Between Us and the Moon - Rebecca Maizel Page 0,20
hot, burning hot. I don’t take my flip-flops off until I sit down in my beach chair. I admit, I drop my things near their cooler and towels by the water. One good wave will wet their towels. Bean, without Scarlett’s bikini, would stand at the shore and tell these guys that their belongings were dangerously close to being washed away. It’s high tide after all. But Scarlett wouldn’t do that. Neither will I. Not Sarah.
Not while I am conducting the Scarlett Experiment.
What ensures a properly conducted experiment? Make sure that you change only one factor at a time.
I peel off my shirt first and place it down on the ground next to my open beach chair. I place my hands on my hips. Next, I look left and right. There are people, but no one seems to notice my string bikini top.
Hmm. Tricky.
Observable fact: wearing Scarlett’s flashy clothes doesn’t mean I’ll have someone instantly looking at me and paying attention to what I do. Every great scientist knows that one shouldn’t expect instant gratification when conducting an experiment.
When I slip off my shorts, one of the dads nearby peers at me over his book. Gross. Too old. Success? Not quite. He gets back to his book. I’m not sure this is the kind of attention the Scarlett Experiment is supposed to generate. I’ve never seen dads talk to Scarlett. The experiment hypothesizes that I find a guy that Scarlett would pick out. That guy looks like my gym teacher at Summerhill.
I plop down in my beach chair.
I have to remain objective. I will analyze the data after leaving the beach and try to interpret what exactly happened while I wore Scarlett’s bikini. That way I can formulate the perfect combo of clothes and behavior.
About fifteen minutes later, I am properly SPF’ed and my eyes are closed.
“I’ve never been so patriotic in my life,” Andrew says and sits down on the sand next to me. “Nice suit.”
Success. Scarlett’s bathing suit is an attracting factor.
He shakes the ocean from his hair and I take that second to check out my legs and stomach. Looks good, no stray hairs. Okay . . . act natural.
At the shore, a lot of people walk up and down the edge of the water. Curtis chats with a couple of lifeguards.
“You have seaweed in your hair,” I say and sit up. Andrew is sopping wet and toweling off his legs with his T-shirt.
“Get it out for me?” he asks and leans forward. His hair is blonder than I thought. I pick out the long seaweed string and lay it next to my feet. A few icy drops from his head fall onto my thigh and roll down my shin. His eyes are more blue than green, and I think that one of his parents must be blue-eyed because genetically—
“So what were you saying about the dune grass?” he asks. Water drips down his biceps. He must notice my gaze because he looks at his arm and brushes the fleck away with his fingers.
“The ecosystem is endangered. And you almost shoved me into it,” I say, meeting his eyes again. I want to cringe because Scarlett would never mention anything about the ecosystem. Andrew loops his hands around his legs and lets the salt water drop on the sand. Even the hair on his legs is blond. “It’s important to preserve the natural beauty of the dunes,” I add with a flip of my hair.
“Is that so?” he asks with a smile. “What were you doing on the street the other night?” he asks. “Hiding in the dark?”
“What?” I laugh it off. “I wasn’t hiding.”
“You almost took a digger into the street.”
“I just wanted a second by myself.”
“So you hid in an alley?”
“I was avoiding someone I didn’t want to see,” I say, and the truth of the words comes out a bit more serious than I’d like, though I don’t think Andrew notices.
“I know what you mean. I wish I could avoid people in town,” he says. “I haven’t felt much like doing my usual thing this summer. You kind of caught me in a weird moment.”
Maybe I should ask him why he was—
“You made me laugh though. I needed that,” he adds.
“Oh yes. I’m hilarious,” I say sarcastically and try to remember to be cool. Be Scarlett. I don’t want to pry into his personal life because Scarlett wouldn’t. She would keep the conversation flirty. “I hear you,” I say with a dramatic, Scarlett-like sigh.