God, I love her so much.
June
Sunshine Falls
“What color would you call that?” Reed asked, running his fingers through his hair and peering into the pool water at Sunshine Falls, the only motel in downtown Winship. Remember, Dylan? Later that Thursday, you’d persuaded us that we absolutely had to slip away just before dinner—that no one would miss us, that you’d always wanted to sneak inside Sunshine Falls. We could pretend we were Canadian tourists!
“Green,” Fern answered, bikini strings poking up like antennae against her neck. Already there were white tan lines latticing her back. Her toes curled against the pool edge, as if she’d hang on for dear life if anyone tried to push her in. Land dweller, I thought, smiling.
Seagulls screamed on Silver Sands beach. Heat feathered on my face as an orange creamsicle sky spread out above us. Puffy clouds.
“Reed,” I said sneakily, poking him with my finger. “Reed. Reed.”
“Yeah?”
“The ground is lava.”
There. That wild, only-summer grin. “The ground is lava.” Grabbing me by the shoulders, he gently tugged me sideways into the pool with him. When I surfaced a split second later, spitting out green water and rubbing the chlorine from my eyes, he said, “I saved you.”
“Ha,” I said. “Thanks. . . . Can I ask you something?”
“Go for it.”
“Did you ride your tractor this morning?” He laughed. “I’m just saying, that’s a serious farmer’s tan you’ve got going on.”
After a few moments, you emerged into the pool area, Dylan—four firecracker Popsicles from the vending machine in your hands. “Brave,” you said to me and Reed. “You got in the pool.”
“The ground was lava,” I explained.
We ate our Popsicles, our bathing suits glittering like crowns in the dying sun. And on the car ride back, Reed speculating about the algae content of the pool water, you turned up the radio on some twangy country song. Even though Fern had leaned forward in the back seat, resting her chin on your shoulder for a few seconds as you drove, I remember thinking how lucky I was: to have my siblings, to have you. To have this moment in time when everything felt so good and so slow.
That night, thunderstorms.
The sky split right down the middle.
It was after lights-out, but even in the darkness I could see several of the campers dragging their sheets up to their chins, their eyes wide open. Rain pounded on the red tin roof, harder and harder, ear-crackling thunder sounding close by. It sounded like a thousand Tupelo ghosts were tap-dancing above us. In the morning the whole camp would smell sweet, and warm mist would flutter like moths. All this fear would vanish. But right now, Bailey—a seven-year-old from Rhode Island—was pulling the sheet clear over her head. No one was asleep.
I made an executive decision. “Okay,” I said, climbing down from my bunk and switching on the flickering lights. “Everybody up.”
All the campers murmured questioningly as I led them into the white-tiled bathroom, where the acoustics were best. But Fern knew exactly what I was doing. She clapped out the beat. I drumrolled on my thighs. And then we were singing (me rather badly) the camp song—repeating the chorus until everyone caught on: I said, The Hundreds is the best around! Can’t you hear that ocean sound?
Our voices drowned out the thunder. And my sister was happy.
When I look back on that summer, this is how I want to remember her. This is how I want to remember us. Belting out a song in the middle of a storm. Gobbling up firecracker Popsicles beneath an orange sky. I want to remember picnics in the wildflower meadow and lounging in the sun-washed grass, fresh blueberries and sweating bottles of cool lemonade, snorting with laughter and then laughing some more, lava in Mom’s garden and Fern’s ballerina leaps to safety, Reed quietly swimming with me in the cove—salt, sky, sunshine. Happy, happy, happy.
Nothing between us but love and air.
November
This Is a Very Small Town
For half the night, Nana and I chisel dry rot out of the Chris-Craft, and it feels good.
I chisel with frigid, numb hands. I scoop out crevices and corners, work over this spot and that spot again and again, dig out this disease that’s infecting everything. It’s the only way to begin.
“Take it easy,” Nana comments after a while. “She’s starting to look like Swiss cheese.”
But I have to get it out. Every little bit of yuck and ick and bad. This is helping. I can feel it.
“I think that’s enough for the night, Cookie.” When I finally drop the chisel, Nana says, “We should start working on it after school, when it’s not so darn cold. And I need my beauty sleep!” Pause. “At this pace, I think we can plan on a first-week-in-December launch. You know, once she’s restored, she’ll need a name. Naming a boat’s good luck.”
How about The Life Destroyer? Or Home Wrecker? “I’ll think about it.”
Back in my room, I crash into bed, sleep for four hours, and wake up, absolutely exhausted, to the smell of scrambled eggs with dill. At the breakfast table, Dad points out that my long-sleeved Honey Badger Don’t Care T-shirt is on inside out.
“That’s how all the kids are wearing it nowadays,” I tell him.
He sips strong-smelling tea from his favorite mug, Marine Biology . . . Now My Life Has a Porpoise. “You children never cease to astound me.”
For the third time that week, I skip taking the bus, rocking up to school on foot just as the first-period bell rings. As soon as we take our seats in English, Coach Miller announces, “Sorry, I know you guys are all juniors and seniors, so you’ve taken Sex Ed in Health, but the school board feels that . . . uh . . . for some of you, the message didn’t really sink in.” I shiver as he makes a disturbing compression motion with his hands, like he’s squishing an ant between them. Swishing toward the whiteboard in his track pants (cue snickers from the back of the room), he writes THE MIRACLE OF LIFE in all caps.
“I know that you’re all eager to continue our discussions of Moby-Dick, and it’s uncomfortable to watch this in class, but all first-period teachers are required to show it, since some of you are no longer taking science. So just sit back, and this film should be . . . enlightening.” He slides a busted-up DVD into an ancient TV set. Our school should really spring for some updated technology. “Without further ado . . .”
Somehow the buttons on the remote get stuck—then get really stuck—so our first glimpse is of “the miracle” itself, a wide-angled shot right between some poor woman’s legs as a baby squishes its way out of her nether regions. A collective uugghhh rolls around the room. At the desk next to mine, Alexander alternates between cupping his hands over his glasses and fiddling with the sleeves of his black sweater, which is way too thin for Maine. Those blue suede shoes of his are water stained.
Eventually Coach Miller sorts out “the situation,” and we’re in for a real treat: forty-five minutes of middle-aged men explaining the wonders of the female body, using words like lovemaking and coitus and pardon me while I vomit.
By lunchtime, I’m not even a little bit hungry—a rarity for me. Besides, lunch isn’t the same anymore. We used to eat on the gym bleachers, sharing fries and debating the merits and pitfalls of chipotle mayo. Reed and Dylan always had surfing videos up on their iPhones, asking if Fern, Hana, and I saw the magnificent awesomeness in front of us, if we truly appreciated how difficult it was to “carve in an impact zone.”
“You’ll never guess what happened,” Hana says, setting down her mini–cheese pizza next to me and immediately jumping in. Her eye shadow perfectly matches her blue puffball earrings—the ones she bought at a megamall in Seoul. “Seriously, guess.”
“Drake finally responded to your fan letters?”
“Gah, I wish. Okay, allow me to set the scene. We’re making these small tables in shop, and I kept telling my partner that if I wanted a table, then I would just buy a table, and Mr. Hawkins heard me and got a li
ttle bit angry, and then even angrier when I broke two saws. Two! How is that even possible?”
I acknowledge the impossibility to her satisfaction.
“So he didn’t even notice,” Hana continues, “when Nick Manganiello took out a blowtorch. Like, who stocks blowtorches in high school classrooms? Who thought, Know what would be really great? If we gave our students firepower?” She pauses as Elliot joins us on the opposite side of the round table, setting down his soggy burger and fries. Huh, he’s not wearing a reindeer sweater today—just a simple green sweatshirt, and the casualness works with his all-over-the-place brown hair. He is cute, I guess, if you’re into the shy-guy thing.
“And then what happened?” I ask Hana, who says, “With what?”
“. . . the blowtorch.”
“Oh,” she says. “Nick singed his eyebrows off.”
“On purpose?”
“I really don’t know.”
Silence falls across the table. I eye Hana, who’s eyeing Elliot, who’s avoiding looking at Hana, even though it’s obvious that he wants to. Their awkwardness is a blanket that covers everything.
“We should invite him to sit with us,” Hana suddenly says.
“Who?”
“New kid.”
I follow her gaze to the back of the cafeteria, where Alexander’s standing stiff as a lighthouse, clutching his tray and searching for any empty table—or for someone nice enough to invite him to sit down. There’s a sketchbook under his arm. Maybe he has AP Drawing with Ms. Lucas? She’s always encouraging her students to carry art supplies everywhere, to find inspiration “in the wilds of high school,” as if bargain cafeteria meat and bathroom graffiti are sparks for the greatest of imaginations.
“I’m goin’ in,” Hana says, pushing back her lunch tray and skipping toward Alexander. From a distance, I watch her literally grab his arm—reeling him to our table like she’s hooked a prize fish. “Quinn, Elliot, meet . . . Alexander? It’s Alexander, right?”
“Yes, right, thank you,” he says, sitting in the only empty chair, which happens to be right next to me. Up close, I notice there’s a small scar on his jawline—a burn mark, maybe, no bigger than a fingerprint. “This is very kind of you. Thank you.”
“Hey, man,” Elliot says. “Nice to meet you.”
I shift in my chair, adding, “Hey.”
“Hello,” Alexander says, except it’s like hallo. One thing’s for sure: his accent is turning heads, including those of Fern and a few swim team girls, two tables over.
“So have you heard the rumor?” Hana asks Alexander. “Apparently you’re in witness protection.”
Pushing up his glasses, Alexander breaks out into a nervous grin. The top row of his teeth is perfectly straight—the bottom, not so much. “I suspect that . . . uh . . . It seems to me that you don’t get a lot of new people around here.”
“When my mom got recruited for her job at Winship Hospital and my family had to move from New Jersey,” Hana says, “I remember someone telling me that they’d never met anyone not from Maine. And that we should go back to Jersey because if my great-great-great grandparents weren’t born here, then I’d always be an outsider, and New Jersey is just as bad as New York, and we’re coming in here and ruining everything, and so on and so forth. It’s stupid. We can ‘celebrate diversity’ with that banner, but I’m not sure how many people in this cafeteria actually know—or care—that there are two Koreas.”
“Wow,” Alexander says. “So, logically . . . er . . . this would be the worst place to send me, if I were, indeed, in governmental protection.”
“Pretty much,” I say, surprising myself. “You kind of stick out.”
Alexander straightens in his chair, appearing genuinely concerned. “How so?”
“Well, the accent.”
“Blast,” Alexander says, snapping his fingers. “I thought I was blending in. I suppose I’ll have to—”
He doesn’t get to finish. As he’s reaching for his drink (soda from the cafeteria fountain, something mysterious and red), he knocks the cup directly into my lap. In slow motion, it splashes and seeps into my favorite jeans.
“Shit,” he says. “Oh, shit, I am so sorry. Please let me—”
I cut him off, grabbing a wad of napkins from the middle of the table. “It’s . . . it’s fine.”
“No, it’s not, I—”
“It’s okay,” I say, not angry, just kind of numb. “Really, it’s fine. It was an accident.”
Hana bites her bottom lip. “I have some sweatpants in my car.”
Which still means walking through the halls, to the office, to the parking lot, to the bathroom—all with a giant, period-like stain between my legs. Good, give the wolves another reason to bite. For what seems like the millionth time, I repeat, “It’s fine,” but excuse myself from the lunch table, wrapping the Antarctica parka around my waist and letting the sleeves dangle for coverage. “I’ll see you guys later, okay?”
I should take Hana up on her offer.
But when I get to the parking lot, I just keep on going.
“Take those darn things off,” Nana says at five o’clock that same day, as we’re working on the boat. She taps the side of my headphones and raises her voice. “One day you’ll blow out your ears. And if we’re going to do this thing, we’re going to chat.”
I’m reluctant to pause The Sunshine Hypothesis: Indigo is discussing the crown of thorns starfish, which has all these brilliant colors and poisonous spikes, and a butthole on top of its body—and yes, it’s disgusting, but kind of cool. It wraps its prey in a death grip, turns them to goo with its digestive juices, and—
Another tap.
Okay, okay, removing the headphones.
“At least tell me what you’re listening to,” Nana chides, shuddering in the polar air. She’s halfway up the stepladder and peering inside the Chris-Craft. I haven’t gotten that far. Haven’t actually stepped in the boat like she has. To be honest, when I even think about it, a coil of nerves tightens in my stomach and a tingling I’m going to pass out sensation drags up my arms. . . .
“Cookie.”
I startle. “Sorry, sorry. Uh, it’s about sea creatures and marine phenomena. Fantastical things that seem like magic but are true.”
“Why magic but true? Why not magic and true?”
“That is such a you thing to say, Nana.”
She raises her chin like a queen. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Now let’s get some tunes in here, whatdaya say?” On top of the woodworking bench is an old transistor radio, programmed to Nana’s favorite station—all Motown, all the time. I turn it on and “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by the Four Tops blasts into the barn, joyous voices floating to the rafters. It’s hard not to bob your head to the beat.
“So,” Nana says, deliberately casual. “A scout called when you were at school.”
I stiffen. “Which one?”
“University of Florida. He said they wanted to offer you a full swimming scholarship. You know anything about that?”
Crap. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. I’d buried the letters from Florida—along with the others—underneath my swimsuits, in a sealed box wedged deep in my closet. I should’ve burned it in the yard. “I . . . yeah.”
“And you don’t want to speak to him?”
“Not really.”
“What about how you skipped half of school today? Are we going to speak about that?”
Ugh. I thought I’d been stealthy—hiding on the porch of one of the cabins, just listening to the podcast and trying to stay warm; I didn’t even change my jeans until after classes let out.
“That’s what I thought,” Nana says, sucking on her teeth and hoisting herself from the stepladder into the Chris-Craft with the grace of a dying animal.
“Do you—um—need help?”
“I’m old,” she says, “but I’m not dead yet.”
“So . . . no, then?”
“When were you going to tell me about the scholarship, C
ookie?”
Honestly? Probably never. Maybe years and years and years from now, when Nana’s ghost inevitably came back to haunt me—I know all about those letters, and gosh dang it, I’m mad!
“I don’t swim anymore, Nana.”
She taps her foot on the bottom of the Chris-Craft. “So what do you want to do?”
“Fix this boat. Take it out on the water.” Find the sea monster.
“I was thinking more like in the long term.”
My temper is slipping a little. “What happened to that thing you said last night? You know, When you’re ready to talk, we’ll talk. I want to work and not talk. Let’s just—”
“Hello, Quinn?”
He has to say it loudly, above the music and my escalating voice. Maybe he’s even said it more than once.
Nana and I spin around, and I kid you not, Alexander is in the doorway to the barn, a black beanie covering most of his dark hair. The collar of his gray peacoat is sticking up Dracula style.
How the hell does he know where I live? And why’s there a massive glass dish of something tinfoiled in his hands?
I switch off the music. “Uh, hi.”
“Hello,” he repeats from the doorway, breath pluming in the air.
“Hello!” Nana says, cupping her hands over her mouth like a megaphone. “Don’t be a stranger—come on over!”
Oh, Jesus.
Threading his way between the boats, Alexander pulls up a few feet away—close enough for me to smell a wave of oniony, bready, minty goodness. What is in that dish?
Nana clears her throat, oh-so-subtly begging me for an introduction.
“Alexander,” I say slowly, thoroughly weirded out by the whole situation, “this is my grandmother. Nana, Alexander’s in my English class. He just moved to Winship.”
“Is that so?” Nana says, her eyebrows arching.
“Do you eat beef?” is Alexander’s response, his gloved hands passing me the dish. “I made my yaya’s—you know, my grandmother’s—recipe: keftéthes. They’re basically Greek meatballs, very light but full of flavor. And they have ouzo in them. You can’t really eat just one.”
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