Between Us and the Moon Read online

  When I slip off my shorts, one of the dads nearby peers at me over his book. Gross. Too old. Success? Not quite. He gets back to his book. I’m not sure this is the kind of attention the Scarlett Experiment is supposed to generate. I’ve never seen dads talk to Scarlett. The experiment hypothesizes that I find a guy that Scarlett would pick out. That guy looks like my gym teacher at Summerhill.

  I plop down in my beach chair.

  I have to remain objective. I will analyze the data after leaving the beach and try to interpret what exactly happened while I wore Scarlett’s bikini. That way I can formulate the perfect combo of clothes and behavior.

  About fifteen minutes later, I am properly SPF’ed and my eyes are closed.

  “I’ve never been so patriotic in my life,” Andrew says and sits down on the sand next to me. “Nice suit.”

  Success. Scarlett’s bathing suit is an attracting factor.

  He shakes the ocean from his hair and I take that second to check out my legs and stomach. Looks good, no stray hairs. Okay . . . act natural.

  At the shore, a lot of people walk up and down the edge of the water. Curtis chats with a couple of lifeguards.

  “You have seaweed in your hair,” I say and sit up. Andrew is sopping wet and toweling off his legs with his T-shirt.

  “Get it out for me?” he asks and leans forward. His hair is blonder than I thought. I pick out the long seaweed string and lay it next to my feet. A few icy drops from his head fall onto my thigh and roll down my shin. His eyes are more blue than green, and I think that one of his parents must be blue-eyed because genetically—

  “So what were you saying about the dune grass?” he asks. Water drips down his biceps. He must notice my gaze because he looks at his arm and brushes the fleck away with his fingers.

  “The ecosystem is endangered. And you almost shoved me into it,” I say, meeting his eyes again. I want to cringe because Scarlett would never mention anything about the ecosystem. Andrew loops his hands around his legs and lets the salt water drop on the sand. Even the hair on his legs is blond. “It’s important to preserve the natural beauty of the dunes,” I add with a flip of my hair.

  “Is that so?” he asks with a smile. “What were you doing on the street the other night?” he asks. “Hiding in the dark?”

  “What?” I laugh it off. “I wasn’t hiding.”

  “You almost took a digger into the street.”

  “I just wanted a second by myself.”

  “So you hid in an alley?”

  “I was avoiding someone I didn’t want to see,” I say, and the truth of the words comes out a bit more serious than I’d like, though I don’t think Andrew notices.

  “I know what you mean. I wish I could avoid people in town,” he says. “I haven’t felt much like doing my usual thing this summer. You kind of caught me in a weird moment.”

  Maybe I should ask him why he was—

  “You made me laugh though. I needed that,” he adds.

  “Oh yes. I’m hilarious,” I say sarcastically and try to remember to be cool. Be Scarlett. I don’t want to pry into his personal life because Scarlett wouldn’t. She would keep the conversation flirty. “I hear you,” I say with a dramatic, Scarlett-like sigh. “I want to just take it easy this summer. I’m so tired of parties, you know?” I lean back in the chair and cross one leg over the other. “I went to so many this—whoa!”

  The weight of the chair flings me back and I yelp as my legs fly in the air. Andrew grabs onto my ankle and pulls me forward just before I completely teeter backward. The chair hits the sand and my teeth clamp together.

  “Wow, that was close,” he says, and his face is red. He’s trying hard not to laugh in my face. He dips his head and laughs between his knees. I place my sunglasses back on straight.

  “I do that all the time,” I say with a scoff.

  I want to die. I put my face in my hands. That was not Scarlett-like. “Why can’t I ever be graceful?” I say with a chuckle.

  Andrew shakes his head at me, but this time we share a laugh. At least, I think he’s laughing with me. He squints at me and a little smile lingers on his lips. “Andrew,” he says and extends a hand. “Andrew Davis.”

  I meet his warm palm with mine. “Sarah Levin,” I say and immediately tense up.

  Oops. He was with Scarlett last night, he has to know her last name. He doesn’t appear to have made the connection between Scarlett and me.

  “Sarah,” he says. “I like that.”

  I am in no way going to explain that people call me Bean.

  He’s still holding on to my hand as I slowly cross one ankle over the other and curse myself for not painting my toenails bubble gum pink. I bet Scarlett has nail polish I can borrow.

  “So how did you become a dune grass expert?” he asks.

  His hand is still in mine.

  “I’m a scientist,” I say. Scientist has a very regal sound. Maybe it can redeem me from the falling incident.

  He cocks his head a little. “Really?” he says. “That’s cool.”

  “Do you always shake people’s hands for this long?” I ask with a glance at our intertwined fingers.

  “Just beautiful, smart scientists.”

  I lift my chin and try to mimic the many ways Scarlett has done this same behavior. I wonder if this is when I should act like I am disinterested so he’ll be more interested. Our eyes flicker back and forth from our touching skin to each other. I don’t even know how to act like I’m uninterested. “Actually, I’m an astronomer. I’m tracking a comet this summer,” I say instead. Being an astronomer is also impressive.

  “The only things I track are lobster traps.”

  We laugh again and he lets my hand go.

  The side of his mouth lifts. The rest of his mouth follows, as if something is dawning on him.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’ve never met an astronomer before.”

  “I love the stars,” I say. “They’re my whole life.”

  “That’s how I feel about working at the juvie camp,” Andrew says. “Right now, I lobster full time. But I work part time with troubled kids out in Brewster. You know, in the part of Brewster you don’t see. You go to school for astronomy?”

  “Not yet.”

  I want to ask about the juvie camp, but he keeps throwing questions at me.

  “You starting in the fall?” Andrew asks.

  A dash of happiness runs through my belly. This boy, with his sun-streaked hair and proud, bronzed nose is so gorgeous and is talking to me. I wonder if he has ever broken his nose and why the bump seems to fit him like that. I wonder why I have never spoken to a boy who looks like this in my entire life. The Scarlett Experiment is working! I am a Scarlett-pheromone-wielding phenom who can summon anyone while wearing an American flag string bikini.

  “What about you?” I ask, trying to turn the question of school back on him. I figure the more vague I am, the more time I can buy to figure out what I should say.

  “I’ll be a sophomore at Boston College,” he says. “I’m nineteen, but I’ll be twenty in August.”

  I almost blurt out that I’ll be sixteen in a few days. He’s nineteen? That’s not that old. Granted, he’ll be twenty soon but that’s not for a few months.

  “What do you study?” I ask, stalling.

  “Well, it should be criminal justice.”

  “Should be?”

  He hesitates.

  “I just want to make sure that’s really what I want to do.”

  I can smell the ocean salt in the air and I love the way he licks the drops of water off his top lip. He keeps talking, using expressions like “the T,” dorms, and Commonwealth Avenue, but I keep thinking: Driver’s Ed, PSATs, and the Waterman Scholarship.

  “Where do you go to school?” he asks.

  Here it is. I can’t be evasive forever. I don’t want to tell Andrew the truth, that I’m just a high school student whose only friends are the Pi Naries and whose boyfriend just dumped her
for the class boobs. I take a deep breath. That is not what the Scarlett Experiment is about. I don’t want him to get up and leave. Not after the way he looked at me when I mentioned the comet. Not after he said I was just what he needed last night. No one has needed me to make them laugh. Not until now. He might be just what I need too.

  I have to answer. Where do I go to school? How silly. Of course I know where I go to school. The number one school I will apply to in two years.

  “I start MIT in the fall. I’m eighteen.”

  “So you gonna call me? Because I think you should,” Andrew says.

  We walk up the boardwalk toward the parking lot. Curtis waits at the end of the walkway yelling into his cell phone. All I hear is, “Dude. No way. Beachcomber?”

  “I’m here through August,” I say, holding the sweaty lounge chair under my arm. Without asking, Andrew takes it from me and holds it with the tips of his fingers.

  “Me too; school starts the day before my birthday, sucks huh? Hey, we’ll be in the same city,” he adds. “My friends and I can show you around.”

  Oh crap. MIT and Boston College are both in . . . Boston. They both start in August.

  “So it’s crustaceans and convicts until school,” I say.

  Crustaceans and convicts? Wonderful. Who even talks like that?

  “Yeah, you could say that,” he says, but he’s smiling so I am taking this as a positive sign.

  We stand in the parking lot, and stretching behind Andrew is the street that leads back toward Aunt Nancy’s. Cars pull out of the lot in a long line; it’s almost four thirty. I can’t help peeking around for Scarlett, even though the string bikini is now hidden under my clothes. Not only that, I would have to explain why I am talking to Curtis and his friend, Andrew.

  “Dude . . . ,” Curtis says now, talking to Andrew. He motions with his arm toward the cars in the parking lot.

  “Which one is your car? I’ll help you with your stuff,” Andrew offers.

  He thinks I drove here.

  Oh boy. Didn’t think about that.

  “I walked again but without falling this time,” I say and gesture to the street running past the guard booth. “I live less than a mile away.”

  “Let’s go. Waves in Truro,” Curtis says. He still has the cell phone next to his ear. He barely acknowledges I’m there other than a small, “What’s up?”

  Andrew and Curtis head toward a beat-up red pickup, the same one from the side street next to the Bird’s Nest. When he is next to the car, he reaches to the driver’s-side tire and pulls out his keys. I point and say, “Your chances of vandalization and/or theft are much higher with that method of concealing your keys.” I immediately want to slap myself with the beach chair. I am just blowing this opportunity with Andrew left and right.

  Andrew bends over and laughs again. He asks for and takes my cell.

  “I’ve never thought about possible vandalization or theft,” he says, but he’s beaming. “But I will now.”

  He punches the keys on my phone. When he hands it back, the screen says ANDREW and below it: ten numbers with a 508 area code.

  “You should call me, Star Girl,” he says with a wink. And just like that, he gets in the car, revs the engine, and pulls past me with a wave out the window. Just like that—he’s gone.

  EIGHT

  RESULTS DAY 1: THE SCARLETT EXPERIMENT

  Subject was inconsistent with the variable of behavior. Though there were a couple of positive results, they were, at best, unreliable. Nothing is conclusive yet. Subject was a silly, impulsive twit who fell over in her beach chair. In order for the Scarlett Experiment to execute accurately and for the hypothesis to be proven, subject must employ behavioral tactics of Scarlett Levin.

  It’s safer up here at my desk where I can shut the door and I don’t have to listen to Nancy go on and on about how unlike Scarlett I am. If only she knew that I was better at being like Scarlett than she realized.

  Okay, so my first attempt at the Scarlett Experiment wasn’t a complete success, but I did employ some variables that yielded partial success!

  1. Andrew liked the bikini.

  2. He thought I was funny (potentially laughing at me when I flew backward in my beach chair)

  I put my pen down and reread my notes. I just pretended that I was Scarlett and wore her clothes, and it worked. I had a few embarrassing moments when I let my guard down, but repetition is the key to success. Okay, so I lied about my age too, but I don’t need to see Andrew again. It’s not like we are going to date or anything. It’s just one dumb lie. He doesn’t even have my phone number.

  I will need to find something else of Scarlett’s to wear to test out. I’ll also need an exact list of Scarlett’s behavior to choose from at any given moment. That would prevent anymore Bean moments from sneaking through when I meet someone else.

  That evening, after I finish recording my experiment results, I make sure the American flag bikini is washed and deep in Scarlett’s bag again. My skin is warm from the day in the sun, and even though I won’t talk to him again, I can’t help but peek at my phone for that name: ANDREW in big letters.

  Dark bulbous rain clouds pass over my skylights. No point in taking out the Stargazer. I can’t work on data collection in inclement weather. Even though I could work on the essay. I don’t want to work on the application or the comet right now.

  I think you should call me, Star Girl.

  Dad says Scarlett has been downstairs practicing a solo all afternoon for a Juilliard showcase. I’m not surprised she would miss out on an opportunity to go to the beach on a day like today; Scarlett is as dedicated to dance as I am to my comet. I come down to the kitchen and check to see if anyone’s hanging around. I know how much Scarlett loves Nancy’s studio. She visits during school breaks just to dance. Nancy buys her whatever she wants so Scarlett can master her routines without “any of us around,” or so she says.

  I stop at a collection of photographs that sit on a side table near the entrance to the basement. A few of these tables run against the wall next to the glass patio doors. The picture is of two women in bathing suits on the beach, their arms wrapped around each other. It’s the 1960s; I can tell from the bathing suits and bouffant hairstyles. I recognize Gran immediately. She’s on the left and her long blonde hair runs all the way down her back, like Scarlett’s. The woman on her right has straight brown hair that falls halfway down her back, too.

  That woman must be Nancy.

  Even though we’ve been coming here forever, I’ve never seen this photo before. Wow. I really look like Nancy when she was my age. That’s slightly horrifying.

  I check behind me just as classical music echoes from the open door to the basement. I slide the photo out of the frame and rest it in my hand. Nancy seems almost normal. Gran can’t be more than sixteen. I know Nancy is three years older than Gran.

  I try to imagine that this image is of Scarlett and me in place of Gran and Nancy. I have no idea who would be who. Their whole lives were ahead of them. How could they know what their lives would be? Who knew Gran would move to California and meet Gracie? Who knew Nancy’s husband, Raymond, would die after twenty years of marriage? If they knew then what they know now, I wonder what would be different. I slide the photo into my back pocket and hide the empty frame behind some other pictures.

  I squeeze through the crack in the door to the dark basement stairwell. The carpeted stairs cushion the sound of my footsteps. I sit and scoot down a couple of stairs like I did when I was a kid. First stair, second stair, third stair . . . from here I can sit in the shadows.

  Through the air, Scarlett lifts her arms and leaps across the floor, one two three, one two three. She does this leap three times in a row, her signature move. Grand jeté with the cleanest lines in Rhode Island. That’s what everyone says when they come to her recitals. “You have to see Scarlett’s jumps.”

  She stops just as the music finishes and her hands glide back to her sides. With her hair up in a tight b
un, her posture is so elegant, like a doll. She brings her heels together in first position and uses a remote control to restart the music. Tchaikovsky begins again.

  “Five, six, seven, eight,” Scarlett counts aloud and she lifts a leg toward the sky so it’s almost parallel to her body. She places it down and flies into another leap. She lands onto the floor without making a sound. I can’t move like that, like my body is a ribbon curling and flying through the air. Up and down, Scarlett breezes over the wooden floor. Her body is thin under that pink leotard. “She’s so ladylike,” Nancy says of Scarlett. I just don’t know how to be graceful like that. After today’s debacle on the beach, it’s painfully obvious that grace is not my strong suit. I need to try even harder than most people to keep both feet planted on the ground.

  Scarlett lifts her hand above her head and I try to mimic it in the dark of the stairwell. I curve my wrists like I, too, am pirouetting on my tiptoes. It’s not the same. I lower my hands and examine the calluses on the side of my middle finger from writing lab reports. Scarlett’s long blonde hair and bubble gum pink toenails seem so vibrant compared to my thick wavy hair and jagged toenails.

  Scarlett spins and rises on the tips of her toes. She lifts her chin and appraises herself in the mirror. She comes back down on the flats of her feet and takes a sip of water.

  That’s what makes her irresistible to guys. That she can lift her chin, throw her head back, and drink with the boys. She can be the best dancer in the whole state and the best person to be around too.

  Except when she’s with me.

  I would never have a picture like the one of Gran and Nancy because Scarlett would never take a picture like that with me.

  She presses the music to start again. The routine is better now that she’s warmed up. Her jumps longer, her turns cleaner.

  I exhale heavily through my nose and sit in the darkness of the stairs. I never wanted to be a dancer, and I still don’t. I just want someone to sit here like I am right now. I want someone, for one moment, to see something special in me that has nothing to do with science. I press on the balls of my feet and inch back up the stairs, one by one until I am out the door again.