On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves Page B

said anything about it, or told me to knock it off, which was just one more reason why I liked her so much.

    It would have been my senior year, and Anna hated that I’d missed so much school.
    “You’re probably going to have to get a GED. I wouldn’t blame you at all if that’s what you wanted to do, instead of going back and finishing high school.”
    “What’s a GED?”
    “A general education diploma. Sometimes when kids drop out of school, they choose that option instead of going back. But don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
    “Okay.” I didn’t give two shits about my high school diploma right then, but it seemed important to her.
    The next day, when we were working on the house, Anna said, “Are you ever going to shave?” She felt my beard with the back of her hand. “Isn’t that hot?”
    I hoped there was enough hair to hide my red face. “I’ve never shaved before. What little I had fell out when I started chemo. When we left Chicago everything was just starting to grow back.”
    “Well, it’s all there now.”
    “I know. But we don’t have a mirror, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”
    “Why didn’t you say something? You know I would help you.”
    “Uh, because it’s embarrassing?”
    “Let’s go,” she said. She grabbed my hand and pulled me back to the lean-to. She opened her suitcase and took out a razor and the shaving cream she used on her legs, and we went down to the water.
    We sat cross-legged facing each other. She squirted shaving cream into her hand and dabbed it on my face, then spread it around. She put her hand behind my head, pulling me toward her until I was at the right angle, and then shaved the left side of my face with slow, careful strokes.
    “Just so you know,” she said. “I’ve never shaved a man before. I’ll try not to cut you, but I can’t promise.”
    “You’ll do a better job than I would.”
    Only a few inches separated our faces, and I looked into her eyes. Sometimes they were gray, and sometimes blue. Today was a blue day. I never realized how long her eyelashes were. “Do people notice your eyes?” I blurted.
    She leaned over and swished the razor around in the water. “Sometimes.”
    “They’re amazing. They look even bluer because you’re so tan.”
    She smiled. “Thanks.”
    She scooped up water in her hand and ran it over my cheeks, rinsing the shaving cream away.
    “What’s that look for?” she asked.
    “What look?”
    “You’ve got something on your mind.” She pointed at my head. “I can practically see the wheels turning up there.”
    “When you said you’d never shaved a man before. Do you think of me as a man?”
    She paused before she answered. “I don’t think of you as a boy.”
    Good, because I’m not.
    She squirted more shaving cream into her palm and shaved the rest of my face. When she finished, she held my chin and turned my face side to side, running the back of her hand along my skin.
    “Okay,” she said. “You’re all done.”
    “Thanks. I feel cooler already.”
    “You’re welcome. Let me know when you want me to do it again.”

    Anna and I lay in bed one night, talking in the dark.
    “I miss my family,” she said. “I have this daydream I play out in my mind all the time. I imagine that a plane has landed in the lagoon and you and I are right on the beach when it does. We swim out to it and the pilot can’t believe it’s us. We fly away and as soon as we find a phone, we call our families. Can you imagine what that would be like for them? Being told someone has died and having their funeral, and then they call you on the phone?”
    “No, I can’t imagine what that’s like.” I turned onto my stomach and adjusted the seat cushion under my head. “I bet you wish you never took this job.”
    “I took the job because it was a great opportunity to go someplace I’d never been. No one could have predicted this would happen.”
    I scratched a mosquito bite on my leg. “Did you live with