Personal Touch Read Free Page A

summer people—and their fine young sons—but I wasn’t.
    I didn’t have any of these daydreams last summer. Last summer, when I was fifteen, it would have been enough just to see the handsome boys. Or even the plain ones. I didn’t really want to get to know them better. Then I would have had to speak to them. Or—horrors—touch them.
    This summer. Good grief. All I could think about was getting to know them better. It was ridiculous. I knew perfectly well the only people who’d come to buy used paperbacks would be elderly, overweight, retired bridge players with copper tans from spending the winter on a Florida beach. The only two good things that would happen to me my sixteenth summer were that I’d earn money and that by fall I’d be incredibly knowledgeable about books.
    The moment I admitted that that was what would really happen, I’d get swept up in this detailed fantasy where I would become incredibly knowledgeable about boys. And not by reading about them, either.
    Everybody had managed to land a job.
    Several people were working at the fast food joints (we have only two in Sea’s Edge, and believe me, they’re on the edge of town, literally, where they can’t disrupt the quaintness of the rest of the village), and a lot of my friends were going to be waiting table or working in the kitchens of better restaurants. That bunch talked all May about the size of the tips they hoped to earn.
    A few boys had jobs in factories inland, and I knew a couple of girls were going to be toll takers at the Turnpike Exit. Ginnie was a lifeguard at the Holiday Inn Pool and Margaret was teaching crafts at The Sandpiper Summer Camp for Little Boys and Girls…the one where Tim lasted about three days before being thrown out.
    “Speaking of Tim,” said Margaret lazily, scooping sand between her toes, “is he returning again this year?”
    I stared up into a blue, blue sky to watch the sea gulls wheel. I love the beach in May. It’s not quite warm enough to sunbathe, but we all wear our bathing suits anyway and then we lie there on the sand with blankets on top of us. “I guess so,” I said. I had not given Tim much thought, what with jobs to consider and fantasies to construct. Tim was all too real. A noisy nuisance.
    “He has to grow up eventually,” said David. “He can’t always be a little juvenile delinquent.”
    “Optimist,” said Margaret. “I bet Tim’s doing time. He’ll be spending the summer at a detention center.”
    We all laughed.
    David is Margaret’s boyfriend. I envy them and yet I don’t. They seem so placid together. They act as if they’ve gone together for generations and the whole dating thing is old stuff to them. The excitement long gone. Honestly, you’d think they were twenty-five and married.
    David objected. “Tim was never really bad, Margaret,” he said. “Just—just—”
    “Bad,” I said, knowing firsthand. What did Margaret and David know of a kid who celebrated my mother’s Fourth of July birthday by giving her a swarm of honeybees? And having the nerve to claim he thought she would like them, since she used honey on her waffles? What did Margaret and David know of a brat who—
    But why waste good beach time thinking about Tim? I said to myself.
    Because David kept talking about Tim, that was why. “The thing is,” said David, “seventeen is a much more mature age than Tim has been any other summer.”
    “So what?” demanded Ginnie. “Every year, David, in case you have not noticed, every single human being on earth is a more mature age than he was the year before. That has no significance regarding Tim’s behavior any of the previous years.”
    “Aw, give him a chance,” said David. “Tim is the most interesting summer person I’ve ever met.”
    I studied David. His profile, his hair, his bare chest. Last fall I had suddenly gotten a crush on him. It had been very intense and I had been terrified I would be saddled with that crush the rest of my