Wishful Thinking

by Alexandra Bullen

  And, for better or for worse, she’d decided to start with Luke.

  “Now, please, stop moving,” Hazel begged, and Luke folded his knees, affecting a studious stare. “Just look out at the water, and pretend you see something that scares you.”

  Luke turned to Hazel, his sandy eyebrows raised. “What? Why?”

  “Come on,” Hazel insisted. “If I want Rosanna to put my stuff in the show, it has to be good. Can you please take this seriously?”

  Luke cleared his throat and turned back toward the ocean. Hazel brought the lens to her eye and focused Luke’s face in the frame. She watched as his brow became heavy, his light brown eyes narrowed and concerned.

  “Nice,” she said softly. She pressed her finger on the button, and just as she snapped the shot, Luke’s eyes popped open, his jaw dropped, and he screamed.

  “Shark!” he shouted. “Everybody out of the water!”

  Hazel dropped the camera to her lap and spun to face the ocean. The waves were breaking right on the shore, and beyond them, the water was clear and flat and decidedly sharkfree. Reid was the only one swimming, and he was either less gullible than Hazel, or had been too busy dodging the incoming waves to hear Luke’s phony cry.

  Hazel looked back at Luke, who was grinning mischievously, his star-shaped dimples twitching in place. “Sorry,” he said, and shrugged. “I was trying to find my motivation.”

  Luke nuzzled his head playfully against Hazel’s neck as she flapped the wasted picture dry. She tried not to smile but failed.

  “Hey, Blondie,” Jaime called from behind them. Hazel turned to see her crouched by the edge of the red clay cliffs. “Come here. I want to show you something.”

  Hazel pushed herself up to her feet, lightly kicking sand onto Luke’s towel as she passed. “Thanks for your help,” she deadpanned, tucking her camera and the drying photo in her bag and walking up the beach. Maybe her luck would be better with Jaime.

  Hazel walked to the edge of the cliffs, where Jaime was huddled in the sand, the thick straps of an all-black racing suit peeking out of the top of her oversize Boston Celtics T-shirt. Hazel had tried to get Jaime to wear a two-piece, but she was convinced that Reid would notice the slightest thickening that had settled down around her hips. She still wasn’t ready to tell him about the baby, and she didn’t want to take any chances of him finding out on his own.

  “Check this out,” Jaime said, tracing a patch of the rock wall with one hand, as Hazel settled next to the cliffs beside her. “If you look carefully, you can find all kinds of things in here.” Her voice was wistful. “My grandmother used to take me on walks here all the time.”

  Hazel squinted at the dark crevices hidden in the sandy rock wall. “What are we looking for?” she asked. It all looked like dirt and pebbles to her.

  “Anything that seems out of place,” Jaime said, and shrugged. She ran her hand along a curve of the wall and pulled it back, her dry palm covered in a thin layer of crumbling red mud. “Some people think the clay is healing. But I just like to see what’s hidden inside.”

  Hazel studied Jaime’s face as she carefully surveyed the surface of the cliffs. Every day with Jaime was new and surprising. Since Reid had come back, there’d been a lightness to her, a sense of fun that hadn’t existed before. Even when they worked together at Rosanna’s, she was more patient, and less neurotic about getting everything done. And even though she’d been spending the majority of her nights off with Reid, on dinner dates in town or hanging out at his house, every night before bed she and Hazel would rehash the events of the day. It was like having a sister, or exactly like what Hazel had always dreamed having a sister would be like.

  Only, in that dream, her sister wasn’t also her mother. But most of the time, Hazel didn’t think about that. She’d been having too much fun to think about much of anything, really, except that everything was going so well. And if it continued to go well, and Reid and Jaime stayed together, then maybe, when Jaime had her baby, they would keep her and raise her themselves. If things worked out the way Hazel hoped, she’d have nothing but more good times to look forward to. Maybe for the rest of her life.

  “Look!” Jaime gasped, scraping away at layers of sand and pulling out what looked like a small, triangular rock. “It’s a shark’s tooth.”

  Jaime opened her hand and Hazel peered inside. The tooth was delicate and cracked, with little black lines running across its jagged, flaky surface. “There are tons of these in here, and they’re thousands of years old,” Jaime said, closing her fingers tightly around the artifact. “Arrowheads, too. It’s like an entire history of the island is frozen in time. All you have to do is look for it.”

  Jaime’s eyes looked far away and Hazel wondered what it must be like to feel so connected to a place. To have a history built inside the very earth that you walked on every day. More than just family, it was a history of a people. Jaime’s people.

  Now Hazel’s people, too.

  Hazel reached into her bag and pulled the camera out again. Without thinking, she trained the lens on the tooth in Jaime’s open hand. Jaime’s fingers were crusted in clay and sand and the jagged white tooth blinked between the creases of Jaime’s palm.

  The camera spat the image free, and it wasn’t until Hazel had it in her hand that she remembered she was supposed to be taking portraits.

  “Don’t move,” she commanded, and took a few careful steps away from where Jaime sat.

  “What are you doing?” Jaime asked, folding the shark’s tooth into her small palm.

  “Just pretend I’m not here,” Hazel said, squaring Jaime’s face in the lens. But Jaime quickly buried her head in the sleeve of her T-shirt, just as Hazel snapped the shot.

  “I look like a whale,” Jaime huffed as she escaped to another section of the cliffs, farther down the beach. “Not every moment has to be preserved for posterity, you know.”

  Hazel sighed and stuck the photo in the pocket of her bag. She didn’t need to look at the blurry image to know that all she’d gotten was a blur of pink fingers and dark hair.

  “Nice camera.” A voice spoke suddenly from over Hazel’s shoulder. She turned to see Reid standing, wrapped in a towel and dripping in the sand.

  “Thanks,” Hazel said, squinting up at him and leaning into his long, skinny shadow. “Too bad I can’t get anyone to sit still.”

  Reid smiled and knelt in the sand beside her. “Don’t look at me,” he said, drying his hands on his towel. “I get enough of that with my dad. He’s a big photo nerd.”

  Reid held out a hand and Hazel passed him the camera. She watched as he turned the machine over in his palms. Since he’d gotten back, Reid had spent almost all of his time with Jaime, so it was rare that he and Hazel had a chance to talk by themselves. It was easy to forget that he was so much more than just Jaime’s boyfriend. He was Hazel’s dad, and she still knew almost nothing about him.

  “Is he a photographer?” Hazel asked, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Your father?”

  “He tries to be,” Reid said, holding the lens up to his clear blue eyes. “He’s more of a collector. He has some pretty amazing prints in his study. We should all take a ride over and see them later.”

  Hazel looked at her bare toes in the sand, trying to imagine the man Reid described. Her grandfather. Could it be that she’d gotten her photography-loving genes from him?

  Suddenly, Hazel heard a familiar click. She looked up to see that Reid had taken her picture.

  “Hey!” she whined. “Not fair.”

  Reid shrugged, a few drops of water dropping from the tips of his short reddish hair and landing on his freckled shoulder. “Every photographer needs to have her picture taken once in a while,” he said with a smile. “How is anybody supposed to know you were there?”

  Reid stood and tossed his towel to the sand, revealing his still-damp blue and white striped trunks. “Watch this,” he whispered to Hazel, and tiptoed around her. She turned just in time to see him scooping up Ja
ime by the waist.

  “Noooooo!” Jaime squealed, reaching back toward the cliffs as Reid hauled her off to the water’s edge. “My shark’s teeth!”

  “They’re just rocks,” Reid laughed. “They’ll be here when you get back.”

  Jaime pounded on his shoulders with tight little fists, her dark hair falling over her face, a wide, open grin cut from ear to ear. Reid dunked her into a wave, soaking her T-shirt and leaving her wild-eyed and laughing as she tried to catch her breath.

  Hazel wiped a few grains of sand from the lens of her camera and buried it inside her bag, making her way back to the blanket.

  “Don’t make me come out there,” Luke called from the water. He was standing waist-high in the rushing tide, waving at her to come in.

  Hazel shook her head defiantly, an excited flutter already catching in her breath.

  “Okay,” Luke said, jogging toward her. “You asked for it.”

  Before she knew what was happening, Luke was there, tucking his arms around the back of her knees and tossing her over his shoulder like a rag doll. As he sprinted toward the ocean, Hazel hiccupped with delight, watching as the cliffs bounced behind them. She held her breath as the sand got darker and thicker under Luke’s bare feet. Rippling white water flooded around his ankles and soon they were falling together into the shocking cold.

  Seconds later, when they surfaced at the same time, they were still clinging to each other’s shoulders, their noses just centimeters apart. They stayed like that for a few long moments, blinking and gasping for air, neither one of them wanting to let go first.

  After the beach, after their fingers were wrinkled and pruney, their bathing suits full of sand, and their cheeks freckled and sun-kissed, Reid suggested they go back to his house for dinner.

  “My parents are at some charity thing,” Reid explained as they pulled out of the beach parking lot. “But I’m sure the cooks are around.”

  Hazel glanced at Luke, sitting beside her in the sticky backseat. Cooks? he mouthed, and Hazel swatted his thigh. She didn’t care who was doing the cooking; her dad was inviting them to his house for dinner. She was going, and that was that.

  They drove with the windows down, past working farms, lush estates, and tucked-away ponds. As Reid started to turn at an intersection near the airfield, a paved landing strip in the middle of an overgrown field, Jaime sat forward in the front seat.

  “Go straight,” she said, pointing through the windshield. “It’s faster.”

  Reid continued his turn and shook his head. “I think I know the way, James,” he laughed. “It is my house.”

  “Your house, maybe,” Jaime said with a stubborn smile. “But it’s my island. And you’re going the wrong way.”

  Reid laughed and turned on the radio, flipping through static to find something that sounded like classic rock. Jaime made a face and quickly changed the station, settling on something poppier. She turned up the volume and tossed her hair to the music as Reid’s eyes met Hazel’s in the rearview mirror. He flashed her a bemused smile, and Hazel smiled back.

  It was her first family road trip, even if she was the only one who knew it.

  Reid turned down a side street, hugging the rocky points of the coast. The road was lined with old Victorian homes, many of which looked like restaurants or hotels. At a sharp bend, Reid pulled into a narrow driveway and turned off the ignition.

  “Home, sweet home,” he said as they piled out of the car. The driveway was lined with tall, manicured hedges, and a row of pink rosebushes hugged the wraparound porch.

  Inside, a spiral staircase led up to the second floor, which overlooked a formal sitting room, complete with a baby grand piano and claw-footed furniture. Jaime hurried to the bathroom; she’d yet to have any of the weird pregnancy food cravings the books had prepared them for, but she was right on schedule with the constant need to pee.

  “Whoa,” Luke gasped, hovering over the piano and plunking a few of the higher keys. “Are you sure it’s cool we’re here?”

  “Of course.” Reid tossed his towel over a high-backed chair at the dining room table. “My parents are used to it. They’re actually not as uptight as they look.”

  Reid lifted his eyes to a gilded frame that hung over the piano. It was a portrait of a sophisticated couple, standing in front of a glowing fireplace. The man was tall and dapper in a handsome suit, and the woman was petite with dark red hair. At their feet, two shiny-haired golden retrievers lay quietly on an oriental rug.

  Hazel stared wide-eyed at the painting. Those were her grandparents. Those were her grandparents’ dogs.

  “Hey,” Reid said, startling her from behind. “Want to see those prints I was telling you about?”

  Hazel nodded and followed Reid to the stairs. Luke sat down carefully on the glossy piano bench. Hazel could tell that he was trying hard not to break anything, or drip on something expensive. She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze as they passed.

  Reid led her upstairs, down a long hall, and through a pair of thick glass doors. His father’s study was an oval-shaped room, lined with bookshelves and centered by a dark mahogany desk.

  “This is it,” Reid said, flipping a light switch behind the door. A dozen strategically placed light fixtures snapped on, perfectly illuminating the framed photographs that plastered every square inch of the walls.

  “He’s got a little bit of everything,” Reid said, walking slowly around the room. “Edward Weston, Cartier-Bresson,” he listed, pointing at one shot of a group of children playing in a fountain. Hazel felt like she’d seen it before, probably in one of the coffee table books she’d spent hours flipping through at bookstores but never had been able to buy.

  Hazel stood close to the pictures, slowly gliding from one to the next. She lingered in front of a tall, black-and-white image of a beach on a cloudy day, the crooked shoreline diagonally snaking from top to bottom down the frame.

  “That’s an original Ansel Adams,” Reid said, standing behind Hazel with his arms crossed.

  Hazel nodded and leaned closer, making out the title of the work. “Rodeo Beach,” she read aloud. “I’ve been there!”

  She looked closer at the image of the shore. She’d been to that beach, just across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, a few times with Roy, and once or twice with different group homes. It wasn’t far from the city, or Roy’s apartment in San Rafael, but the traffic at the tunnel was always bumper-to-bumper. Most of the time, Hazel had been forced into tagging along and was ready to leave as soon as she’d arrived. The beach she remembered looked nothing like the pristine shoreline she saw now, through Ansel Adams’s lens.

  “He’s my dad’s favorite,” Reid said, pointing out a few other, similar-looking landscape views. “My dad always says the American West is a photographer’s dream. I think he wishes we lived out there.”

  Hazel sighed quietly, looking at Reid as he crossed behind his father’s desk. How many times had she wished that she’d lived anywhere else? She still couldn’t believe that in a strange and accidental way, her wish had come true.

  “I don’t know,” Reid said, stopping in front of the big bay window at the back of the room. “If I were a photographer, I’d have a hard time dreaming up anything better than this.”

  Hazel looked over his shoulder. The window faced the ocean and a long, crumbling jetty that wound its way out toward the horizon. A rustic white lighthouse sat atop a small, stony hill. He was right: It was a picture waiting to happen.

  “Reid!” Jaime shouted from downstairs. “How do you work the TV? There are, like, two hundred remotes!”

  “I’ll be right there,” Reid called back, starting back toward the hall. “You can hang out up here as long as you want,” he said over his shoulder. “Just turn off the lights when you leave.”

  Hazel watched him go, his long, slender arms swinging by his sides as he hurried to the top of the stairs. “Hey, Reid,” she called after him. “Thanks. This is really great.”

 
Reid smiled. “No problem,” he said with a friendly shrug.

  Reid bounded down the stairs and Hazel turned back to the study. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she felt somehow sturdier. As if, for most of her life, she’d just been floating around, and now she was finally attached to something real. Maybe it was the way Jaime felt about the island, and her arrowheads. They were in her blood. They made her who she was.

  Hazel took one last look at her grandfather’s collection, turned off the lights, and hurried downstairs to join the others.

  21

  “I’m out back,” Rosanna called from behind the studio. Hazel was balancing two blue mugs of French press coffee in one hand and a plate of Emmett’s muffins in the other. She walked carefully through the tickling blades of tall grass and found Rosanna on the patio.

  “I’m supposed to be packing, I know,” Rosanna sighed. It was the beginning of August and preparations for the big cross-country move were well underway. Jaime and Hazel spent most of their time packing up the office and planning travel arrangements, though they did their best to avoid talking about what any of it meant.

  Rosanna was supposed to be dealing with the contents of her studio, and preparing for the end-of-summer going-away party she was planning to host at the farm. But lately it seemed like she’d been doing more painting than packing.

  Today, she had set up an easel outside and was facing the section of cliff where a small cluster of beach plum trees bent sideways toward the ocean, their white flowering branches curved like icicles.

  Hazel put the coffee and muffins on the low glass table and peered over Rosanna’s shoulder at the canvas. She had a feeling the sudden inspiration was Rosanna’s way of putting off dealing with the inevitable—the move, the realness of her disease—but wherever it came from, the result was a breathtaking collection of landscapes. She’d only just started sketching the lines of the cliffs and horizon, but Hazel could already tell she was trying something new.

  “I came out here early this morning and something about the way the light was hitting the trees wouldn’t let me go back inside,” Rosanna said. “Sometimes when I get stuck with portraits I like to try something totally different. Kind of like clearing the slate.”