The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau Read Free Book Online Page A

Raquel Welch’s airy whisper. This kiss was like the Matterhorn ride at Disneyland: a scary thrill.

    When it felt like seconds had passed, or perhaps hours ( Jamie’s sense of time as well as her senses of smell and touch seemed new to her, as if she were just figuring out how to use them), Flip sat up and centered the top button of his jeans at his waist.
    “Should we go grunion hunting?”
    “Uh . . . uh . . . okay.” Jamie felt she would go anywhere and do anything with Flip; asking what she wanted seemed pointless.
    “You ever been before?”
    “No,” Jamie said. “My parents go with a couple of their friends every year but I’ve always been home sleeping while they do it.”
    “It’s so cool. You’ll flip out . . . ” and then Flip laughed.
    “Get it? Flip out?”
    “Oh yeah,” Jamie panted, “your name.” And she realized just then that she was already flipped out—she was both herself and someone totally new to herself, someone who was frothing with a happiness she had never before felt.
    “The grunion,” Flip said, “they just, like, come streaking out of the water, like these silver flashes . . . you know, and you just, like, you just snatch them and put them in a bucket and then you take them home, fry them up in a pan with some butter, and they taste, like, so good.”
    “I hate fish,” Jamie said, but what she was really thinking is how strange it was that her body was fizzing, carbonated somehow, simply by listening to Flip Jenkins talk about frying grunion.
    Jamie took off her sister’s shoes and rolled up the bottoms of her pants before getting out of Flip’s car. It occurred to  her, as they walked from the parking lot onto the beach, that Renee would be shocked to know that her shoes were sitting in Flip Jenkins’s VW bus. The previous year, when Betty and Allen were briefly looking to buy a different house, they discovered that one of the houses they were considering belonged to Bo and John Derek. Renee was so thrilled with this fact that she stole a pencil from John Derek’s study. She kept the pencil in a shoe box under her bed with the ballet slipper she was given from a principal dancer in the New York City Ballet (they danced in Santa Barbara every summer) and the autographed picture of David Cassidy that she got when she wrote to his fan club.
    Jamie imagined that if the Famolares in Flip’s car had had nothing to do with her, Renee might have simply retired them to the celebrity box.
    It was a full moon; from a distance the water looked like slick, black glass. As they edged closer to the shore, Jamie could see small waves breaking, each one bringing with it a vibrating flash of silver. Bands of people with buckets ran along the foaming water, scooping up grunion with their fists. Everyone seemed to be whispering, as if they were sneaking up on the helpless fish.
    “The grunion look cool,” Jamie said.
    “They’re, like, totally beautiful.” The word beautiful sounded different when Flip said it; to Jamie it sounded more . . . beautiful.
    “Yeah, they’re beautiful,” she said.
    “Think we can find your parents?” The grunion schedule was printed in the daily paper—a fact the true grunion hunters resented, as the midnight beaches were often overrun with people who simply liked the party atmosphere of the Hunt.

    “Uh . . . my Mom has a big laugh,” Jamie said. “It’s sort of like what the Lost Boys sound like in the movie Peter Pan . . . you know, when they turn into asses.”
    “Never saw it,” Flip said.
    “Oh.” Jamie instantly regretted the Disney film reference and decided that if Flip never asked her out again, that would be the reason.
    “Someone’s smokin’ some doobage,” Flip said. “Do you smell it?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Do you get high?”
    “I haven’t yet,” Jamie said.
    “That’s cool,” he said. “You’re only fourteen, there’s plenty of time to try that stuff out.”
    “Do you get high?”
    “Not too much,” Flip