Reese
The new girl and her family check in to the resort the next afternoon. I’m at the lodge with Cass and Mae when it happens,
when I see her walk in with her dark brown hair, her flawless skin and the kind of smile that actually turns heads. There
is grace in the way she walks, and I’d bet my life that back home—wherever home is for her—she’s popular, has a lot of friends,
is captain of the volleyball team and is the kind of girl that every guy wants and that every girl wants to be.
I stand there while Mae and Cass take an eternity to pick out a movie to rent, giggling, putzing around, staring at the poster
of that missing little kid again. As I do, I watch the new girl float around the lodge, examining things—the moose heads and
taxidermy fish, like I did my first time here—put off by her confidence but also completely mesmerized by it.
I hate her. I want to be her.
Later that afternoon, I take Mae and Cass to the pool alone.
On the way there, I see Daniel from a distance. I haven’t seen him all day, not since Uncle Elliott found us in the woods
together. He’s standing by the pool again, skimming leaves off the water with the net. When I see him, I stop without meaning
to, my mind wandering, going back to last night in the woods, imagining him leaning in, breathing into my ear to take my shorts
off, so that Mae runs into me from behind.
“Why’d you stop?” she asks.
I don’t say. Instead, I say, “You guys go. I’ll be right there,” not taking my eyes off him.
Mae and Cass jog ahead. I hold in a breath, feeling my smile slowly build. I watch him drag the net over the water’s surface.
I take in his hair, his eyes, and go mentally back to last night again, to him asking, Do you wanna? before laying me down on the ground. Lowering himself between my legs. My heart beats hard again, remembering how everything
happened.
Or almost happened.
Daniel looks up. I wave, hoping to catch his attention, but he doesn’t see me. I start walking again, faster this time to
catch him before he goes. I close in on the pool. It’s busy now, all the chairs spoken for, so that Mae and Cass fling their
shoes and towels on the ground and go running into the pool, jumping in without testing the water first.
I reach the gate.
It’s as I open the gate that I see her. The pretty new girl from the lodge.
She sits on one of the chairs across the pool from Daniel. She’s leaned back, her already-tanned legs spread out in front
of her. Her eyes, as far as I can tell, are closed, and her face is turned up to the sun, her long hair falling over her shoulders.
I look at Daniel.
He sees her too.
And it’s the look on his face and how completely dialed in he is that makes it hard to swallow, hard to breathe. There’s a
pain in my throat. My lungs tighten.
Time slows down.
I look at her again. I look at him.
The girl must have ESP because she opens her eyes just then, like she knows someone’s watching her even with her eyes closed.
She looks around the pool, wondering who.
She finds him, and when she does, she pulls her knees into her chest. She sits up straighter in the chair and shields her eyes from the sun.
They stare at one another for so long that I start to feel physically sick. I lose my balance, stumbling back a step from
the gate. I stand there, frozen, as some little kid comes running past, almost pushing me out of the way to get in, his dad,
behind him, muttering something like slow down and not a race.
“You coming?” the dad asks, holding the gate open for me. I shake my head and mumble no. “Suit yourself,” he says. Instead,
I watch Daniel wave at the girl. His smile is cool and effortless, the kind of smile I feel in the pit of my stomach because
it’s not for me and it’s not intended for me to see.
The girl smiles back, a smile that slowly widens, changing the look of her whole face, making her even prettier if possible.
She lifts her hand. She waves, and then Daniel waves again, like he didn’t already wave first. She throws her head back and
laughs.
My heart hurts.
I wonder if this is what a heart attack feels like, or if this is worse.