Page 105 of The Comeback Summer

“Is your watch broken?” I ask, slowing to a jog.

“Nope,” Hannah says smugly, “but you just ran for two and a half minutes.”

She lifts her hand and I reluctantly give her a high five. It’s hard to be miffed at her when I’m so proud of myself. Nine weeks ago, I could barely walk one leg of the lake path. I’ve come a long way, getting stronger even if I’m not getting any skinnier.

“Want to go another ninety?” she asks.

“Don’t press your luck,” I tell her.

We walk in companionable silence, enjoying the beautiful morning. The breeze coming off the lake makes up for the heat of the August sun shining down on us.

I’ve missed this. My sister is one of the few people in the world I can just be with, and the last few weeks have been tense with the weight of secrets between us. Who knows how long she avoided telling me about Josh. And I was hiding the truth about my feelings for Adam.

Although I was hiding that from myself, too.

Adam sent me two texts the night I ran away like a crazy person after kissing him. One to make sure I got home safely, another a few minutes later, apologizing if he did anything wrong.

I sent back a short reply to the first, letting him know I made it home. But I didn’t acknowledge the second. I couldn’t. Everything I tried to say felt wrong. Plus, I can’t explain what happened when I don’t understand it myself.

One moment I was in my body, my skin thrumming with every word, every touch, every look, and every kiss. The next, I was in my head, catapulted back in time. I was six years old, listening as my mom told me that “curvy girls like us” don’t get Prince Charming. I was twelve, hearing my dad complaining about how the local news anchor had put on weight, saying she should be taken off the air. I was fifteen, standingalone in the gym because every boy I’d asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance had turned me down. I was seventeen, trying not to cry when Alex Taylor told me that he liked my personality but he wasn’t attracted to me.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a therapist to realize that when I pulled away from Adam, I was protecting myself. I’ve been doing that my whole life. Just like porcupines have their needles and skunks have their smell, I’ve got my sharp wit and sense of humor. But in that moment with Adam, I didn’t even have those. I felt so naked and exposed I had to run away. I was too close to confronting that so-called lie of mine.

“What do you think?” Hannah says, breaking my silent reverie.

I look at my sister, hoping for context. What did I miss?

“You weren’t listening, were you?”

I shrug an apology and my sister rolls her eyes and says, “We’re here.”

I can hear the music thumping from Castaways, the giant ship-shaped bar at North Avenue Beach. It’s got the vibe of a club after midnight, even though it’s just barely eleven a.m.

“You’re sure you don’t want to just, I don’t know, lay out like a normal beach person?” I ask, hopefully.

“Come on,” Hannah says. “This’ll be fun.” And it sounds like she really believes it.

I follow her, trudging through the sand, away from the rental beach chairs and umbrellas, toward Scott, who is lounging on an oldfree britneybeach towel.

For the next thirty minutes, Hannah leads us, her two reluctant followers, through a series of drills performed in the lake at various water depths, so we can “take advantage of thenatural resistance of the sand and water.” Which is nothing compared to the resistance that’s going on in my head.

I can’t stop thinking about Adam and the mess I made of things.

We finish up by lying on our backs in the water—which is deceptively relaxing for how terrifying the obstacle is going to be. “Water crossing” sounded benign until Hannah explained that we’d be floating one hundred yards on our backs under a chain-link fence that’s like six inches above the water.

Today, I’m grateful there’s nothing between me and the clouds. I close my eyes and try to imagine the crosshatch of the fence above me, and just the thought feels suffocating. I wonder if there are built-in safety escapes along the way if someone (aka me) has a panic attack.

Maybe that’s what happened the other night. Although I’m not sure that would be more or less embarrassing than the other excuses I’ve invented for myself.

“Hey,” Scott whispers, floating into me.

“What?” I hiss. He’s been complaining every step of every exercise, and I wonder if I was this annoying to Hannah in the beginning. I have a feeling I owe her a big apology.

“Spill the tea already,” he says.

“What tea?” I ask, playing dumb.

“Don’t be coy with me,” Scott says. “I’m out here, getting my hair wet with lake water, to support you two.”

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