[Author’s note: This is the final chapter of Clubius Contained]

I was up early as usual and in the kitchen eating a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast when there was a knock on the front door of our cottage.

Molly and her mom had arrived last night and had stopped by for just a little bit to say hello. Mom had said we’d be going to the beach in the morning if they’d like to join us. Molly’s mom said she needed the morning to sleep in and get settled, but Molly said she’d join us. I told Molly that I usually run to the beach in the morning and she said she’d like to do that too. We’d made a plan for 8 o’clock, which it was now.

I opened the door with a mouthful of Cheerios. There was Molly in a t-shirt, shorts and sneakers. She was now maybe four inches taller than I was. The last time I saw her, over a year ago at my tenth birthday party, I don’t remember her being taller. Her light brown hair was tied in a ponytail.

“Hi Coop”, she said, “Whatcha eating?” I felt a little sad that she didn’t call me “Coob” anymore, I used to really like the way she said my name.

“Cheerios”, I mumbled through a mouth full of them. She nodded.

“We have Shredded Wheat”, she said, “Spoonsize.” I nodded back. We looked at each other and didn’t say anything.

“I got taller”, she said, “Since last time I saw you.” I kind of wrinkled my nose and nodded. I’m not sure that I liked that, but it WAS true.

“Not that it matters”, she said, “Girls get taller sooner than boys.” We were both still standing on either side of the doorway.

“Can I come in?” she asked. I nodded vigorously and stepped aside and put my arm out like grownups did to invite someone in. She stepped in our kitchen and looked around.

“Your kitchen is bigger than ours”, she said, “Do you and David have a bedroom?” I nodded.

“You’re lucky”, she said, “I have to sleep in the living room on the couch, but it opens up into a bed. Mom has the bedroom.”

David peeked his head out of our bedroom door to check out Molly standing in the kitchen.

“Hey Wavey Davey”, she said, smiling and using the nickname she used to call him a long time ago, “You look so grown up.” She didn’t say that I looked grown up, but I guess that’s what you said to a little kid you hadn’t seen in a long time. David looked like he didn’t know what to say and wrinkled his nose.

“I AM eight”, he said, then asked, “You guys going to run to the beach?” Molly looked at me.

“We are, aren’t we?” she asked, “How far is it?”

“About a mile”, I said, “Can you run the whole way?”

“I can”, she said grinning, like she was proud of herself, “Can you?”

“I never had run that far before we got here”, I said, “But now I can.”

“Cool”, she said, “Finish your Cheerios and we’ll go.” I was kind of surprised she said that. I mean I said “cool” now too sometimes instead of “neat”, but I was surprised that she told me to finish my Cheerios like she was my mom or big sister or something.

SHE looked grown up too. I mean she WAS a few months older than I was, even though I was going into seventh grade and she was only going into sixth, because I’d skipped kindergarten. She walked around the kitchen and peeked through the open door into the bathroom. Then she went into the living room and looked around, finally peeking in our bedroom door.

David was probably on his bed drawing because I heard her ask him, “Still drawing comics?” There was a pause when I guess he showed her something he was drawing and I heard her say, “Wow kid, you’re really getting good!”

I guess I felt a little jealous. I gulped down the rest of my cereal and called out to her, still disappeared in our bedroom, “Let’s go.”

“Just a minute”, she called back to me, “I want to see all the stuff he’s done.” I couldn’t hear all the words but I could tell by the way her voice sounded that she was telling him how much she liked each and every picture he must be showing her.

Finally she came out of the bedroom and back into the kitchen with me.

“Wow”, she said to me, “He’s gotten SO much better!”

“I know”, I said, “He draws all the time. You ready to go?”

“Yep”, she said, and she ran in place on the kitchen floor. Her legs seemed really long.

We walked out the kitchen door to the outside and I closed it behind us.

“Aren’t you going to tell your mom that you’re going?” she asked, looking kind of worried. I shook my head.

“Nah”, I said, like I was some big kid, “I just go. She knows I run to the beach, and she and David will come a little bit later in the car.”

“Okay”, she said, sounding a little like she maybe wasn’t.

“Do you tell your mom every time you go out of the house?” I asked.

“Well I didn’t use to”, she said, “But now she wants me too, I think because I’m a girl.” She pulled the little blue bow thing that held her ponytail together off her hair which tumbled out down to her shoulders. Her hair was longer than it used to be. Then with both hands she gathered it all back up behind her head again really tight and pulled the bow thing back over it.

“Let’s go”, she said.

“Do you have to tell YOUR mom that we’re going?” I asked. She gave me a look like she was kind of mad at me.

“No”, she said, shaking her head really fast, “I told her before I came over to your place.”

Our feet crunched on the gravel of the driveway as we walked. When we got to the part that went out to the road I started to run and so she did too. I noticed right away that she took long strides with her long legs and it looked like running was easier for her than it was for me. I had to run extra hard to keep up with her.

We both ran without talking, side by side, down the road toward the beach. I was breathing hard and she was next to me breathing hard too. Our shoulders even bumped together a couple times as we ran on the loose gravel of the road. After a few minutes it started to feel like it was the old days and we were the same again. And I even felt like I could tell that she was feeling that same way about feeling the same.

I imagined we were kind of like my Crime Society Brute Brothers, two bodies with one brain, and maybe like David had suggested that we each had half a brain when we were apart, and not thinking very well, but were back to our whole brain now.

I wished we were still best friends, and that we still lived across the street from each other. Maybe all my school friends and even the girls would tease us that we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but maybe we wouldn’t care. Maybe we’d even BE boyfriend and girlfriend and walk in the park sometimes holding hands. As we continued to run the words from the Association song played on the jukebox in my mind…

Cherish is a word I use to describe
All the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside
You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I had told you
You don’t know how many times I’ve wished that I could hold you

I saw her eyes look over at me and look a little worried, like she might be figuring out what I was thinking about her, or maybe she was thinking the same thing about me.

I wasn’t sure I even wanted her to be my girlfriend, I just wanted her to be my best friend. Girlfriends and boyfriends were complicated. From listening to all the Motown, the Beatles, and other songs, that’s what all those older kids were usually singing about.

Still running, we went around that last turn and up ahead we could see the parking lot of the beach.

“We’re almost there”, I managed to say between big breaths.

“Oh good”, she said, “My legs are getting tired.” I liked that she said that, so it didn’t feel like we were trying to do better at running than the other one like we were on different teams. But I needed to say something back to tell her I felt that way too, that I wasn’t better than her at running.

“Yeah, I’m tired too”, I said between breaths, “This last part is always really hard, though I keep going cuz I’m almost done.”

“Yeah”, she said between her breaths, “Almost done.”

We finally got to the little parking lot up on the dunes and I stopped running, still breathing hard. I walked to the edge of the dune looking down and sat on the part with the grass at the top with my feet hanging down the beginning of the sandy slope down to the beach. Molly sat next to me. Our shoulders weren’t quite touching but were close enough that I could feel the energy of her body. We both looked at each other, still breathing hard, and smiled.

“Wow”, she said, “You do that every morning? It’s been a couple weeks since I ran that far.”

“Wow”, I said back to her, “You were able to run that whole mile and you haven’t run that far in a couple weeks? I don’t think I could do that!”

“Yeah well”, she said, looking in my eyes, hers twinkling now, “I wasn’t going to let you think you were better at running than I was.” We both laughed, and it felt like, at least for now, we were back to being best friends again, or at least good friends.

We sat quietly for a while, enjoying that we were together, and just looked down at the beach, the ocean beyond it, and the sky full of white puffy clouds above. It felt good, like we didn’t need to talk, but finally it felt like one of us should say something, and she finally did.

“So you’re going to junior high, to Tappan”, she said, “No more elementary school.”

“Yeah”, I said, like I wasn’t happy about it, “I never like going back to school. I never like having grownups in charge of me all the time and telling me what I have to do. And now at Tappan I’m going to have EIGHT different teachers in charge of me.” She nodded and looked out at the ocean.

“That sucks”, she said. I remembered her using swear words back at my tenth birthday party, but I still wasn’t used to it. Girls didn’t usually swear as much as boys did, at least not when they knew boys could hear them. But because I used swear words sometimes now too, it felt good, like we were more the same.

“I’m going to a different school too”, she said, “Even though it’s only SIXTH grade. I’m going to the U of M lab school. My mom wants me to go there, says it’s better than regular school, and my step dad was able to get me in. Mom said she didn’t want me to go to Slauson.”

She thought about that for a minute and said, “I don’t know. All my school friends are going to Slauson. That kind of sucks too. So at least you’re going to Tappan with YOUR school friends.”

“Yeah”, I said again, like I still wasn’t happy about it, “But there’s going to be a thousand kids there and most of the kids in my classes I probably won’t know and cuz I skipped kindergarten I might be the youngest kid in the whole school!” It felt good to say all that stuff that was worrying me, even though Molly couldn’t do anything about it.

“Well”, she said, “But you had all those school friends at Bach that came to your birthday parties. And those guys from Burns Park too, like Mike. So you’ll make other friends at Tappan!”

“I hope so”, I said.

“I hope so too”, she said, and we both got quiet again and looked out at the ocean.

After sitting there a while longer, a car horn honked three times. We turned to look behind us and it was mom and David in our car. Molly and I walked over to where they had parked and we all headed down to the beach to swim.

***

It was the next day and Molly came over at 8 o’clock again to run to the beach with me. Yesterday we’d stayed at the beach swimming until lunchtime and then all went out to lunch with Molly’s mom. All us kids had pizza together last night, and mom and Molly’s mom had fried clams and cocktail sauce. When Molly and I got to the beach parking lot up on the dunes we sat in the same spot and looked down at the beach and the blue ocean beyond.

“So do you and David still play with soldiers and dinosaurs and Godzilla down in the basement, or out in the yard?” she asked.

“Sometimes”, I said, “But not very much. And just in the basement, not out in the yard.”

“How about your school friends”, she asked, “Like the ones that were at your tenth birthday party. Do they like to play that soldier and dinosaur pretending stuff, or your wargames?”

“Not really”, I said, “I only do soldiers and dinosaurs with David. I do other stuff with my school friends in the park. They don’t even know I play that kind of stuff. They don’t even know that I play wargames. Except for my friend Mike. I don’t even let my other school friends come to my house!”

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t want them to know mom and dad are divorced”, I said.

“Why not?” she asked again.

“Because they’ll think I’m strange”, I said, “And won’t want to be my friends anymore.” Molly nodded and thought about that for a minute.

“I guess when MY mom and dad got divorced”, she said, “I was still a little kid. You and Paul and all my other neighborhood friends knew that they were divorced, but it didn’t seem to make a difference to all of you.”

“Remember”, I asked, “When we went on that bicycle ride to try and find your dad’s new house and we rode through Wurster Park?”

“Yeah”, she said, nodding as she kept looking out at the ocean, “You fell off your bike.” I’d forgotten about that but now I remembered.

“I remember we went to the Washtenaw Dairy”, I said, “And one of us had money to buy ice cream cones.”

“I did”, she said, “My dad gave it to me, remember?” I didn’t really, but I nodded.

“And remember”, I asked, “Then we went to the Kiddie Korner, and that guy that worked there thought we were lost?”

“Yeah”, said Molly, laughing through her nose, “I remember. We knew how to get home, though we never found my dad’s house. Turns out it was on Mosley Street which was just a block away up Main, but I didn’t know that til later.”

So we just sat there for a couple minutes, not saying anything, thinking about all the things we used to do together when we were little.

“So is Mike your best friend now?” Molly asked, “I remember him at your birthday party and when I went to Burns Park before that. He’s really nice. When I was still going to Burns Park he knew I wasn’t a boy when I played in those soccer games before school, but he never told on me. Other boys figured it out and then I had to stop.”

“Yeah”, I said, “I guess Mike is kind of my best friend. He IS really nice. And he figured out that mom and dad were divorced, but he didn’t think we were a bad family or anything, or worry about me. And he didn’t tell any of my other friends who still don’t know.” Molly nodded.

“Patty’s still MY best friend, and she’s a girl of course”, Molly said, “I think it’s probably better that way. When you and I were best friends it was really great, but it was strange for other kids, because they alway thought we were girlfriend and boyfriend.”

We were quiet for a minute, looking out at the ocean.

“So do you just play the wargames by yourself?” she asked, “That can’t be much fun.”

“Well”, I said, “I have different friends I play wargames with, but playing them by myself is fun too. I do that a lot.”

“I like to play Monopoly or Parcheesi with my friends”, she said, “But it wouldn’t be any fun by myself.”

“Wargames are different”, I said, “Each turn is all strategy stuff. Where to put or move each side’s armies to make their best move. Then when you’re done with setting up or moving one side, then you figure out the best setup or move for the other side. And you go back and forth until one side wins I guess, or you get bored.”

“Oh I see”, she said, “That’s cool”, the second time I’d heard her say “cool” instead of “neat”.

“How about you?” I asked, “What about your friends?”

“All my friends are girls now”, she said, making a thinking face, “None of them have soldiers OR dinosaurs, or want to play with them. We ride our bikes. Do crafts at West Park. Patty has a good tree for climbing in her backyard and we are up there a lot doing pretending stuff. Like Nancy Drew detective stuff or pretending we’re in a spaceship.” Then her eyes twinkled.

“Do you remember when we used to play spaceships and submarines on the monkeybars in Allmendinger Park?” she asked, and I nodded, “That was really fun, wasn’t it? Remember when I was Captain Nemo at your birthday party and I wanted to sink all the war ships?”

“Yeah”, I said, “You were really mad that day.”

“Yeah”, she said, thinking, “That’s when my mom and dad were getting divorced.” I got quiet, thinking about my own mom and dad. I could tell that she could tell that I was thinking about that and SHE got quiet and even looked worried.

I didn’t usually like talking with anyone about mom and dad getting divorced, but it just felt like I wanted to talk about it with SOMEBODY, because I thought about it A LOT. Molly was probably the only person in the WHOLE WORLD I could talk to about it!

“My mom and dad getting divorced sucks”, I said, “I HATE it!” I’d thought that a lot, but never said it to anyone else. She nodded but still looked worried.

“It’s really bad”, she said, “But do you think your mom will marry someone else like my mom did?” I’d never thought of that until she said that.

My mind filled with imagining I had a new dad, a “stepdad”, like Molly did. That just felt SO weird. And when I thought about my REAL dad, I just felt so sad for him if that happened. And what if my stepdad wanted to be in charge of me all the time.

“I didn’t think anything could be worse than my mom and dad getting divorced”, I said, “But that would be WAY WORSE.” Then Molly suddenly looked worried, like I’d said something really bad.

“I LIKE my stepdad”, she said, looking a little mad, “He says funny stuff and he makes all these cool models and lets me help.” I could tell I’d said something that Molly didn’t like, but I didn’t know what to say next to make it better. We were both quiet for a minute and looked out at the ocean. My mind was trying to figure out what to say. I remembered what mom used to say to dad after she said something bad to him.

“I’m sorry I said that”, I said, still looking out at the ocean. I could see her head nodding slowly.

“It’s okay”, she said quietly, also still looking out at the ocean, “I guess I felt that way too when mom told me she had a new ‘boyfriend’. But they’ve been married a long time now and he’s okay and mom’s happy. He told me he’s just my ‘pretend dad’ and not my real dad. That made me laugh. He’s funny.”

I thought about that for a minute and it seemed to make sense, at least for Molly. But there was still no way I wanted to have a stepdad, even one like Molly’s, but I decided I better not tell her that, even though we used to be the kind of friends who told each other EVERYTHING we were thinking. The whole world seemed really different and more complicated than it did back then.

“My mom is still sad a lot”, I said, picking up some sand from the ground and throwing down the slope of the dune, “Specially when she pays the bills or is up late at night.” Molly nodded, and then she scooped up some sand and threw it too.

“But”, I said, “I think coming here is helping her feel a little better.”

“I guess that’s good”, Molly said. I nodded. We were quiet again, but I could tell she was thinking about asking me something.

“Did you ever want us to be girlfriend and boyfriend?” she asked. I HAD thought about that a lot.

“Whenever the older girls in the park asked you if I was your boyfriend”, I said, “You’d say no, that I was your BEST friend.”

She nodded and laughed through her nose, then said, “I remember. You WERE”, and she looked at me and smiled. But I hadn’t answered her question and I kind of wanted to, because I’d thought about it so much.

“It would have been really different if we were boyfriend and girlfriend”, I said. I thought about all those Beatles songs with all their girlfriend problems and all those Motown songs with boyfriend problems.

“Yeah”, she said, “I wouldn’t want you to be with any other girls and you’d want to makeout with me all the time.”

I thought about what that’d be like “making out” with Molly. Arthur’s older sister said that making out was getting to “first base” and “second base”, but she wouldn’t say what those meant. But then Frankie said that his older brother said that “first base” was “french kissing” which meant kissing on the mouth and using your tongue too. “Second base” was touching a girl’s breasts. I could imagine kissing Molly on the lips and then our tongues touching and licking each other, if that’s how that worked. Molly didn’t really even have any breasts to touch.

“That would be very weird”, I said, shaking my head. She nodded.

“I heard that making out is getting to first base AND second base”, Molly said, “I know what first base is, you know, tongue kissing. And second base is feeling someone up, up here”, she said, pointing at her chest.

“And third base is feeling someone up down there”, she said, pointing down toward her legs as she squeezed them together, “But that’s worse than making out.” I hadn’t heard about “third base”, but it made sense, though I couldn’t even imagine Molly and me doing THAT.

“Do you remember”, she asked, “When you kissed me on the cheek when we were hiding under the blanket in the back of our car when we went to Saugatuck and I kissed you back on the cheek?” I nodded.

“And then later”, I said, “When we were there we tried kissing each other on the mouth? And we decided it was weird, but GOOD weird? That was kind of half making out.” I could see her thinking about that.

“Well maybe one third making out”, she said, “Because we didn’t do our tongues.” I nodded. That made sense.

“And we couldn’t do more than half even now because I don’t have any breasts yet”, she said, looking down at her chest.

“And remember”, I asked, “When we were up in your room at your Prescott house and we both took off our clothes and showed each other what we looked like naked?” She nodded.

“I still can’t believe we did that”, she said, “I had never seen anyone else naked before.”

“Neither had I”, I said, “Except for my baby brother.”

“Did you like that?” she asked, “Seeing me naked?”

“I guess so”, I said, “I just wanted to know since you were a girl if you looked different, you know, down there.” She nodded.

“Me too”, she said, “But it was… fun. But I guess it was also bad.” I nodded.

“But you never told anybody about it, right?” she asked, “I never did.”

“Well”, I said, “Just two older boys in the park a long time ago. Remember? I told you. I just said it was a girl and they didn’t even know me so they didn’t know that you were my best friend so that you were probably the girl.”

“Yeah, I remember now”, she said, nodding, “Did they think you were bad?”

“Kind of, maybe”, I said, “But I also think they were jealous that I was younger than they were but I’d done something that they hadn’t, so that was kind of neat, for me at least.” She nodded like that made sense, and even grinned a little.

“Yeah”, she said, nodding, “We did some neat stuff together.” We were quiet for a minute, both thinking and looking out at the ocean.

Finally she said, “I think if I was old enough to have a boyfriend, I’d want you to be my first one.” She glanced at me and smiled but then looked back out at the ocean.

“Me too”, I said, “That would be neat.”

“But oh well”, she said, “C’est la vie.” Then looking at me said, “That’s French. It means ‘that’s life’. I learned that from my stepdad. He’s French.” I nodded.

“C’est la vie”, I said.

A couple of grownups walked by heading from their car down to the beach so we both got quiet.

“We probably shouldn’t be talking about this with other people around”, she said, looking around, “We might get in trouble.” She probably was right, though it was all fun to talk about. There was nobody else in the whole world I could talk to about this kind of stuff. Maybe Mike, but I don’t know.

Mom, David and Molly’s mom finally came in the car. It was Molly’s mom’s first time at the beach so we gave her a “tour” and all walked up along the beach toward the Highland Light lighthouse. Mom told her the whole story about it being the very first lighthouse on Cape Cod, and that George Washington ordered it to be built, along with another one on Cape Ann, north of Boston. Mom really liked to tell people stuff about Cape Cod and Boston, I guess cuz she said she grew up here so she was proud of it. That made sense. I think I’d be proud of Ann Arbor too.

It was a cloudy day and the water felt colder than yesterday so we didn’t do as much swimming, but enough that I could show Molly how to bodysurf. She was a good swimmer, probably better than me, so she figured it out pretty quickly. We spent most of the morning making cities and forts out of the wet sand on the beach with roads connecting them. When it was time to go home for lunch, Molly ran home with me while the others went in the car.

***

It was the third day that Molly and I had run together to the beach. It was a lot windier today so the trees whooshed above us as we ran. Now that she was getting used to running every day, it seemed a lot easier for her than for me. She took longer strides than me, and I even counted that I had to take twelve strides when she just had to take ten. But even though running was harder for me than for her, there was no way I wanted her to know that, so I just tried my best to pretend running was just as easy for me as her. I liked telling her lots of stuff I was really feeling, but I didn’t want to tell her THAT, that she was better at something than I was.

We’d all gone to Provincetown yesterday afternoon, which mom liked to call “P-town”, because she LOVED nicknames, not just for people but for some places too. I took Molly to my favorite store there, which was the army surplus store. We had fun trying on all the different hats and helmets and gas masks. They even had old hand grenades that wouldn’t blow up anymore, and I used the money mom had given me to buy something to buy one of those. I knew all my friends and all the kids on our street would think it was super cool and think that I was super cool too for having it.

When I told mom what I got, I don’t think she liked it, but she just told me to keep it in the paper bag from the store and put it in the car and not carry it around. Mom just had three rules that I was supposed to follow. No tackle football. Come home when the street lights come on. And no guns, not even toy guns. Though if I made a gun out of Tinker Toys, which was usually a raygun, that was okay, and I guess a hand grenade was okay because it wasn’t a GUN, but it was a WEAPON.

I didn’t like having to follow ANY rules, because I didn’t want other people, specially grownups, to be in charge of me. But after getting smashed into by Mike and the wind knocked out of me, I was mostly okay with the no tackle football. And coming home when the streetlights came on made sense, and was okay because it meant that if I did that, I could do whatever else I wanted to, by myself even.

The toy gun one used to be a problem at Allmendinger park when a bunch of boys decided to play soldiers together and wanted us all to go home and get our toy guns. If I brought a Tinker Toy gun, they might think that was lame or even think I was a sissy. But when we played soldiers together like that, usually Paul was playing too, and HIS mom let him have toy guns, and he always had an extra one he would bring for me.

But now on this windy day with the sky all blue with no clouds, Molly and I had our time alone together at the beach before mom, Molly’s mom and David came in the car. We sat in our same spot, me on the left side like usual and her on the right. Molly’s hair blew in the wind under her Tigers baseball cap. My hair wasn’t long enough to blow, but my face and arms felt cool from the wind.

“Remember when you came over to my Burns Park house before you moved there and we went to see the Rock?” Molly asked. I nodded.

“We walked by my new house”, I said, “Before I knew it was going to be my new house, but something felt strange about it, like it was important.”

“Yeah”, she said, “And that was pretty strange too, but remember when we were at the Rock and that old guy got mad at us?”

“Yeah”, I said, “Because he said we liked communists. We didn’t even know what communists were.” I remembered how scared we both were, but I didn’t say anything about being scared because I was a big kid now.

“Remember how scared we were?” she asked. So I nodded even though I wouldn’t have said anything about it.

She said, “I asked my mom what a communist was and she said it was someone who believed in socialism like she did but not democracy, that believed in sharing but not voting.”

“Your mom and my mom used to argue about that”, I said, “My mom said socialism wasn’t realistic in our country.”

“I remember”, Molly said, “They always argued about that kind of politics stuff. My mom liked Humphrey and Johnson, and your mom liked Kennedy.”

“My mom LOVED Kennedy”, I said, “She cried when he got shot and died. I remember when we heard about it on the car radio and dad was really worried about it and about her, so we drove right home.”

“My mom was sad too”, Molly said, “Though she said Johnson is doing a better job with Civil Rights.”

“My dad took me to see Kennedy in the middle of the night”, I said, “When he was running for president, he spoke at the Michigan Union. That was really neat. We went and saw Nixon too, at the train station during the daytime, but my mom and dad didn’t like him as much.”

“Yeah”, she said, “My mom called him ‘Tricky Dick’.”

“And then that Goldwater guy”, I said, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.”

“Yeah”, she said, “My mom thought he was really bad, and would start World War Three. She doesn’t think there should be any wars, except maybe World War Two, because that was against Hitler and he was really bad.”

“My mom doesn’t like the Vietnam War”, I said, “And she was worried that my dad might have to go and fight in it because he’s still in the Army Reserves.”

“What are ‘reserves’?” she asked.

“I think that’s when you’re kind of still in the army”, I said, “But only for part of the time, but you might have to fight if there’s a war.”

Molly looked out at the ocean, her eyes squinting from the wind. “Would you want to fight in a war?” she asked, “If it was a good war like World War Two? You always liked playing with toy soldiers, and pretending to be soldiers with other kids in the park, and you like all those war games.” I didn’t expect her to ask me that, but I guess that was one of those that mom would say was a “good question”.

“I don’t know”, I said, “I think wars are interesting, and in the games I like all the strategy and moving armies around on the mapboard, and how you use the rules and the charts to pretend like it’s real. And it was fun playing soldiers with other kids in the park because it was like being on the same team together and like what my dad did in the war. But I don’t think I’d want to fight in a real war like that new Vietnam one.” But then I was thinking that she also liked playing with toy soldiers.

“You liked playing with toy soldiers too”, I said, “And you liked pretending that your bedroom in your old Prescott house was a fort and we were shooting cannons at cars. So do YOU want to fight in real wars?” It was kind of strange talking to her that way, like I was arguing with her like mom liked to argue with her mom or her friends at parties.

“C’mon silly”, she said, turning to look right at me, her hair blowing across her face, “I’m a girl. Girls don’t fight in real wars!” Even though she was right, it still made me kind of worried like were we on DIFFERENT teams now, me on the boys team and her on the girls one. But then I think she noticed me looking worried.

“I don’t mean you’re REALLY silly”, she said, “My new friends and me always say stuff like that to each other.” I nodded, since I guess that made sense.

“I just don’t want there to be a girls team against the boys team”, I said. Even though I’d thought about it a lot, I couldn’t remember ever saying it before to anyone else. She wrinkled her nose and looked worried as she thought about that, and I remembered when she was little and used to put the tip of her thumb in her mouth when she was thinking and worrying about something.

“Well”, she said, “As boys and girls get older they start liking each other more and become boyfriends and girlfriends. That seems like they’re on the same team.”

“I don’t know”, I said, “I listen to all those Beatles songs about having trouble with their girlfriends and they don’t sound like they’re on the same team.”

“But when kids get grown up enough they get married”, she said, “THAT seems like being on the same team.”

“I don’t know”, I said again, watching bigger waves than there had been before rolling up and crashing down, “My mom and dad got divorced. THAT didn’t seem like being on the same team. Your mom and regular dad did too.”

“That’s true”, she said, thinking and worrying again, “But my stepdad and my mom are more like friends, so THEY seem like they’re on the same team.” I nodded, thinking about that. And then I thought of those words that grownups often said when they had trouble figuring stuff out.

“It’s complicated”, I said.

Molly looked at me and laughed through her nose. “You sound like my mom”, she said. I laughed through my nose too back at her and we both stopped talking and looked out at the ocean for a while.

“Well”, she said, still looking out ahead, “You always said that when all of us grow up, we were going to do things differently. We’ll all be on the same team, right?”. She looked at me like she expected me to think so too.

I was worried now, after mom and dad’s divorce, all those songs about girlfriend and boyfriend problems, and school always seeming to be girls against boys, that maybe we wouldn’t be on the same team. But I nodded, because I still hoped.

A car horn honked three times behind us and we turned around to see our car in the parking lot. Mom was driving and waving out the side window at us. Molly’s mom, sitting on the other side of the front seat, stuck her hand out her side window and waved too. They parked and the two of them and David came over to where we were sitting.

Mom looked at us then looked at Molly’s mom and said, “They’re sitting in the exact same place as yesterday Joan, like two seagulls guarding their perch, or two old souls.” The wind blew her big hat and she had to grab the top of it so it didn’t fly off her head.

“I think you’re right Jane”, Molly’s mom said, holding her own big hat, “I think you’re right.”

Mom looked out at the ocean. “Now THAT’S a good stiff breeze, and looks like the surf’s up”, she said, “Should be some good body surfing boys and girls!”

“Should we be concerned about riptides?” Molly’s mom asked, looking worried.

“I asked Gracie our landlady about that the other day”, mom said, “And she thought they weren’t that bad at this beach. But let me wade in and I’ll tell you for sure.” We all headed down the dune to the beach, Molly and I carrying the cooler together.

It WAS really good for body surfing, and Molly, David and I did it for a couple hours. We knew to leave our t-shirts on so we didn’t get too sunburned.
***4
It was the fourth day that Molly and I ran together to the beach. There was no wind today but it was hotter and your skin got all sweaty really quick, what mom would say was “stickier”. As we ran our t-shirts got wet with sweat and I had to try to wipe it off from getting in my eyes. I still felt like I had to run harder than she did, with her long legs and long strides. I was glad when we finally made it to the beach parking lot. We sat in our same spots on the top of the dune with our view way off to the edge of the ocean and sky.

“So are you glad you’re done with elementary school?” Molly asked, using the sleeve of her t-shirt to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. I nodded.

“First grade at Bach was okay”, I said, “I got to learn how to read, and I had some new school friends that I didn’t know already and we got to hang out at recess, which was fun. And my first grade teacher was pretty neat because she seemed more like an older kid than a regular grownup and at least sometimes she let us decide what we could work on in class, like dinosaurs. But after that, it was all regular grownup teachers who were in charge of you all the time and made you do all this stuff that wasn’t much fun, specially homework. I mean I liked reading books, ones I got at the library or even those text books, because they told you about stuff maybe you didn’t already know.”

“Actually”, I said, “The thing I liked best about my last two years here at Burns Park were those soccer games before school in the morning and after lunch. There were never any grownups in charge of us and we figured out our own rules. I wish all of school had been like that.”

“Yeah”, she said, “Those were neat for you, though they didn’t let us girls play unless we pretended to be boys and no one found out and told on us.”

“Yeah well”, I said, “That was the one bad part I guess.”

“I liked learning how to read at school too”, Molly said, “And reading all those books. And recess. I liked my first grade teacher Mrs Morgan and my third grade teacher Miss Valentino at Burns Park. They were both really nice. Then we moved and I went to Mack for fourth grade, but I didn’t know anyone and the other girls all knew each other. But one of those girls was Patty and she became my new best friend. She and I did everything together, kind of like YOU and I used to do when we were little. We both like reading, riding our bikes, and sports, though most sports we had to play with boys because they don’t have girls teams. But we both went to the YMCA and did basketball and volleyball with other girls. And Patty really likes running, so I’d run with her pretty much every morning before school. Even a mile like you run here.”

“So in your schools”, I asked, “Did it seem like the girls and boys were on different teams against each other all the time?”

“You mean in sports?” she asked.

“Not sports”, I said, “Just everything at school. Like the girls only talked with other girls and were always trying to do better than the boys on tests, and would only play with other girls at recess.”

“Oh yeah”, she said, “I never thought of it like teams but I think you’re right. The boys were always trying to embarrass us or get us in trouble.” She thought about that for a moment and then said, “But wasn’t the park like that too?”

“Well yeah, kind of”, I said, “But sometimes girls at Allmendinger Park would let me play what they were playing as long as it was just me and not a bunch of boys. And if girls wanted to join us playing imagination stuff on the monkey bars or in the lilac bushes, boys, at least me and my friends, would let them.

“Yeah”, she said, “But you were different. You weren’t like a regular boy.” I looked at her like that was interesting but I was also a little worried about what she was saying.

“It’s not like you were a sissy or anything”, she said, shaking her head, “But you never really cared if someone was a boy or a girl. I think that’s why we could be best friends.”

“And when we got naked together up in my room when we were little”, she said, looking out at the ocean but not at me, “I’ve taken showers in the girls’ locker room at the Y with Patty, and other girls on our teams, but there is no way in hell I would do anything like that with a regular boy. But I thought doing it with you was neat, though I know it was bad too!”

“It WAS neat”, I said, also just looking out at the ocean, “Even though it was bad too.” With what we were talking about it seemed better to talk without looking at each other, less embarrassing.

“Did you ever do that with any other girls?” she asked. She just looked at me enough to see my head shaking.

I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking about back in third grade when I told my school friend Joey that I’d “pull down my pants” for that girl Mary in our class, and then he told on me in class when we were all standing by the door waiting to go out to recess, and Mrs Rodney called me up to her desk later to tell ME that I shouldn’t have said that. It was JOEY that said that, at least to everyone else. It wasn’t my fault that he blabbed to everyone what I had told him in private. And after that, I felt like I wasn’t a regular kid, but some kind of pervert.

If there was anybody in the whole world I could tell about it, it would be Molly and it would be right now. But she had already said I wasn’t like a “regular boy”, so I was afraid that telling her this might make HER think I was some sort of pervert too. That would be the WORST thing in the whole WORLD, if Molly thought that about me. So that was the one secret I could NEVER TELL ANYONE ELSE. Not even Mike OR Molly. No one else would ever know that maybe perverted part of me. I wasn’t happy with that, but at least I was safe. And I wondered if that was why I didn’t even want my old Bach School friends to come to my birthday party, since they knew this bad secret.

“Did you ever get naked with other boys?” she asked.

“Uhhh”, I said, because I had, but wasn’t sure I wanted to tell her that either. But she looked at me, and we had spent enough time together these last few days so that she was able to tell what I was thinking again, even though I couldn’t always tell what SHE was thinking.

“So you have”, she said, grinning a little bit, “You were one of those boys that would get naked in the lilac bushes in Allmendinger Park. I wondered about that.”

“How did you know about that?” I asked, “You didn’t even live there anymore.”

“I know”, she said, “But Marybeth told me about it when she came to one of my birthday parties. You know she lives right across the street from those bushes?” I couldn’t believe that Marybeth saw us doing that in the lilac bushes. Now I would be too embarrassed to ever talk to her again!

“Did she say she saw me?” I asked. Molly shook her head as she looked out at the ocean.

“She just said that boys got naked in the lilac bushes by her house sometimes”, she said, “So I figured you probably did.” I worried again that Molly might think I was some sort of a pervert.

“Well”, I said, “I only did that one time.” And I decided I better not tell her about that other time that I invited those other two boys over to my house and we took our clothes off in our basement walk-in closet and then we laid on top of each other. I really wanted us to talk about something different, talk about girls versus boys.

“So I want boys and girls to be on the same team against the grownups”, I said, “Not against each other.”

“Yeah, I know”, she said, like I didn’t need to tell her that, “You ALWAYS thought that! But most boys aren’t like you. Maybe Paul or Ricky or your friend Mike, but not most of them.”

I looked at her. It was worrying me thinking that I might not be like most boys. I didn’t want other boys to think I was some kind of freak or pervert or sissy. Specially cuz I was gonna go to junior high and there would be all those kids I didn’t know and I would be the youngest. She could tell I was worried.

“You’re not BAD different”, she said, shaking her head, “You’re GOOD different.” I guess it was better being good different than bad different, but it was still DIFFERENT, and I was worried that would be a problem!

A car horn honked three short times behind us, and I recognized it this time as our car. I stood up and turned to look and then Molly did too. I was happy to stop talking and hopefully also stop thinking about this stuff we’d been talking about. We walked towards the car. Mom looked out the driver’s window with sunglasses on and her big hat.

“It was already starting to get hot and sticky in the cottage”, she said, “I opened all the windows, but we may want to hang out at the beach all day. Joan and I brought sandwiches for lunch in the cooler along with the usual drinks. Can I trouble you two strapping young people to get it out of the back and haul it down to the beach?”

“Sure Jane”, Molly said, sounding like an older kid or even a grownup. If I had said “sure mom”, it wouldn’t have sounded the same.

***

It was more of a regular day today with the usual ocean breeze and not so “sticky” when Molly and I ran to the beach. It was the last day before we headed home, and after lunch today, mom had made a plan to take us all to dig for clams at this other beach on the bay side just before low tide, which the lady that owned the cottages said was the best time to find them. I felt sad that Molly and I would go back to our regular lives and probably only see each other once in a while, when one of our moms had a party or we had a birthday.

“I’ll miss running to the beach with you every morning”, I managed to say, though I looked out at the ocean and not at her. But even that felt strange. I couldn’t EVER remember saying ANYTHING to Molly that I liked her or liked being with her. Back when we were younger and best friends, we just KNEW it I guess, without having to say it.

“I’ll miss you too, Coop”, she said, nodding and also looking out at the ocean, “But if you promise to invite me to your birthday party, I promise to invite you to mine, even if you’re the only boy there.”

She thought about that for a minute and then said, “But maybe I’ll invite Ricky and Paul too. My girl friends will think it’s strange, but too bad.”

“Okay, I promise”, I said, feeling sad and happy at the same time.

“There was that neat girl at your birthday party”, she said, “But that was a long time ago so I don’t even remember her name. We played your hockey game against Mike and that other guy down in the basement while you were upstairs.”

“That was Abby”, I said, “She lives across the street.”

“Is she going to Tappan too?” Molly asked. I nodded.

“She could be your new girl across the street”, she said, still looking out at the ocean and the puffy white clouds that looked like they were sailing in the air above it.

“I don’t know”, I said, “Might be dangerous.” Molly wrinkled her nose thinking and nodded her head slowly.

“Yeah…”, she said. She picked up a small stone and threw it down the slope of the dune. We were both quiet for a minute, not knowing what to say next.

“So what music groups do you like?” Molly finally asked, “I know you and David like the Beatles, because you have all their records.” I was glad we were talking about something else.

“Well, not ALL their records”, I said, “But yeah, we do have a lot. I like them, of course, but I also like the Association, though I don’t have any of their records, or the Beach Boys.”

“I’ve got two Beach Boys records”, she said, “And one Mamas and the Papas, but not as many Beatles as you guys have.”

“And I like all the Motown groups, of course”, I said.

“Of course”, she said back.

“Though we don’t have any of their albums”, I said, “I just hear all those on the radio or play them on the jukeboxes.”

“Who do you like best?” She asked.

“I don’t know”, I said, “It’s hard to decide between the Supremes and the Vandellas, maybe the Supremes.”

“I know”, she said, “The Supremes are nicer and the Vandellas are tougher, so I guess I like the Vandellas best.”

“And I can’t decide”, she said, “Between Smokey Robinson or Stevie Wonder. Smokey’s songs make you cry but Stevie’s make you want to dance. And the Four Tops are great too.”

“For me maybe Smokey”, I said, “‘Tracks of My Tears’, but Stevie is great too AND the Four Tops.”

“Remember?” she asked, “When we were going to Saugatuck and we were at that restaurant and we each picked a secret song on the jukebox and you and I both picked the same one, ‘Heatwave’?”

“Yeah, I remember”, I said, smiling now, “We were always thinking the same things back then.” She nodded.

“We were”, she said, still nodding, “I liked that. I liked doing stuff with you. Sometimes we didn’t even need to talk because we already knew what the other one was thinking.”

“Yeah”, I said, noticing that I sounded a little sad. She noticed too.

“So maybe we ARE more different now”, she said, “But that’s okay too I guess. I mean I play with girls and you play with boys so we’re going to be different now, right?” I wrinkled my nose and nodded.

“When I was little”, she said, “And you and Paul were my main friends, I figured all boys were going to be like you two. But they weren’t… they were… I don’t know how to say it…” I remembered what my Bach School friend Amanda used to say about most boys.

“Stupid?” I asked.

She looked up at the sky, thinking, and said, “Well, maybe something like that. They just seem to have their own ideas all the time, and they don’t seem to want to know mine.”

“But what were we talking about?” she asked.

“Music”, I said, “What we liked.” She started nodding and I could tell she was thinking.

“I just like having so much of OUR music around”, she said, “All the groups and bands I like and then all the others, that I don’t know about yet, but also sound good. I pretend they’re singing to me, trying to tell me things.” I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I was figuring she was right.

“Yeah”, I said, “They’re telling us what we should be like when we’re older and we’re in charge, instead of all those crazy grownups, and what we should be doing.”

“Yeah”, she said, “When WE’RE the grownups and WE’RE in charge.” But that didn’t sound right to me.

“Well”, I said, “I don’t think we’ll ever BE ‘grownups’ like them. I mean, yeah, we’ll be GROWN UP, but we’ll be completely different.”

“Really”, she said, “You think so?”

“Yeah”, I said, feeling mad even, “If we become like them, that would be totally stupid!”

“Hmm”, she said, “I don’t know.”

We both sat quietly for a minute, and looked out at the ocean. It just always pounded its waves on the shore, never changing. I wondered if she was thinking that now I was one of those boys she had been talking about, with his own ideas but not interested in hers.

“What do you think?” I asked. She smiled and looked at me.

“Well I don’t know for sure”, she said, “But when we’re older, we’ll be the moms and dads and the teachers, not kids anymore. There’ll be new kids growing up and they might just think WE’RE the stupid grownups.” I really hadn’t thought about that but that did make sense, but it also worried me. We were quiet again as we both looked out at the ocean, pounding forever against the shore.

Then there were the familiar three honks from mom in our car.

***

We finally headed back home after three weeks at the cottage by Longnook Beach. Molly and her mom left too, but they went to Boston to spend the weekend there, before driving back to Ann Arbor. Mom drove straight home, though we did spend the night at a motel. It was that same motel in Niagara Falls we stayed at on the trip out, but we didn’t go to the Falls this time and just got dinner and breakfast the next morning at the little restaurant place across the street. “Let’s just keep it real simple and get home!” mom said.

We were all sad that we were leaving the Cape and going home. Mom really didn’t like having to do all that driving herself, saying it was no way to travel, which made me think about dad not being with us and that made me feel extra sad. I sat in the front seat again pretty much the whole way and it was my job to navigate, but also to try to find radio stations with music, news, or talking about interesting stuff. David sat in the back with his sketch pad and drew stuff.

I WAS super happy that we had gone, and super happy that Molly had been there too that last week. She had been my best friend since I could remember when I was a little kid, and had been my best friend until two summers ago when we moved to Burns Park and she moved across town again. And I had been worried that I hadn’t seen her since my tenth birthday party, and she may not even like me anymore, since I guess I wasn’t sure I even liked me anymore.

But I was so happy that it turned out that even though we weren’t BEST friends anymore, we were still GOOD friends. She ran to the beach with me every morning, and we sat on the sand dunes and talked as we looked out at the ocean and waited for David, mom and her mom to come in the car so we could all go swim. When we were little we had thought that since we were best friends, we always wanted to be the same. Now we were older and had done different stuff, so we weren’t the same anymore. But that was okay, because we still liked hanging out together, and we could tell each other things that we couldn’t tell anyone else.

A chapter in my life was ending. Hell, it felt bigger than just a chapter ending, if felt like a whole book was ending. The story of a kid having a regular family with a regular mom and a dad and we all lived in the same house and nobody thought we were strange. Now it felt like we were becoming something really different, and I was becoming something different too.

And now everything was going to be even MORE different because I was going to junior high at Tappan in a few days and there would be like a THOUSAND kids there, and since I was a year younger than my classmates, because I skipped kindergarten, I might be the youngest kid in the WHOLE SCHOOL. I would have EIGHT different teachers instead of one, and maybe different kids in all those eight classes.

I mean I didn’t like school anyway, because there was always a grownup there, the teacher, in charge of you all the time, except maybe at recess, which we didn’t have anymore. But I had gotten used to having that one teacher each year, and figuring out how to make them think I was a really good student, so they didn’t try to bother me too much. And since there were the same kids in my class all the time, I’d get them to like me, at least most of the other boys, so they wouldn’t try to tease me or think I was strange. But now it seemed like school would be way more complicated, and at the same time my family was getting way more complicated too.

I never liked the words “child” or “children”. I can’t remember ever saying either of those words my whole life since I started talking. When grownups used them, instead of saying “kids”, it was usually because they thought we were bad, or stupid, or they wanted to be in charge of us.

If any grownups thought I had been a “child”, there was no way in hell I was one anymore!

[End]