The moment Mum called me on Saturday morning that I had a phone call, I knew the only person who could be calling me was Nathan. Just because we talked yesterday at the park doesn’t mean I want to talk to him over the phone. I still hate him even if I’m allowing him to take me out.
“What are you doing today?” Nathan asks me.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, my uncle is the manager at Wet ‘n’ Wild, and I was wondering if you would like to come to the park with me?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Seriously? A water park?”
“Yeah, it will be great.”
“I hate Wet ‘n’ Wild.”
“Okay, well, have you ever been there?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know if you will hate it?”
“I don’t like water parks.”
“Come on, Alex. It will be fun. It will just be you and me.”
I roll my eyes. Thankfully Lindsay was spending the day with Emilynn, so she couldn’t hear my conservation at all. “Nathan, just because you asked me out for Monday does not mean I want to spend the weekend with you either.”
“I know. Let’s not make it a date. We will make it like a friends’ day out all the time.”
“Why can’t you go with Eric?”
“He is busy today.”
I sigh. “Fine. I will go. But if anyone from school is there, we pretend we aren’t there together.”
I feel his smile through the phone. Even if I couldn’t see it, it makes my heart jump for joy a little. I put my hand over my heart. Is it supposed to feel like that?
I hang up the phone and promised him I will meet him at the park. I didn’t want anyone seeing me in broad daylight getting into the car with him.
“Are you going out?” Mum wanted to know.
“Yeah. I will be back later. I don’t know how long I will be.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to the park.”
“Are you meeting with Nathan?”
I feel nausea. “No.”
I run up to my room before Mum could ask me anymore questions. She didn’t need to know if I was hanging with Nathan. She will think I’m going on my first date and she will make a fuss over it. I didn’t see what the fuss about hanging out with a guy. I didn’t even like him anyway. I was going to spend the day with him. I hope that’s what we’re doing. He better not try anything on me.
I search through my draws for my swim suit. I can’t believe I’m agreeing to do this. I don’t remember the last time I even wore a swim suit. I haven’t been swimming for years. I hate the water. I search through the draws, not remembering where I put it. Maybe if I tell Nathan that I no longer have a swim suit, he might change his mind about the water park.
I sneak downstairs and grab a beach towel from the closet in the hallway. I then make my way out onto the street and towards the park.
I didn’t have to wait for Nathan for long. He pulls up on the side of the road five minutes after I arrive. He smiles when he sees me, unlocking the door. I climb in.
“Just so you know, I don’t have a swim suit,” I tell him.
“That’s okay. We can get one at the park.”
My heart sank in my chest. I guess I really don’t have a choice about going to the park.
“Listen, I will pay it for you,” Nathan offers. “I’m paying our entry and I can for the swim suit too.”
I stare at him with my mouth open wide, shocked by his words. “You don’t need to do that.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
He pulls onto the road and begin driving.
“Thanks for inviting me. No one has ever inviting me anywhere before,” I admitted.
“Well, can you blame them for not inviting you? I mean, everyone is afraid of you. Plus you say you hate everything so maybe they figured you will hate whatever they ask you to do.”
He has a point on that. It doesn’t really bother me when no one asks me if they want me to do something with them. I prefer to be alone anyway.
“How come you aren’t afraid of me?” I ask.
He turns to look at me for a second and then turn back to the road. “I don’t know. There is just something different about you that I like. I think there is a lot more to you than what people think. They know you as the girl who hates everything and everyone. I think there is more than just that.”
I didn’t know what to say that. Is it supposed to be a compliment? Or is that something all guys will say to get you to like them? I can’t tell.
We find a parking spot and then walk towards the entry. I feel like being sick. I look around me, hoping not see anyone I know from school. I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard someone call out the name Lindsay, thinking that my sister was here. What do I do if it was her? But when I look in the direction to see who it was, it turned out to be a guy name Lindsay. I swear that name only suits as a girl’s name, not a guy’s.
Nathan pays our entry and then we walk to the gift shop. I look around the aisles at the different swim suits – board shorts, tankinis, and bikinis. I’m definitely not wearing a bikini. I hate them. I can’t stand to wear them. It makes me feel self-conscious wearing it. Besides, I don’t want Nathan or other guys to be staring at my body.
I pick out a dark purple tankini. Nathan pays for it and then tells me to go try it on. I do. I feel nervous as I strip out of my clothes and into the swim suit. I feel naked wearing it.
I step out of the change room. Nathan is waiting for me, and when he sees me, I wasn’t sure if I should slap him or something. He scans his eyes up and down my body, making me feel uncomfortable for wearing this. I shouldn’t be wearing this. I try to cover myself with my arms.
“I look terrible,” I say.
Nathan shakes his head. “No. You look good in it. It suits you.”
Before I can decide that this is a stupid idea and to go and get change, Nathan grabs my wrist and pulls me along with him. I panic as we walk pass people, and went to the locker we hire to place our stuff inside.
“You do realise how much I hate you for doing this to me?” I tell him. I want to feel anger, but for some reason I can’t feel it. It’s like Nathan has taken it away from me. Normally I wouldn’t have agreed to be here with him. I would have hung up the phone, but I didn’t. I let him lead me here.
What is wrong with me?
“Well, I don’t see you doing anything to stop me.” He winks his eye at me and smiles.
I feel butterflies in my stomach. I put my hand over it, never getting this feeling before.
“Why did you bring me here in the first place?” I want to know.
Nathan shrugs his shoulders. “I just thought it would be fun to bring you here.”
“It’s not even summer.”
“I know. It’s the beginning of autumn, but it’s still warm until next month. And I thought I could get to know you a bit.”
“We agreed to do something on Monday night, not today.” I want to draw. I need to draw. I can’t be here with Nathan. What will people say if they see me with him?
“I know that’s what we agreed to do.”
“Then why did you change the plans?”
“I didn’t. I just thought today was a nice day and we could do something together.”
“I don’t want us to do anything together.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s what you’re going to say once we start to have fun.”
I was going to tell him that I don’t like to have fun when he takes off his t-shirt, showing off his six-pack abs and muscles. I couldn’t help but stare at him. He put his shirt in the locker and then pulls out a bottle of sunscreen, asking me if I want some. I hate sunscreen. I don’t believe it even works because you can still get burnt with it on. I let him squirt the cream onto my hand, and I rub it onto my arms and face. Nathan does the same, and I can’t but watch as he rubs the cream onto his body.
“You’re blushing.”
I snap my eyes away from his chest and look up at him. “What? No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You look cute when you blush.”
“Don’t call me cute.”
He chuckles. “Sorry. Come on, let’s go.”
He grabs my wrist, but I quickly push him away.
“Rule number one. Do not touch me unless I tell you to,” I warn him.
He nods. “Okay. Come on. What slide would you like to go on?”
“None.”
“How about I choose something and then you can pick the next one?”
I agree to allow him to pick the first slide. He decides the Tropical Cyclone is what we should go down first. I wasn’t sure on the whole idea with it because I had to slide down with Nathan. The idea of having his body pressed up against me terrified me. I couldn’t go down it with him. I want to go down the slide on my own, but I know he will want me to go with him. The next slide we go to, I will make sure you go down the slide yourself.
We stand in the line to go up to the slide. It’s long. I hate it how it’s long and feels like it isn’t moving at all. How can people stand to go to these places and put up with the long lines?
“Remind me to kill you later once you drop me home,” I say to Nathan. There are at least ten people in front of us now.
“Why is that?” he asks, turning to face me. He doesn’t look scared at all.
“For making me come up here.”
“But you’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”
“Not while I’m standing in this line.”
“Yeah, I know. The lines are the worst, but I promise you will have fun. Um, would you like to go in front of me? That way I’m behind you when we go down?”
I nod and he moves aside so I can stand in front of him. After five minutes or more it was our turn. Nathan sits down on the plastic float first and then I sit in front of him. His chest is pressed against my back. I panic.
“You guys ready?” the guy working the slides asks us.
Nathan answers yes. I just nod, although I didn’t really feel ready. I feel like I’m making a mistake for being here with him. I hang onto the float, preparing myself. The worker pushes us down the tunnel. The water pushes the float along.
“Get ready,” Nathan says to me.
The float began picking up speed the further we go down the tunnel, turning sharply on the corners. Nathan screams with excitement as I just couldn’t decide whether or not if I should scream or not. In my head I’m screaming at myself to join in the fun with Nathan, but my body just didn’t know how to respond to it.
We finally come into the light, landing in the pool beneath the tunnel. Nathan is still screaming, and it made me feel like a complete fool for not acting the way he is. I look around and see everyone around me having fun. In a nearby pool I see a young girl with her father, splashing each other in the pool. Why couldn’t I have fun like them?
“So what do you think?” Nathan asks as we swim out of the pool.
“I don’t know. I guess it was okay.”
“You guess? You don’t sound so convince.” He climbs out and then helps me out as well. “You mean to be jumping around with excitement. Please tell me you had a fun going down the slide. All I could hear was my own voice going down that tunnel.”
I shrug my shoulders. What do I say?
“So, what slide are we going on next?” he asks.
I look around, trying to think which one. I see a tower that was six stories high. There were different colour slides coming out in all directions. One catches my eye – a green and blue tube. It goes down and has a loop in the middle before leading the rest of the tube into the pool.
I point to it, and tell Nathan I want to go onto that one. He agrees to go and we join the line leading up to it. It takes us a while to get up there and when we do, we position ourselves on the tunnel. Nathan gets blue and I get green. I hate green.
“See you at the bottom, Alex,” he says, winking me.
I narrow my eyes at him, but not in a serious way. It was more in a joking way. “Beat me, and you’re dead.”
He pokes his tongue out at me.
The staff member tells us to go. Tucking my arms down beside me, I slide down the tunnel. The water carries me down. I want to scream. No one is here to hear me scream. It feels as half of me was telling me to have fun, and the other half is telling me I couldn’t. I can’t have fun. Not without Dad. Nothing feels right with him.
I suddenly panic. I want to get out of this. I can’t be here with Nathan anymore. I can’t have fun.
I hit the bottom of the water. I can’t breathe. I quickly resurface. I struggle to breathe.
“Yes! I won!” Nathan says as he swims over to me. “Alex, are you okay?”
I take a couple of deep breaths. “I want to go home.”
“Alex, come on. We are just having fun.”
I shove him hard in the chest. He stares at me in shock of how my behaviour suddenly changes. “Take me home!” I say through my teeth.
He nods without saying anything. We get out of the pool and walk to our lockers, grabbing our stuff. We walk to the change rooms. I strip off my wet suit and stare at it on the floor. I stand there naked, shivering a little. I try to hold the tears back, but I couldn’t hold them. They flow out. I quickly wipe them before someone hears me sobbing and knocks on the door to see if I was okay. I dry myself with the towel and then put my clothes back on.
I walk out of the change rooms and Nathan stands there waiting for me. He looks concern, like he thinks he has done something to upset me.
“Alex, if I did something to upset you, I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “We don’t need to leave.”
“I want to go home, Nathan. Don’t ask me anymore questions. Just take me home.”
He listens to me and we walk back to his car. We drive home in silence. He drops me off at the park. He says goodbye. I watch him drive away. Once he is gone, I walk home. Dereck’s car is parked on the street. What is that jerk doing here again? Doesn’t he have anything else to do with his life?
I walk inside, heading to the backyard to hang up the wet towel and swim suit. Mum and Dereck are in the kitchen, eating a sandwich. Mum asks if I want anything for lunch, but I ignore her, heading straight outside. Mum keeps the pegs in a bucket beside the clothesline. I hang up the wet stuff and head inside up, and lock myself in my room. I lie down on my bed and cry.