Page 33 of The Summers of Us

I bet that was how Everett’s hands would have felt if I held them right now. Not that Iwantedto hold them. Neither did he. His hands were deep in his shorts pockets. And I was, well, me.

Everett walked to the first tank. I joined him, staring at an alligator floating idly in the water. It looked fake until it finally looked at us likewewere the attraction. What was she thinking? Did she have some alligator friend in there that was so cute and cool that she didn’t know what to do in all the thick, warm water? So she just thrummed there, her only movement a steady blink, trying to figure out what to do?

“Do you have something in your eye?” Everett asked.

“Yeah. Must be an eyelash.” That was why people normally blinked their eyes, right? Not because they were pretending to be a love-stricken alligator in a tank or anything stupid like that.

“You might want togatorit out.”

I looked at him. Seconds of silence passed before my mouth won the battle between smiling or not. Finally, we erupted into an ice-shattering laughter. It was a wonder it didn’t break all the tanks around us and send us swimming through the glass ceiling.

I swept a ceremonious finger through my eyelashes. “I think thatgatorit.” The pun sounded even dumber from my mouth.

Now with the proverbial ice all broken, Everett and I walked across its shiny shards to the next tank. He made another ridiculous joke. I did a disappointed-but-not-really head shake until it spilled into a giggle. We did this same push and pull at every exhibit. We teased a pond slider turtle for facing the wrong way. We named him Holden since his expression was stuck on annoyed and his defiance looked intentional.

Everett made a terrible joke about a school of rainbow trout swimming in a fake current, thus never going anywhere at all.

“If I could speak fish, I’d tell them it’s a trap.” My gaze was fixated on the way they moved in unison through the fabricated stream. “Do you think they know they aren’t really moving?”

“I don’t think they know what water is.”

“Of course they know what water is.” I said, half offended. “Maybe not while they’re in it, but they sure do know how it feels to go without it.” My mind wandered off some sad, deep end into my own woes.

“That’s very poetic of you, Q. Now I feel bad for these trout. You’ve made me reallycharabout them.” Everett stopped my mind from careening, like a fake stream that kept me from veering too far at all.

“Ouch. That one was bad.” My smile made it seem like it was his best. The best at being the worst. The best at pulling me out of the deep end.

“That’s not verycharring of you.” He winked.

When we’d exhausted our jokes in the freshwater room, we walked through the double doors into the Tidal Zone. Finally, I could breathe again, A/C peeling our clothes off our skin.

“What I like about this aquarium is it makes sense. It’s like we’re working our way from freshwater streams to the bottom of the ocean.”

“You sound just like a tourist right now, Everett Bishop.”

“I resent that, Quinn Kessler.”

My name sounded a whole lot like he practiced it in the bathroom mirror the same way I’d practiced my facial expressions last night. It sounded a lot like the smile on his face—soft and confused about how much he truly resented being called a tourist.

When I smiled back, it was nothing like the ones I decided on last night. Instead, it felt soft and confused about why his dumb jokes didn’t sound so dumb at all to my ears.

“You ever done a touch tank?” Everett led us to the touch tank.

“My mom says it’s how you get diseases.” I hid my hands in my pockets like he always did.

“Come on, you gotta try it. It’s awesome.”

“When my mom told me not to fall for peer pressure, I don’t think this is what she meant.”

“You’re not falling for peer pressure; it’spierpressure.” Everett pointed to the pier painted on the wall behind the touch tank, just in case I didn’t hear the pun in his inflection. “Pier pressure is way more fun. And not dangerous like the peer pressure moms warn us about.”

I let out a little snort. “You’re so dumb. Why do your puns still surprise me?”

“Because you don’t spend enough time with me.” A look flashed across his eyes. He gulped and stammered, “Come on, touching a hermit crab isn’t a gateway drug.” Everett stuck his hand in the touch tank, gently inching back a hermit crab shell to force it out. The hermit crab dangled out, antennae dancing wildly in the water. “Hi, Quinn!”

I knew the crab was a crab, but a small part of me believed it really was waving at me, begging me to join in. It only soundedvaguelylike Everett putting a voice on.

Part of my mind wanted to listen to Mom’s voice in my head, but something about the dopey grin on Everett’s face made me want to touch the hermit crab. And a sticky anemone, a stout horseshoe crab, a spiny sea urchin.

---