by Sarah Dessen
“Oh,” Clyde said. “Sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” I said quickly. “It’s kind of confusing, all of us together.”
“Clyde?” Ivy stuck her head out the door, squinting in the sunlight. “Can I get an idea of when you’ll be able to start up again? We’ve got quite a bit we’d like to cover.”
“Not too long. Gotta talk to a man about some drywall.” She looked confused, as if not sure if this was a euphemism for something. “Fifteen minutes.”
She nodded, not exactly looking pleased, and went back inside. Clyde said to me, “She’s really something, huh?”
“Exceptionally talented,” my father agreed, as if this was what he’d meant. “I saw Cooper’s Way at the Tribeca festival. Just riveting.”
My dad and Clyde just looked at him. The silence was so excruciating I finally broke it myself. “So Benji’s inside, and …”
“The spot’s in the café,” Clyde finished, turning back to the door. “No crack yet, but it’s sagging. Hate to think what’s weighing it down.”
“Either loose pipe or a leaking one,” my dad replied. “We’ll have to cut in to know for sure.”
We went in single file, Clyde and my dad first, my father and I bringing up the rear. Ivy and Theo, who were watching something on the monitor, barely glanced up. I, however, was more than aware of the oddness of this little parade.
“Watch your step through here,” Clyde said over his shoulder as we wound through the maze of cords. “Emaline’s boyfriend and his boss have the place wired up like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Boyfriend?” my father said from behind me at the exact same moment my dad, up ahead, glanced back.
“There’s Benji,” I said, loudly, like increased volume might change the subject even faster. “He’s been a big help to me today.”
Benji, who’d just stuffed a heaping forkful of pie into his mouth, chewed for a moment, then explained, “There was a towel situation. The new system involves spreadsheets and everything.”
“Really,” my father said.
“Yeah, but Emaline didn’t use it? So her sister got really mad and had to give us a refresher course.”
My father looked at me. “Sounds exciting.”
“Oh, you know the realty business,” I told him. “Never a dull moment.”
He smiled, and I felt myself relax, relieved he’d apparently let the whole boyfriend comment slide without further comment. Then I glanced at my dad. He was still looking right at me.
With a lot of loud rattling noises, Clyde dragged a ladder out from a storeroom and set it up at the end of the counter. We all watched as my dad climbed up, pulling a flashlight from his pocket once he reached the top. As he tipped his head back, examining the spot, Clyde observed from below with more attention than I’d seen from him since we’d started this whole thing.
I looked over at Theo and Ivy, wondering if they’d noticed this as well. He was crouched down, adjusting some plugs on a power strip while she sat on a dryer, studying her phone. I walked over, leaving Benji regaling my father with more towel details.
“So,” I said to Theo. “How’s it going, you think?”
“Good,” he replied. “I mean, he’s not the most cooperative subject. We knew not to expect that, though.”
“At least he’s answering the questions,” I pointed out.
“Oh, yeah. I think Ivy just needs to get some momentum with him. All these interruptions …” He looked over at my dad, on the ladder, then back at the plugs. “It just makes it hard to get a good rhythm.”
“This shouldn’t take long,” I told him. “And we’ll all be out of your hair pretty soon.”
“All of you?” He got to his feet and came closer. “Because I was thinking, you know, that maybe we could …”
“What happened to tomorrow?” I said.
He ran a hand through his hair, looking over at the counter. “Well, really, tomorrow actually starts tonight. If you actually think about it.”
“You’re messing with my demarcation,” I pointed out.
“You’re right, you’re right.” He stepped back, holding up his hands. “Sorry.”
Neither of us spoke for a second, the only sound my dad moving the ladder, triggering another round of clattering and scraping. When it was finally quiet, Theo said, “All I’m saying is that, you know, we could hang out tonight. Just as friends, at least until—”
“Midnight,” I finished for him. “And then we turn into something else, like Cinderella after the ball? Pumpkins, maybe?”
“Fine,” he said, shaking his head. “Forget it. Demarcate away. I’ll see you tomorrow, in daylight. Not a moment before.”
I smiled, stepping a little closer to him. “I didn’t say no. I just made a princess reference.”
“I have no sisters and sparse girlfriend experience,” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means,” I said, as Ivy slid off the dryer and started coming towards us, “that I might see you later.”
He smiled, surprised and pleased, at least until Ivy said, “Are we ready to shoot when he is? Because if you’re gabbing over here, we ought to be.”
“All set on this end,” Theo told her cheerfully.
“Well, that’s half the battle,” she replied, sliding her phone back into her pocket. She looked over at Clyde, standing at the base of the ladder, then at me. “How long does this sort of thing take, again?”
“Not really sure,” I told her.
She sighed loudly, then said to Theo, “Just double-check we’re set up and ready to go. We need to establish something here, and soon.”
He nodded, turning his attention back to the camera. A beat later, I heard my father say my name. He and Benji were now walking towards me. “We should be getting back the house. Thanks again for the help today.”
“No problem.” To Benji I said, “It was fun, right?”
“Totally,” he agreed. “Much better than practicing card tricks.”
My father nodded at the camera. “Impressive setup you guys have here.”
“Yep,” Ivy said, not looking up, from her perch on the dryer. “All we need is the subject.”
My father raised his eyebrows. I said, “Clyde’s not exactly running on a schedule.”
“The roof takes precedence,” Ivy added, with a loud sigh.
“It’s actually a ceiling,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.
“—send a crew by early next week to cut in, and then go from there,” I heard my dad saying, flashlight still in hand, as he and Clyde came towards us now as well. “I’d plan on redoing that entire part of the ceiling, though. And that would be the best-case scenario. Get into more structural issues and—”
“A burst pipe would be the least of my problems,” Clyde finished for him.
My dad nodded, then started out the door, but not before shooting me a look making it clear I should follow. Outside, after my father and Benji said their good-byes, he walked over to his truck and tossed the flashlight onto the passenger seat. “Did I hear you right?” he asked me. “That kid’s your boyfriend now?”
“I didn’t say that,” I pointed out. “Clyde did.”
He just looked at me. This was not his department, and we both knew it. In our house the divisions were clear: my mother handled all things relationship, menstruation, and fashion related, while his arena was oil changes, finances, and plumbing problems. But this was too big to ignore.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “It’s just been a really weird day.”
“Tell me about it.” He ran a hand over his face—up, down, then up again—another one of his end-of-workday moves. “You headed home soon? Your mom’s worried about you.”
“It’s my next stop.”
“Good.” He climbed in the truck and pulled the door shut with a bang. “I’ll see you there.”
I really had planned to go right home. But once I was in the car, I realized how badly I needed some per
spective. When I saw the boardwalk in the distance, I knew exactly where to find it.
Five minutes later, I was walking up to the ticket booth at Surfside, the rundown little amusement park that had been right on Colby’s beach since my mom was a kid. It had none of the high-tech attractions of SafariLand: no dancing or driving games, no laser tag, not even go-karts. Instead, there was just a rickety building that housed a decrepit snack bar and skeeball, duckpin bowling, and basketball tosses. Outside was a merry-go-round, a roller coaster that had been Closed for Repairs since I was in middle school, and the Ferris wheel.
When I walked up to get tickets, pulling a couple of bills from my pocket, Josh Elliott, who worked there most days, waved me off. “You know your money’s no good here, Emaline.”
“You never let me pay,” I said to him, as he grabbed a ring of keys on his way outside.
“High School Special,” he replied. Which was what he always said, even though he’d been on his second senior year when I was a freshman, and even then never graduated. “Hop on.”
I walked over to the wheel, climbed onto the bucket nearest the ground, then pulled the door shut behind me. Josh disappeared into the booth, and a moment later the engine started up and I began to rise.
There might have been more beautiful places than the top of the Surfside Ferris wheel, but I didn’t know of any. I’d always felt something magical as I got higher and higher above the boardwalk, beach, and ocean. It was like resetting myself, and I’d come here often during the last year when the stuff with my father and college was weighing heavily. It calmed me, a reminder there was something else to this world than just Colby. I always knew, logically, this was true. But some days, I needed to see it to be sure.
When I reached the highest point, Josh stopped the wheel so I could sit there for a while. At first, I traced my day from a distance, finding the Washroom, the office, Wave Nails, Big Club, Sand Dollars, Last Chance. Then I turned and looked at the ocean, amazed, as always, by this greatest of contrasts. One side was populated, housing everything, and the other, nothing but blue. In between and high above, I did all I could to soak up the stillness while it lasted.
* * *
When I knocked on the door of Sand Dollars later that night, at first there was no answer. Then, finally, the intercom—fixed, thanks to my call to maintenance—buzzed.
“Yes? Who is it?” I heard Theo say.
“Cinderella,” I answered. I heard him laugh. Then there was a buzz, and the door clicked open.
Inside, I found the entire place dark, the only light coming from the pool sconces outside. I came up the stairs, then stood for just a minute on the landing, letting my eyes adjust. Finally, I made him out, over at one of the tables, a pair of headphones around his neck.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re in the dark.”
“It’s part of the job.” There was a click and a monitor came on; now I could see him. He waved me over to where he was sitting. “Come check this out.”
I went, relieved to see no sign of Ivy. Over at the table, he moved some books off the chair beside his, then gestured for me to take a seat.
“He was a little stiff, but it was the first interview,” he said, reaching forward to the keyboard in front of him. The screen came to life before me, showing Clyde in a freeze-frame. A couple of keystrokes, and he was talking.
“—never planned on it for a living,” he said. “People didn’t do that around here.”
Then came Ivy’s voice, off camera. “But you did.”
“Well, someone’s got to be first to buck the trend,” Clyde said with a shrug. “Might as well be me.”
“And Henrikson? He was part of that as well?”
I felt Theo lean closer to my ear, his voice low. “That’s Dale Henrikson. Abstract painter, worked mostly in the late nineteen fifties. Very well esteemed, until he lost his tenured position at Cal Arts after a scandal involving a student who was a minor at the time. He ended up teaching Clyde here at Weymar.”
I nodded. “Right.”
“Not that he,” Clyde was saying on the screen now, “was exactly at the height of his own career. I didn’t know that, though. Had no idea who he was. Only ended up in that class because welding was full.”
“You wanted to be a welder?”
“I wanted to be anything but a farmer. And I liked fire.”
I felt Theo shift. When I turned to look at him, he was grinning. “See that?” he said, nodding at the screen. “You can just see him warming up. It’s golden.”
He rewound the clip again, and we both watched Clyde move in reverse, taking back these words. “So it went well,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Ivy was really happy. And she’s never happy.” He paused the tape again, then pushed back from the table. “And you know what? I’m happy, too.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Sure. You’re here.”
I felt myself blush, then redden even more as I realized it. Theo might have been dorky in some ways, but he’d already emoted more than Luke had in our first three months of dating. Maybe it was true: outside of Colby, everything and everyone moved faster.
As if to emphasize this, Theo leaned in and brushed my hair back. He was just leaning in closer when I said, “What time is it, exactly?”
He sighed, then looked at the computer screen. “I had a feeling you might point that out. Eleven forty-six. And thirty seconds.”
“So,” I said, “it’s not tomorrow.”
“Not technically, no.” He sat back in his chair. “Although if we were in Australia, I could make a compelling argument for us to have been together long enough to be engaged.”
I raised my eyebrows, startled at this. Clearly I wasn’t the only one. Even in the dark, I could see him redden. “Well,” I said, swallowing. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re here, then. Because that would be crackers.”
“Be what?”
I cleared my throat. “Crackers. You know, crazy. Insane.”
“I’ve never heard that term before,” he commented.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a Morris original.”
“A what?’
“Never mind.” I looked at the clock again. “Anyway, you do make a good point. Time is relative, right? At least in physics. What’s fourteen minutes, really, in the great scheme of things?”
“Thirteen,” he corrected me, nodding at the clock.
I snapped my fingers. “Exactly.”
At this, he grinned, and I found myself smiling back. He had one of those faces, so wide and open that whatever expression he made, you couldn’t help but mirror it. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re right. Demarcation is important. We’ll just keep busy until midnight.”
I looked around the dark room. “Doing …?”
“Whatever it is platonic friends who have no romantic involvement yet do together,” he said.
“Like watch the clock and discuss physics?”
“It’s worked so far.”
We sat there for a moment, in silence. Finally he said, “Well, that was a short run.”
“Totally,” I agreed. “We make awful platonic friends.”
“It’s a good thing we only have to do it for another eleven minutes.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and studied me. “Maybe it’s just that we don’t know each other all that well yet. Tell me something about yourself.”
“What?” I replied.
“Anything.”
I just looked at him.
“What’s your favorite condiment?”
“Condiment?” I asked. “You have everything in the world to choose from and you ask me that?”
“Look, all I really want to do is kiss you. And I can’t for another—” He glanced at the clock. “Ten minutes. I’m doing my best.”
“Fine. It’s mustard.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Mustard? Really.”
“What’s so surprising about mustard?”
“I d
on’t know,” he said, with a shrug. “I kind of figured you for a ketchup girl.”
“Why?”
“Not sure. Just a hunch.”
I rolled my eyes. “What’s yours?”
“Soy sauce,” he said, without missing a beat. “I can eat it on anything. Even ice cream.”
“That,” I said, “is disgusting.”
“I disagree, but we’ll move on,” he replied. “Favorite room in the house?”
“Bedroom,” I replied. “I like to sleep. You?”
“I’m into cooking. Kitchen.”
“You can never have enough clocks there,” I said.
There was that grin again. “Novels or poetry?”
“Novels,” I said. “Most poems are too short and cryptic for my taste.”
He pointed at himself. “Totally opposite. Love haikus and free verse, low tolerance for long-winded prose. Salt or pepper?”
“Can’t I like both?”
He made a face.
“Fine. Salt.”
“I’m all about pepper. See, opposites do attract!”
We both looked at the computer clock again. Seven minutes.
“I feel like I’m in school, time is passing so slowly,” I said, leaning my head back and looking at the ceiling. That made me think of something. “Favorite subject.”
“Computer programming, closely followed by commercial design,” he answered easily. “What’s yours?”
“History,” I told him. “And geometry and trig. Love angles and protractors.”
“That,” he said, pointing at me, “is so mustard of you.”
“Favorite SAT word?” I asked him.
He thought for a second. “Pernicious. Because it looks like it would mean something pretty, but instead is all malicious and dangerous. You?”
“Omphaloskepsis,” I said. “The art of studying your belly button. Because that was totally what I would have preferred to do instead of learning to spell that word.”
He laughed, then snorted, which made me laugh.
“You’re a snorter?”
“Hey, you picked mustard,” he reminded me. “Okay, let’s get topical: favorite tomorrow-related quote.”
This I had to think about for a moment. Finally I said, “‘Everything will look better in the morning.’”
