ALSO BY AUDREY COULOUMBIS
Getting Near to Baby
Jake
Love Me Tender
Maude March on the Run!
The Misadventures of Maude March
Say Yes
Summer’s End
War Games (cowritten by Akila Couloumbis)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Audrey Couloumbis
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Couloumbis, Audrey.
Lexie / Audrey Couloumbis. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When ten-year-old Lexie goes with her father to the beach for a week, she is surprised to find that he has invited his girlfriend and her two sons to join them for the entire week.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89322-3
[1. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Divorce—Fiction. 3. Remarriage—Fiction. 4. Beaches—Fiction. 5. Vacations—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.C8305Le 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010020751
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For Hannah,
who likes cold eggs
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Acknowledgements
About the Author
I should have been on my way to the shore. So of course I was sitting on the window seat, reading.
“Lexie, your dad will be here any minute,” Mom said, coming into my room like she was on her way to a fire. “You aren’t packed.”
My shorts and tops were folded and stacked on my bed. Sweatshirts and jeans too, because it gets cold at night at the Jersey shore. I was supposed to put them in my suitcase. Mom had been bagging stuff to make lunch at the shore. It was almost time to eat already.
I didn’t shut my book. I said, “Daddy’s late.”
“He should have been here over an hour ago. Almost two hours ago. Did I rush you then?”
“No.”
“Right, because we knew he would be late. Now he’s very late, which means he’ll be here any minute.” Mom got my old pink and white polka-dotted suitcase off the high shelf in my closet. Babyish, maybe, but I still liked it. “Let’s get this stuff packed up.”
I closed my book. “It’s going to be weird without you there.”
“It’s going to be weird without you here,” Mom said. She was using the voice of If people can climb mountains, we can do this. “But we’ll manage.”
In about one minute, she packed everything. I got up to go over and lie on my bed. “The thing is,” I said, “I don’t want to go.”
“You love the shore,” Mom said. “You love your dad. You’re going to have a fine time and you’re going to forget to call me every day.”
“I won’t,” I said, and started to feel exactly the way I didn’t want to feel. Like I might cry. I stared hard at the ceiling. “I won’t forget.”
Mom said, “Just don’t call while my favorite shows are on, okay?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You don’t watch TV.”
“I’m probably going to start.” Mom sat down on the edge of my bed. She looked like she might cry too.
“It’s just for this week,” I reminded her. “Then it’s only on the weekends.”
“Right.” Mom stretched out next to me and put her head on my pillow so both of us were looking at the ceiling.
“I brought a few of my favorite beach books home last year,” I said. “I can leave them with you.”
“Leave one for me,” Mom said. “Beachcombing. Or Out of the Ocean.”
“I could leave you Babymouse.”
“No, no, you’re right in the middle of it,” Mom said and I was so glad.
But I felt bad too. “It isn’t fair that you can’t come to the shore.”
“Your dad can’t live here anymore, I can’t stay there anymore.” Her eyes had closed and her voice sounded like she might fall asleep. “That’s the way things get worked out with divorce.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry about that, I really am.” She got up and started going through my closet. “A big part of growing up is dealing with things we don’t like.”
She pulled out two dresses for me.
“Daddy won’t take me anywhere I need a dress.” Mom put one of the dresses back in the closet. I asked, “How come Daddy’s late and we’re hurrying?”
“I don’t like to keep him waiting back, that’s why,” Mom said.
“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” I asked her.
“George said he’ll pick me up at work and take me to breakfast every morning.”
“Every morning?” George had been her boyfriend for about a month now. He was always on time, and Mom liked that.
“Pancakes, omelettes, waffles, scrambled, french toast,” she said. “Something different each day.”
“George always keeps his promises,” I said. I didn’t think it was always important to be on time. But promises mattered.
“He’s a good guy,” Mom said. We were quiet for a few seconds and then she said, “Lexie, your dad loves you as much as I do. He’s just got a looser style.”
“I know that.”
We heard the car horn. Daddy bought one of those oooh-gah horns right after they got the divorce. He said he got it so I would know it was him. I looked out the window and saw our car and suddenly I wanted to go. I already missed Mom, and I still wanted to go.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“I didn’t check your knapsack,” Mom said as I unzipped it. “Toothbrush, hair comb?”
“And my bathing suit.” I stuffed the book I was reading inside. I left the others for Mom.
“Did you put in the sunscreen?”
“Daddy always forgets to tell me to put it on.”
“You’re old enough to remember. You’re practically preadolescent.”
“Don’t rush me.”
Driving to the shore, Daddy kept telling me riddles. “What’s green and sings ‘It’s a Small World’ when you plug it in?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Electric lettuce.”
“Silly.” He makes these up himself.
He said, “What’s yellow, runs downhill, and makes everybody els
e run and hide?”
“Don’t have a clue.”
“Baby diarrhea.”
“Gross.” Really.
He said, “What spits, throws sparks, and can climb a tree at the speed of light?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“A cat on Rollerblades.”
“Weird.” But I laughed. I like his riddles.
He said, “Why did the ballerina wear a tutu?”
“To keep her tush-tush warm?”
Daddy looked over at me. “Very cute,” he said. “We could come up with a riddle for that.”
“So what’s the answer really?”
“Because the one-one was too little and the three-three was too big.”
I didn’t feel like making up riddles. I said, “Can’t we listen to the radio?”
Between the songs we sang along with, we made plans to build the biggest sand castle ever and eat hamburgers every day. Except today, when we were having turkey sandwiches.
We didn’t stop for lunch. We ate a bag of chips and drank soda so we’d get to the shore faster. Even if I didn’t know the way, I would know when we nearly get there. When you open the car windows, the air sort of sticks to your skin. It smells like tuna fish out there. For some reason, no one minds.
I sat up straighter so I’d see the water first.
“I want to find a hermit crab this year,” I said. “I already bought a fish tank and put gravel in the bottom.”
“Cool,” Daddy said.
“Mom helped me plant some parsley in the tank and we put in a few grass seeds, because maybe a hermit crab would like that.”
“Sure, who doesn’t want a lawn?”
“I’m serious,” I said. “We also saved a blue plastic lid. We’ll put water in it for a hermit crab pool.”
“Okay, well, maybe we’ll find one,” he said. “If not, we can probably buy one. Doesn’t one of those shops on the boardwalk sell them? They have decals of flags and flowers on the shells.”
“I’d rather find my own.”
Daddy said, “I asked somebody to come out to the shore for a visit.” There was something in his voice, like when he tells me he got me something special for Christmas and lets me wonder what it is.
I didn’t ask who was coming to the shore. I looked at his face, still half smiling, and at the way his hair falls over his forehead. I looked away.
Last week I’d heard Mom tell a friend of hers that she used to love the way Daddy looks. Then she said she would never marry another man who didn’t comb his hair back off his face.
“I thought you might like some company,” Daddy said.
I turned the radio off. “I thought we were each other’s company.”
“It’ll be fun to have Vicky out here,” he said. “Besides, it’s a nice thing to do for friends. Get them out of the city heat.”
Mom was still in Baltimore in the sweltering heat—that’s what she called it when sweat ran down our sides in lines. This would be our first time here without her.
“It’ll be fun to have Vicky out here,” he said again.
I turned on the radio and we didn’t talk anymore until we got to Seaville.
“I can see the water,” Daddy said, like I should be getting excited.
I could see the water too, and across it, I could see the trees on the long barrier island where our house stood. Technically, this water was the ocean. What Mom and I do is look out across the water to where it meets the sky. We weren’t quite there yet.
“Close, but no cigar,” I said, because that was what George says when something is almost right but not exactly. I’m not sure what cigars have to do with it.
We passed Bongo Billy’s ice cream stand, the one with plastic palm trees and a monkey with eyes that do a slow blink. A long line of people already stood waiting for cones.
“Nearly there,” Daddy said. He sounded excited about it.
I sat forward, watching for the bridge.
“You met Vicky, remember?” he said. “You liked her.”
I met Vicky in Daddy’s hardware store. She’d brought in her broken vacuum cleaner, dragging it through the snow, asking if someone could tell her how to fix it. Daddy fixed it.
A few weeks later we ran into her in the grocery store. She and Daddy talked like friends and I thought it was because of the vacuum cleaner. Then Vicky said how much she liked the movie they’d seen and I knew it wasn’t just the vacuum cleaner.
Maybe I said she seemed nice. I never said I liked her.
I didn’t care if he wanted Vicky to come out sometime. On one of our weekends. For a whole day. This was supposed to be our week at the shore, Daddy’s and mine.
We turned onto the bridge that leads to our road. For a long time, I didn’t know this was a bridge. I thought it was a road with water on both sides.
A lady in loose pants waved to us when we stopped at the other side. I didn’t wave back. “Who’s that?” I asked. The breeze made her pants ripple like a skirt. People always wear stuff like that around the shore. When they aren’t wearing bathing suits, anyway.
“I don’t know,” Daddy said. “Someone friendly. You heard me, right? Vicky is coming out here.”
Another time when I saw Daddy—the snow was gone then so it was around Easter—I found a scarf in the car and Daddy said, Vicky’s. And I said, The movies? And he said, No, she had a problem with her car and I gave her a ride home.
That didn’t sound like a date to me. I figured she must have been going to the movies with somebody else by now. I didn’t expect her to show up at the shore. “You gave old Mrs. Steadman a ride home once,” I said. “You didn’t ask her out to the shore.”
“Give me a break here, would you?” Daddy said. We were on the last turn before our road. I looked out at the water.
“What day?” I asked, hoping we could get Vicky’s visit over with quick. Like being the first one in at the doctor’s office. It’s much worse to wait around and see little kids come out with tears on their faces and lollipops in their mouths.
If Vicky came early, tomorrow or the next day, we could settle down to enjoy ourselves sooner.
Daddy cleared his throat, the way he does when he talks with Mom and she’s getting mad. He looked a little sunburned. It wasn’t sunburn, I knew that. The sunburned look comes right after he clears his throat if Mom is going to be very unhappy.
For some reason I couldn’t explain, I almost cried. I sucked it in, though. Daddy hates it when I cry.
“They’re going to be with us all week,” Daddy said. “She’s bringing her kids.”
“Her kids?”
“They’re about your age.”
“You could have told me.” I could hardly breathe. “I thought this vacation was for us.”
“It is, honey,” Daddy said. He was using that same voice, I can see the water. “We’re going to have lots of fun.”
I felt like I’d been tricked. “Does Mom know?” He didn’t answer. He frowned, which meant Mom didn’t know either.
We turned into our parking spot, the gravel making popping sounds under the tires. There were cars parked in other spots already. Gravel is to keep the wheels from getting stuck in the sand. We sat for a moment, the way we always do, taking everything in.
The houses are on tall stilts to hold them above the water during high tide. Windows had been propped open with sticks to let fresh air into the houses. Quilts flapped from the deck railings.
Standing on the deck is like being up in a tree house without the leafy branches all around. Like being on a ship headed out to sea. You get a brave feeling, because before you get used to it, it’s scary.
A couple of dogs chased each other below, sand flying out behind them. From the car, we could look straight under the houses to where the ocean meets the sky.
Everything looked the way it should.
And I still didn’t feel like I was all the way there yet. Lately I would get this feeling of falling behind and not being able to catch up. It’
s the feeling of being divorced, I think. I stared out at the water and waited for the feeling to go away.
Nothing protects the houses from strong winds, so the first thing we say is “Well, it’s still here,” like, boy, are we amazed.
“Well, it’s still here,” Daddy said, and things felt almost normal again.
Our house is a silvery gray because that’s the color wood turns by the sea. Some of the houses are painted bright colors in the spring, and by the next year, the sides that face the sea are going gray again.
We took stuff out of the car and climbed the steps to the porch. It’s the porch on this side because it’s screened in. On the ocean side it’s open and we call it the deck.
The wind was blowing sand over the porch boards. I could hardly wait to take off my sneakers and walk barefoot in wet sand. First I had to help carry stuff.
Inside, the house smelled the by-the-ocean smell that makes Mom sneeze and open all the windows. It had that too-quiet sound of coming in for the first time of the summer.
Daddy looked around like he didn’t know for sure what to do. He was loaded down with a knapsack and two duffel bags and a grocery bag from an expensive store where Mom never shops. He let everything drop to the floor right inside the door.
I carried the bag full of lunch meat and the other stuff Mom packed for us to the long room that opens out onto the deck. This room is part bookcase, part dining room, part kitchen, and part laundry and utility room. The utility part means the water heater is there behind the washing machine.
I put the bag I was carrying on the table, thinking about how hungry I was. But Daddy went straight outside, so I did too.
We stood at the edge of the deck and let the wind blow our hair every which way. The railing is there so nobody falls off, but that brave shivery feeling still happens for a minute.
This was when Mom usually took over. Daddy and I always headed straight out to splash around a little.
“Let’s check out the water,” Daddy said.
I kicked off my sneakers and we ran down the wooden steps. Daddy started doing these fast runs across the waves on the shore, something he calls wind sprints. Water splashed all around him.
I stood on the wet sand and waited for the water to come. It rushed over the beach in a curved line, barely touching me, leaving sea foam bubbling between my toes. Sand trickled away, trailing the water.
Lexie Page 1
