Page 23

Tonight wanted something more for me.

I was restless in bed, my night with Everett at Carolina Beach pinging in my head. “It didn’t feel like this,” was the bedtime story that wouldn’t quite lull me there. Everett was single, and time was ticking for me to do something about it. It had already been a few weeks but I hadn’t mustered the courage to make my move yet.

The last time I thought he was single and I was ready, he actually wasn’t single. He’d moved on to Kelsie, but this summer, I didn’t have to let us keep missing each other.

The night was in control. It made me slip out of bed, throw a bikini on, and set off into the night. I hoped I didn’t wake Blair or Hadley up when I left, picking my bike off a palm tree and setting off into the night. The air was cold on my bike, but it still felt like freedom.

The feeling fully hit me when I turned onto Main Street, with only a few porch lights and deer awake with me during the witching hour.

I was really doing it.

My therapist would be so proud. I’d tell her about it in our call tomorrow. We’d been talking every other week since last November. Last session, I updated her on Everett—that he was single at the same time I was—and she reminded me of something we’d been working on during the school year: How to happen to your own life before it happened to you. Back home, I’d only gotten as far as captaining the tennis team, but armed with new information about Everett, I could do more. One day, I would ride a real rollercoaster, and then I could probably conquer the world, maybe even escape from the quicksand my dad left me in.

Tonight, it started with Everett. It was time to take a step. If you did that in quicksand, you’d drown in it, but there was no rule about beach sand. Beach sand was just microscopic shells. Shells never drowned anyone.

I texted him before I biked over, but I didn’t expect a reply so quickly. There was still no response when I set my bike against his mailbox. Everett’s room was off the first-floor balcony, which I knew from the few times we’d come over for beach days, so I had no choice if I wanted to happen to my own life tonight.

I took control back from the night and found myself before his window. Trespassing, if Everett didn’t notice before the neighbors did. I considered throwing something at the window like in the movies, an oyster shard or something, but I wasn’t going to mess with someone else’s glass. My therapist would understand.

Instead, I knocked on his window. I didn’t breathe in the silence after, like silence meant I wouldn’t be caught. I listened for stirring inside, then knocked again. “Everett! It’s Quinn!” I scream-whispered so he’d actually brave the noise behind his window.

He drew the curtains back, looked briefly like he thought he was still dreaming, then unlatched his window and swung it open. “What’s up?” he croaked.

“Do you want to go swimming?”

Waves thrashed the shoreline with a sound like beach thunder ripping down the horizon—layered and prolonged and echoing like a pinball bouncing off thick storm clouds.

The sound was menacing, but I’d made up my mind.

If I’d known years ago that it would one day be Everett with reservations about night swimming, I wouldn’t have believed it. There was a lot I wouldn’t believe, but somehow this was more shocking than the very idea that Everett and I were walking in our bathing suits down a dark patch of beach. Alone. Together.

“Sharks feed at night,” he said.

“Come on, you can’t back out now, you already put your trunks on.”

“Quinn, are you peer pressuring me?”

“Would it be more apt to say it’s pier pressure?”

“And you’re using puns? I must be dreaming.”

I pinched him gently on the arm. He was being dramatic, but I needed him to know this wasn’t a dream. “You don’t have to, but I still am.”

“Me too.” He pulled his shirt off.

In the faint moonlight, I briefly saw the muscles that made up his torso. If I could see him, that meant he could see me staring, so I watched the sand while I kicked my shorts off. If I looked up, would I see him taking me in? When I eventually did, he wasn’t, but maybe he was just good at darting his eyes away at just the right moment. A lot of people were.

“First one in wins!” I shouted, then took to the water as fast as my legs could take me.

I screamed with joy as a wave tore through me and broke my fall in the same moment. I was a pinball bouncing off thick, cold waves, bracing for each one that glowed white and frothy under the moon. It was easier once I got past the insurmountable surf closer to the shoreline. I did a mermaid dive under a calmer wave.

Underwater, I couldn’t tell it was the middle of the night, but the reminder came quickly when I resurfaced. It was even darker on Everett’s side of the island, where the turtles liked to nest, so any oceanfront lights were a dull red. Still, the moon helped me make sense of where the ocean met the stars. The white-capped waves were their own stars on the inky water, twinkling and ever changing the way stars couldn’t.

“Quinn?” Everett exclaimed.

“Over here!” I followed the sound of his voice a few waves away until I saw his head as a silhouette before the moon’s glitter. “Did I win?”

“Definitely.”

Something grazed my waist but retreated just as fast. “Holy shit!” I recoiled with a yelp, but really there was nowhere to go.

“It’s just me,” Everett said, then his hands were more intentional under the water. He grabbed my forearm and squeezed it reassuringly, then let it go immediately. It left me cold, but maybe that was just from the sun’s absence.

“Holy shit.” I exhaled a large breath in relief. I’d thought it was a jellyfish, maybe a stingray, even a curious shark since Everett had put the thought into my head. It was feeding time, even if I wanted to pretend sharks didn’t eat.

I was on edge, sure, but to be on edge was to be in it. I’d happened to my own life. I’d thrown myself to the ocean under the moonlight, which was living, even if it felt like dying. And I was okay. Mermaids didn’t worry about creatures lurking in the dark water. Mermaids didn’t even need to wipe the salt water from their eyes. Their wet hair dried in perfect waves.

A few shaky breaths later, my heartbeat finally slowed. “How do you feel?”

“Scared shitless.”

I laughed. “Me too.”

We left the water almost as quickly as we got in. But it still counted as living, as it gave my chest the same feeling as everything else had this summer. Including Everett, who was behind me on our way up the ladder of the long-abandoned lifeguard post.

During the day, the lifeguard post housed watchful eyes for lost swimmers, but tonight, all it watched was us. We sat wrapped in our beach towels, our backs against opposite walls, facing each other. Sure, my eyes watched the lights of distant cargo ships and Loggerhead Lighthouse, but with my legs stretched across the lifeguard post, it was easy to think only of him. He was close enough to touch.

“So, really, what’s changed with you?” Everett’s voice carved him from the darkness.

“What do you mean? I’m always like this.”

“Sure.”

The truth came out anyway, despite my attempt at humor. It was easier, especially since holding it in felt more like betrayal than protection. “I’ve been working on happening to my own life. Making a life for myself.”

“Life starts with swimming at night?”

I shrugged. “Among other things.”

Eventually, I hoped I’d get to the point where I could be in full control. Where life could mean resting my hand on Everett’s leg to absentmindedly brush off the sand dried to his skin, just because it hurt too much not to. Just because I could.

Until I was in full control, our conversation was enough. Passing glances were. Nudging legs as silent acknowledgment of their touching.

“I always wanted that as a kid, to be older and make my own rules,” Everett said.

“My mom always told me I’d regret wishing my childhood away, but it is cool to think about sneaking out for a swim, then actually do it.”

All my life, my mom had kept me from it, which was really just to cover the real truth, that it was my dad’s absence that held the knife. I was working on forgiving my mom for life happening to her. She lost all her fluffernutter and firefly moments, too, but she stayed. She took care of me all by herself. She knew where I found comfort and allowed me to spend the whole summer here, every year.

She made sure I was safe.

What was the logical next step after doing the most dangerous thing at the beach? I wouldn’t tell her about the swimming, but I’d tell her about Everett.

Maybe one day, I’d tell Everett about Everett, too.