Off the Trails

by Emily Franklin

  “Thanks,” Melissa says to Matty, but before she leaves, she tries one more time to get the slicing right. With only her wrist, she flicks the edge of the knife on the edge of the carrot.

  “Perfect!” both Matty and Bob say at the same time. Melissa laughs, letting the surprise of two perfects wash over her as she heads outside.

  “Well,” Bob says as he leads her to the trolley stop. “Guys can be real jerks.”

  “I know,” Melissa says, thinking back to her own boy-littered past. Not that much had happened in the way of love, but with Gabe and James back at Les Trois Alpes, there could have been more success, if only James hadn’t turned out to be a slug. “So, do you think I should tell her?” Confiding in Bob concerning her awkward position with Bug Slash William and his two girlfriends had seemed the natural thing to do. In fact, Melissa was realizing, talking to Bob about just about anything felt easy.

  “Tell them, you mean? Don’t you have to tell Dove and Harley? Doesn’t seem right to tell just one that her boyfriend’s cheating.” Bob kicks at the sand with his flip-flop. “You can’t wear these in a kitchen.” He flicks his eyes back to the restaurant. “Too many knife-on-the-foot incidents. Very unpleasant.”

  “Gross image.” Melissa takes Bob’s hand, thinking again about the mounting dread she has. How to tell Dove her steady love is nothing but a cheat? How to tell Harley that her island fling is using her—or not—but is a slime just the same? “Just be honest with me, okay? That’s all I ask.”

  Bob squeezes her hand. “I’m so not that guy. The date-more-than-one-person-at-a-time guy. You may not have noticed, but I’m pretty focused when I want to be.”

  “Yeah,” Melissa acknowledges. “Me, too, actually.”

  “I noticed that.” Bob mimes Melissa’s perfect slice. “May you one day try it on a black and a white truffle, often called white diamond and black diamond. Their weight is typically only one ounce. Thus the price tag.”

  “Again with the food trivia. How—or why—do you know about this stuff?” Melissa pulls at his hand until he turns around.

  Bob shrugs, tugging on a ringlet that’s escaped its ponytail. “Just interested in it, I guess.” He looks down the road for the trolley. “Ready for our field trip?”

  Melissa nods, grateful that Bob has planned an activity to distract her from the cheating issues and the upcoming party, which the whole island seems to be planning to attend. “Just what I need to distract me.

  Bob makes a face, looking behind Melissa at the beach. “You might want to get distracted right about now.” He leans in and kisses her. Melissa melts, her heart aflutter, her insides and outside happy—until she feels a tap on her shoulder.

  “Sorry to bug you,” Dove says.

  Melissa winces when she hears the word bug, and then again when she realizes Dove has no idea about the double meaning. “No problem. What’s up?” She scans the road for the trolley but there isn’t one to rescue her from the conversation.

  “Not such a great day …” Dove’s eyes pool with tears.

  “Let me give you guys a minute,” Bob says. He leans in toward Melissa. “You know what’s right.” Melissa nods. “I think I’ll go rustle up some grub for our little trip.” Bob strides off toward the restaurant.

  “Don’t make too much fuss,” Melissa shouts. Then to Dove she adds, “I just don’t want him causing problems with Matty Chase. I’ll admit to you that every time I’m with Matty Chase I want to blurt out ‘please hire me to work on your new TV show’ even though I know he’d probably fire me for it.” She watches Bob walk up the deck to the front of the tent. “Bob’s so mellow and unafraid of authority—the opposite to me, I might add—but he’s so lax I worry he’ll say something to offend the staff in there.”

  “Well, you can’t control other people,” Dove says, shaking her head. “That’s for sure.”

  Melissa watches a lone tear escape Dove’s eye. Maybe she knows. She does. She found out about William and his piggish ways and has come for comfort. “So … did you want to tell me something?”

  Dove nods, her eyes welling again. “It was so bad, Mel. I mean, bad the way you have a nightmare about not knowing anything on a test and have to sit through the final exam.”

  Melissa tries to follow. “I hate those dreams.”

  “No, no, this was real.” Dove brushes her hair back from her forehead and wipes her eyes. “It is real.

  Melissa nods, patting Dove’s back empathetically. “So you know, then.”

  Dove looks at Melissa like she’s crazy. “What? Of course I know. I was there. But what do you know? Has word spread already?”

  “Well …”

  “I’ll kill Gus. Really.”

  “Gus?” Melissa pauses, truly confused. “Hold on. What are you talking about exactly?”

  “I got fired today,” Dove says. She goes from crying to laughing. “It’s stupid, really. It was so bad it was comical. Or it would be if it didn’t make me broke and sad.”

  Melissa’s heart slams. She doesn’t know. She meant the job, not the boy. But I have to tell her. “Maybe some things are for the best,” Melissa says, starting to build up to the issue.

  Dove considers. “Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Like, there’s a different path for me and if I’d done the perfect breakfast—one without the damn Tahitian vanilla—I’d never know the correct path.”

  Melissa nods, overenthused. “Right. Exactly! Sometimes you think you want one thing, but then you realize that thing’s not everything you think it is. It fails you somehow and then you can find the right thing.”

  Dove watches Melissa as though she’s giving obtuse driving directions, her hands flailing. “Wait. Now I’m confused. What are you talking about?”

  Melissa falters, panicking. Don’t shoot the messenger, she thinks. “You deserve the truth …”

  Dove puts her hand on Melissa’s arm. “So do you. And I was going to talk to you the other night but …”

  Melissa races to find the words to explain the cheating. “The problem is that I know that you think you love William—”

  Dove puts her hand over Melissa’s mouth. “Hold on. Let me say what I’m going to say or I’ll chicken out again. And based on the crappy day I’ve had, I have to at least let this go okay.”

  Melissa swirls with worry. If I don’t tell her now I’ll completely lose my nerve. She has to know about William and Harley. “Dove, William is—”

  “He’s not Max,” Dove says, staring out at the rocking boats on the ocean. By the water, people wade in the waves, kids dig in the sand, and the well-heeled lunch crowd exits the restaurant full of the best food on the island.

  “What?” Melissa is agog at Dove’s pronouncement.

  “It’s something I’ve been realizing. When I was at Les Trois, I kept comparing Max to William. Since I’ve been here I keep doing the same thing—but this time comparing William to Max. Or at least I’m admitting this now, because I haven’t before. Not even to myself.”

  All of Melissa’s reserve starts to dwindle. “So you don’t feel the same way about William that you did?”

  Dove half laughs. “It’s so bizarre. I want to. But I guess I don’t. Not that it matters.”

  Maybe she does know, after all. “Why’s that?”

  “Because he doesn’t feel the same way,” Dove says.

  “So you do know.” Melissa gives the same empathetic pat to Dove’s back.

  “Stop patting me. I’m not a poodle.” Dove waves to Bob, who wanders up the beach at a leisurely pace, holding a bag of food. “Didn’t know they did takeout.”

  Melissa furrows her brow. “They don’t.” Please don’t let him have annoyed Matty or anyone else.

  “All I know is that Max used to like me, even liked me when he flew here. Or maybe that was just an excuse.” Dove shakes her head. “All I feel is that I’ve missed my window. For Max, for Oxford …”

  Melissa nods, knowing she can’t possibly tell Dove about William and Ha
rley when she’s already so muddled. Not to mention the fact that maybe Dove wouldn’t care as much about the cheating now that she had gotten in touch with her old feelings for Max. “So, you’ve decided on Max?” Finally, their saga would be over—complete. Not that I’m one to talk, Melissa thinks.

  “Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? He doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore. I had my chance and I didn’t act on it. And now he’s off buying flowers for some girl I don’t even know.”

  Melissa looks surprised. “Really?” After all his moaning and mushy feelings, I’d be shocked, but then again … “Are you sure?”

  Dove sighs. “You go off with Bob. I’ll see you back at the Sugar Hut.” She waves her hands in front of her face, creating a little wind. “I know—call me a glutton for punishment—but I took Max up on his offer for a place to stay. Seems like it’s my turn to pine for him while I consider my future.”

  Melissa greets Bob with a kiss on the cheek, feeling very glad to see him and slightly overwhelmed by the talk with Dove, and concerned about the big bag of take-out food steaming in Bob’s hand. “See you back at the hut then,” Melissa says. Dove gets on one trolley heading toward town so she can collect her things from the boat while Bob and Melissa step on a trolley heading the opposite way.

  23

  EVERYTHING IS TOO FAMILIAR and at the same time totally different. The last time I was here I was in school, Dove thinks as she climbs the wide central staircase to the guest rooms. The Sugar Hut. She can hear Max’s family frolicking in the pool outside and wishes she felt like joining them. But though she’d thanked them for the offer, she heads instead toward her temporary room to relax. Everything’s temporary these days, Dove thinks.

  She enters the bedroom, feeling at once a sense of ease from the motion of the overhead fan. Draped over the king-sized bed is the sheerest of mosquito netting, giving the room an air of regality. The floor is terra-cotta tile, the walls clean white. Dove slings her bags onto the floor. From her backpack she pulls the A. J. Samuels textbook, thinking she’ll bring it to Max’s room and leave it waiting for him. As she stands up to find his room, she holds the heavy text in one hand. A slip of paper falls out, fluttering to the floor.

  Dove picks it up, unsure if it’s a receipt or a bookmark. Neither, she thinks when she sees it. Back at Les Trois, she’d met Professor Hartman, an important faculty member at Oxford, who’d been keen to have her study there.

  That’s it, she thinks. That’s the answer. This whole time I’ve been wondering how to fill in the blank of what happens next, when it was there all along. She grabs the book and the number and heads out the door to find a phone.

  Harley counts the cash she has shoved into the side pocket of her black suitcase. Enough for a ticket out of here, but not to pay the party fine and the Pulse bill. She runs her fingers over her cheek, tapping. Where else could I work? She thinks back to the stores she’s been to, the cafés, wondering if she could perhaps try a beach job—working at the sunglasses hut or something. Then she feels defeated. No way. I’ve hardly got the references for anything local. But what else? Harley thinks about the rest of the year ahead, her year between high school and whatever comes next, and wonders if maybe the solution is closer than she thinks. She puts her money back into the suitcase and begins to cram in her clothing and shoes. I’ll get ready for the Botanical Gardens party with Melissa and Dove. Like old times, she thinks. Except that I have to tell Dove about her parents’ being in town. And that I got busted for using her name at the store. Then she thinks, But Melissa did, too. So maybe Dove will deal with the bill and I’ll be off the hook.

  This sets her mind at ease. And when I go to the party, no matter what Emmy Taylor does to shake her funds in my face, no matter what lack of prospects I might have, I will have a fun time. Then she reconsiders. That is, depending on what Bug has to say. He could make it better than fun. He could make it perfect.

  “So, this is it?” Melissa creeps toward a stone bench and sits on it, her skin prickling with the emptiness of the place.

  “Yep. The Eden Brown Estate. It’s haunted.” Bob comes up behind her and pinches her waist. Melissa screams, and then yanks him down so they’re next to each other. “Don’t freak me out like that. I have to tell you—I get scared really easily.”

  “Duly noted.” Bob points to the house. “Then I probably shouldn’t inform you that it’s all true. The rumors.” He puts on a voice worthy of a horror movie. “Supposedly this woman Julia Huggins was going to marry a man but on the day of the wedding the groom and the best man had a fight.”

  “A duel?” Melissa mimes jabbing at him with a sword.

  “Yeah.” He grabs her sword arm and wraps it around him.

  “And?”

  “And they killed each other.”

  Melissa sticks out her tongue. “Not a very happy ending.”

  “And is that what you want? A happy ending?”

  Melissa nods. “So, what happened to the bride?”

  “She went bonkers. Became a recluse. The mansion was closed. You can go in if you want. But it’s totally haunted. Everyone says they can feel someone’s presence there.”

  Melissa shudders. “Um, no thanks. I’ll stay right here.”

  “With me?”

  “I suppose,” Melissa says.

  Bob gives her a faux-serious look. “Ms. Forsythe, are you suggesting that I am your happy ending?”

  Melissa pulls back, blushing. “Hey, I never said that.”

  “Fine. So what else could conspire to make your dreams come true? Aside, of course, from me—” He grins.

  “Truth?” Melissa pulls her knees up to her chest. “If I could make progress at work. I know it’s really soon and I’m not trained properly, but it’s like I’ve found my calling.” She breathes in the musty air, looking at the mansion. “And I know this is what I want to do. I have all these ideas—not just for cooking, though I like that. But for—” She stops herself.

  “For what? Just say it.”

  “Okay, but you’ll think it’s silly. So … I’ve heard that Matty Chase has a new project, something that’s sort of under wraps. And I just think—I could help with it.”

  “With his television show?” Bob asks.

  Melissa’s face changes. “How do you know about that?”

  “Sorry to inform you, but celebrity chef gossip travels faster than bad restaurant reviews. It’s common knowledge.”

  Melissa blushes. “Oh. Well, that’s what I want to do.”

  “Cook on TV?”

  Melissa shakes her head. “No. I’m not the kind of person to go on camera.” She stands up, her voice passionate. “I want to help do the segment ideas, plan them out, create them, research them…. I’m not a natural in the kitchen, but I’m a natural problem solver, and I love food.”

  Instead of laughing, Bob nods, thinking. “So give me an example.”

  “How?”

  “Say I’m the ultrasuave Matty Chase …” He laughs. “And you have one minute to impress me and convince me you’re meant to be on television.”

  “Not on it. Near it.”

  “Fine. Go—” He snaps his fingers.

  “I once had to throw a ball for hundreds of people—royalty included—and pull it off without a hitch. I did it outside, with food, drinks, and entertainment.” She watches Bob nod, impressed. “Well, let’s say it’s summer and we want to do a picnic segment that doesn’t bore the pants off everyone. We do themed picnics—the kids’ picnic with sandwiches made with cookie cutters, stars, circles, that kind of thing. And a women’s-night-out picnic complete with hypothetical questions and great finger food.”

  “So, you’d combine food with activities?”

  “Sometimes. And other times, it would be more standard—recipe and prep and easy-to-follow, charming instructions with celebrity guests.”

  “It could work,” Bob says. “A bit rough around the edges but it might fly.”

  “And what about you, Mr.
Beach Guy?” Melissa hesitates bringing up what Bob’s plans entail, hoping that they somehow include her.

  “Depends on the tide,” he says, feigning an Irish accent. He looks at her. “But the truth of it is—and you did ask for the truth, right?” Melissa nods, her pulse increasing. “The truth is I’m leaving for New York soon. Can’t stay in paradise forever.”

  “No,” Melissa agrees, wishing she hadn’t asked, and feeling her own paradise slipping away. “You can’t.

  24

  “I FEEL SO GUILTY,” Harley says, whispering to Melissa in the cavernous bathroom at the Sugar Hut. Downstairs, Max is waiting for everyone so they can drive to the Botanical Gardens.

  “You do?” Melissa puts on lip gloss in the mirror and watches intently as Harley slides into heels.

  “I should have told Dove.”

  Melissa spins. “So you know?”

  Harley nods. “Yeah. I saw them—well, I think it was them. Hard to miss the Lady de Rothschild, since she’s basically a carbon copy of Dove. Or the other way around.”

  “They’re here?” Melissa’s voice rises with emotion.

  “Shhh. Yes. And they’re onto the Pulse situation. Thus, I am out of a job yet again.”

  Melissa takes all this new information in and feels doubly bad about not spilling the cheating beans to Dove earlier. “Harley?” Melissa starts, thinking she’ll have the courage to tell her about Bug.

  “Yeah?” Harley spins on her heels, making her flouncy dress twirl out. “Can I just say that the one bright spot in my otherwise bad couple of days is heading to this party? At least it’s one thing to look forward to.”

  Melissa smiles a small smile, understanding and not wanting to break Harley’s spirit. Besides, I have my own worries. When they’d left the haunted estate, Melissa’s spirits had flagged. He’s leaving. And just when everything was going so well. “I hope we all have fun,” Melissa says, covering up any hint that she knows about wrongdoings.

  Downstairs, Dove is all grins. She grabs Melissa’s hand and pulls her aside. “I did it!”