Jersey Angel Read online

  “How’s it going, Joopy boy?” He licks me. “I have boy trouble, if you can believe it,” I tell him. “But I’m practicing the art of patience. You know about patience, don’t you?” He yawns and settles his head between his paws.

  Then a very cute guy who graduated a few years ago pulls up in a Boston Whaler and swings himself onto the dock. “Long time no see.” He has shaggy blond hair and his madras shorts hang low, showing his briefs.

  “Hey there.” I hand him the pump.

  “When am I gonna take you for a ride?”

  “I’m ready whenever,” I tell him with a smile.

  “So come on.”

  “As you can see, I’m working.”

  “Next time.”

  As the sun sets and the marina quiets down, I decide to visit Joey on the boardwalk, where he works his dad’s stand.

  I spy on him from the Kohr’s stand. “Come on over. Check it out. A prize every time,” he calls to people strolling along with their slices and cones. What is his life like these days? I know he’s working a lot, and football practice starts in late July. After a long night at the stand he probably goes home and makes himself comfy on the couch with a nice plate of fancy cheese and maybe thinks about finding himself a girlfriend. I wonder. How much does he really miss me? Does he want to give it another go? Underneath it all I think he does. The prospect of a ride with the very cute guy with the madras shorts just isn’t as appealing to me as hanging out on Joey’s couch with a plate of cheese, fancy or not.

  Not much action tonight at the water balloon stand. Joey sits on a stool, props his feet up on the ledge, and yawns. Just then Carmella walks over and starts talking. She tilts her head, tosses her long, glossy hair, and laughs. She’s a big flirt, a little bit stuck up too, but we’re friends. Cheerleaders. She’s all right. She has the most amazing bag. At the right moment she can whip out just what you need—a tampon, a spritz of perfume, a string of dental floss, a chocolate Kiss, a Band-Aid, a dousing of Off.

  So I bide my time and visit my friend Vic, who’s working the Ferris wheel. We were never an item, but we fool around now and then. I sit with him for a while as the bennies climb in and out of the cars. We play a few rounds of rummy and yak. When I know Joe will be getting ready to close up, I head back.

  “Hey there,” I say, walking slowly over to the stand.

  “Well, look who it is.” Joey glances at me. A couple of stuffed Bart Simpsons have tipped over on the shelf, and he sets them neatly in a row.

  “You want to hang out?” I say.

  “Hang out?”

  “Yeah.” I pick up a leaky gun and point it at a clown head. Joey flips the switch, and I aim the stream of water into the mouth, making the blue balloon grow bigger and bigger until it bursts with a satisfying pop. “Let’s hang out on the beach.”

  He looks down to the water, deep in thought. “Yeah, okay,” he says finally, taking a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Why don’t you go buy us zeppoles while I finish closing down. I’m kind of hungry.”

  “No cheese?”

  “Maybe later.”

  “All right.”

  I hurry off to the zeppole stand, which is a ways down the boardwalk, where I get us two hot zeppoles right out of the deep fryer and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Then I hurry back, and what do I find? The stand is closed up, the gate is lowered and locked, and Joey’s nowhere in sight. Ditched. Even so, I walk down to the beach on the minuscule chance that he’s sitting on the sand, waiting for me, which of course he isn’t.

  How do you like that. I mean, damn. I park myself on the sand and eat my zeppole, licking my fingers clean of grease and sugar. This isn’t like him. Not at all. Where’d he go, my Joey? The guy who gives me a ride on his handlebars, calls me to say good night, whispers into my hair when he tells me I’m pretty, trails his fingers down my bare back when we’re in bed?

  I ride over to his place and park myself outside his window. “So what do you have to say for yourself?” But there’s no answer, and as my eyes adjust to the dark inside I can see his bed’s empty. Double ditched. I pry open the screen and toss the powdery zeppole onto his rumpled sheets. “Have that with your cheese.”

  How I miss Inggy. On my way home, I ride by her place, and to my surprise the Olofsson car is in the drive, and Ing’s window is lit. I climb the sycamore—an easy climb—up to the roof deck and see her hunched over her desk, tapping her lip. I scramble through the window.

  “Hey, you!” she says, spinning around in her seat. “We’re back early. I called you a couple of times from the car, then called the House and Meems said you were nowhere to be found.”

  “I’m found!” I say happily, reaching for my phone. Forgot to charge it. We hug. I kick off my flip-flops and lie across one of her twin beds, and she lies across the other, facing me.

  Let me tell you about Inggy: the O’s moved from Sweden to the island when we were in second grade. There was Inggy, the color of milk, with long white ponytails jutting out over her ears and spilling down her arms. She was the size of a toothpick, and she’d brought some kind of smelly fish in her lunch box. And she came right up to me at the lunch table, big blue eyes, her face merry. “I can sit here?”

  “Well, okay,” I said, making room. She squeezed in next to me, all smiles, and tucked into her smelly Swedish lunch was a good old-fashioned American donut, which she whipped out proudly for me to see. She took a big powdery bite and thrust it at me, so I took a bite too. We were instant friends, little Inggy Olofsson and me. Who would have thought she’d grow so tall and spindly. At five eleven, she’s the boniest and most glamorous person I know. Her white hair falls down her back and all summer long she’s slathered in 45 sunblock and wears enormous sunglasses that make her look like some beautiful bug. Tonight she’s wearing a red bandana skullcap and has a pencil tucked behind her ear.

  “What were you furiously scribbling over there?” I ask.

  “The dreaded personal essay. You’re supposed to make yourself shine. Show how noble you are. What an asset you are to the community and all that. So I’m reading all these samples and they’re such crap.” She folds her pillow in half and rests her head on it. “You know, stuff like befriending some old hag and shopping for her Depends. Loathsome, ass-kissing stuff.” Ing, I should mention, loves the word loathsome. “Total disingenuous bullshit.” She pulls the pencil from behind her ear and waves it at me. “I refuse to partake.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “Thanks, my friend.”

  “Write about our parties in the benny houses.”

  “Ha!”

  Back in the winters in seventh and eighth grades we’d break into some summer bungalow and bring space heaters and candles, and we’d have small parties of the vodka and orange juice and Ouija board variety. After some rounds with the Ouija, couples would pair off and make out in the bedrooms. I made out with lots of boys in those benny bedrooms, shivering on the cold mattresses, our cold lips pressed together. Inggy and Cork were a couple even back then, so they only locked lips with each other.

  Anyway, Inggy was very decent about our break-ins. She once replaced a tablecloth that one of us accidentally scorched with a cigarette. Another time she insisted we return the next day to scrub a bathroom after one of our moron friends blew chunks.

  “Look,” I say. “Think of the angles. You’ve got resourcefulness, responsibility …”

  “There’s my essay,” she jokes.

  “Bullshit-free.”

  She sits up and smiles at me. “I’m glad to be home.”

  “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “And happy birthday! Let’s celebrate.”

  “How about some hors d’oeuvres and cocktails?” I say.

  Inggy rubs her hands together and springs off the bed.

  We head down to the clean white kitchen, where Mrs. O is padding around in a baggy summer nightgown. “Angel, sweetie.” She smells fresh from the shower, soap and cold cream. “Tell me everything,” she
says, plopping into a chair. She has chin-length blond hair and heavy bangs, like a doll’s, and two front teeth that overlap. But she has great bones and eyes—that’s where Inggy gets her good looks.

  So I tell her about our renters. She likes hearing their antics.

  “Lookie,” Inggy says, digging through the freezer. She holds up a box of mini hot dogs wrapped in dough.

  “Excellent,” I say. We love pigs in a blanket.

  “Don’t forget a birthday toast.” Mrs. O winks. Swedes like to drink.

  “Yup.” Inggy pulls out a bottle of green apple martini mix and starts making a batch. Mrs. O hands me a little package with a bow. Inside is a three-pack of nail polish in amazing blues and purples.

  “I bought one for me too.” Mrs. O laughs. “I want blue toes!”

  “She does!” Inggy brings over the cocktails. We clink glasses, and Inggy hands me a bow-topped present too: big hoop earrings and a three-pack of lip gloss in sangria, watermelon, and guava-gold.

  Yawning, Mrs. O kisses us and floats away, carrying her cocktail upstairs. Ing tops off our glasses while I grab ketchup, mustard, and a half container of double fudge icing from the fridge.

  We clink glasses again.

  “To summer,” I say.

  “To summer,” she says. “To senior year.”

  I take a long sip. “Nice and sour. So tell me what’s happening.”

  She tells me about the schools and campuses and assorted dorms, including a story about a resident mouse named Herman on one of the floors that the girls refuse to kill. I fill her in on my boring days of cleaning and my nightly visits to Joey. “Might be a phase,” I say. “But I don’t know.… He’s just not budging.”

  “He’ll budge.”

  “I don’t know.…” I dip a spoon into the icing and lick it clean. “I have a bad feeling this time, and I almost never do. Not with Joey.”

  “You’ve got to stop dumping him.”

  “The thing is, Ing, most guys would love a time-out every now and then.”

  “He’s not a time-out kind of guy. Quit dumping his behind.”

  I get up and open the toaster oven. The puff pastry is steaming hot and the juicy smell of hot dog fills the room. I put on an oven mitt and place the sizzling tray on a cutting board. “Dig in.”

  “Another toast,” Inggy says, leaning toward me. “A close call … but the little pink stick said negative.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How late were you?”

  “Well, I should have gotten it this morning.”

  “What?” I cry.

  She gives me a withering look. That’s another word she likes—withering. “I happen to be like clockwork, so wipe that smirk off your face. It was due early this morning and morning came and went, then afternoon, then night. As soon as we pulled in the driveway I was in a complete panic, so I hopped on my bike, went to CVS, and bought two tests—you know, the early-response kind. Both negative. And then twenty minutes later it started.”

  “I’ve got news for you, dodo. That’s not late.”

  “For me it is.”

  I shake my head and laugh. “You’re cuckoo. You know that, right?”

  Inggy squirts mustard over one of the little dogs and pops it in her mouth. “God,” she says with her mouth full. “I wish I could take the pill. I hate the loathsome paraphernalia.” She got bad headaches from the pill, though, so she and Cork switch off with condoms and a diaphragm. The first time she used the loathsome diaphragm, she couldn’t get it out and she called me one afternoon, crying from the bathroom. “It’s stuck! I can’t reach it!”

  “Relax,” I told her.

  “It should come with a handle or a plunger or something,” she sobbed. “Help me!”

  “You’re all worked up and you’re probably, like, sucking it in.”

  “Will you come over and try to get it out?”

  “Me? Can’t you get Cork to do it?”

  “He’s out back taking a nap.”

  “Wake up his lazy ass and tell him to get in there and get it.” Luckily they were able to fish it out. Remembering this gets me to thinking about Joey. If I had a diaphragm and it got sucked up in there, I know in a second he’d help me fish it out. I wouldn’t have to ask twice. And of course, this makes me feel really lousy, things being as they are.

  “Back in a sec.” Ing runs upstairs and a minute later comes flying down with the bathroom garbage. “The evidence must be disposed of.” She shows me the negative signs on the sticks, then ties up the bag.

  “Phew. What a close call,” I try to say with a straight face.

  “Shut up.” She pokes me in the side with a bony elbow.

  We finish our drinks, and Inggy dips a finger in the icing and licks it, her forehead sweaty and glistening. “Tipsy?”

  “A little.” The ceiling fan stirs the warm air.

  She looks down at the tied-up bathroom garbage bag. “Come on. Let’s get rid of this.”

  We walk a block to the ocean. At two in the morning, most of the houses are dark and quiet. Inggy tosses the bag into a garbage can by the beach entrance. “Adios.”

  “Come on,” I say. We walk to the water’s edge, where there’s a breeze.

  “Oh, nice,” Inggy says, flapping her arms.

  I let the cool water rush over my feet and splash up my legs.

  “I’ve been thinking about next year,” she says, swirling her foot through the wet sand. “I have this little fantasy, so hear me out. You’ll probably go to Ocean Community, right? So I’m thinking this: instead, you and Cork come with me wherever I go. There’s bound to be a nearby community college, and we could all rent a house maybe—”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” I cry. “Yeah, Inggy goes to Syracuse, and when she trots off to some party she brings her tag-along doofus friends who go to the community college down the street.” Inggy gives me another withering look. “Think about it,” I say. “God, Ing!”

  She runs her foot through the wet sand. “I just want to figure out a way for all of us to be together.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And you’re not a doofus.”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  As the water washes over my feet, I look around at the dark, empty beach and peel off my tank. “Let’s go in.”

  “All right.”

  We run up to the dry sand and strip down to our underwear. “What the hell,” I say, wriggling out of that too. Inggy takes a quick look around before flinging off her bra and pushing down her panties. Then we rush at the waves.

  I glance at her, the shocking whiteness of her, all long, skinny arms and legs, not an ounce of fat, her little boobs. She dives under a breaker, and when she surfaces, her white, wet hair is plastered to her. It’s low tide, so we swim out a ways, and she floats on her back, spitting a stream of water into the air.

  “Angel, you’ve got some great boobs.”

  “Thanks, I like them,” I say, looking down. They’re full and firm, perfect handfuls.

  She swims over. “Oh, I wish I had bigger boobs. Let me touch them.”

  “Get out!”

  “Come on,” she says, splashing me. “I’ve never felt big ones. Give me a thrill.”

  So I fall back into the waves and let her feel me up. “They are simply amazing.” She giggles.

  I reach out and touch her little boob, a booblet. “Don’t!” She slips away, giggling some more. “God, I’m so flat!”

  “I don’t know, Ing. I think you got a mouthful there.” And we both flop back into the water, laughing. I tip my head and gulp in the dark, starry sky. “Hey, what’s going to happen to us?” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you wish we could just hang out … be seventeen for a few years?” I think about Joey, this summer that’s about to bloom, senior year … and then it’s like I can’t see any further.

  “We’ll have a good year, Angel.”

  “Oh, I know.” But
I wish she knew what I meant.

  chapter 5

  I’ve never had trouble with guys; maybe it’s because I really like them. I’m driven to put myself right in their paths—like the cartoon mouse that’s roused by a delicious smell and lifts its nose in the air and follows the scent. That’s me. But I also don’t get hung up on them. If I put myself in a guy’s way and he doesn’t do anything, well, later for him.

  But with Joey things have always been a little bit different. He’s someone I’ve known all my life but never really knew. Then in eighth grade he shot up and got cute, his shy, dark eyes glancing out at the world, and girls started noticing him. At the only benny break-in party he ever came to, we wound up together in a bedroom. He lay on his back on the benny mattress with his hands folded behind his head, trying to look all cozy, but honestly the guy was stiff as a board. I snuggled up to him and said, “So? You want to make out?”

  “Shouldn’t we talk first?”

  “Okay then.” I flipped over on my stomach.

  “You do the algebra homework?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I did most of it. The last two were hard. I’ll take another look tomorrow.”

  “That’s enough talking,” I whispered, moving in for a kiss. And he gave me a dry, cold peck on the lips.

  “I don’t want to make out with every girl here.”

  “You don’t have to, dummy,” I said, trying to move in again.

  “I know who I don’t want to make out with.”

  “But do you want to make out with me?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  Then he got quiet for a minute. “We were both starfish in that play. In third grade.”

  I flopped on my back with a sigh and stared up at the dark ceiling. “I was supposed to be a jellyfish but Franny James got sick, so yeah, I substituted as a starfish.”