Look at me: Read Online Free PDF Page A

and his friends—Marco, Amos, Todd—stuttered over the brownish water at intervals presaged by the roar of Moose’s motorboat. Even at this distance, the sight of Ellen’s brother was arresting: a taut, athletic-looking guy in neon-green swim trunks, the best water-skier of the four, by far. But he skied the least, preferring to egg on the others from the wheel of the boat.
    “Which do you want?” Ellen asked.
    “Including Moose?”
    She looked at me oddly, then shook her head in adamant refusal. “Marco,” I said, crestfallen.
    “I’ll take Todd,” Ellen said, which mystified me; he was the palest of the three, angular in a way that reminded me of my father.
    Moose’s destination that night was a party in one of the vast houses on National Avenue, just north of downtown; our plan was to show up there, do it somewhere in the house with our respective choices, and afterwards meet back at the country club beside the swimming pool.
    The party was disappointingly routine; Tom Petty straining some dad’s stereo, a throng of drunk, roaring guys older than our classmates, but otherwise identical. At last I observed Moose again at close range—in the kitchen, where he and another guy were scrimmaging with sponge mops for a can of Tender Vittles on the sticky linoleum. A towering presence was Moose, big shoulders flicking under his white T-shirt like keys on a player piano as he wrested the cat food from his opponent with some fancy mop work, forearms buttery with tan, his appearance a winning amalgam of beauty, thuggishness and faint embarrassment. And something else: an awareness on the part of Moose and everyone else, a crowd of admirers thronging the room for a glimpse of his folly, that he was special. Famous.
    At the sight of us—of Ellen—Moose abandoned the game. “Sis,” he said, discarding his mop and slinging an arm around her shoulders. Thus encompassed, Ellen looked childlike, serene—bland in a way I couldn’t have pictured. The crowd curled around her like a smile. I watched it all with jealous fascination.
    Later, across a patio drenched in buggy light, Ellen and I tossed ourselves at Moose’s friends with an abandon verging on carelessness. Moose cast acid looks in my direction, but as the party ground on, he lost track of us. Eventually Marco and I crept up a narrow flight of stairs to a third-floor guest room that reeked of mothballs. He peeled the clothes from my body and was just lowering himself on top of me like a crane setting an old car onto a pile of old cars when I recoiled. “No,” I said. “Stop, wait!” stricken with the memory of Mr. Lafant. It was too soon, I didn’t know this guy; I’d forgotten what I was supposed to do with him, and why. Marco, bewildered by this seizure of modesty after my slatternly behavior downstairs, went to take a piss.
    I fled the room and bolted from the house, sprinting north along the river toward the country club, already revived by the thought of seeing Ellen and swapping our tales of woe, like always. Except, I thought, still running, what if hers was not a tale of woe? What if finally, after so long, she and Todd had found what we were looking for? The thought sickened me.
    The club’s iron gate was locked, a variable we hadn’t foreseen. I stood outside, wondering whether to scale it. Finally I shimmied over the fence and dropped to the ground inside the club, intensely quiet under the bright moon and torn clouds. The warm golf course grass bounced under my feet. I ran down the concrete steps to the pool, whose turquoise bottom caught the light of the moon, and I saw something move in the water and it was Ellen. I felt such a shock of happiness that I called out her name and she hushed me, laughing, and I saw her clothes by the pool and flung off my own and dove into the wet, heavy silence. I felt the water move as Ellen swam past, her long hair fluttering over my skin. We burst into the air, giggling.
    “So, what happened?” I asked