the past. Someday Nate would be married to Stacy Hartman and they’d all laugh in fond memory of these past weeks.
“Yeah, right,” she mumbled. She got dressed. It was early, the sun just rising. Today was the opening of the festival and she’d be inundated with work. Good. And where would Nate be? With Stacy? Laughing together as she told amusing stories about her adventures in Italy?
“One time I had a flat tire on the way to Richmond,” Terri said under her breath. Changing that on the side of the highway with seventy mile an hour traffic had been a real adventure.
As she walked into the kitchen, she saw that Nate had taped a piece of paper on the fridge. It was a drawing of the back of a muscular man wearing a towel and holding a rugby ball. Hank Bullnose, prop forward, says he’ll meet you in the dressing room at noon. Bring sausages.
Terri knew the cartoon was supposed to make her smile, but instead, it brought tears to her eyes. She ran across the room, threw the door open and went outside to fall into one of the chairs. Her chair. The one next to Nate’s. Where the two of them had sat in the evenings and on weekends. Where they’d shared meals and laughter and confidences.
The lake was beginning to come alive. She saw lights coming on, heard a couple of shouts and motors.
It was Widiwick, she thought. It was a festival that had been started by an eleven-year-old boy with a heart as big as the earth. A boy the town came to love to the point where he was their ideal of perfection. WWBD. What would Billy do? they asked one another. It became a motto. Something to achieve.
All through school Terri had been too busy to think about the things other girls did. She wasn’t interested in the dances—unless they were to be held at the lake. Then her concern was feeding people and getting them across the docks without falling in after they’d had too much spiked punch.
She’d heard the girls giggling over beautiful Billy Thorndyke. Who was he going to date when he ever did? He couldn’t spend his entire life studying and playing sports, could he?
Because Terri had always been exposed to the sexual shenanigans that went on at the lake, she knew more of the world than the townies did. She truly believed Billy was gay. It made sense. He was always with boys, never alone with a girl. Girls threw themselves at him, but Billy ignored them.
When she and Billy were in elementary school together, they’d been buddies. Terri had been a tomboy, strong from all she did at the lake, so she could keep up with Billy on the playground. When the school set up swimming classes at a nearby pool, Billy had been impressed when Terri swam the length easily and quickly.
But by the time they reached the seventh grade, the sexes began to separate. It was like the Garden of Eden and the kids became aware of bodies and feelings they didn’t understand. Terri hadn’t had time to be part of all that. By that time, she’d grown tall and knew enough that she was a good help to her dad and Uncle Jake. She worked before and after school and on weekends. In the summer she was working every minute.
One day in the last months of their junior year, Billy stopped at Terri’s locker and asked what she was doing on Saturday. “Cleaning the oil filters,” or some such was her answer.
“I could save you a seat at the game,” Billy said.
“That would be nice. There are some bored teenagers at the lake now. They’d probably like to go. Thanks.” She turned away to head to class.
Billy caught her arm. “I meant for you. Come to the game and after we can go get something to eat.”
“Can’t. Sorry. Too much to do.” She’d run to her class.
When Terri looked back on it, she was astonished that she’d been so oblivious to Billy’s attempts to ask her out on a date. But then, so many of the kids sucked up to her in the hopes of getting something for free at the lake that she’d learned to ignore them. The girls showed up whenever something like a soccer team booked cabins. The boys came to see some female swimmers. And when they did, they acted as though Terri was their best friend.
For all that Terri didn’t