I give her a thumbs-up.
“Hey, Olive,” says James. “Nice Oreos.”
“Were you keeping Clem company?”
“She was keeping me company.” James looks over at me and smiles.
“It was fun,” I say, standing up to wave to my parents, who—as always—are lagging behind Olive. They’re each carrying two big eco-bags full of groceries.
“Success!” says Mom as she comes toward us.
“Oh, hi, James.” She smiles at him. So does Dad when he reaches us.
“James!” Dad says. “Great to see you.”
It’s like they were worried that I’d be alone all day brooding and painting my cabin black or something—sheesh.
“Wanna do a sparkler?” asks Olive, her eyes shining excitedly.
“It’s not even dark yet,” I say, but at the same time, James says, “Yes!”
Olive sticks her tongue out at me and puts down her bag. She roots through it and pulls out a box of sparklers.
Mom and Dad drop their bags too. Apparently, this is a family sparkle moment.
We stand in a circle on the edge of the dock, and Dad takes a lighter out of his shorts pocket. As he ignites each of our sticks, pink, blue, and green sparks fly in all directions, and the fizzy noise makes me smile.
James waves his green stick around like a sword, while Olive draws flowers in the air with hers. Mom and Dad touch theirs together in a patriotic toast, but I just keep mine still, watching the pink sparkles effervesce, burning down to the bottom.
When we’re done, Olive cheers “Happy Fourth of July!” and James gives her a high five.
I love how nice he is to her.
“Olive, come help unload,” says Mom, picking up her grocery bags and turning down the dock toward The Possibility.
“Can’t I stay out here with Clem?” she asks.
“Clem has to come in too,” says Dad. Then he looks at me. “After a few minutes, of course. We’ll give you time to say good-bye.”
I feel my face flush. Like I need time to say good-bye to James? This is totally embarrassing.
“It’s okay,” I say, edging past James and standing with my family. “James, I’ll see you around, right?”
“If you’re lucky,” he says, grinning.
I stick out my tongue at him and turn to follow my parents up the dock. Then he calls my name, “Clementine!”
We all turn back—my family is so nosy—and I see that he’s holding out his drawing. He ripped it out of the sketchbook.
I walk back toward him.
“Here.” He hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say, looking at it again. I love the way our shadows are in the foreground. So still, so quiet, hovering at the edge of the water together.
“This is really good,” I say. “How come you’re giving it to me?”
“So you’ll remember what’s real.”
chapter twenty-five
I help unpack the groceries when we get back to the boat. The cabinets have these storage dividers in them so that things won’t move around when the boat rocks, even if we’re on a really big tilt. It’s a complex operation to put away the groceries, so Mom and I man the galley while Dad and Olive stand in the living-room area with the bags and take out items one by one to hand to us.
During all this activity, I field questions about James. Mom wants to know how long he was sitting there with me.
“A couple of hours, I guess,” I say. “I don’t really know.”
“What did you talk about?” asks Mom.
Dad hands her the coffee grounds.
“Stuff,” I say. “But mostly we were quiet; I was reading and he was drawing.”
I glance over at the table where I set down James’s picture, suddenly feeling protective of it, like I should have taken it into my room.
Dad notices where I’m looking. “This illustration is excellent,” he says, picking it up and holding it out for everyone to see. I know he’s a huge fan of art kids at his school, even though they’re six years old. He always says that they grow up to be the artistic kids in high school, who are the true thinkers. Well, he says that when he’s trying to get me to sign up for art, anyway. “We can frame it and hang it up on the boat if you want, Clem.”
“Um, no, Dad,” I say, taking the paper from him and putting it in my room, in a drawer, where hopefully even Olive won’t snoop. That scene is for me.
“Where’s James’s dad?” asks Olive when I return to the galley.
“I think he was on the boat,” I say. “But James just wanted some land time or something. Someone else to talk to.”
“He likes talking to you,” says Mom as she opens the small refrigerator and motions to Olive to hand her the perishables. “I can tell.”
“Okay, okay,” I say. “Can we stop with the family discussion of James? He’s cool. We’re sort of friends. But who knows if or when we’ll see him again.”
Truthfully, my heart sinks at the thought that we could possibly go off course or James and his dad could change their minds and head somewhere else. I want us to be sailing on the same route, like it seems like we have been so far. I don’t want to give him up.
“I’m pretty sure we’ll see James again.” My dad wiggles his eyebrows up and down. It’s hugely dorky.
This is the moment in a normal house where I would exit the kitchen and make the discussion stop. But I’m here. On a boat. With nowhere to go.
“We’ll leave you alone,” says Mom, mercifully. “But I’m just saying, it must be nice for both of you to have someone your own age to talk to.”
“Hey!” says Olive. “I am an excellent talker.”
“That you are, Miss Olive,” says Dad. He rubs her hair, which I notice is getting dirty. Like, dreadlock dirty. But I guess if my parents don’t mind, neither do I.
“He must miss his mom this summer,” says Mom, looking wistful as she puts a new bottle of olive oil up in the cabinet.
I look from Mom to Dad, wondering what they know about James’s mom. They spent some time with Bill Townsend, maybe they have the full story. I don’t want to ask them, though. I want to see James again, and let him tell me what he wants to tell me in his own time. It seems fairer that way.
“I’m sure he misses her,” I say.
“Sylvia sounds like such a lovely woman,” says Mom. “I hope we get to meet her one day.”
Sylvia, of course—like their boat name, Dreaming of Sylvia.
“Bill told us all about her,” continues Mom. “How she works with children in other countries every summer through a nonprofit program, and he and James take this trip together while she’s gone. Wouldn’t it be fun to hear about all her adventures in South America and Africa?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That would be cool.”
And I feel relieved, because I realize that I was projecting something awful—like that James’s mom was dead! But I read it wrong, and she’s just away every summer. He must miss her, but it’s not like a tragedy.
I smile.
“Want me to help make dinner?” I ask.
When I get to my room that night, I can hear fireworks echoing around the lake. We watched them for a while as it turned dark, but there are so many going on that we’d have to stay up till 3 a.m. to see them all. I love the happy pop, pop, pops, though.
I take out my journal so I can record this day, and I start thinking in that deep-inside way that I only really pull off when I’m writing a diary entry. There’s one thing that’s been bugging me—why is James’s boat called Dreaming of Sylvia if James’s mom skips the trip every year?
When I flip to the next blank page to ruminate some more, I see that there’s a piece of paper tucked into the journal.
C, I certify that these are mine. Please return them soon. ♥ E.
I stare at Ethan’s note for a moment. I press my fingers over the indentations where he pushed down the pen. He was here. I tuck it farther back in the journal.
Then I write abo
ut the day on the dock. About James and how he made me laugh, and how I even wanted to kiss him in a certain moment. But then we settled into something, sitting there side by side, that felt maybe even closer than a kiss. I keep coming back to what he said to me: “So you’ll remember what’s real.”
“That’s what today felt like,” I write. “Real.” And then I change up my style so it’s like a poem or something—I do that when I’m feeling all deep—and I write in a stacked tower of words:
Solid.
Tangible.
Fundamental.
True.
Before I close the journal, I flip through and find Ethan’s note again. Then I crumple it up and toss it in the plastic bag I’m using for trash.
chapter twenty-six
I put my earbuds in, plug the cord into the computer, and do a search until I find the full track. Then I press Play. I close my eyes while I listen so I can block out this dirty old room with its scuffed white walls and weird posters about employee regulations.
Mom got a signal on her cell last night and decided she needed to check in with the office, so we had to get online today. There’s supposedly WiFi at the dock, but none of us could get it to work, so we walked into town and found this little Internet café that looks like it hasn’t been used since 1999 or whenever it was that everyone got their own connections at home.
Mom is on the computer next to me, and Dad and Olive are going for ice cream across the street. Olive doesn’t care about getting online—and I can tell Dad is enjoying his completely off-line summer.
I came here for one thing: “Clementine” by Elliott Smith.
When I start to listen to it, I like the soft sound of his guitar and the edge of pain in his voice. It’s definitely a riff on the original song—he keeps singing “Dreadful sorry, Clementine,” and something about things being wrong. But it’s got this hopeful sound to it, too, and I love hearing my name in a new song that I hadn’t known about. You know how hearing your name in a song can make you swoon just a little bit? Yeah, that’s happening.
When I’m done listening, all I can think about is how the song reminds James of me. I pull my iPod wire from my bag and log into iTunes to buy it. I want to listen to it again.
Then I close the browser and stare at the desktop for a minute.
Mom is typing furiously, probably answering, like, two hundred e-mails that have come in from work. She gets this really intense look when she’s doing work stuff on the computer. She bites her lip and sighs out loud a lot. I know she’s completely in her own world right now.
I open another window and log into Facebook. I have to—I can’t help it.
At first I just scroll through my friends’ updates. I see Henry, Renee, Aaron. But I don’t see anything from Ethan. I look at my friends number: 102. When I left, it was 126. I guess I could have anticipated that, but it still stings.
I know I shouldn’t, but I try to figure out who else has unfriended me. Amanda only updates a few times a week, so maybe she’s just not on my first newsfeed page. My heart speeds up a little. I scroll to page two. There’s still a chance that she’s there.
But she’s not.
I search for Amanda’s profile. We are not friends. I feel a sharp pain hit my chest. I guess I expected some random judgmental people from school to go away, and I guess I understand why Ethan has to, even if he maybe doesn’t want to. But Amanda? Amanda was always mine.
My head is spinning, but this is my one moment of connectivity, so I have to pull it together and see it all. There won’t be another chance for a while.
Like a true masochist, I look at Renee’s photos. There are a bunch of her and the rest of our friends in a new album called “Summer Nights.” I notice a shot where Henry has his arm around her and is leaning into the side of her head, and I wonder if they’re finally getting together. And I’m missing it. Heart pang.
Ethan is there too. His hair is shorter, like he got it cut for summer, and it looks lighter, like he’s outside a lot. He’s smiling in each shot; he’s having a great time. He’s there with Amanda.
I click faster, then move back to thumbnail view so I can find the pictures with him in them. There are a few of him with all of my friends. And that’s how I think of it: he’s with my friends.
How did this happen? Amanda took him back?
I click to Amanda’s profile and open up her latest album—she doesn’t protect her photos. That answers my question. Self-takes of Amanda and Ethan kissing; him picking her up on the shore of Dilby Lake, where Amanda lifeguards every summer; them in downtown Chicago by the Art Institute.
I can’t freaking believe they are back together.
Amanda forgave him and not me!
I click to my own profile and scroll for wall posts and messages. There are just notes from a few boring groups I belong to. I see a couple of random “Have fun on the water!” messages from people who don’t know me very well.
Aaron wrote, “Don’t fall off the boat!”
There’s nothing from Amanda or Ethan. Not a wall post, not a whisper. I thought one of them might have written me something explaining, something to tell me how they can have this summer without me, like I never existed, like Ethan didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve been erased.
When I check my private inbox, I see a message from Amanda. At the sight of her name, my heart speeds up. Then, just as suddenly, it stops—or at least it feels like it stops. The subject line says, “BITCH.” I don’t open it, but I don’t delete it, either. I’m frozen.
I look over at Mom, feeling panicky and breakable. She’s still in her zone. She doesn’t see me. I log off and walk out of the little dirty room and into the fresh air. I see Olive and Dad through the window of the ice cream shop across the street. I turn right and walk to the end of the sidewalk. This isn’t a very long Main Street. I walk back to the other end of the street and catch my breath. I swallow the lump in my throat. I wish I had stayed off-line.
I keep pacing for a few more minutes, calming myself down. “It’s okay, you’re okay,” I whisper, trying to remind myself of James and the drawing and being in the moment with the sun and the water and the quiet of the day.
I stare at a bunch of wildflowers growing in the parking lot at the end of the street. How can she forgive him and not me? There are yellow, purple, and white flowers growing; they all are really tiny. Do they even miss me? I’m reminded of a minifloral pattern that used to be on one of Amanda’s skirts when we were little. If they talk about me, what do they say? I wonder if the flowers are weeds, and someone’s going to pull them out of the ground one day and throw them away, even though they’re so pretty. Does Ethan say terrible things about me? The flowers look even prettier somehow because they’re against this hard, gray concrete backdrop. Does he make it sound like it was all my fault? Maybe they’re more beautiful because they’re struggling to grow in a harsh environment. Does Amanda hate me forever?
I turn around and carefully look at the sidewalk as I go, noticing some initials, VG + RS, written in the concrete. I see a chalk-drawn hopscotch game in front of the hardware store.
I want to push Facebook from my mind, but it’s still there.
Everyone can tell something’s off with me when I walk into the ice cream parlor. I try to arrange my face the right way, I try to slow my breathing, I try to smile. I study the menu intensely. Olive sees it first.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
Mom’s done with her e-mail and she’s eating maple-flavored ice cream. Olive is crunching the lower half of her waffle cone. Dad’s loudly draining the last drops of his vanilla milkshake.
I’m such a damn billboard for my emotions. How do deceptive people do it?
I glance over at the ice cream counter.
“They don’t have peppermint,” I say.
“They have mint chocolate chip,” says Dad.
“Not the same,” I say.
Olive looks at me sympathetically. I sit down and join the family ice
cream table, ice-creamless.
When we get back to the boat, I need some in-my-own-cabin time. They didn’t push me to talk earlier, and no one’s asking me to do anything now. Mom starts making dinner, and Olive offers to help. I go into my room and close the door. When I get out my journal, I have trouble starting.
The Facebook stuff is still fresh in my mind, and I write about Ethan and Amanda being back together. When I write about Amanda unfriending me, and how she’s spending the summer with Ethan, I let a few tears fall, now that I’m finally in a semiprivate space. But I don’t bawl my eyes out like I wanted to when I first saw her album. Family ice cream time helped. The flowers in the parking lot helped. Seeing the boat with the sun setting behind it as I walked toward the dock helped. And thinking about James—and seeing him again soon—helped.
I take his drawing out of my drawer and tape it to the wall next to my bed, just so it’ll be there when I need to focus on being in the present. With him, with my family. It’s a reminder of what’s real.
chapter twenty-seven
Dear Amanda,
I know you don’t believe me, but Ethan and
I never hooked up. We never even—
Eventually, out in that field in the county, the sun started getting low in the sky, and Ethan and I both started murmuring about “getting back.” I wondered, What happens now?
But even though I felt like we could talk about anything and everything, I couldn’t ask Ethan that. I didn’t even know what I wanted to happen.
We drove back to town slowly, right at the speed limit. From the moment we got in the car, though, I noticed that something had shifted—things felt off.
For twenty minutes, we were silent.
“Oh,” I said, noticing the gas needle close to E. “I should stop for gas.”
“I should really get home,” said Ethan. “Can you drop me off first?”
“Sure.” I faced straight ahead.
Ethan checked his phone. “Shit,” he said. “It’s dead.”
Unbreak My Heart Page 12
