Once school let out for the summer I started working the same shifts as Corina. We went to the same high school, but before I got the job at MJ’s Grocery I had never noticed her. She was going to be a senior next fall, a year ahead of me. One morning I was stocking bags of dog food in the pet care aisle when she came in for her shift. She was carrying a little purse with green flowers on it and her brown hair was in a ponytail. She walked up behind me.

“Those aren’t too heavy for you, are they?” she asked, smiling.

I grinned. I was sixteen and scrawny like I was thirteen. I still only shaved once a month. My dad was thirty-eight and couldn’t grow a beard, so I wasn’t optimistic. The bags weren’t too heavy though.

Then she put her hand on my head. I was startled, but I hoped that it didn’t show. “Your hair’s getting so long,” she said. “Aren’t you going to cut it?” Her fingers were soft and warm. The aisle smelled like dog food and cat litter, but close up she smelled like green apple flavored gum. The next day I went to the barber and got most of my hair shaved off.

Corina a day later told me I looked cute before walking away.

Business was slow during the weekday afternoons. One day my friends, Todd and Spencer, came in and bought cans of Monster and bags of M&M’s. They paid at Corina’s register, and I stood up there talking, counting down the minutes in my head until my shift ended.

“When do you get off?” Spencer asked. He was already halfway through his bag of M&M’s. Todd and Spencer both worked at the Denny’s by the mall, but they called in sick all of the time so the manager only put them on the schedule for one or two days a week.

“When are we going to the swimming hole?” Todd asked before I could answer Spencer. They looked at each other and laughed.

They kept asking me to go to the swimming hole at the river. There was a ledge of rocks twenty feet up that kids dove off of into water. I’d never done it before, and they knew that. I could barely swim, but they didn’t know that.

“Oh, the swimming hole,” Corina said. “I haven’t been there in forever.”

“You should come with us,” Todd said.

Corina looked over at me and I nodded, feeling a sensation in my throat that was numb and burning at the same time. “Yeah, definitely,” I said. “That’d be cool.”

I overheard her talking to an old woman, Irene, who lived down the street and came in a few times a week. They were talking about this guy Corina knew, Derek, who was in Iraq. At first I thought maybe Derek was her cousin, but then she told me her friend Derek was coming home on leave. “He’s in the army. Well, the National Guard,” she said.  “I’m so excited. I e-mailed him a lot while he was over there, but I haven’t seen him in forever.”

I was about to ask her a question, like how long he was coming home for, but then she asked: “Are we still going swimming? Or were you guys just being nice inviting me?”

“We’re going on Wednesday when I get off of work,” I said. We put each other’s numbers in our cell phones so I could call her.

That night I lay in bed and thought about her. My mom turned off the air conditioning at night to save money, and it was hot in my room. I closed my eyes and pictured Corina and I holding hands. We were in a car driving somewhere on the highway. It was autumn and all of the trees by the highway were red and orange and yellow. A sea of them in a valley below. I was driving. My car was much cleaner and nicer than normal. In my chest I had a sensation like I was floating. The tips of our fingers were touching. She was saying how beautiful it was outside. We were hungry and it was late afternoon. In a little while we would stop and eat. She looked perfect.

On Wednesday morning Derek came to see her with a bunch of balloons. I was down on my knees stocking the candy bars in the front, and I knew who he was as soon as he got out of his car. He was wearing camouflage with the tiny squares on it. I saw him pulling the balloons out of the backseat of his car and walking across the sunny parking lot, the balloons bumping together gently. They were all different colors—red and blue and green and yellow. He had so many of them that they almost didn’t fit through the door. For a second one of them got stuck in the frame, and it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, that they’d all pop. But then he pulled the balloons free.

Corina didn’t see him until he opened the door. She jumped up and down by her register and ran over to him. They hugged. She was breathing heavily like she’d just won a race, and her eyes were shiny. Derek’s cheeks were chubby, and he was barely taller than I was. He had a sunburn. His haircut reminded me of my chemistry teacher.

“Oh my God,” Corina said. He had his arm around her and she had her hands near her face like someone in a movie trying to convey happiness and shock. “I didn’t know you were coming. This is crazy.”

“Did I surprise you?” he asked, raising one eyebrow. His voice sounded like gravel.

We went to the swimming hole when I got off that afternoon. Todd and Spencer were there and Todd’s cousin, Mary, who was in our grade. I’d known her since we were little kids. Todd said he had sent Corina a text message asking her if she wanted to come. I didn’t even know Todd had her number. Spencer had a cast on his wrist. He fractured a bone trying to do a break dancing move in his garage.

“You’re going swimming with that?” I asked as we walked along the rocky path to the river.

“Yeah, why not?” he asked.

“It’s going to smell like a dead horse’s ass,” I said. I knew because my little brother Seth had broken his arm playing football last fall and then gotten his cast wet in the shower.

Mary, who was walking next to me, laughed. “He already smells like a dead horse’s ass,” she whispered, getting close so I could feel her breath.

On the bank, I took my shirt off and my cell phone beeped as I was taking it out of the pocket of my shorts. It was a message from Corina. Sorry I can’t come swimming, it said. Derek’s taking me out to dinne. Maybe next time. The r was missing from the end of the word dinner, like her thumb had been moving too fast in her eagerness to get back to Derek. I turned off my phone and put it on the ground with my shirt.

“Come on,” Todd said to me. “You have to go first.”

“He’s never jumped before,” Spencer told Mary.

Mary made a face like this was strange, but then she smiled. “It’s not as scary as it looks,” she said.

“I’m not scared,” I said.

We climbed the path to the top of the rocks. The four of us were in a line, Mary in front of me. Her back was skinny and tan, and all the ridges of her spine were visible. I thought that maybe when we went to Spencer’s house later that night I would put my arm around Mary while we were on the couch. Maybe we would go into the guest bedroom and I would put my hand up her shirt while we kissed.

I walked out to the edge of the rock, and they were yelling at me to hurry up. I looked at the muddy water below. I closed my eyes. Maybe Mary and I would drive somewhere in my car, to get fast food or ice cream. But as I jumped, I knew that even if that happened, there would be only one name I was thinking. I knew it as my feet hit water.