Free Perfect Couple by Jennifer Echols

alone and own a microwave oven.
    “That was a fine idea of mine,” he said, “when you didn’t want to borrow my car.”
    I demanded, “What are you doing with your car today?”
    “I don’t have to tell you that, either. I’m sixty-eight years old.”
    And you’re acting like you’re two , I thought, but that was Mom’s line. Really, he was acting like me . I took care never to be as mean as he was, but I wanted to be by myself a lot, and people probably took it as meanness. Tia had asked to hang out with me at my house in the past, and I’d told her no. She was so extroverted that after a few hours with her, I needed to be alone with my art. And I’d ruined some fledgling relationships back in ninth and tenth grade by complaining when guys with boyfriend potential called me and texted me and interrupted my thoughts. They were insulted when I turned my phone off.
    Granddad was just dishing out the same antisocial behavior to me, and I couldn’t take it.
    “All right,” I called through the door. “I’ll come back to check on you tomorrow.” The way things were progressing, he probably wouldn’t even open the door for me then. Iwould have to wave to him through the window. I turned for the stairs off the porch.
    The lock turned. The door opened. He stuck his hand out with his car key dangling from one finger.
    “Thank you,” I said, sliding the key ring off his pointer before he changed his mind. “I’m going shopping out on the highway and then to the beach. You can call me on my cell if you need the car back.”
    Instead of answering, he shut the door and locked it.
    *   *   *
    A few hours later, I parked Granddad’s car way back from the beach in the nearly full lot and lugged my bag and cooler out of the trunk. I always brought thermoses of water so my friends didn’t have to throw away plastic bottles, which was bad for the environment. The smooth cooler felt strange on my bare tummy. In my teeny bikini, I struggled to haul my load onto the sand, across the beach, and around families and motorcycle gangs and groups of elderly drunken rabble-rousers. Finally I spotted the cluster of towels and umbrellas where my friends had settled.
    As I walked, I squinted at the ocean. Compared with my glasses, my new contacts made the sun almost unbearably bright. But I recognized Aidan and Kaye in the waves. Her hair in black twists was easy to pick out. Then I saw thedrum major of the marching band, DeMarcus, and his girlfriend, Chelsea, and the cheerleaders who’d run the race with Kaye that morning. Noah and Quinn and Kennedy sat in the sand with the tide flowing over their feet.
    Obviously Kennedy wasn’t as worried about being associated with Quinn and Noah as he’d been when he’d sneered at me in Ms. Patel’s class on Friday. Maybe Tia was right: He picked a fight with me only when we had a date planned.
    Off to themselves in the water, Brody held Grace. I could tell he was supporting her in deep water because she was higher than him. Her sunglasses still balanced on top of her head, and her bouncy curls were dry. In fact, he might have been holding her out of the water specifically to keep her hair dry, which was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen at the beach, and I’d lived here almost my whole life.
    “Howdy,” I said, plopping down my ice chest and bag near Tia, Will, and the huge dog Will borrowed from the shop where Tia worked. The three of them lay on towels in the shade of an umbrella. Will still had trouble staying in the Florida sun for long.
    He and Tia stared at me for a moment. Then he exclaimed, “Oh, Harper! I didn’t recognize you without your glasses.”
    “I didn’t recognize you in a bikini,” Tia said. “Look at thatbod! You could crack pecans with those abs. What gives?”
    I spread out my towel next to them and lay down. “I don’t know if you heard Sawyer this morning,” I said, “but when he was sitting on the curb about to pass out after the race, he