Free Beach Trip by Cathy Holton

still didn’t trust him completely. She still couldn’t give herself to him. Heath didn’t handle rejectionwell. He pouted and sulked and became overbearing and obsessive. He couldn’t seem to comprehend that she didn’t want what other girls wanted: marriage out of high school and three children by twenty-five. He couldn’t seem to see the big picture as she so patiently explained it to him.
    When she broke up with him, he’d shouted, “You can’t break up with me! I’m the quarterback!,” which Sara thought was childish and pathetic, really. But by then she’d become enamored of Faye Dunaway’s character in
Chinatown
(
I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does
) and saw herself ten years into the future, a powerful woman navigating the treacherous male-dominated waters of corporate law like a sharp-toothed barracuda.
    “Hey, who’s this?” Jemison, the all-state wrestler, had appeared out of nowhere, shirtless and pumped up like a silverback gorilla. His hair stood up wildly around his head. He leered at Mel and sauntered over. “Who’s this foxy girl?” he asked. Mel rolled her eyes and glanced at Sara, who gave her a quick
let’s go
look.
    He slung one meaty arm across her shoulders and Mel quickly pushed it off, saying, “Take a shower, why don’t you?”
    He laughed loudly. His beady eyes narrowed as he looked around the circle. “I like her,” he said. He noticed Sara then, and stuck his plastic cup out to her. “Have a drink,” he said.
    “I don’t drink.” Sara looped her fingers around Mel’s belt in the back and gave a little tug to get her moving.
    “She doesn’t drink, Jemison,” one of the boys said. “We already tried.”
    “Yeah, Jemison, she doesn’t smoke either,” another one chattered, hopping from foot to foot and waving his long arms.
    “Huh,” Jemison said, squinting at Sara. “She doesn’t drink and she doesn’t smoke. What does she do?” The others chuckled and looked around nervously. Jemison leaned in so close Sara could smell his sour breath, and growled, “Are you a narc?”
    “Leave my friend alone,” Mel said.
    “I’ll get to you in a minute.”
    Sara stepped back. State champion or not, she figured they could outrun him as long as he didn’t take to the trees. As if guessing her intent, he put one hairy arm out to stop her but before he could grab hold of her shoulder a voice rang out across the clearing. “Leave her alone!” It was a voice of authority, deep and masculine, and Jemison stopped, his armhanging midair. The crowd parted and they could see him now, a lone boy sitting in the back of a pickup truck, one knee drawn up and one arm resting casually across the top.
    The world stopped suddenly, or at least it did for Sara; everything became blurry and grainy, like a film in slow motion. The boy in the back of the truck seemed lit by a strange phosphorescence. Or maybe it was just a moonbeam, trained on him like a spotlight. The image made Sara dizzy. She felt like she’d been hit over the head and covered by something dark and heavy. He raised his hand and beckoned to them and Sara began to move toward him like a sleepwalker.
    “Sorry, Radford,” Jemison shouted, stepping back, and the spell was suddenly broken. The crowd began to shift and disperse. Jim Morrison sang “Don’t You Love Her Madly?” and Jemison raised his hand and said again, “Sorry man, I didn’t know they were with you,” and turning, slunk off into the night.
    John Thomas Radford. He was a third-year English lit student from Charlotte, North Carolina, and, climbing up into the bed of the truck beside him, Sara felt like she’d known him all her life. Mel sat down on the other side of him and later, when they got cold, he took off his jeans jacket and put it around Sara and made one of the other boys give his jacket to Mel. His hair was long and straight and fell just below his ears. He seemed lit by some kind of strange incandescence. Even