by Sarah Dessen
“Who said that?”
“My mom. Usually when I was in tears over something school related right before I went to bed. What about you?”
He didn’t have to think. “It’s John Wayne. ‘Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.’”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s great.”
“I know.” He smiled. “I like yours, too.”
We sat there a second, looking at each other. I don’t know you, I thought. And yet I do. It was the weirdest feeling.
“Next question,” he said, and I sat up, ready. “Do you know what time it is?”
I looked at the clock: 12:02. “It’s morning.”
“Tomorrow,” he agreed. “How about that.”
And then he leaned forward, carefully, slowly, pulled me onto his lap, and kissed me. No toasters this time, just this dark room, the pool glowing blue in the distance, and Clyde, frozen in front of us. It was really nice, and worth the wait. Until the lights suddenly came on.
“Theo! Hello?” An annoyed sigh. “I need some help here.”
We broke apart, sloppily. I put my hand over my mouth, then turned to see Ivy on the landing, a large box in her arms. She gestured at Theo impatiently, and he eased me off his lap, getting to his feet.
“I thought you were just wrapping things up,” he said, crossing the room. “What’s this?”
She handed him the box without comment, then walked into the kitchen, tossing down her purse and keys with a clank. Despite myself, I thought of the (at least previously) nick-free countertop. Once a realty employee, always a realty employee, even after hours.
“Mr. Conaway suggested,” she was saying now, as she pulled open the fridge and took out an opened bottle of white wine, “that I do some ‘reading up’ before we meet again.”
“Reading up?” Theo repeated, carrying the box over to the table. “On his work? But you’ve already—”
“Not his work,” she cut him off, getting herself a glass. She poured it more than half full, then took a large gulp. “This place.”
Theo opened the lid and took out a few books. I saw what looked like an atlas and some other volume with a visible layer of dust, spotted with fingerprints. “The town?”
“Yes, Theo. The town,” she said, her voice flat. “Apparently, my questions today did not convey an understanding of that particular part of his personal history. I suppose he’d be more comfortable with someone who can name-check the Gualalupes.”
“The who?” Theo asked, confused.
“That Catholic family.” Ivy waved a hand in my direction. “She knows.”
Now they were both looking at me. I said, “The Guadaleris.”
“Exactly.” She took another gulp of her wine, then walked over and picked up the dusty book. “He was kind enough to provide me with some items from his personal library for my perusal.”
“Those are Clyde’s books?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. He has volumes.” To Theo she said, “Anyway, if you need me for the next twelve hours, I’ll be studying.”
“I can help,” Theo offered.
“I know. The rest are for you. We’ll regroup tomorrow and compare notes.” She glanced at me again, then added, “You probably should get started.”
“Oh.” Theo swallowed. “Sure. Right. I’ll get on it.”
“Good boy.”
And then, with a dramatic sigh, she stuck the book under her arm, grabbed the wine bottle, and shuffled off down the hallway. I watched her go, yet again shocked by the way she talked to Theo. But when I turned to say as much to him, he’d already emptied the rest of the box and found a legal pad and a pen.
“You’re serious?” I looked at my watch. “After all that work we did to get to midnight? Don’t you ever clock out?”
He shrugged. “I told you, it’s not that kind of a job.”
“So you have to pull an all-nighter because she didn’t do her homework?”
“I have to pull an all-nighter,” he corrected me, “because we weren’t fully prepared for the interview.”
I walked over to him and picked up another one of the books, a blue one with a warped cover. The title, once embossed but now worn and faded, read Our Fair Town: A Local’s Remembrance. It had been penned by someone named Irma Jean Rankles. I said, “Either way, I have to say right now working at Colby Realty feels like hitting the jackpot.”
“You really think delivering towels is better than this?”
“I think,” I replied, “that I spent half of fourth grade studying the history of Colby. It’s not exactly compelling stuff.”
He cleared a space for himself at the table, sliding a monitor aside. “Well, obviously Clyde feels differently.”
Instead of responding, I flipped through the first few pages of Our Fair Town, something that—judging by their smell and yellow pallor—no one had done since Irma Jean’s days. “So you’re … I should go. Right?”
He looked up at me. “You don’t have to. We could read together. This stuff might be fascinating, now that you’re not, you know, nine.”
“Doubt it.” I put the book on the top of the stack. “It’s late. I need to get home anyway.”
“Oh. Right.” He tucked the pen he was holding behind his ear, then reached forward, looped his arms around my waist, and pulled me closer. “Look, I promise. Tomorrow night, we’ll get together. No town history, no work stuff. No demarcation. Deal?”
It was hard to say no when he said it like that. “Deal.”
He smiled, then cracked the atlas and flipped the legal pad to a clean sheet. The good student, personified. I hung around as he turned through the early pages of town maps, his brow furrowed with concentration. Pretty quickly, though, I felt a yawn coming on and slipped away to the door.
Outside, there was a warm breeze blowing, and I had that stiff spot in my neck I knew would only be cured by sleep, and lots of it. I opened my car door and was about to slide in when I heard Ivy say from somewhere above me, “You’re leaving.”
I looked up to see her up on the deck off the master bedroom, the glowing tip of a cigarette visible in her hand. Unnecessarily, I told her, “Theo’s got a lot of work to do.”
She exhaled, not saying anything for a minute. “So you’re … together now. Yes?”
It was hard to gauge her tone, saying this. Maybe it was the wind, or the angle, but I couldn’t tell if she was being condescending, annoyed, or a mix of both. “We’re just hanging out,” I told her.
“Ah.” Another drag. “Not sure that’s the best idea.”
No mistake this time: I felt myself bristle, hackles rising. “Meaning what? You’re the boss of his personal life now, too?”
“Just making an observation,” she said mildly, shrugging.
“Well, I’m not on your clock. So you can save your breath.”
I slid into my car and pulled the door shut with a bang. I made a point not to look up at the house at all as I cranked the engine and backed out, glancing back only once I was pulling away. By then, though, she was gone, the only thing visible on the deck the half-filled wine glass, a cigarette butt bobbing within it. Which pissed me off more, if that was even possible.
I rolled down my windows as I drove into town, trying to cool off. When I passed the Washroom and spotted the back door open, light spilling through, I doubled back.
Anywhere else in town on a summer Friday night at this hour would have been crowded, if not outright packed. But the Washroom wasn’t exactly Tallyho. In the Laundromat, a girl tapped away on a laptop, waiting for her clothes, while a guy across the room thumbed through a paperback. Over on the café side, Clyde was behind the counter, talking to a guy who was reading the newspaper and eating a piece of pie. When he saw me, he smiled.
“Emaline,” he said. “What’d you do with those New York friends of yours?”
“The better question,” I
replied, walking over, “is what did you do?”
“Me?” he said, all innocent.
I just looked at him. “Our Fair Town: A Local’s Remembrance? Really?”
“What? It’s a very informative volume.”
“So you’ve read it,” I said, clarifying.
“It’s part of my own personal collection.”
“Since when? Lunchtime?” I asked. He blinked at me. “I saw the stamp, Clyde. You got it today, along with the rest of them.”
There was nothing he could say; we both knew he was busted. He’d been safe assuming Ivy and Theo wouldn’t know about the Colby library’s budget crisis, and how they were selling older books to try to generate revenue to buy newer ones. But as an avid reader who regularly haunted both the library’s stacks and their clearance room, I knew well the red circle with a date inside that meant final sale.
“Okay, fine,” he said now. “It is sort of mean. But she had so little respect for this place and everyone in it. I had to do something.”
“So you attacked with Irma Jean Rankles.”
“Or,” he countered, “I encouraged her to educate herself and provided the means for doing so.”
The guy eating the pie snorted.
“Good night, Clyde,” I said, shaking my head.
“Oh, don’t leave angry,” he called out as I started back towards the door. “It wasn’t targeted at your boyfriend. He seems like a good kid.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“No? Well, can’t say I’m not relieved.”
I turned around, looking at him. First Ivy, then Clyde, not to mention every other volley from the peanut gallery all day. What was it about me that made people think my love life was up for their debate? “You just said he seems decent.”
“He does,” he said, shrugging. “But still, you know the drill. Those things never end well.”
“What things?” I said. “Relationships? That’s a pretty sweeping generalization, don’t you think?”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “Can’t speak for all. And I’m not. But when it comes to folks like that and people like us? Not a lot of happy endings.”
I had a flash of Amber saying the same thing about Luke and my long-term chances. So the odds weren’t good for me and a boy I knew or one not from here. Which meant what: I’d never be happy with anyone?
“Well,” I said, with a shrug, “someone’s gotta be first to buck the trend, right? Might as well be me.”
Clyde just looked at me for a long moment. Then he smiled. “Good point.”
“Good night,” I replied. And this time, I walked out the door.
12
“DON’T LOOK YET. Are you looking?”
I blinked again against Theo’s hand, which was pressed over my eyes. “I’m not looking.”
“Good. Just a little bit farther. We’re almost there.”
Even though I was basically blindfolded, I knew we were outside and walking in sand. Which narrowed the location of Theo’s Super Secret Surprise Best First True Date Ever to, well, just about anywhere in Colby. I was also pretty sure I’d just gotten a whiff of popcorn, which meant we were somewhere near the boardwalk, but the wind was blowing too hard for me to be any more specific.
“Okay, now, step up one step.” I did, feeling his hand support my elbow. “And one more. Perfect. Now take two steps back, keep your eyes closed, and count to ten.”
“Theo,” I protested, as he dropped his hand. “Do we really—”
“To ten!” he repeated, his voice now farther away.
“One, two, three,” I began. Some sand blew in my face. “Four, five, six …”
“Go more slowly!”
“Se-ven. Eight. Ni-ine …”
Suddenly he was back beside me, sliding his hand over mine. When I got to ten, I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw, no surprise, was the ocean. Then I realized we were on a wooden platform, dusted with sand, that held a small wooden table and chairs. The table was set with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a white paper bag. I looked behind me, expecting to see a house, but there was only a rise of dune, dotted with driftwood.
“Wow,” I said. “Is this—”
“Isn’t it great? I found it while I was running the other morning. It’s like this perfect spot in the middle of nowhere. The table and chairs were just tossed to the side, so I pulled them over.”
“It’s beautiful,” I told him.
He squeezed my hand, clearly pleased with himself. “Well, there’s much more to come. This is only the beginning of the Best First True Date Ever. Here, let me get us some wine.”
He walked over to the table, pulling the cork from the bottle there. As he busied himself pouring, I turned slightly, hoping so much that the walkway he’d led me down from the car was not lined with a white fence. It was. Worse, there were still scraps of yellow ribbon tied to it.
In the two weeks or so since Theo and I started hanging out regularly, I’d learned a few things about him. First, he liked pomp. Everything was an Event, with a Specific and Special Moniker. Hence, our first kiss was referred to as the Big Club Big Moment, our developing relationship part of his Best Summer Ever. Likewise, this evening, which he’d planned to compensate for the rushed and somewhat chaotic state of our getting together, was our First True Date. After being with Luke, who had to be reminded of any and all occasions and still forgot my birthday regularly, I found this kind of adorable.
At the same time, for all his incredibly sweet intentions, Theo’s surprises and Big Moments were often, for me at least, tinged with a sense of awkwardness. Everything he found novel, charming, and amazing here, I’d known my whole life. Which meant knowing the backstory of them all as well.
Like, for instance, this spot. It was not a table in the middle of nowhere; in fact, a year earlier, there had been a set of stairs attached to this platform, which was in turn attached to a house. Both had been swept away by a freak storm that had hit us fast and hard in September—between ostensibly “more serious” hurricanes—that also claimed a life of a neighbor, who was hit by a flying deck board while trying to save the family’s loose dog. Bad enough to lose your house to something big and scary enough to have its own name. But this was nothing anyone really saw coming. Of course, Theo had no way of knowing this. To him, it was just a pretty place, not sacred ground.
This same thing had happened, albeit on lesser levels, the other times he’d tried to put together Big Impressive Moments. There was his discovery of the “great hole-in-the-wall restaurant” where I’d actually eaten with Luke on one of our first dates, not to mention many after. His excitement about the dusty Island Drive-In Movie Theatre—complete with oldtimey speakers!—which I associated only with peach brandy and my first hangover. Also the lagoon behind the mall, where for a quarter you could buy some dog kibble to throw to the voracious snapping turtles. They rose up from below the water, looking positively primordial, and had been a favorite of mine for as long as I could remember. Which made it considerably harder to feign the level of excitement he clearly felt showing them to me, although I did my best.
That was the thing about Theo, though. His enthusiasm was contagious. There was something so genuine and honest about how pumped up he got over the smallest things. I’d seen glimpses of it with the milk crate at Gert’s, as well as him meeting Clyde the day of the Big Club Big Moment. Now that we were together regularly, however, I understood it to be a core part of his personality. He didn’t play it cool. He didn’t play at anything. He just was, and it made me want to be, too. Even if I sometimes felt a bit guilty doing so.
“Okay,” he said now, holding out a plastic cup of wine to me. I walked over to him, taking it, and sat down at the table. He cleared his throat. “A toast. To the Best Summer Ever. And to you.”
“To you,” I repeated. We clinked glasses and drank, with me wincing a bit at the taste. I was used to watered-down keg beer, and Theo’s love of wine, red in particular, was so
mething I was still adjusting to.
“Oh! Almost forgot.” He put down his glass and reached forward for the folded paper bag. “I brought snacks and apps, as well.”
“Snacks and apps?”
“Cocktail food,” he explained, opening the bag. “That’s what my parents called it. Every night between five and six, they had drinks, snacks, and apps. Usually martinis, olives, and either herring or salmon dip with rice crackers.”
I had not eaten one of these things, ever. Instead of sharing this, though, I said, “Really.”
He nodded, taking a carryout box from the bag. “But don’t worry. That’s not what I brought. I know it’s not exactly for everyone.”
I smiled, watching as he removed two other small boxes from the bag. While he opened and arranged them neatly in a row on the table, I tried not to think of my dad and the two cold beers he drank most evenings. But it wasn’t like I’d envisioned our families being similar. Nothing else was.
Theo had grown up in both New York and Connecticut, attending private schools. His father was a psychiatrist, his mother an editor at a publishing house that specialized in travel and art books. They’d had him late—he claimed “our pleasant surprise” was his family nickname—and he’d been raised making the rounds of art openings, symphony performances, and operas. They did not have a television when he was a kid, and never kept junk food in the house. He’d actually had his first Cheez Doodle a few days earlier, with me.
It wasn’t like I’d planned on indoctrinating him in the orange delights that were my favorite snack food. I’d just picked up a bag from the Gas/Gro after a hard day at work and brought them with me when I went to pick him up. That was the other thing: Theo didn’t drive, at least not confidently. He had a license, but because he spent most of his time in the city, he didn’t use it much, and was much more comfortable riding shotgun than behind the wheel. Which didn’t bother me, since I was the exact opposite. Riding made me nervous. It had been a running joke between Luke and me how uncomfortable I was in the passenger seat, always looking both ways in tandem with him and eyeing the speedometer when it crept higher than I thought it should be going.
