Three

“Dang girl, what’s up with the sweater?” Sami asked Katie. “You know it’s going to be like 90 degrees in the shade, right?”

Katie shrugged. “It was cold in the house this morning,” she lied, not wanting to admit that she still heeded her mom’s suggestions. The radio was cranked up to the latest album that Beth had snagged off her brother, and the girls kept the windows down to bring in some remnants of cool wind that existed between pockets of fiery air. Katie held her hair down as best as she could to try and save the work she had put into it, knowing that it would be completely undone by the time she got to school. But she didn’t want to risk sounding like her mother by asking to roll the windows up. Besides, the other girls didn’t seem to mind that their hair was flying in all directions, so Katie shouldn’t either. But Katie couldn’t help but admit that it was different. Beth hardly cared about her appearance, which only made her prettier in her own natural way. And Sami, with her blonde hair and long legs, never seemed lacking in attention. Katie knew that the wind would only give Sami a windblown look reminiscent of someone who had spent the day at the beach, so much that she could almost smell the ocean on her. Katie, on the other hand, worked hard on her appearance. She had to. If she didn’t she knew she blended in with the crowd, her brown hair and freckles making her almost invisible. She knew she was the plain one in the group. Her lack of confidence made it so that she could never be as cool as Beth. And her mousy hair and lack of style made Sami’s league way out of her reach. And yet all three girls had been inseparable since grade school when they were placed in the same class and suffered the same torture from Tommy Algers who loved to pull girls’ long hair. It had been Katie who had put a stop to the antics of Tommy, grabbing him after he took hold of her long braid, and pulling him to the ground in a flurry of fists and shoves. She had been sent home that day by an unsympathetic principal, and punished severally with a belt to her backside so that it was several days before she could sit comfortably. But that event triggered so many different things. Her mother brought Katie dinner that night as Katie lay in her bed, crying silently over things that adults couldn’t understand. And Katie had caught the unmistakable glimmer of awe and respect in her mother’s eyes, even if it was just for a second. Tommy Algers avoided Katie at all costs, especially now as he was branded as the boy who was beat up by a girl. And most importantly, Katie had earned the approval of her classmates, suddenly being noticed for the first time. And Beth and Sami stuck by her like glue. Katie knew that their initial loyalty was in favor of protection. But their bonds grew stronger into something resembling a sisterhood in their teenage years.

“So what’s up with you and Brad?” Beth asked. Katie smiled at his name, and just shrugged in mock innocence as they pulled into the school’s parking lot. Sami laughed and reached from the front seat to playfully smack Katie’s knee.

“Katie, it’s not like we couldn’t see you two. Are you guys an item?”

“I don’t know,” Katie said truthfully. “He’d been drinking. We all were.” Katie mentally pretended that her few sips off his awful beer added up to something significant enough to consider drinking. “For all I know, he doesn’t even remember any part of the weekend.”

Even as she said the words, she prayed there was no truth in them. She had been surprised when he had parked himself by her next to the bonfire, inching his hand closer to hers that she had resting in the sand, waiting to be touched by him. And eventually he did, his pinky resting lightly on hers, cautiously enough but still sending bolts of electricity starting with her smallest finger and generating all the way down to her toes that she kept curled underneath her. Everyone around them was laughing and drinking, the ocean was wildly crashing underneath the full moon, and the fire crackled in the light breeze. But for all Katie knew, none of it existed except for she and Brad, connected by their fingers inching closer to being intertwined with an urgency that she had yet to understand.

Brad leaned close to her, taking his hand to brush the hair away from her ear. She could feel his breath as he whispered, “Let’s take a walk, Katie.” She smiled, ducking her head and looking at him shyly. They both got up and left the unsuspecting group. Katie shivered despite the warm air. They both walked with their hands stuffed in their sweatshirt pockets. As sure as Brad had always appeared to her, Katie could sense his sudden nervousness. It relaxed her a little more to know that she wasn’t the only one suddenly aware of her insides in a nauseous way. As the orange glow from the fire disappeared, he pulled his hand from his sweatshirt and took hers. They made small talk just to pass the time. But it all was a blur. The only part of the night Katie recalled with vivid accuracy, the only part that she replayed over and over again was the moment that words ceased to exist and Brad reached out and held the back of her head lightly, leaning in to kiss her softly on the lips underneath the moonlight on an otherwise pitchblack night. And Katie heard the ocean all around her, drowning them from far away as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her as their mouths said more than she’d said in her whole life.

“There’s Loverboy now,” Sami teased, nodding in the direction of the jocks that hung out in the quad by the gym. Katie tried to appear unphased as her eyes fervently searched the group of boys for Brad. Their eyes met, and Katie caught an unmistakable wink and smile. She smiled back in relief, forgetting her wild hair and mousiness in a group of beauty. It was just a wink. But he might as well have given her the world. And as Sami and Beth chattered along on their way to the lockers, as the first bell rang, as Katie moved through a sea of faces, she was convinced that he had.