Free Whisper to Me by Nick Lake Page A

like I wasn’t worth your attention. I felt like it made sense that you didn’t look at me.
    You hung back and let Shane do the talking. He told Dad how he’d come from New York and you’d come from Stonebridge, twenty miles inland, to work for the summer. You’d met each other at the bus station—you’d both been checking out the ad Dad had posted on the cork bulletin board. Shane was going to be a lifeguard for the summer, and you were going to work the concessions.
    “Gutting shrimp,” said Dad.
    “Excuse me?” you said.
    Dad smiled. “It’s what they get the out-of-town kids to do. There’s a big shrimp restaurant on Pier One. It’s kind of their thing. Buckets of shrimp, you know. The kids pull **** out of shrimps, all day long, six days a week. They keep the cushy jobs for the townies—running the stands, that kind of thing.”
    “Oh,” you said, frowning.
    “Shane here has the right idea,” said Dad. “Lifeguard certificate. Smart. Sit on your ass all day long, watching the girls go— Oh, sorry, honey.”
    I shrugged. I wanted to be alone.
    “You were a lifeguard, sir?” you asked Dad, breaking my fantasy, picking up on the tone of nostalgia in his voice.
    “Yep,” said Dad. “You don’t swim? You couldn’t have gotten a certificate like your buddy here?”
    You and Shane exchanged a look. I didn’t know, then, what it meant. “I swim,” you said. “But the hours are longer on the Pier. Beach shuts at sunset.”
    “You need the cash, huh?” said Dad.
    You nodded.
    “I feel that,” said Dad. “Well, I should show you two the apartment. You’ve got everything—washing machine, if you know how to use one, bath, kitchen. Though I don’t guess you’ll want to be cooking after shelling shrimp all day.”
    You gave a weak smile. But even that crinkled the skin around your green eyes and dimpled your cheeks. A half-formed thought crossed my mind that I wanted to make you smile at me.
    I want to be as accurate as possible, you know? It’s not like you were haloed by sunlight, or anything, that moment in the yard. I didn’t know then who you were going to be.
    Dad walked you up the stairs by the garage, you and Shane. I noticed something else then. Shane bounded up the steps, muscles moving under his sweatshirt. He had both your bags in his hands, showing off for me, I think. You walked up slowly behind him, looking around you, like you always did.
    I watched you, and I thought about ballet dancers. Not because you moved with grace, because you didn’t. It was like … You know how you watch a ballet dancer pirouetting or extending their leg or whatever, and you think what they’re doing seems smooth and effortless? But then you try it yourself—I did some ballet as a kid—and you realize that it takes just an unbelievable amount of strength to hold your body like that. Watching you climb the steps, that was the impression I had. That Shane might be the one with the muscles, but you were the strong one. It was something in the way you moved. A control.
    But I’m making it seem like this was a big deal in my mind, and it really wasn’t, sorry to offend you. I just want to try to record the things that went through my head when we first met.
    Mainly, I was thinking about how it was going to be way harder now to be alone, that’s the honest truth. As soon as you disappeared into the apartment you disappeared from my mind. It’s so hard, when you fall for someone—the temptation is to look back on the past and rewrite things so they seem more significant. There’s a part of me going: Did I know? Did I know the first time we met that you would change everything? That you would change me?
    But I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t. The absolute reality is that I probably had a mental image of making out with Shane, just for a second. I mean, he was the obviously attractive one.
    Given what I did to you later, or what you think I did, I know this will not be easy for you to read. And I