Edenville Owls

Chapter 5

I had known Joanie Gibson all my life. We had met when we were three years old at somebody’s birthday party. We had been all through school together, and even though she was a girl, we were friends.

Joanie was one of the first girls in class to get boobs. They weren’t very big. But there they were. She had really nice eyes too. Very big eyes. Blue. The fact that she had boobs made her seem hot to us, but I also liked her. I wasn’t exactly sure where hot ended and like began, and I didn’t exactly know how to like a girl. On the other hand, I didn’t exactly know how to deal with hot either... Besides, we were friends.

Nick used to meet her after school sometimes, and buy her a Coke at the Village Shop, and maybe walk her home. So we kind of thought of her as his girlfriend. But she was still my friend.

In bad weather, especially when it was raining and windy, I used to like to go down to the empty bandstand and sit in it alone, protected by the pointed roof, and look at the way the rain and the wind made the harbor look. I was doing it on the Saturday afternoon after I saw Miss Delaney and the guy. Usually the harbor was dotted with sails. But the weather was too lousy, and all the boats were bucking and tossing at their moorings. Close in, there were a lot of Herreshoff 12s, and Beetle Cats. The wind made the empty gray surface of the harbor ripple in an odd crisscross pattern, sort of like the surface of a wood file. Farther out were bigger boats, of which I knew very little.

A girl’s voice said, “Are you thinking?”

I knew the voice.

“Sort of,” I said.

“You sure do a lot of that, Bobby,” Joanie Gibson said, and sat down beside me facing the water.

She had on saddle shoes and thick white socks and a camel’s hair coat.

“There’s a lot to think about,” I said.

“What are you thinking about now?” Joanie said.

“I don’t know.”

“I get like that sometimes,” Joanie said. “I mean, my mind is sort of out there moving around, but I don’t quite know what it’s doing.”

That was right. That was exactly how it was. Her too. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s nice here,” she said. “Under the roof, out of the bad weather, warm coat. And out on the water it’s kind of rough and mean and cold, and we’re not on it.”

“I could be on it,” I said. “Sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, running before the wind. My hair blowing back like in the movies.”

“You have a crew cut.”

“So I’ll let it grow and then I’ll go out in a storm.”

“You’re embarrassed,” Joanie said. “Aren’t you?

“Huh?”

“You always try to be funny when you’re embarrassed.”

“What am I embarrassed about?” I said.

“Maybe embarrassed isn’t the right word,” Joanie said. “It’s more like you’re much smarter than anybody else, and you don’t want people to know it. So you always joke around.”

“So what am I supposed to do,” I said, “walk around, I’m smart, I’m smart all the time?”

“No, just don’t pretend you’re not.”

“It’s not good to be too smart,” I said.

“It’s not good to be too stupid either,” Joanie said.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t like that. I always knew what to say. Way out past the harbor mouth I could see a big schooner tacking back and forth across the wind, beating its way back into the harbor.

“I’m smart too,” Joanie said. “And I’ve known you all my life. I thought maybe we could talk.”

“About what?” I said.

“About why you like to sit in the rain and look at the water,” Joanie said.

I nodded.

“We could talk about that,” I said.

Joanie smiled at me.

“Good,” she said.