Ari and Zac

Chapter 10: Part of Your World

Chapter 10: Part of Your World

Ari reached for a clean swimsuit and tugged it on, followed by her cover up. She slipped her flip flops onto her feet, willing her mind to shut out the thoughts that kept churning and bubbling to the surface.

That boy at the party... The message he sent...

She hadn't known how to react to his message. She knew she should text something back to him, sly and witty to make him laugh. That's what Lucy would have done. Lucy knew how to flirt with boys the way Ari knew how to swim—like she was born to it, the very knowledge embedded in her DNA.

But Ari had listened to that message and then turned into a statue. Completely frozen, unable to move or even think. Utterly incapable of replying in any way. Verbal communication was off the table, obviously, but she couldn't even formulate a text. Not even a hand gesture. Not even the courage to make eye contact again. Instead, she'd merely slipped her phone back into her pocket and made a beeline for the bathroom, safely out of his line of sight.

She'd stayed in there until Lucy came knocking on the door a few minutes later. "Ari," her sister had whispered through the bathroom door. "Ari, are you OK?"

No, she thought now. She wasn't OK. Not even close. She'd been relatively OK before today, maybe. She knew her place in the universe, and she'd made her peace with it. She'd never bothered to have a crush on a boy before because she knew there was no point.

Boys were not for her. Boys were for Lucy. That was how it had always been. Lucy would have first dates, and first kisses. Boyfriends by the dozens. Breakups and heartbreaks too. Someday Lucy would find someone special, and then she'd have an engagement ring...and a dress-shopping expedition...and a bright sunshine-y wedding on the beach, attended by everyone in town.

That was Lucy's fate, and Ari had always known that none of that stuff was for her. She would get to experience it secondhand through her sister, and she was content enough with that. No one ever seemed to want to date a girl like her.

Certainly not a boy who looked like him.

He clearly had no trouble convincing girls to talk to him. After Ari emerged from the bathroom, he'd barely looked her way again. She'd pretended not to look at him either, but she'd watched him surreptitiously, flicking glances from the corners of her eyes. She'd watched him make the rounds to every single girl in the room, and lead each one of them by the hand to the partially curtained-off booth in the corner.

He'd ushered every girl back there but her. Even Lucy had allowed herself to be led away for her big audition. She'd giggled to Ari afterward about the whole bizarre set-up, with the cameras and the old-school karaoke machine. "They wanted us to sing," Lucy had told her incredulously on the walk home. "Isn't that sketchy? Like seriously, what kind of reality show involves singing?"

Ari reached for her phone again with a sigh. She needed to do her meditation exercise and put the whole memory of the evening out of her mind. Forget it ever happened. Forget she ever laid eyes on that boy in the first place. He'd obviously lost interest in her once Lucy told him she couldn't sing. He hadn't even bothered inviting Ari back for an audition. She was the only girl in the place who hadn't taken a turn.

"Forget it," Ari whispered harshly to her phone, surprising herself with the sound of her own voice. She didn't usually make a habit of talking to herself out loud. She could speak just fine when she was alone of course—and sing too, for that matter—but she rarely bothered. Only occasionally, when she felt thoroughly relaxed from one of her early morning swims, confident that she was out of earshot from any human listener—only then would she sometimes sit on the end of the pier and allow herself the pleasure of belting out her favorite song: "Part of Your World," the Little Mermaid's yearning lament from the Disney animated version of the story.