The Trouble Is

Chapter 8: Positioning

The first few days and nights at the lake, it's all about positioning. The sophomore boys set up outside the front of the tent. They will rotate round-the-clock guard duty for the duration of the summer. They have a routine charted out on a poster board with each one assigned rotating slots for cleaning up trash, gathering donations, doing supply runs, and icing down beer. One summer of minion duty is a small price to pay for the opportunity that next year will provide. The few timid freshmen who are brave enough to join in and old enough to have a car tend to linger around the edges, occasionally moving up to talk to the sophomore boys in hopes of distracting them, interesting them, or maybe getting past them.

The juniors dominate. As next year's seniors, they are the kings of summer, but they won't be referred to as seniors until the last day of summer. I don't really know why this is; it's just some kind of tribal knowledge thing. They spread across the entire curve of the cove that marks our territory. They separate their chairs with Styrofoam ice coolers continually filled by eager sophomores with cheap beer and the occasional wine coolers for the girls who don't like beer.

They look like bronzed gods in the sun with slim hipbones poking above the tops of their board shorts. They wear sweat-stained baseball caps and cheap sunglasses that highlight perfect smiles. Their every move speaks of strength and power and experience. The junior girls walk bravely around in their bikinis with the occasional tattoo or piercing to accentuate the difference between them and the rest of the school. It's hard to imagine that these girls are my peers. Half of them haven't eaten a full meal in months, and the other half appear to have won the biological trifecta of big boobs, long legs, and smooth, flowing hair.

Katie leads the way through the maze of lawn chairs and loungers. Someone hands her a beer. I follow along, trying to hold my shoulders back, head up, thinking "Tyra," and channeling my inner model. I watch Katie as she moves with one completely fluid motion, dropping her cutoffs onto the ground by her chair, tugging her swimsuit bottom up a bit, and settling in. The sophomore boys run past me with clanging Wal-Mart bags of shaving cream, silly stream, and Slip 'N Slides, which serve as their price of admission. The music blasts, and I freeze frame at the front corner of the tent. Everything looks like one of those old Polaroid pictures my mom keeps in that wooden box in her closet. It's all kind of blurry and faded around the edges. There are six rows of ten chairs. I count them twice. I re-braid my hair, undo it, and braid it again. Tight-loose-tight. I count ice coolers and count them again. I count so fiercely that I don't notice that someone is standing beside me. The voice startles me, and the picture shakes itself clear.

"Kinda overwhelming, isn't it?"

The voice is quiet and—I think—kind. But my heart jackhammers in the sure knowledge that I have been seen for what I really am in that moment. I purse my lips to try to determine whether I was counting aloud, even if it was just a whisper or a whisper of a whisper.

"Are you new here too?" the voice asks.

He's standing right behind me. I feel the heat coming off him, and I can smell something that's part sweat and part soap or shampoo. I don't know the voice. I've lived in this town my entire life and am pretty sure that I know all the voices here, and I have never heard a voice like that. It wasn't just that it was deep and kind of slow, with a rough sound to it. It was the quietness of it: not quite a whisper, but more like a notch above one. It feels like something meant for only one person to hear. I can't catch my breath; I want to fold into that voice.

I don't like meeting new people on my own. I turn slowly as I force my hands to relax and try to work through my coping steps lightning fast. I run through steps one through three before making eye contact. I breathe deeply, which is step one. Step two, I evaluate my feelings on a scale of one to ten, with ten being totally whacked-out fear. And for step three, I try to think about a time when I was brave. Failing miserably, I try to channel a bit of Tyra. "I'm fierce," I tell myself.

Suddenly, I'm staring straight at him—actually staring straight at his chest. He's wearing a faded tan-colored Houston Oilers t-shirt. It has little holes around the neckline as if it's been washed and worn for centuries. I find myself focusing on the bluish image of one of those platform things they build around oil rigs. I've never heard of a sports team named the Houston Oilers.

"Do you like forgotten sports teams, or is there some food on my shirt?" he asks. Again with that voice, I think. I don't even want to look up. There's just no way the face matches the voice.

"I've just never heard of the Oilers," I say as I finally manage to quit tapping each finger against each thumb and look up at him.

His sunglasses are pushed back on his head, and he looks back at me with an easy smile. He is wearing plain gray swim trunks and has that fine, blondish boy-band hair falling across his forehead that just begs for someone to brush it aside. I watch him watching me. His eyes do not move up and down over my body as I'm sure mine are doing to his. He just looks straight at me. He looks at me and waits with perfect stillness. He looks at me as if he knows me, which makes absolutely no sense. He doesn't even know my name.

Another wave of boys strolls up, plastic bags crinkling. Their laughter is loud and surrounds us quickly. One of the boys' long, tan arms snakes out and wraps the new boy round the neck, pulling him into the group.

"Come on, East," he says. "Let's get this party started."

"Nice to meet you," he says, still looking at me. "I hope to see you around."

I don't say anything in reply. I just stand there, silent.

East, I think. His name is East, or it isn't. It's probably a nickname. Boys love nicknames, even the bad ones like "Hulk" or "Rowdy" or the generic "Bro." I wonder what kind of parent would name a kid after a direction. East, I think again.

They drop their bags at the front of the tent and jog out to the lake. I watch them as they wade in until it's knee high and then dive in like some kind of choreographed group, all shiny and bright in the sun. Dolphins, I think, as they swim out to the homemade fishing barge that some long-forgotten person managed to get stuck within swimming distance of the shoreline.

Katie's arms interrupt my vision as she waves them crisscross in the air, trying to get my attention. Come on, her look says. As I plop down beside her, she pushes her shades down a bit, looking at me with those perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised in question. I just laugh. She knows already. I'm not surprised. As I've said before, Katie knows me better than I know me. She knows what kind of guy I like: primarily no one from T.R. High School and one who has boy-band hair and eyes that see me as I am. In other words, I'm only attracted to fantasies. Yeah, Katie knows this.

"He looks like a possibility," she says, confident in her assessment. "A definite possibility.

"What did he say to you?" she asks.

I tell her.

"What did you say back?"

"Nothing," I say.

"That's cold, A," she says with a nod of admiration, no doubt imagining a new level of coolness that in no way applies here. "Cold."

We hang out until the evening winds down. There's nothing like the first days of summer. The grass is still green, and the water's a little chilly. Parents are not yet nagging about the required summer reading for next year's English class. Everyone is glad to be set free, even if a summer job is first on the agenda. Little brothers and sisters are not yet bored and begging to tag along. No one has paired up yet and, at least for a while, everyone will dance and laugh and play with everyone. For just a few days or even weeks, anything is possible.

We were strictly day timers at the lake until this year. As juniors, our parents will let us come back at night as long as we check in for dinner first. And by check in, they mean physically. We know that tonight, we will be scrutinized upon arrival. Anything out of place could mean that we have to go back to the sophomore rules our mothers invented, the main one being no going out to the lake at night. Katie is already chewing the grape bubblegum that she is convinced covers up all evidence of alcohol. She will spritz herself with her mother's Chanel perfume on the way home. She has a theory that it confuses the olfactory senses of her parents. As we head back to the parking area, Katie takes my hand and pulls me to a stop. We raise our arms high in the air and breathe deeply. This little ritual never fails to pull the sheer fearlessness that Katie exudes straight through me, and for those few moments in the fading sun, I am calm and at peace. And for that one moment, I am fierce.