Before My Eyes Read online

  “Izzy!”

  I catch my reflection in a pair of mirrored sunglasses. I look like I’m falling apart, hair out of my ponytail, beach bag overflowing. He tilts his head, seeing me, watching me watch myself. In the reflection of his sunglasses, I’m all wide brown eyes. I’m distorted, elongated; but he doesn’t turn his head or take off the glasses, and I wonder if he’s looking for someone, too. He has a shaved head and a cold grin.

  Then, from behind him, Izzy appears. She races toward me: giggling, dashing to my side, and jabbing her hand back into my own. “Slow poke,” she cries out.

  “Don’t do that again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Run away from me.”

  “I’m right here,” she says. “Anyways, I’m not afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid, either,” I say, though I am angry at the fear welling inside me. I take a deep breath. The heavyset, bald guy trains his mirrored sunglasses on us. I look down toward Izzy. I’ve seen enough of my distorted image.

  “Yes, you are, Claire,” says Izzy. “You’re always afraid something is going to happen. To me.”

  I exhale. We’re here. It’s going to be a blistering day. I am not afraid.

  The girl in the black bikini and silver flip-flops slides by with her friends. She winks at Izzy and ignores me. She’s barely raising her legs, more gliding along the wood and sand. Strangers are always attracted to Izzy, commenting on her heart-shaped face, her quick smile, her blond curls, how happy and precocious and adorable she is.

  “Someday I want a bathing suit like that,” says Izzy, pulling toward the other teenagers. “Why don’t you ever wear a bathing suit like that, Claire?”

  “I like the frogs on your bathing suit more,” I say to her, tickling her tummy to make her laugh, which she does.

  “Beach,” says Izzy.

  And I wish I were a kid again. I don’t want to be the responsible one anymore.

  “Beach,” she repeats, as if trying to be reasonable.

  I am waiting for the day to end, and the day after that, and for school to start and end, and for the day when I go off to college and leave you, though you will always be my little sister and I will never really leave you. I need to go. I need to know if there will ever be one person, that’s all I really need, one guy who will look at me and understand me. And kiss me. I have to add that. I’m probably the only seventeen-year-old in North or South Lakeshore who hasn’t been kissed in a way that says you’re the only one I’m thinking of, looking at, seeing.

  “Come on, Claire. You’re just thinking too much. You’re going to hurt your brain.”

  “That’s what Mommy always said—or says. She’s still going to say that, isn’t she. I still think too much.”

  “If your head wasn’t screwed on you’d lose that too, Claire.”

  My mother used to say that, too. And Izzy is repeating it with the exact exasperated tone as our mother. She’s also tugging on my arm. I force myself to focus on her. “Did you ever lose your head, Claire?

  “Not yet.”

  “Why’d she say that?”

  “I was a daydreamer.”

  “Aren’t you still?”

  I don’t have time to dream in the day. I’m shaking my head. I’m not a daydreamer anymore. I’m practical. I get things done.

  “Can we hurry up?” she’s saying in her grown-up six-year-old voice. She shakes my arm.

  Why do I feel like turning around and going home? Going into my room, locking the door? Anything could happen here. We are too exposed. “Stand still,” I say to my sister and spray more sunscreen on her from top to bottom, emptying the can.

  “If we don’t hurry up, we’re going to miss the ocean, Claire.”

  She looks at me, smiling, pleading. There’s no other adult to tell her—or me—what to do. I look around as if to double-check that my father—or mother—aren’t suddenly appearing. We are alone, and I realize, free, free: unfettered, unburdened, unleashed, I think, running through synonyms at top speed, for at least today.

  “What are you waiting for, Izzy?” I say, kidding her, dashing along the boardwalk without her, squinting into the sun, resolved to have a last day at the beach that will sustain me through the winter.

  I expect her to follow me. But she stands there, alone, looking panicked into the blinding sun, as if I am going to leave her. “Izzy, come on. Let’s go,” I say, and her thin legs scamper to me. She entwines her fingers through mine. She swings our arms together. I am never going to have a moment alone again, am I? We walk, our hands locked, toward the far end of the boardwalk.

  The Atlantic Ocean stretches before us, miles to the east and miles to the west. At the far end to the east is beach, ocean, and more ocean, and at the far end of the western horizon is New York City with its skyscrapers and bridges in miniature, like a model, against the blue-blue skies. Before us is the chance to be lost in ourselves.

  “Look,” Izzy says, pointing back toward the restrooms. I hope Izzy doesn’t have to go to the bathroom already. It will take us a half hour just to get her bathing suit pulled down and back up.

  “He talked to me.” She points to the bulky guy with the shaved head and mirrored glasses, now pacing near the men’s room.

  “What did he say?” I ask, focusing instead on the beach. I like to lie near the edge of the crowds, near the dunes and sea grass.

  “He liked my bathing suit. And he wanted to know your name, Claire.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him.”

  “I told him: Claire Wallace.”

  “So you didn’t give him my middle name, too?”

  “I’m sorry, Claire.”

  “Did he want to know your name, Izzy?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Don’t tell strangers your name.”

  “I didn’t! I said I told him yours.”

  “I got that.” I glance back toward him again, but now he’s gone into the bathroom or the crowds, become a shadow in the light. “I’m sure he’s harmless, just another guy who likes to hang out here.”

  “Claire, when are we going into the water? Can we dive in? Can we dive right into the biggest wave? Can we? Can we, Claire?”

  I should warn her against the dangers of the sea. I should tell her to be cautious. I need to let her know that I am in charge, that she can’t be running off. I’m the grown-up here. Instead, I whisk her onto the blistering sand, each of us doing a little dance. I shoot to the left and dash between blankets, jumping over other people’s shoes and sandy towels and bare legs. I shouldn’t be running, but I am, and she’s following right behind me, screeching and laughing. I lick the air. Taste the sea in my mouth.

  Max

  Friday, 11:30 A.M.

  “You load the ice in, Pete.” I snag a cold bottle of water out of the freezer and roll it along my face. The sun beats down. This day is never going to end.

  “Okay, Maxie,” says Peter with a loopy smile, as if he’s been thinking of this retort all summer. He hates being called anything but “Peter,” except by me.

  “Maxie?” I say back to him as if I’m angry. “Who you calling Maxie?”

  “You,” he says, staring at the floor, as if I’m mad at him.

  “I like ‘Maxie,’” says Trish. “How’d you think of that, Peter?”

  Peter shrugs, proud of himself. “He called me ‘Pete.’”

  “Hey,” I say as if I’m angry. In fact, nobody has ever called me “Maxie.” Most kids, guys on the team, call me “Cooper.” If you didn’t know me, you’d think that was my name. “You can call me ‘Maxie,’ Petey. Yup, only you.”

  Trish snorts. “If I need you, I know how to call you. I’ll whistle, sweetie.” She whistles off.

  I slump against the back wall and slug down the water. They’ve been okay to work with all summer, Trish and Peter, not that I want to admit it to them. Peter loads more ice in with a crash and a wreckage of cubes bouncing off the never-washed wood floors. He’s smiling, kneeling down, cleaning up his me
ss. He’s done more than his share of work. I look out to the beach, to the ocean, gulping the water down. To the side, Trish snaps the ice cream machine back in place and, calling out that we need more cones, leaves Peter and me for the supply closet in the back. We also need hot dogs for the grill. But the grill is Barkley’s job and there’s no sign of him.

  A line suddenly forms in front of the Snack Shack, and at the front of it is Jackson.

  “Hey! Hey! Petey. Petey? You hear me? You see me? Over here. I’m right here. Come here. Your job is to wait on me. You know that’s your job, isn’t it?”

  I can’t deal with him today. Jackson. He was always one of the tallest kids in our grade, and he must have passed six feet this summer. The captain of the varsity soccer team, his hair is styled after European soccer players, shaggy-long, and streaked blonder from the sun. I run my fingers through my hair. I don’t think I even combed my hair today. Last time Jackson was here I took off into the men’s room, pleaded a break. He looks like he has spent his summer sleeping with every girl who will sleep with him, which is most, judging from the rumors at school. He gets to drive a BMW to the beach, unlike me with an old Jeep. My father says that he can’t have his son driving a nicer car than most of his constituents. I turn half away, fiddling with the ice cream machine as if something is wrong with it again.

  “Where’s Cooper? Or the Bark? They didn’t leave you in charge, did they?” He says it again when Peter doesn’t answer. “They didn’t leave you in charge? Are you in charge, Petey?” On the surface, he sounds like a reasonable customer. However, I’ve noticed for the first time that he likes to repeat himself, as if, having said something once, it makes it more clever to say it again.

  Peter crashes the rest of the ice into the box. Overflowing, most of the ice scatters around my feet and into the corner, milky white, like field mice.

  “How about it, Pete?” he asks. “How about it?”

  She laughs next to Jackson. Not Trish. Trish is nowhere to be seen. Anyway, Trish’s laugh, also off-key, is arguably nicer, at least until you see that it’s coming out of the three hundred pounds of her. This laugh is streaming out of Samantha, in her shiny black bikini today. This is the same bikini she wore last Friday. I wonder if she has racks of bikinis with the names of the days pinned onto them.

  “Can I help you?” says Peter, gripping the empty bucket of ice.

  “Can you help me?” Jackson asks, and then asks again, as if this is a rhetorical question, and not Peter trying his best.

  I cringe. If I could make myself smaller, lose the new two and three-quarters, almost three inches, I would.

  Peter bites his lip, glances back. He knows I’m there, about ten feet behind him, in the shadows. I don’t think I have the free will to go to the front. I don’t care what Mr. Morrison, my history teacher from last year, said. I don’t believe in free will. I’m staying back here.

  “Petey?” says Jackson, whistling at him like he’s a dog. “Petey, come here.”

  Peter steps forward. He’s willing to do his job but he’s not smiling. He looks back at me, and I shrug. It’s his turn at the counter, isn’t it? I mean, if we took turns.

  If Samantha wasn’t there, if it wasn’t my last Friday, my second-to-last shift, I’d go to the front counter. I send mental messages for Trish to return. She’s probably having a snack. She likes to sneak off and eat. In fact, I’ve never seen her eat anything in front of me except an occasional ice cream. I just see the telltale signs on her shirt or around her mouth. But when she eats ice cream, she eats fast, faster than I’ve ever seen anyone eat ice cream, a daze of productivity.

  Peter is rocking forward, toward the counter, and then back on the heels of his oversized work boots. He does this when he’s nervous. And his shoelaces on his left foot are untied. He could trip. I should tell him to tie his shoelaces.

  “Can you help me?” says Jackson. “Do you think anyone here can help me?”

  “I don’t think he can help you,” says Samantha to Jackson. Her hands rest on her bare hips. I cringe, hearing his words echoed in her mouth. I pummel the side of the ice cream machine as if that’s what’s needed.

  “Maybe he can help you, Sammie. Petey, do you want to help Sammie instead of me?”

  He’s the first person I’ve heard call her Sammie.

  Peter tips back and forward on the thick heels of his work boots. He does this when he’s nervous or unsure. He’s smiling now; it’s a confused, eager, sad smile.

  Samantha, a.k.a. Sammie, is laughing.

  Peter doesn’t know what Samantha’s done to make Jackson laugh, but he attempts to laugh, too. Maybe she made a face about Peter helping her. She hasn’t made a face at Peter all summer. She just floated down the line in her different color bikinis. But she never came around with Jackson. This is the first time. She’s been turning up all summer by herself, and I’ve been waiting for the right moment to say something more to her. Now she is laughing with Jackson. She is laughing at Peter, or at me. I need to go forward. I don’t need to be a hero or anything. But I have to go to the front. Do my job. Help Peter. But I can’t. I can’t because I can’t believe what’s happening—Peter is peeing his pants right there in the middle of the Snack Shack. It’s only a dribble, but it’s seeping through the front of his shorts and down his leg toward the untied work boots for everyone—for Jackson and Samantha and me—to see.

  “Oh my god, Jackson! Look at that! I can’t look! But look at that!”

  “I don’t think he can help either of us, Sammie.” Jackson laughs hard.

  Peter is frozen to his spot, more surprised than anything that he has no control over this situation. He looks from Jackson to Samantha to me, with an expression of shock and embarrassment and pain. But something odd happens; Samantha decides somehow that this is an affront to her, as if Peter is doing this on purpose.

  “Make him stop,” she says to Jackson.

  “Oh man, Petey, come one, this is disgusting. Disgusting. Totally. Disgusting,” says Jackson, changing his stance, coming forward in front of Samantha as if she suddenly needed protection.

  “Hey!” I shout out.

  “You got to clean that up, Cooper,” says Jackson, as if daring me to go on offense.

  Samantha smothers her eyes into Jackson’s chest. “Get it out of here.”

  Peter doesn’t move, and neither do I.

  I don’t know if the “it” is Peter or what—that he made a mistake? That he had an accident? I glance at Samantha and wonder if she’s playacting or if this is for real, this act with Jackson. I want to be able to picture her in her bikini, or even less, without thinking of this. She looks up at Jackson, almost a foot taller than her. Her eyes flit from him to Peter as if this could be a contest. She giggles. His arm snakes around her shoulder.

  “Petey. Petey,” says Jackson in response. “Petey, come here. Now, you going to take my order, or what? You going to take my order now? And then you can go like a good boy and clean up.”

  Peter contemplates his untied work boots, now both of them with the laces limp across the sandy wood floor. He’s saying, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to, really. Max? Sorry. I didn’t mean to. But he was calling me ‘Petey’ and that’s your name for me, not his. I’m sorry.” Now it’s him repeating his sentences, as if everything in this world needs to be said twice to be made real.

  “Peter,” I say quietly, “go in the back. I’ll take care of this.”

  He stays at my side as if I need help.

  “Hey, Cooper, been practicing those penalty kicks?” Jackson throws at me. He doesn’t expect an answer. “I think I’ve convinced Sammie to come to our first game. She’ll be new to school this fall—eleventh grade—moving up from Lakeshore South, and she’s all worried about making friends. I said she shouldn’t worry, we’re a very friendly bunch.”

  I say nothing. Samantha clings to Jackson. The two of them go off, into the hot sun, toward the back of the Snack Shack. And while Peter is saying: M
axie, Maxie, Maxie, over and over until I can scream, I’m watching Samantha and her bikini bottom being claimed by Jackson. Everybody else on line is wondering what is going on. Why is Peter standing there like that? Maybe, they’re wondering, like I am, why some people are cowards and others are not.

  “May I please have two bottles of water?” the next girl on line asks as if I would consider not selling her water. She’s the same height as I am and has a striped towel thrown around her neck for cover, even though she’s wearing a plain one-piece bathing suit. Not someone from Lakeshore North. Not the kind of girl I like. Not Samantha. Not the kind of girl Jackson would pay any attention to, I’m sure of that. Not the kind of girl guys like me look at much. She clutches a younger girl’s hand tight in her own. I’m surprised when she says something else to me. “I think you should help your friend.” Her voice is low, husky even. No giggles from this girl.

  “Me?” I say as if she’s talking to the wrong person. “He isn’t my friend.” I glance over at Peter. He’s shaking and looking like he’s going to cry. All Peter can do is stand there. The floor, I realize for the first time, is uneven, on a slant, the planks cracked, with sand spitting through. Ants truck across the wood in a line, more industrious than anyone in this place. Peter rocks back and forth on the heels of his work boots, stinking, going to topple over, with his shoelaces dripping down the sides of his boots.

  I pull out two bottled waters for her. They aren’t cold. Instead of complaining, she says instead, more urgently, “You should help him.”

  She has brown hair, a lot of it, and brown eyes, wide and fixed on me. I can’t help it. I blush. This look is way too intense for me, and she’s too tall, too big a girl, not big like Trish, not fat, but not Samantha, packaged in her bikini.