minutes,” I said over my shoulder.
“No worries,” Lars said. But he sounded worried. “I’ll be right here. Waiting.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll just, uh ... yeah.”
How pathetic that my “romantic” night was ending in poop and stupid fighting—because even if it didn’t look like we were fighting, we were. And to think that I’d started the night feeling so mature, when I wasn’t mature at all. I was a baby playing house. A dumb baby at that.
“Hurry back!” he called. His voice cracked, and I felt a remote pity for both of us.
Do Something to Help the World
I N A WEEK, the seniors would graduate. Two weeks later, the school year would end for the rest of us, and two weeks after that? Bye-bye Lars.
I didn’t like thinking about that: first, this , then this then this , with good-byes every step of the way.
So don’t, I told myself. Focus on today! It was good advice, because this very today was sunny and perfect, and Dinah and I were relaxing on the steps of Pressley Hall, chatting as we watched the junior guys set up wooden folding chairs on the quad. It was an excellent day to simply ... absorb.
Only I was constitutionally incapable of simply absorbing, it seemed. My brain kept jumping forward, no matter how many times I told it no no no. On different days, my thoughts circled around different things. My right-this-moment obsession? THE BEACH.
I’d gotten permission from Mom and Dad to do a camp-enrichment thing with Dinah—which made Dinah all shades of happy—but I was only going to do it if we could find the right one. It needed to be fun, but also cool, in a “this matters” kind of way. It also needed to accept late applicants, since we were coming up fast on summer.
Last night, I found the perfect camp. A camp that would let me do something good for the world, like on my list of goals. My task now was to bring Dinah around.
“How about somewhere at the beach?” I asked Dinah casually.
“Like what?” Dinah said. “And how would it count as leadership- ish?”
“Hmm,” I said. I pretended to consider. “Lifeguards?”
“Like ’em,” Dinah said. “Don’t want to be one.”
Dinah wasn’t a strong swimmer, it was true.
“Swimsuit models? Like, at a surf shop?”
She looked at me like, Are you on drugs?
I decided it was time to hit her with the real one. “Well ... hey, I know. How about something volunteer-ish? Like involving the ecosystem, maybe?”
“The ecosystem?” Dinah echoed. “As in nature ?”
“Not nature nature,” I said quickly. “I’m talking about the beach , not ticks and bears and water moccasins.”
Dinah shuddered. Snakes creeped her out, as did spiders and ticks and basically all insects except “pretty” ones, like ladybugs. I, myself, took pride in not being scared of that stuff, because c’mon. A snake was not going to jump out at you from behind a door and say, “Boo!” As long as you left snakes alone, then snakes would leave you alone. Same with spiders and ticks, for the most part.
The only creepy-crawly thing I was afraid of were cockroaches. Cockroaches gave me the heebie-jeebies. They scuttled , and they squirted green ooze when you smacked them with a shoe, but smacking them with a shoe was no simple feat given their aforementioned horrible scuttling ability.
Worst of all? The cockroaches we had here in Atlanta were different than run-of-the-mill roaches. They were called German cockroaches, and They. Could. FLY. That’s right, fly —right into your ear or hair or mouth , if, say, your mouth was formed into a horrified O like that famous painting “The Scream.”
These days I saw German cockroaches as just one more thing to resent about our Germanic neighbors. Trot on off and frolic with authentic German cockroaches, I told Lars in my mind. I’ll pass, thanks very much.
“There are no snakes or cockroaches in South Carolina, I’m pretty sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure at all, but that was a small
“No worries,” Lars said. But he sounded worried. “I’ll be right here. Waiting.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll just, uh ... yeah.”
How pathetic that my “romantic” night was ending in poop and stupid fighting—because even if it didn’t look like we were fighting, we were. And to think that I’d started the night feeling so mature, when I wasn’t mature at all. I was a baby playing house. A dumb baby at that.
“Hurry back!” he called. His voice cracked, and I felt a remote pity for both of us.
Do Something to Help the World
I N A WEEK, the seniors would graduate. Two weeks later, the school year would end for the rest of us, and two weeks after that? Bye-bye Lars.
I didn’t like thinking about that: first, this , then this then this , with good-byes every step of the way.
So don’t, I told myself. Focus on today! It was good advice, because this very today was sunny and perfect, and Dinah and I were relaxing on the steps of Pressley Hall, chatting as we watched the junior guys set up wooden folding chairs on the quad. It was an excellent day to simply ... absorb.
Only I was constitutionally incapable of simply absorbing, it seemed. My brain kept jumping forward, no matter how many times I told it no no no. On different days, my thoughts circled around different things. My right-this-moment obsession? THE BEACH.
I’d gotten permission from Mom and Dad to do a camp-enrichment thing with Dinah—which made Dinah all shades of happy—but I was only going to do it if we could find the right one. It needed to be fun, but also cool, in a “this matters” kind of way. It also needed to accept late applicants, since we were coming up fast on summer.
Last night, I found the perfect camp. A camp that would let me do something good for the world, like on my list of goals. My task now was to bring Dinah around.
“How about somewhere at the beach?” I asked Dinah casually.
“Like what?” Dinah said. “And how would it count as leadership- ish?”
“Hmm,” I said. I pretended to consider. “Lifeguards?”
“Like ’em,” Dinah said. “Don’t want to be one.”
Dinah wasn’t a strong swimmer, it was true.
“Swimsuit models? Like, at a surf shop?”
She looked at me like, Are you on drugs?
I decided it was time to hit her with the real one. “Well ... hey, I know. How about something volunteer-ish? Like involving the ecosystem, maybe?”
“The ecosystem?” Dinah echoed. “As in nature ?”
“Not nature nature,” I said quickly. “I’m talking about the beach , not ticks and bears and water moccasins.”
Dinah shuddered. Snakes creeped her out, as did spiders and ticks and basically all insects except “pretty” ones, like ladybugs. I, myself, took pride in not being scared of that stuff, because c’mon. A snake was not going to jump out at you from behind a door and say, “Boo!” As long as you left snakes alone, then snakes would leave you alone. Same with spiders and ticks, for the most part.
The only creepy-crawly thing I was afraid of were cockroaches. Cockroaches gave me the heebie-jeebies. They scuttled , and they squirted green ooze when you smacked them with a shoe, but smacking them with a shoe was no simple feat given their aforementioned horrible scuttling ability.
Worst of all? The cockroaches we had here in Atlanta were different than run-of-the-mill roaches. They were called German cockroaches, and They. Could. FLY. That’s right, fly —right into your ear or hair or mouth , if, say, your mouth was formed into a horrified O like that famous painting “The Scream.”
These days I saw German cockroaches as just one more thing to resent about our Germanic neighbors. Trot on off and frolic with authentic German cockroaches, I told Lars in my mind. I’ll pass, thanks very much.
“There are no snakes or cockroaches in South Carolina, I’m pretty sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure at all, but that was a small
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