone, his teeth perfect. “Do you like my teeth?”

“You’re weird.” Changing the subject, I asked, “Favorite word?”

He stared out at the ocean for a few breaths before saying, “Cynosure.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It’s a focal point of admiration. What about you?”

I didn’t even have to think: “Castration.”

Elliot winced. He stared down at his hands in his lap, turning them over and inspecting them carefully. “Well, for what it’s worth,” he whispered, “Andreas thinks you’re cute.”

“Andreas?” I heard the shock in my own voice. I narrowed my eyes as I stared down the beach at where Andreas and George wrestled, and tried to imagine kissing Andreas. His skin was good, but his hair was too shaggy for my taste and he was a little bit of a meathead.

“He said that? He’s with Amie.”

Elliot scowled, picking up a small rock and throwing it toward the thrashing surf. “They broke up. But I told him if he touched you I would kick his ass.”

I barked out a loud laugh.

Elliot was too rational to be offended by my reaction: what Andreas lacked in brains he made up in serious muscle.

“Yeah, so, he tackled me. We wrestled. We broke Mom’s vase, you know that ugly one in the hall?”

“Oh no!” My distress was convincing, but I was mostly elated they’d been fighting over me.

“She grounded us both.”

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh. Instead, I stretched out on the sand, returning to my book, and lost myself in the words, reading over and over again the same phrase: It seemed to travel with her, to sweep her aloft in the power of song, so that she was moving in glory among the stars, and for a moment she, too, felt that the words Darkness and Light had no meaning, and only this melody was real.

Hours may have passed before I heard a throat clear behind us, saw Dad appear. His frame blocked out the sun, casting a cool shadow over where we lay.

I registered only once he was there that I had slowly shifted so I was lying with my head on Elliot’s stomach, in our secluded stretch of sand. I pushed to sit up, awkwardly.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Nothing,” we said in unison.

I could hear immediately how guilty our joined answer made us sound.

“Really?” Dad asked.

“Really,” I answered, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He and Elliot were having some kind of male Windtalker exchange that included prolonged eye contact, throat clearing, and probably some mysterious form of direct communication between their Y chromosomes.

“We were just reading,” Elliot said finally, his voice shifting deeper midway through the sentence. I’m not sure if this sign of his impending manliness was reassuring or damning as far as my dad was concerned.

“Seriously, Dad,” I said.

His eyes flickered to mine.

“Okay.” Finally he seemed to relax and squatted down next to me. “What are you reading?”

“A Wrinkle in Time.”

“Again?”

“It’s so good.”

He smiled at me, reaching out to swipe his thumb along my cheek. “Hungry?”

“Sure.”

Dad nodded and stood, making his way toward where Mr. Nick was busy building a fire.

A few seconds passed before it seemed like Elliot was able to exhale.

“Seriously. I think his palms are the size of my entire face.”

I imagined Dad’s hand gripping Elliot’s entire face, and for some reason the image was so comical it made me laugh out a sharp cackle.

“What?” Elliot asked.

“Just, that image is funny.”

“Not if you’re me and he’s looking at you like he has a shovel with your name on it.”

“Oh, please.” I gaped at him.

“Trust me, Macy. I know dads and daughters.”

“Speaking of my dad,” I said, adjusting my head on his stomach to be more comfortable, “guess what I found last week?”

“What?”

“He has dirty magazines. A lot of them.”

Elliot didn’t respond, but I definitely felt him shift beneath me.

“They’re in a basket on the top shelf in the far corner of his closet at the cabin. Behind the nativity scene.” This last part felt somehow very important.

“That was oddly specific.” His voice vibrated along the back of my head, and goose bumps spread across my arms.

“Well, that’s an oddly specific place to put something like that. Don’t you think?”

“Why were you in his closet?” he asked.

“That’s not the point, Elliot.”

“It’s precisely the point, Mace.”

“How?”

He placed a bookmark between the pages and sat up to face me, forcing me to sit up, too.

“He’s a man. A single man.” Elliot used the tip of his index finger to push his glasses up and held my gaze sternly. “His bedroom is his fortress of solitude—his closet is his vault. You might as well have been looking in his nightstand drawer or under his mattress.” My eyes widened. “What were you expecting to find on the top shelf in the far corner of his closet behind the nativity scene?”

“Photo albums? Cherished mementos of a lost youth? Winter sweaters? Things of a parental nature?” I paused, giving him a guilty smile. “My Christmas presents?”

Shaking his head, he turned back to his book. “Snooping will always end badly, Mace. Always.”

I considered this. Dad didn’t date much . . . well, ever, that I could think of, spending most of his time at work or with me. I’d never given a moment of thought to this sort of thing where he was concerned. I found the bent corner in my copy of A Wrinkle in Time and settled back onto the patch of grass behind me. “It’s just . . . gross. That’s all.”

Elliot laughed: a loud, abrupt snort, followed by a shake of his head.

Glaring at him, I asked, “Did you just shake your head at me?”

“I did.” He used a finger to hold his place in the book. “Why is it gross? The fact that your dad has the magazines or that he uses them to—”

Reflexively, I covered my ears. “Nope. Nope. I swear if you finish that sentence I will kick you in the balls, Elliot Petropoulos. Not everyone does that.”

Elliot didn’t answer, just picked up his book and continued reading.

“Do they?” I asked weakly.

He turned his head to look at me. “Yes. They do.”

I was silent for a moment while I digested that. “So . . . you do that, too?”

The flush crawling up his neck betrayed his embarrassment, but after a few seconds, he nodded.

“A lot?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘a lot.’ I’m a fifteen-year-old guy with an awesome imagination. That should pretty much answer your question.”

I felt like we’d discovered a new hallway door leading into a new room, which contained a new everything. “What do you think about? When you do that, I mean.”

My heart was a jackhammer beneath my ribs.

“Kissing. Touching. Sex. Parts I don’t have and things people do with them,” he added with a wiggle of his brows. I rolled my eyes. “Hands. Hair. Legs. Dragons. Books. Mouths. Words . . . lips . . .” He trailed off and buried his nose in his book again.

“Wow,” I said. “Did you say dragons?”

He shrugged but didn’t look at me again. I eyed him curiously. The mention of books and words and lips had not escaped my attention.

“Like I said,” he mumbled into the pages, “I have an awesome imagination.”