Pulled Under

“And what do you mean by perfection?”

“Think about everything that goes into creating a wave: the gravitational pull of the moon, the wind and weather thousands of miles away in the middle of the ocean, the contours of the ocean floor. It’s an amazing cosmic event that is hidden from sight until the last possible moment. The wave only breaks the surface for such a short period of time, and perfection is the tuning fork that rings in your heart when you catch it the moment it comes to life and ride it until the last bit of it disappears. It’s the feeling of knowing that the forces of nature all came together and you were there to fully appreciate every last bit of it.”

He considers this for a moment, and this time I wait patiently.

“Was that perfection yesterday morning?” he asks. “When you caught that last wave?”

I close my eyes and think back to the wave. “Absolutely.”

“And did it ruin it for you when you found out that I saw you do it? Did my being there make it imperfect?”

“No,” I answer. “Of course not.”

“Then why would other people ruin it? I think you should get over this fear. Better yet, I think you should compete in the King of the Beach contest. It’s not like girls don’t enter. Mickey and Mo both won it. Why not you?”

“Because,” I say, as though that alone were enough of an answer.

“That’s it? ‘Because’? That’s not a good enough excuse.”

“It should be,” I reply a little prickly. “You wanted to know something about me and I told you. And the first thing you’re doing is telling me to change that thing. It’s not a fear. It’s just the way I’m wired. You watching me surf is different from a crowd of people watching me. It’s the most personal thing I can share. I don’t think you understand that.”

“I don’t think you have any idea how great it is to watch you. I don’t even understand surfing and I think it’s amazing. Yesterday morning, watching you, that was mind blowing. Without a doubt it was the best forty-five minutes I’ve had since I’ve gotten here.”

“Really?”

“There is nothing I can do as well as you can surf. When I first got here, I thought surfing was a hobby. Then, after a few weeks of talking to you, I began to think of it as a sport. But yesterday, when I was watching you, I realized that it’s an art. You’re an artist, Izzy.”

You can now add this to the list I just mentioned of the most amazing things anyone’s ever said to me.

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Okay,” I say shyly. “Then that’s one thing that you know about me. But I’m not looking to share that with the world, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stop pushing you.”

We both share a smile, and he reaches over and slips his hand into mine. I feel a charge crackle through my body. Neither of us says anything for a moment, and I give his hand a little squeeze in return.

“Now I want you to tell me something,” I say.

“Anything.”

“Why did you kiss me yesterday?”

He thinks about it for a moment before he answers. “Because I was tired of imagining what it would be like. I just had to know.”

“You’d been imagining it?” I ask. “Imagining kissing me?”

He nods. “Big time.”

“Since when?”

“Since I met you.”

“Right,” I say with a laugh. “When I had the guacamole stain on my shirt?”

“I like guacamole and I respect a girl who can pull it off as a fashion statement.”

I turn to look at him, and the sea breeze blows my hair in every direction. He reaches up and gently moves it out of my face, and I tuck it between my neck and shoulder.

“And what was it like?” I continue. “Kissing me?”

He flashes the smile I see in my mind whenever I think about him.

“Even better than I had imagined. Which is saying something, because I had set the anticipation bar pretty high.”

“Do you . . . maybe . . . want to try it again?”

“I . . . do,” he says, but with some hesitation. “I . . . really . . . do.”

“Why do I sense another ‘but’ coming up?”

“It’s already July first and I go back to Wisconsin on August twenty-fifth. That’s—”

“Fifty-five days,” I interrupt.

“Wow, you came up with that quickly.”

“I’ve already done the math. All of it. Fifty-five days, seven weekends, six more summer camp classes.” I shrug. “You’re not the only one who’s been imagining.”

This makes him smile.

“I want to kiss you very much,” he says. “But if I do, I know that it will hurt unbearably bad fifty-five days from now. Maybe worse than anything’s ever hurt before. And that makes me wonder what I should do.”

Now I turn my whole body and lean forward so that I am just inches from his face. “What you should do? Don’t I have a say in this?”

“Of course you do,” he answers. “What do you think we should do?”

“I think it’s like a wave,” I say. “But that’s just me. I always think everything’s like surfing.”

He has a perplexed look on his face. “How is it like a wave?”

“Consider all the cosmic forces that have brought us to the end of this pier. Your parents, my job, your uncle, summer camp. All of these unseen forces have led us here, and the chance that we have is only going to last for a brief period of time. Just like a wave. I say we catch it as soon as we can and ride it until the very last part dissolves into the sand. I say that we shoot . . . for perfection.”

I don’t wait for him to respond. Instead I reach around, put my hand on the back of his neck, and pull him gently toward me as I begin to kiss him. I can taste the salt air on his lips, and when I close my eyes I lose myself in those lips. It is wonderful and exciting. It’s more than I ever would have dreamed could have happened. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t ignore the clock that starts in my head. Even as I kiss him I can hear it ticking away.

Fifty-five days and counting.

I want you . . . to name which five members of the Continental Congress were selected to write the Declaration of Independence.”

I blink, rub the sleep out of my eyes, and try to refocus. Much to my horror I realize that it’s not a nightmare. Uncle Sam really is accosting me in the kitchen. Okay, it’s my father in an Uncle Sam costume, but it’s still pretty nightmarish.

“What?” I mumble with a sleepy yawn.

“I want you,” he says, exaggerating the pose to look like the famous Uncle Sam poster, “to name which five members of the Continental Congress were selected to write the Declaration of Independence.”

Normally, I make it a rule to ignore my father when he’s in costume. And you’d be surprised by the frequency with which I have to invoke this rule. But that’s impossible at the moment because he’s blocking my access to the refrigerator.

“I just want to get some milk for my cereal,” I moan. “Why does there have to be a quiz?”

“Because it’s the Fourth of July and your father’s an American history teacher,” he says, as though that were a reasonable explanation. “C’mon. Give me the names.”

I can tell that he’s not giving up, so I rack my brain. “I’m pretty sure one was Thomas Jefferson.”

“Yes,” he says, no doubt perturbed that I’m only “pretty sure.”

“And you’ve gotta figure that Ben Franklin was there, right?”

“He was.”

He waits for more, and all I do is shrug.

“That’s it?”

“It’s seven in the morning and I’m in the middle of summer vacation,” I say. “You should be happy that I got that many.”

He shakes his head in total disappointment. “That’s two out of five. That’s only forty percent. Do you find forty percent acceptable?”

“I’m only getting two percent milk, so yeah,” I say with a wicked smile. “That leaves thirty-eight percent for later.”

Rather than continue our back and forth history lesson, I wedge my way past him, grab the milk and orange juice, and head for the table.

“John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman were the others,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”