Keaton had noticed the beautiful teenage girl on the beach earlier in the week. Once he saw her playing volleyball with a group of other teens, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. Her family had rented the Munson cottage and arrived Saturday morning. As soon as the car was unpacked, the girl and her older brother had made their way to the beach. They’d been there every day, laughing, swimming, and making friends. The girl was vivacious and full of life, and her laugh carried with the wind and made him smile every time he heard it. She couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen years old, and her brother was a year or two older. Keaton noticed how people were naturally drawn to her and wanted to be around her. He felt it himself, even though he watched from afar.
Oceanside was a small, out-of-the-way town, but when summer arrived all the hotel rooms and rentals were filled. The shops were busy with tourists, eager to spend their vacation dollars. The scent of the ocean mingled with that of fried clams and fish and chips. Children jockeyed at the window of the candy shop for a view to watch Mr. Buster pull saltwater taffy or pour fudge onto large cookie sheets. The kite shop was a favorite to both the locals and tourists. The sky was filled with every imaginable shape, with children and adults alike running up and down the beach. It was like this every summer.
The beach was crowded, bustling with activity, and yet this one girl had caught Keaton’s attention to the point he found himself looking for even a glimpse of her.
From the moment she arrived in Oceanside, Keaton found it hard not to think about her. He liked her hair, which was auburn, tinted by the sun, and long. She wore it in a single braid that bounced against her back as she raced down the beach, her bare feet kicking up the sand. She didn’t lack for attention, he noticed; he could tell plenty of boys were interested in her. Keaton couldn’t blame them.
More than anything, he wanted to talk to her. The problem was that he didn’t know how to approach her, or what to say when he did. He didn’t know how to tell her that he thought she was pretty. On the best of days, he rarely spoke. Girls left him tongue-tied and red in the face. His heart pounded so hard he felt his pulse in his head every time he thought about approaching the girl on the beach. For the first time in his life, Keaton thought about ways to overcome his aversion to speaking just so he could talk to her. He never had been good with words, and being naturally shy worked against him. Preston, his best friend, encouraged him to try to meet this girl who had taken up so much of his thoughts.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Preston had advised.
Keaton wanted to throw those words right back at him; after all, Preston had had a thing for Mellie Johnson all through high school, and despite being nearly lovesick over the girl, Preston hadn’t done more than greet her in the halls for four years. Not that it would have done him any good—Mellie had run off with some guy she’d met in Aberdeen the day after graduation. No one had seen or heard from her since.
That didn’t stop Preston from hounding Keaton about the beach girl, though. It took Keaton nearly the entire week to find the nerve to approach her. It was now or never, but still, he fretted and stewed. His inability to carry a conversation was one problem, but then there was another bigger problem.
His size.
Keaton’s biggest fear was that she’d be intimidated or frightened by him the way most people were. The girls in school had avoided him because he came across as aggressive and mean. He didn’t intend to appear that way; it was simply the way he’d always looked, because he rarely smiled. The truth was there was little in Keaton’s life to smile about. If he had his way, he’d have been invisible, but his height and size made that impossible. He’d grown to six-six while a junior, and another two inches his senior year. His shoulders were broad to the point that he barely made it through a doorway. His hands and feet were huge. He’d become used to the names