The Story of Us by Deb Caletti

Aunt Bailey was alittle tipsy too, laughing too much and flirting with George, who told us about his childhood in Chiba, Japan, and his trip here with his family. George was sweet. He made sure to hold the salad bowl for Aunt Bailey while she scooped, since it was heavy. He told her and Gram that two lovely ladies like themselves should have husbands, which was sort of an insult, but he meant well. He kept saying how beautiful everything was.
    I lost all the ground that I’d gained that afternoon with Hailey and Amy, or else I was just too tired to give them the kind of attention that made our relationship work so well. They sat together near the end of the long table, twirling pasta on their forks, looking down on us like two ravens on a telephone line. Amy picked the mushrooms from her sauce and piled them up on her plate, and Hailey would whisper to her and she’d whisper back until Rebecca or Mom or Aunt Bailey would ask them a question and their heads would pop up, wearing tight, polite smiles. They were the kind of smiles that said, I wish you’d curl up and die but I’d never, ever say so.
    Sometimes you wanted more from people. I wished Jupiter would get them in line.
    After dinner I headed to my room. I wanted to write to Janssen and tell him everything that had happened that day, but halfway there I changed my mind. I wanted to see the beach at night, I told myself, and myself told me what a liar I was. From the dining room I had seen the small bonfire, the orange glow that looked so inviting. I saw the figure there too.Of course, I could tell who it was even from there. The short hair, the wide shoulders. That stupid-girl hot-guy reaction wasn’t me, though right then my body didn’t seem to know that. It was new, that want. But it felt safe to play with. Desire could feel like a demand, but I knew it wasn’t one.
    It was cool outside. I should have brought a jacket. What I was doing felt wrong, but I kept stepping toward wrongness, kept picking at it, the way you pull a loose bit of yarn even though you see the sweater starting to unravel. That hot guy—well, I was stuck, and maybe he seemed like a way to shove myself in one direction or the other. You pull the bit of yarn and it unravels, and you either stop because you remember how much you love that sweater, or else you keep pulling, because it’s already ruined. But at least you do something. I could smell burning wood, and the ashy heat lifted up into the air and sent a swarm of firefly sparks dancing down the beach. I could hear the snap and pop of the fire as I got closer. He turned when he heard me.
    “Hey, Cricket,” he said. He knew my name.
    “Hey, Somebody with a Guitar,” I said.
    “Ash,” he said. “Pull up a log.” He sat on a blanket, his back against a large piece of driftwood. His guitar was propped beside him like a shy friend. He moved it so I’d have a spot. I sat down. It felt close. Very close, closer than I’d been to anyone except Janssen. A male, non-related anyone. Oscar and Gavin, maybe, but they didn’t count.
    The fire made my face burn hot. The waves slid across the sand, their foamy edges bright white in the moonlight. I feltfar away from Marcy Lake, where Janssen and I would sit sometimes at night, listening to crickets and watching strange insects dip down for drinks of murky water. I might as well have been in a different country, or in a different life altogether.
    “You live here,” I said.
    “I do.” He threw a stick at the fire and missed.
    I responded with several highly intelligent statements. “Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
    “Your mother getting married, or your father?”
    “Mom.”
    “When my father got married, they made us all go barefoot and throw pieces of paper with wishes for them into the sea.” He twirled a finger by his head.
    “What was your wish?”
    “I was, like, five. I think I wrote, ‘ No fighting .’ F - I - T - I - N - G .”
    “That’s a good wish. Rebecca’s not your