All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

All he managed to do was break Leslie’s heart.

He wasn’t Wavy’s only suitor, either. The way she strolled up and down, her skirt swishing around the tops of her boots, her narrow hips jutting out, it was like throwing chum into a pool of sharks. The old guys were the worst. Guys who had to have been twenty-five or thirty. They were more persistent, too, offering her cigarettes and beers.

“She can talk, right?” Leslie’s lifeguard asked me one day.

“If she wants.”

“How do I make her want to talk to me?”

By then, I knew the answer: “You need to be Jesse Joe Kellen.” Besides being one of the few people she would talk to, Kellen was one thing Wavy would talk about.

Leslie’s friend Jana came over to our house with this book, Forever. She got it at summer camp and she said, “Oh my god, you have to read it.”

We read it. Jana’s sister Angela even read the dirtiest parts out loud to make us laugh. Angela was pretty, with gray eyes and a dimple in her chin. She had a boyfriend, but I don’t think she’d done anything but hold his hand. As for me, I thought, I’m never doing that with a boy. Never.

Wavy found the book worth three words: “Not like that.”

“Oh, you think you know so much. I bet you’ve never even kissed a boy,” Leslie said.

Wavy gave us the smoldering look that had stolen Leslie’s lifeguard and said, “A man.”

“What man?” Angela said.

“Kellen.”

“You really kissed him? Like a real French kiss with your tongue?” Jana said.

“More.”

“How much more?”

Wavy flicked her finger against the Judy Blume book.

“Oh, bull. You’re lying,” Leslie said. “I wish you guys could see him. He’s huge.”

Wavy grabbed at her crotch like a guy and gave Leslie a nasty smile.

“He’s so disgusting. Seriously, he’s fat and he has all these gross tattoos.”

Jana and Angela weren’t listening to Leslie. They were staring at Wavy.

“So, you really touched him?” Jana said. “You touched his—his penis? What was it like?”

“Hot. Hard. Desperate.”

Leslie scowled, but Jana, Angela, and I broke up laughing. The dirty-minded Wavy was fun, but I assumed most of it was an act to upset Leslie. Ken in a dress.

“Do you really go all the way with him?” Angela said.

Wavy nodded, but Leslie said, “No, she doesn’t!”

I didn’t know what to believe. I was older than Wavy, but something had happened to her in the last year. She seemed a lot more grown up than I felt. She seemed more like Aunt Val, and not just her clothes, but the way she held her head, the way she walked.

“She’s not even fourteen. She doesn’t either go all the way,” Leslie said.

Wavy shrugged and flashed her ring at us. I’d thought it was costume jewelry, but that day she let us look at it up close, so we could see it was a real ring. Not some gumball prize that would turn your finger green.

“You wouldn’t! He’s so grody,” Leslie said.

Anyone else might have been offended, but Wavy wasn’t. She opened her backpack and took out a photo album. In the front were pictures of Aunt Val and Donal. After that were pictures of Kellen. Playing cards with some men. Holding Donal up to feed a giraffe. Standing next to Wavy, her in a pretty green dress. The last one showed him astride a motorcycle on a sunny day with his shirt off, tattoos all over. He smiled, his gold tooth glinting.

Jana was fascinated. She came back the next day and, instead of her younger sister, she brought a friend of hers. Someone who was a lot more popular than Leslie. That was Leslie’s consolation prize for losing the lifeguard.

Jana and her friend grilled Wavy about everything, which was funny since she hardly said more than a word at a time. Sometimes she didn’t even need a word, like when she used me to demonstrate some sexual position that seemed completely ridiculous when I was fifteen. I couldn’t imagine two grown-ups doing that with straight faces, and when I started giggling, Wavy collapsed on top of me, laughing.

They even got Donal involved. Luring him upstairs with cookies, Jana said, “Is your sister really getting married?”

“Kellen loves her. When we go swimming buck naked, he kisses her and lets her rub her boobies on him. It’s gross. He says, ‘Oh, Wavy.’”

Donal tried to make his voice deep and Wavy, who’d been drawing a dinosaur tattoo on his shoulder, flicked him on the back of the head.

“You go skinny-dipping with him?” Jana said.

That raised Wavy even higher in Jana’s eyes, but it reminded Leslie of her swimming pool tragedy. It left me with divided loyalties. I loved Wavy, but Leslie was my sister. I was sad and relieved when the two weeks were up. Maybe Leslie could get her lifeguard back, if she still wanted him.

Mom had planned the visit the way she wanted, but there was confusion about when Wavy was going back. Wavy was furious when she found out she wasn’t going home until after her birthday. Grabbing the calendar off the kitchen wall, she threw it down on the table and started counting off the days to indicate two weeks.

“Wavy, we’re going back on the twentieth. Your mother and I agreed.”

“You agreed. Not me,” Wavy said.

“I thought you’d like to spend your birthday with us.”

Wavy tapped her finger over the fourteen days again and she had a scary look in her eyes. A look that said she would do what she wanted.