The table is small. He could probably lean across and—
“I’m sorry,” he says, startling me from the so-not-okay direction my thoughts were heading. “I didn’t know. I thought … You always seem so confident in front of the class. I had no idea.”
He does look legitimately sorry.
He inhales and goes on, “You know the other night when they were having karaoke here?”
I nod. I’ve barely thought about karaoke these past few days, but now the memories come surging back. The first powerful chords of “Instant Karma!” The way the restaurant faded away as I sang. All except Quint, for that one moment, his eyes glued to me, his half-astonished smile …
I look down at the table, suddenly flustered, and … oh good heavens, I’m blushing.
What the heck?
“I was watching some of those people get up to sing,” says Quint, and I snap my attention back to him. “And I thought, I literally cannot imagine anything more painful than to sing in front of a crowd like that. I would rather have a root canal.” He gives an exaggerated shudder. “So, I get it. In a way. Stage fright, or whatever. And you’re right. I should have been there. You did ask me to.” He pauses. “I’m really sorry.”
We sit in silence for a while, tourists and beachgoers passing by on the sidewalk. Birds squawking nearby, hoping we’ll leave behind some crumbs of food.
“I have a trick,” I say quietly.
Quint’s eyebrows go up.
“When I have to perform in front of people, I tell myself, this is only five minutes of my life. Or ten, or twenty, or whatever it is. In the grand scheme of things, five minutes is nothing, right? And that’s all I have to get through, and then it will be over.”
His mouth quirks. “If I ever decide to do karaoke, which is highly unlikely, I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Most songs are under four minutes long.”
He nods, and now he’s smiling. His smile is familiar, but it’s not very often that I’ve been the recipient of it.
I swallow.
“Look, Prudence. I don’t want this summer to be as miserable as biology class was all year. Do you think maybe we can try something different?”
I don’t look away as the threat of tears starts to fade. “Well,” I say, “that does seem better than the alternative.”
NINETEEN
The waiter arrives, swapping out the empty appetizer plate with a giant platter of nachos, piled high with roasted pork, gooey cheese, and all the fixings. Quint thanks him, and as soon as the waiter walks away, Quint nudges the plate toward me, pushing it on top of some of my papers. “You can have some if you want.”
“Thanks,” I mutter. “Given that you did eat my food.”
He smirks. He knows as well as I do that if I were going to finish the tostones, they would have been long gone before he arrived.
I huff and take a chip.
Quint groans in approval as he takes his first bite, and washes it down with a swig of his soda. “So much better than rice and beans.”
“Rice and beans? That’s a weird comparison.”
He chuckles. “There are only, like, three things on this menu that Morgan can eat. She pretty much just comes here for the tostones, and they are amazing, but a guy sometimes needs a bit more. So we had rice and beans, but the Puerto Rican kind? What’s it called?”
“Pigeon pea rice.”
He snaps his fingers. “Right. Except even that is usually made with ham or bacon or something, so she ordered the vegetarian option. It wasn’t bad, but this?” He sweeps his hand toward the nachos. “Oh my god. So good.”
“She’s vegetarian?”
“Vegan. And, I mean, she always says that she’s fine with people eating meat and dairy in front of her, but…” He gives me a knowing look. “Believe me, she is judging. She is judging hard. So I’ve found it’s easier to just get whatever she gets.”
“Huh. I guess that explains the billboard,” I say, picturing the cows in their green pasture, and the big X drawn over their happy thoughts. It still doesn’t make what she did okay, but if she’s opposed to meat, then of course she’s opposed to the local burger joint.
“What billboard?”
I blink, realizing that Quint probably doesn’t know about the graffiti. “Oh. I was just thinking about this billboard I saw, advertising Blue’s Burgers? Someone had vandalized it, and I was just thinking how, you know, to me, eating a cheeseburger isn’t exactly a question of morality. But Morgan would probably disagree.”
“Oh, she would disagree with all the raging fires of hell,” says Quint. Then he shrugs. “I mean, she’s cool. I like Morgan a lot. She’s really smart and super fun to work with. But when it comes to the meat industry and the humane treatment of animals, she is”—he takes a second to search for the right word before settling on—“passionate.”
Something tells me he’s using passionate to describe Morgan the same way he used dedicated to describe me.
“I guess that’s good to know,” I say. “Honestly, she mostly just seemed rude the other night.”
He grimaces. “She did, didn’t she? I know I shouldn’t apologize for other people or anything, but she’s not usually so disconnected. I guess there was, like, this big online petition thing going around, trying to get the government to shut down some local factory farms that have been caught using inhumane practices. So she was writing emails to all our local politicians and trying to blow it up on social media.”
Factory farms? Is this connected to the billboard incident, too?
But Blue’s Burgers gets their meat from cows that graze happily on fresh green grass all day. That’s what all their advertising has been telling us for years. They don’t have anything to do with some shady factory farms.
And even if they did, Morgan was still committing a crime. The universe still punished her for it.
Quint goes on, looking a tiny bit embarrassed when he adds, “Not that she couldn’t have stopped for two seconds to give your friend her attention or some applause or something. And you too, for that matter.”
I shrug, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Again, I think about his gaze on me, the way he’d toasted me with his Shirley Temple as I left the stage.
“You were really good, by the way.”
It takes a moment for Quint’s words to register.
“I don’t think I said that yet,” he continues. “But you were.” He’s suddenly intent on his nachos, like choosing a chip with the perfect amount of cheese-to-pork-to-jalapeño ratio is a life-or-death situation.
I blush again, but this time it spreads all the way down my throat and across my chest.
“Thanks,” I say quietly. I have to clear my throat. “But I know I don’t have a great singing voice. You don’t have to—”
“No, I know. That’s not…” He hesitates. “I mean, your voice is fine.”
“Fine,” I say with an erratic laugh, “is barely a step above tolerable.”
“That’s not what I meant. You were…” He trails off.
“I’m flattered,” I deadpan.
He shakes his head. “I’m just trying to say, you were…” He flicks his wrist through the air, trying to summon a word or maybe trying to convey his meaning through a flourished gesture, but the message isn’t translating.
I should probably appreciate the twin telepathy I have with Jude more than I do. Clearly, communication is hard.
“I was?”
His fingers stall, then clench briefly, before swooping down and grabbing a chip off the pile. “Never mind.”
My knee starts to bounce anxiously under the table. I find myself staring at him, even as he turns his head and fixes his attention resolutely on the sliver of beach that can be seen beyond the buildings on the other side of the street.
His cheeks. They look redder than before, too.
Which I am obviously imagining. Or maybe he forgot to put on sunblock—an amateur mistake here in Fortuna Beach.
That m
ust be what it is.
“You just seemed really confident up there,” he says, speaking a little too fast all of a sudden.
“I’m a pretty confident person in general.”
“Believe me, I’ve noticed. But it was more that … you looked like you were having a lot of fun. That’s all.”
Oh. There it is. The f-word. The note of surprise. The implication—Wow! Prudence Barnett knows how to have fun? Who knew?
“Right. Because all I know how to do is work hard and get good grades and study.”
He glares at me, and just like that, we’re all bristled up again. “Honestly? I’ve wondered.”
It’s terrible, the way this comment burns. There’s no way for Quint to know how he’s just jabbed a stick straight into one of my weakest places. I know I can be a bit of a control nut. I know I take things too seriously sometimes. I know I’m not a jokester or the life of the party or one of those breezy “cool girls” that are portrayed in the films like the fantasy of every red-blooded boy out there.
I know the words someone like Quint uses to describe someone like me.
Buzzkill. Uptight. Prude.
But he’s wrong.
“I can have fun,” I say. “I do have fun. And for your information, I have friends who like hanging out with me. People who legitimately enjoy my company. Maybe I don’t go surfing or … or do kegstands or whatever—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Quint. “That’s not what I—just never mind, okay? Let’s just forget I said anything.”
I inhale sharply through my nostrils. My pulse is running hot, but I force my anger back down from whence it came. I admit to myself that maybe, just maybe, that was a slight overreaction. Though I’d never give him the satisfaction of knowing that.
“Fine,” I mutter. “It’s forgotten.”
“Great.”
“Okay.”
“Fine.”
Aaaaand … suddenly, things are weird. Uncomfortable. Like there’s been something left unsaid but neither of us is quite willing to say it, and—to be honest—I have no idea what that thing is. But it’s looming over our heads, daring us to take notice.
“Okay!” I say again, so loud and sudden that Quint jumps a little. “So. Let’s talk fundraising strategies, shall we? I have so many ideas. I’m bursting with ideas. Here. I made a list, organized in order from lowest to highest start cost, but then on this side I’ve noted what I think the potential income could be.” I flip around the top piece of paper and hold it toward Quint. He scans it as he eats a few more nachos. I take my pen and tap the top item—bake sale. “Obviously, a bake sale would be incredibly cheap and easy, but how much money can we really expect to make selling brownies?”
“I don’t know. People really like brownies.”
“True. And I also have this page of supplementary ideas, and under bake sale I did think we could make themed goods? Like, cookies shaped like dolphins, that sort of thing. But, anyway, I think we can do better than a bake sale.” I tap a few more items on the list. “Other cost-effective options are creating a mailing list and working on our educational outreach with local schools, and we definitely need to step things up on social media. The only cost there is our time. On the other end of the spectrum, down here, we have things like—”
“Gifts with donations?” says Quint.
“Yes! Like in our project. Remember? Reusable tote bags and water bottles, all branded with the center’s logo. Just a little incentive, based on various donation amounts. But we would have to pay to produce those items, and it’s better to order that stuff in bulk so that the price-per-item goes way down.”
“Field trips?”
“Right! I thought, if we can get kids excited about the center, then they’ll go home and tell their parents. We can invite classes to come and see the animals, watch us feed them, maybe do a fun craft project, like I found these sea turtle suncatchers on Pinterest that are made out of tissue paper and super cute, and then—”
“Prudence. Pause.”
My words halt.
“Before we can do any of this, we need to figure out our message. Our mission. I mean, I know why my mom started the center, and why so many of the volunteers donate their time there, but we need to be able to convey it to people who’ve never heard of us. Who maybe have no idea that these animals are in danger. Because no one is going to give us money if they don’t know why it’s important.”
“Of course it’s important,” I say, more than a little confused.
Quint laughs. “You don’t think it is.”
“That’s not true. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re here because you want a better grade on that project.”
My hackles rise and I’m about to argue, when Quint lifts both hands. “Just stick with me here. We rescue and rehabilitate sea animals. Why?”
“Because…” My mouth stays open, but nothing else comes out. “Because … because people think they’re cute?”
He rolls his eyes. “People. But not you?”
“I don’t know. They’re not bad.”
“Have you ever seen a baby sea otter?”
I roll my eyes. “No, but I’m sure they’re great. I’m just saying. They’re sea animals. They’re not puppies.”
“Ah. So you’re a dog person.”
I make a face. “Ick. No.”
Quint laughs, tipping back in his chair and balancing on the back legs. I’m tempted to kick it out from under him. His teeth, I notice for the first time, are weirdly perfect. Like, toothpaste-model teeth.
“Oh, stop it,” I hiss. “I’m not a monster. I can see that puppies are adorable, and I’m sure baby sea otters are, too. But … I like people. I like kids.”
He looks surprised at this. “You do?”
“Well, sure. I mean, when they’re not related to me. I used to tutor kindergartners in reading and they were the best.”
He stares. “Huh.”
“Don’t huh me,” I say, pointing a finger at his face. “I do more than study, you know.”
He cocks his head to the side, and I can see that this is new information to him. But I can also see him struggling not to say that. “You said you like kids when they’re not related to you. Jude isn’t your only sibling?”
“I wish. We have three younger sisters. Lucy is thirteen, Penny is nine, and Ellie is four.”
“Ellie,” he says, curious. “Short for Eleanor?”
I nod.
“Wow. Your parents were really committed to the Beatles thing, weren’t they?”
My eyes widen. He picked up on that really fast. “You know Beatles music?”
“Of course. They were pretty much all my dad listened to when I was growing up.”
His dad? This is the first I’ve heard of Quint’s dad. I don’t recall seeing a wedding ring on Rosa, but then, I wasn’t looking for one, either. And with her line of work, it’s possible she would take it off anyway.
Then I catch the subtext of Quint’s words. That’s all his dad listened to when he was growing up.
But not now?
Did he pass away?
Curiosity floods through me, but I know I shouldn’t ask. Instead, I shrug, trying to act nonchalant. “Yeah, well, I’m just glad my parents kept having girls, because there aren’t a lot of guy-friendly names in Beatles songs. I mean, there’s Maxwell, who murders people with a hammer. Or Rocky, who gets shot in a saloon … It’s really slim pickings.”
Quint chuckles again, but at least this time he doesn’t seem to be laughing at me, which is a nice change. “I love it. I always wanted a little brother or sister.”
“Everyone says that, because they have no idea what a pain they are.”
He shrugs. “I think I’d be a pretty kickass big brother.”
I want to argue, to shoot a hole or two in that theory, but … maybe he’s right. I mean, Jude is a great big brother. He’s way more patient with our sisters than I am and more willing to play with them or help with homew
ork or babysit. Not that it’s a competition, but we both know who the better older sibling is.
“Do you have any older siblings?” I ask.
“Nope. Just me and my mom.” He pauses before adding, “And because I know you’re dying to ask—my dad is alive. They divorced when I was nine.”
“Oh,” I say, trying not to let on that I’d definitely been picturing a great childhood tragedy in which his dad died in some sudden and horrible way. Something like relief surges through me, even though I know that divorce can be really hard on a kid, too.
“He lives in San Francisco with his new wife,” Quint adds. “I spend two weeks with him every summer and some major holidays. I’m not sad. I’m not traumatized. It’s fine.”
I press my lips together. It’s tempting to tease him for this speech, which he’s clearly given a time or two in the past, but I resist the urge. For three whole seconds. “And you’ve spent how many years in therapy trying to get to this point of well-rounded acceptance?”
The look he gives me is withering, but in a good-natured way. It occurs to me, somewhat bewilderingly, that this conversation has actually turned into something kind of … friendly.
“Funny,” he says. “So, do you like your name? I’ve always wondered.”
I shrug. “I don’t dislike it. There have been times when I hated it, especially with a twin named Jude, because the jokes pretty much write themselves. Prudence the Prude and her weird brother, Jude … Heard that one a lot in middle school.”
Quint grimaces. “Your parents didn’t think that one through?”
“I’m not sure how they could have missed it. But ‘Dear Prudence’ is a beautiful song, one of my favorites, in fact. So … whatever. People are jerks. I’m used to it.”
“It kind of fits you, doesn’t it?”
I stiffen, the words striking me between my rib cage. My eyes narrow. “Because I’m such a prude?”
He looks startled. “No, that isn’t … Why do you keep doing that?”
I roll my eyes. “Please. I know what people think about me. I get it. I don’t goof off. I take things too seriously. But I’m not a total killjoy, either.” I swallow, finding it suddenly impossible to hold his gaze. I don’t say it out loud, but this is actually one of my biggest fears. That, in reality, I am a total killjoy. And these arguments sound defensive even in my own head, and I realize I’m biting the inside of my cheek to keep from blurting something rude right back at him. Maybe if you’d ever showed up on time to class you could have taken five seconds to get to know me, rather than just asking what you missed and copying off my notes. “I know I can be intense. I know I’m not … silly or flirtatious or whatever, but—”
Instant Karma Page 17
