Lila was in the other direction, facing Mike and holding both his hands. When she saw me, she gestured to Brandon with exactly the same motion as Keke. I wished they would make up with each other so I could stop having every conversation with them twice.
Already in knots, my stomach pulled taut as I crossed the sand. I slipped between football players and touched Brandon's elbow on the side opposite Stephanie. "Hey, can we talk?"
"Zoey!" Brandon called, smiling, as if there were nothing wrong at all.
Stephanie looked over at me in outrage, then up at Brandon. She snatched his arm off her and flounced up the beach. The football players said, "Woooooo."
She definitely thought Brandon was her date.
"Sure, Zoey," Brandon said, talking to me but watching Stephanie go.
Even so, I didn't think he understood what was about to happen. We walked back to the stairs across the dunes and sat down. He lit a cigarette and cupped it in both hands to keep the rising wind from blowing the fire out.
"I wanted to--" we both started at once, then laughed.
"Y first, baby," I said.
"Okay." He took a long drink of beer. "Y know how you told me Saturday you didn't mind I was doing Stephanie?"
Still scanning the beach, I finally found who I'd been searching for all along. Doug was using the tip of one crutch to draw a picture in the sand for Stephanie and the junior swim team girls. As I watched him, I realized I'd misheard Brandon. I could have sworn Brandon had just told me he'd had sex with Stephanie Wetzel. "I'm sorry. What?"
"Y know how you and Doug saw me and Stephanie doing it in the Buick last Friday night, and you were all upset? And then you came over to my
ou house Saturday morning and told me you weren't mad and it was okay. Right?"
"Right!" I said, because if I'd said What the hell are you talking about? , he might not have told me the end of this story. You know how . . . ? always ended with a well . . .
"Well," he said, "Stephanie minds that I'm doing you."
She certainly did. I could tell from her steely glare, even in the darkness.
"Or, you know, that I did you the one time," he qualified. "That's why I told you the Buick needed work, so I could ride to school with Stephanie, and so I couldn't come to your house for the past week. I felt really bad about lying to you, Zoey. I tried to tell you at the swim meet Wednesday night. That's what I came to the swim meet for. But Doug was being a dick about it."
I nodded. "He didn't want you to break up with me right after my mom escaped from the insane asylum? He is a dick."
Brandon turned to stare at me like he was seeing me for the first time. He was having a realization, a breakthrough! Good for him. I asked innocently, "What?"
"I never heard you cuss before," he said. "Anyway, you and I talked all summer about my girlfriends. Y knew how I was, and you were cool about me
ou doing Stephanie. Stephanie had a cow when I mentioned you. And I think I might be in love with her. That's never happened to me before. I really hoped you would understand."
"I do," I said brightly. "I'm in love with Doug."
Brandon took another sip. "Doug who?"
"Doug Fox !" I hadn't thought there was another Doug in our school.
"Y are ?"
I began to get a little annoyed that Brandon and I were not having the same conversation. "Y We've been together all week. We have some things to
es. work out--"
Brandon talked right over me. "Doug told me you weren't together!"
I sighed in exasperation. "Why is Doug telling you anything about him and me?"
Brandon took a long drag of his cigarette, shielding it with his other hand so it wouldn't go out. "At the party last Friday, I was talking to some guys, I'd had a few beers, and I was kind of bragging about doing you. No offense, but that's just how guys talk. Nobody thought you'd give it up until you were through law school, so they were real impressed. Well, a few minutes later Doug Fox corners me and says it had nothing to do with me, so I shouldn't be bragging. Anybody could have gotten in your pants. He said you hated his guts and he'd still get in your pants in the space of two hours. All I had to do was let you catch me doing another girl. That's why I was with Stephanie in the first place."
I nodded. "And you said, `Okay, Doug, see if you can have sex with my girlfriend. I'll go have sex with this other girl. That's fine.'"
"Well." He exhaled smoke. "I didn't think you and I were together. I mean, I know we were together, but we weren't really together together. We were just friends with bennies. And Doug Fox was up in my face, challenging me. What else could I do?"
I nodded again. It all made sense in the world of Brandon, a sunshiny plastic world very familiar to me because I had observed it all summer.
"The next morning when you weren't mad anymore about Stephanie and me, I thought, cool." He smiled a dreamy smile, then remembered he was in the midst of ruining my life. "But Doug had called me earlier Saturday morning and said y'all didn't get together after all, so I shouldn't say anything to anybody about it."
"Y ou're telling me about it now," I pointed out, still not quite believing. Or believing, because it made so much sense, but wishing it weren't true.
"I would have warned you about him before, but you were both in that wreck. I figured he wouldn't be making any moves on you with a broken leg. But if he has . . . Zoey, you need to stay away from him. I've seen defensive backs with less of a temper than that guy. Y know he's been to juvie."
"Doug Fox has no idea what a temper is." Out the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon's hand come up to catch me, but I was too fast. I leaped up from the stairs, stormed across the beach, and pushed past Stephanie Wetzel, dragging my feet across Doug's picture in the sand. "Two hours?" I screamed up at him. "Y only needed two hours?"
He gaped at me for half a second, then looked over my head toward Brandon. "Motherfucker!" He crutched over to Brandon on the stairs.
I could have tried to stop Doug, but I just stepped out of his way.
"You told her?" Doug shouted at Brandon. "Man, you are stupider than I thought. Come on." He poked Brandon in the chest with the sandy tip of his crutch.
Some boys from the swim team crowded around. Every one of them had a hand on Doug, pulling a fistful of his T-shirt. But I just stood there watching it happen. Almost enjoying it.
"Scared?" Doug asked Brandon.
Brandon launched himself off the stairs at Doug. The swim team leaped out of the way. Brandon and Doug landed together on the beach. Doug's crutches went flying, and a cloud of sand billowed up. The rest of the swim team and the football team came running, crowding around. They pulled Brandon off Doug and handed Doug his crutches.
"Brandon, you ass," Ian said, "he's got a cast on."
"And he's on Percocet!" Gabriel said.
"That just makes it hurt less," Doug said, struggling to stand. Propping himself up on his crutches, he pointed at Brandon. "And I'm not waiting three weeks until I get this cast off to kick your ass. Come in the ocean with me where I can stand up."
The crowd parted for him. He limped into the ocean, nearly falling again when the tip of one crutch sank deep into the wet sand. He looked over his shoulder. "Coming, or are you still chicken?"
Brandon looked around at us. No one was stopping him. He waded after Doug into the tide. The rest of us gazed after them.
"Y can tell neither of them is good at math," Nate offered. "The physics don't support this. The waves are too high. And if they get deep enough for
ou Doug to stand without his crutches, they'll be too deep to punch each other with any force."
"My money's on Fox," said a football player. "That guy's nuts."
"Money?" Connor repeated.
The boys knelt on the beach and pulled out their wallets, discussing terms. When I looked out at the ocean again, Doug and Brandon had disappeared. Clouds had rolled in, covering the full moon. The black ocean and the black night were one.
"Zoey."
I looked beside me to see who dared disturb me observing my boyfriends clobber each other. Stephanie Wetzel. "Y Stephanie?" I asked. "Brandon
es, was mine first, but you're welcome to him. So whatever you want to tell me, we really don't need to have that conversation."
She stepped closer and said breathlessly, "I can't stop Brandon. There's no way he'll stop now with the whole football team watching. Y have to stop
ou Doug."
"They both deserve whatever they get," I told her.
"Y don't understand!" she shrieked. "I have a pool at my house. Wednesday night after your swim meet, Brandon came over."
"It's okay," I said. It wasn't okay. She and Brandon were cheaters. But I was a cheater too. Anyway, I was so furious at Doug that I didn't have much emotion left for Stephanie Wetzel. "Brandon told me you've been together."
"It's not okay! I found out Brandon can't swim."
I sucked in a breath. "Oh God." That's why Brandon had refused to take a promotion to lifeguard at Slide with Clyde. And that's why I couldn't see or hear him and Doug now. I pictured it all. The stormy surf had swept Brandon out over his head. Doug had tried to grab him, but his waterlogged cast weighed him down. They were already gone.
And I'd just said they deserved what they got.
I kicked off my shoes, wiggled out of my jeans, and shouted, "Brandon can't swim!" to anyone in hearing before I dashed into the black water. 17 I swam like demons were chasing me, like my boyfriend was drowning in front of me. When I reached the spot I thought they'd be, I tread water and shouted into the darkness, "Doug!"
"Zoey!" he shouted back, faintly over the roar of the ocean, way down the beach where the current had swept them.
I swam in that direction. Then I felt the current catch me too. It pushed me along too fast for comfort until suddenly, thankfully, I tripped over a warm body in the cold water and reached down to grab it.
Instead of grabbing me back, he shook my hand loose and struggled to the surface on his own. Doug panted, "Brandon can't swim. I've got him. Help me," and he was underwater again. There was no way he would let Brandon go, and there was no way I would let Doug go. We would all go down together. I took one last breath.
"Zoey, we'll get Brandon," Stephanie said, swimming past me. Another junior girl followed her, and they both dove under.
A wave crashed on top of me and pushed me down. In the blackness I put out my hands for Doug and felt only the sandy bottom where I didn't expect it. I didn't know up from down.
And then I felt him. Put my arms around him. Shoved off from the bottom as hard as I could and kicked until I ran out of breath, kept kicking past that threshold where I had to take a breath, kept kicking.
We hit the cold night air and both gasped.
"I'm okay," he heaved. "Get Brandon."
"We've got him," a girl shouted.
"I've got Doug," said Mike gliding beside me. "Zoey, just get to shore."
"We've got her," Keke and Lila said. One of them put her arm across my chest and said what lifeguards say. "Stop struggling and relax."
I didn't want to struggle and take them down with me, so I lay back in the water and let them tow me. I knew how to do this. I'd taken my turn being the victim in months of lifeguard training. I glided across the surface, the water cold but seeming warm compared with the colder air. I looked up at the sky and saw a universe of stars.
Closer to shore they handed me off. A boy's solid arm wrapped around me. I could tell from the shouts that Doug and Brandon were handed off too, a lifeguard relay.
My back raked across the sand, and the strong arm let me go. I flipped over and crawled the rest of the way up the beach to collapse in the frigid wind, one of a long line of parallel bodies. I allowed myself three deep breaths to recuperate, then sat up to look. "Brandon," I said, finding his bulk on the sand. I called, "Is Brandon okay?"
"He's okay," the junior girls called back, all four of them in unison.
Beside me, I touched Doug's soaked T-shirt stuck to his hard, flat stomach. "One," I said. There were seventeen people on the swim team, and I had to make sure we were all accounted for. "Two." I counted aloud to sixteen. "Where's seventeen? Who are we missing?" My heart beat frantically as I stood up and scanned the dark beach. "Oh God, where's number seventeen?"
"You're number seventeen," Doug said.
"Oh." I fell to my knees in the sand beside him. "I need another nap."
"I need another beer," Gabriel called. Boys cheered their agreement.
"I need another cast," Doug said. "And some crutches. My dad's going to kill me."
I put my hand on his stomach again. I was still mad at him. Seeing his life pass before my eyes hadn't changed that. But I felt better with my hand on his stomach. "I'll take you to the emergency room."
"I'll call my brother to take me," he said.
"I want to take you," I insisted.
"I'll get your dad's car all wet."
"Serves him right. That's what you get when you go out of town and give your daughter the keys to the Benz. Everyone knows seventeen-year-olds are irresponsible." I sat up and yelled down the line, "We could have died out there. The whole high school swim team plus one running back, gone. And you know what the people on the beach would have said? `It all happened so fast.'"