The Trouble Is

Chapter 3: Bikini Promises

Katie's bedroom is a full-out explosion of color and disorder. Deeply hued scarves from everywhere her father has traveled cover the walls. These are randomly accented with scraps of magazine pages that caught her eye, notes we passed in school, scribbles on napkins. The ceiling over her bed has these long silver wires with clips on the ends where she rotates her "photos o' the day." It is chaos. It is beautiful. It's as if Katie had created one of those art exhibitions made of everyday stuff that was one thing apart and something else when put together.

She tosses her new cross-body purse across the room as we enter and grabs a stack of mailing boxes and envelopes. Katie has a credit card and is allowed to use it to order clothes online as long as she stays within her limit and returns what she doesn't plan to keep within two weeks. She lets me pay her back for whatever I choose, since my parents won't let me have a credit card. She is careful as she opens each one, keeping the paper and packaging under each bathing suit as she spreads them out around the room. It's a rainbow of nylon tops and bottoms and buckles and string ties.

Katie goes first with a simple racerback suit in some kind of shiny fabric made to look like snakeskin. Although it's a one-piece, the fabric makes it look somewhere on the wrong side of the line. I think it's the whole snakeskin thing.

"You look kind of slutty," I say. "But not in a bad way."

"Just kind of?" she responds as she checks out her butt in the full-length mirror hanging from the closet door. She pulls the elastic up just so, allowing a bit more skin to show.

I start conservatively with a solid-blue one-piece suit. I turn to check it in the mirror, relieved to see that everything is tucked in where it's supposed to be. It will do. So now we both have our "family time" suits ready. We toss those suits across the room and dig into the bikinis. We rotate through bottoms that tie on the sides with little strings, beaded tops, bandeaus that are so tight we can't breathe, and fringed bottoms. I have my own little rules about the bottoms—if I have to wax off more than an inch, it's a no-go.

Katie has no such rules. Her summer motto leans toward "How low can you go?" She finds two suits that break every rule her parents ever invented and tosses them on the bed. These are the keepers. I love the fringe bottoms, but I know that I won't be able to handle it after it's been worn a bit and the fringe starts to bunch up in little clumps. I settle on a reasonable halter top with small beads across the top. The coordinating bottoms don't require a full-on wax but have little straps on the side to show some skin. The suit has a certain symmetry to it when I twirl around in front of the mirror.

Katie takes a pic of me as I spin around, immediately sending it to the printer from her phone. I know that late tonight she will go through today's photos, looking for a new way to see the story of her life as she lies in bed at night. I love that about her—the way she reinvents her life every day or so.

We rip off tags, spray each other with sunscreen, and pull our jean shorts and tees over the new suits. As we slide on our flip-flops, Katie holds out a pinkie.

"Now promise," she says sternly. Neither one of us laughs, even though we know that this is the stuff of first-grade summer camp. The pinkie promise got us through that week; it will get us through more. Pinkie promises are for the real moments. As Katie says, they're for "serious shit."

"Promise that this is going to be the best summer ever," she says. Neither one of us laughs or even smiles.

I reach my pinkie up, linking it with hers, nodding. It doesn't matter that we've made this promise every summer. I know this sounds childish. But it seems that it actually does come true. Every single summer is just that—the best ever.

"I promise," I reply.