“Write back, Morgan.”
She didn’t.
And I felt as small as ever.
It scared me to be up there on my own. I grabbed my phone, pulled myself to standing, and walked the rest of the length of the trestle, to the other side. Approaching Ethan’s memorial, I saw that the sign said We love you, Ethan. And then underneath that, in different, lighter handwriting, Heaven has a new angel. Up close, I could see that all the stuffed animals were turtles. Some were brownish and very realistic-looking. Some were bright green with goofy smiles and googly eyes. One had a rainbow-colored shell. I stared at the turtles, and then looked back at the rock bed where Ethan had fallen, and then back at the turtles, and burst into tears.
I stood there crying for the better part of five minutes. I wasn’t sure why I was crying. Maybe it was for Ethan, even though I hadn’t known him, really. Maybe it was for his family. Maybe it was because now that I wasn’t on the bridge anymore, a couple of the thoughts I’d had up there had scared me. Just momentarily, but still.
And I wondered if Ethan really liked turtles all that much. Or if his family just thought he did. My dad didn’t stop buying me unicorn plushies until I was about fourteen because I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d stopped collecting them when I was ten. I wondered if there were things even Ethan’s mother and cousins didn’t know about him. Or if it was true what Katy had said—that he maybe hadn’t wanted anyone walking him home. That he didn’t want to be babied like that.
As I sniffled and pulled up the shoulders of my dress to dry my face, I remembered Ethan hadn’t ridden the Laser Coaster ever before. He’d told Briony and the other kids that.
Of course. Possibly he hadn’t ridden it before that night because he wasn’t allowed to. Because his family had been protective of him lately. But why? Maybe it didn’t matter why. Maybe he was being sneaky that night. And that answered some of the questions about his choices. It was a rare night that neither of his cousins were around. And he chose that night to ride the roller coaster. He couldn’t do it another night because one of them was almost always there, making sure he followed his mom’s rules. And on a night he’d broken his mom’s rules, it made sense that he might not call her for a ride—out of guilt or rebellion or some combination of the two.
On the other hand, that still didn’t explain his backpack. Or the sparkly scorpion. I glanced up the alternate path in the woods—the one that led to Braeburn Road, and Morgan and Winnie’s neighborhood—and wondered exactly how far up that path Morgan had found the paperweight.
My phone vibrated with another text from my dad.
Ivy. Come in or at least call now. Chris and I need to talk to you about something.
I couldn’t tell over a text, of course, if the matter was really as urgent as my dad was making it sound. My heart jumped a little. Maybe he and Chris had talked and were going to ask me about the tape recorder. Or maybe not, I tried to reassure myself. Sometimes my dad just liked to make people hop to it.
Coming now, I typed back before walking over the bridge and through the trees to my car.
FOURTEEN
I found Dad in his office.
“Hey, Ivy,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You recovered from your tummy ache? You need anything? Pepto-Bismol? Smelling salts?”
Chris was sitting on the old couch opposite my dad’s desk, staring down at the clipboard in his hands. I noticed that he was wearing the same shirt as yesterday—a dark-green polo shirt with a tiny smear of mustard near the collar buttons.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to sound upbeat and innocent. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Two things,” Dad replied, unbuttoning the top button of his dress shirt and loosening his tie. “First of all, we thought you ought to know how much progress we’re making on this giant doughnut thing.”
I glanced again at Chris, whose gaze had shifted to the window. From the couch you could see the lifeguard chair that towered over the WaterWays slide area.
“What kind of progress?” I asked, relieved that this wasn’t going to be as serious as his text had made it sound.
“Well, the cheese guys in Landon are on board with renting out those big vats. We’ve got someone delivering them tonight. I can’t wait. I’ve got a recipe for a dough that I think will really hold up even if it’s done in big batches and formed into giant balls. I mean, it doesn’t need to taste great or even have the consistency that people are used to for doughnuts. Chris agrees with me on that. Right, Chris?”
Chris nodded. His eyes looked glassy to me. I wondered how long he and my dad had been having this conversation.
“And Chris and I had another good idea: stringing the dough balls together with a thick bendable wire. You won’t see it, but it’ll keep the balls tight together. We might allow people to view the frying of the doughnut balls the night before, to kind of build things up. But I’m not sure about that—we’ll see. Then we’ll construct it in the wee hours, so people don’t see the wire…see the sausage being made, so to speak. And then the doughnut will be all ready for frosting and sprinkling when we open the next day. So, Ivy…I hope you’ve already cleared your calendar for July sixteenth. And the day before, of course, for preparations. No tummy aches allowed.”
“I will.” I hesitated. “But that’s so…soon.”
“That’s usually a high-traffic week to begin with. We don’t really need to draw a lot of extra people in. I mean, sure, some extra. We definitely want a crowd. But it’s mostly for the fun of it. Maybe a teaser for something even bigger later in the summer.”
Something bigger than the giant doughnut, come August? What could that be? Were we going to find a way to rain sprinkles over Danville? Shoot a doughnut-filled rocket ship to the International Space Station? My head was spinning.
“Chris, do we do a ribbon-cutting of some kind, you think?” Dad continued.
“Umm…what would the ribbon go around, exactly?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know. The doughnut?”
“I wouldn’t mess with the simple beauty of the doughnut itself.” Chris yawned. “Frosting all over the ribbon?”
“Okay. Never mind.” Dad tapped his pen on his desk. “No ribbon. And I was thinking of officially calling it Doughnut Daze. Isn’t that cute?”
“Is this event going to be more than one day?” I asked, slightly alarmed.
“Well…no,” Dad said.
“I was asking him the same thing,” Chris volunteered.
“You decided on the site?” I asked.
“Yup. In the crossroads area between the Starship 360 and the Laser Coaster.”
“That won’t be too tight a fit, if you’re planning to draw a big crowd?”
“Some people can watch from the Starship 360. And we’ve got those extra bleachers for the doughnut-eating contests in August. We can stage those on the opposite side. Having people at different heights will really build things up, make it feel very exciting.”
“But then…people can’t ride those rides that day?” I asked.
“Ivy.” Dad tapped his pen on his desk again—more noisily this time, like he was beating a drum. “We figured you and Chris would share the publicity duties. I think the local papers are getting sick of hearing from me. If they’re dealing with a fresh new face, I figure they might pay more attention. And since Jason’s not here, the Fabuland Facebook feed’s been kinda neglected. I’d like you two to give it a little more attention. I’m thinking Chris will handle most of the traditional media contacts, and you’ll do all the social media. At least to start. Does that sound good to you both?”
I glanced at Chris, who nodded perfunctorily. Clearly they had already worked all this out.
“Good deal,” Dad said, without waiting for a nod or a word from me. “We can nail down some of the details later, but you probably nee
d to be back on cotton candy right now. I had Carol bag some before she went on pizza duty, but we need someone doing the live-action cotton candy. People lag in the midafternoon. They need the pick-me-up, the stimulation.”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved for the opportunity to get out of the office. “I’m headed over there next.”
“Wait,” Chris said. “Ed, you forgot why you called Ivy in. Remember?”
“What?” Dad looked puzzled for a second.
I held my breath, waiting for one of them to demand the tape recorder.
“The waterslides?” Chris prompted.
“Oh! Right,” Dad said, and then twisted his mouth into a serious expression. “Ivy, we’ve had a report of a safety concern and we thought you could shed some light on it.”
“Okay?” I squeaked. This sounded worse than something about the tape recorder.
“You might not have been aware of this when you were gone, but one of our lifeguards left unexpectedly and we were in a pinch. Carla put Morgan in the chair. She assured me she was going to check credentials before she put anyone in the post. Now Chris and I are concerned that the proper steps weren’t taken.”
“Why is this coming up now?” I asked, my pulse quickening fast.
“Maura Taft came to me with her concerns this morning,” Chris said, glancing at his phone and then slipping it into his back pocket. “She’d heard someone who didn’t have the proper training was put in that post.”
Maura Taft was Drea Tomasetti’s best friend. Damn.
“Umm…what was your question?” I murmured.
The wheels were starting to turn in my head, but maybe not fast enough. Maura Taft worked one of the prize booths, but at school she was on the swim team. I wasn’t sure if she had lifeguard credentials, but she was probably at least working on them.
Dad leaned back in his chair and jangled the change in his pocket for a moment. “Does Morgan have lifeguard training? We didn’t want to bother her, under the circumstances. But we thought you would know.”
“Umm,” I said.
Drea had probably told Maura what I was asking yesterday. And some bells must have gone off for Maura. Maybe she knew that Morgan wasn’t a great swimmer. Or maybe it just annoyed her that someone had asked Morgan and not her.
“Speak up, hon,” Dad said.
“Can we maybe talk about this privately?” I murmured.
Chris perked up at the question, and nearly leapt off the couch.
“Sure,” he said.
He was gone in seconds. After I heard him reach the bottom of the stairs, I turned to my father.
“I don’t want to get Morgan in trouble,” I said, talking fast now. “Because I think she was having a tough time right before the Ferris wheel thing, and I’m sure there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.”
“Noted,” Dad said. “No one’s getting Morgan in trouble. I’ll promise you that.”
“Umm…is Carla here today? Can I talk to her?” I knew what the answer would be. I was just trying to buy a few more seconds to figure out how to respond.
“No.” Dad folded his arms. “You can’t. I’m the boss. Not you. Please answer the question.”
When I looked into his dark eyes, I felt myself become disarmed a little, like I had looking at Ethan’s turtles. Like I no longer had to hold on so tight to everything. Because it was just Dad and me now, and his promise had given me permission to let go.
“I mean…Dad…didn’t you ever notice…”
I was about to ask my dad if he’d ever noticed that Morgan was kind of aquaphobic. But then it occurred to me that he probably hadn’t. First of all, she did her best to cover it up. Second of all, he didn’t really know Morgan all that well. It took two or three years of me having her over before he stopped mixing her up with my other blond friends from middle school. I’d always gotten the feeling, then, that he’d found my friends interchangeable—extensions of me whom he’d buy ice cream for and tell jokes to, but whose exact facial features, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses were of little consequence. He probably never knew Morgan wasn’t a good swimmer or that diving terrified her. He was only vaguely aware that his own daughter was afraid of heights.
“Dad. I need you to promise me again. Because Morgan isn’t doing well right now, and I think she may have been pressured into a bad decision or something.”
“Yes. I promise. I already promised. Now spit it out, Ivy.”
I wondered for a moment about Chris—if he shared some of the blame with Carla. Had he scheduled Morgan in that lifeguarding spot without asking about credentials? I decided that wasn’t my concern at the moment. There were a number of things I’d been wondering about Chris, and I was having trouble figuring out how to address any of them.
“Ivy!” my dad barked.
“Morgan isn’t a good swimmer,” I blurted out.
Dad’s arms tightened, moving higher up his chest, like they had a life of their own. Like he was part python, squeezing another part of himself up and out.
“She…umm…barely ever goes in the deep end. She’s actually never been a fan of water.”
Dad’s mouth slackened and he looked from the window to me and back again.
“Dad,” I said softly. “You didn’t know that?”
Dad stared at me. But he only looked me in the eye for a moment, then seemed to let his gaze graze over the rest of my face—my mouth, the color in my cheeks, the wrinkle in my forehead—like he was quickly assessing the sincerity of what I was saying.
“Where the fuck is she?” he demanded.
“Who?” I felt my breath leave me for a moment. “Morgan?”
“No. Carla.” He swung his office door open, calling, “Chris, is Carla here right now?”
He flew down the stairs and I followed him.
“Uh…what?” said Chris, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. “She’s usually monitoring the wave pool, right?”
Dad nodded and walked in the direction of WaterWays. The wave pool was farther than the waterslides, but I could already hear the wheeee! and whoaaa! of kids riding the waves.
“Dad,” I said, walking alongside him.
“Yeah?”
“We probably should get the whole story first, before you do anything about it. Don’t you think?”
Chris was following us, not saying a word.
“I’ll handle this, Ivy,” Dad said.
“Just…talk to her in private, will you?” I pleaded.
“What is this, honey?” Dad walked faster so I was a couple of paces behind him. “Business Management 101 from my sixteen-year-old daughter?”
“Seventeen,” I reminded him.
“Still kind of comical, honey. Carla!” Dad yelled when he caught sight of her sitting on one of the two lifeguard chairs. The waves were on low tide. A few adults turned to look. Most of the kids kept playing in the waves. Kids are used to yelling, and learn to ignore it, I’ve found.
I stopped in my tracks to watch some of the midafternoon moms watching my dad make his way around the pool to Carla. He looked out of place here approaching the tanned, muscular lifeguard in his sweat-stained blue business shirt.
Carla was a hyperathletic woman in her twenties. She always had a very serious expression, and rarely spoke except to tell someone to quit running around the pool. It had surprised me when my dad hired her because he always preferred people who smiled a lot over other qualifying job skills. But his last WaterWays manager had quit abruptly at the beginning of last August and Carla had been a quick hire.
“I need to talk to you, Carla,” he was saying. Plip plop plip went his feet along the shallow puddles next to the pool. His speed and determined tone made my pulse quicken.
“Dad,” I called, but found my voice inadequate. It came out breathy and girlish. No one heard me over t
he kids playing in the pool. I tried to straighten my spine like I had at the trestle, but the attempt just made me feel numb. I was frozen, watching Carla.
She quickly climbed off the chair, expert and catlike. She looked at my dad expectantly, calmly. Until he got close enough for her to really see his face. Then her tidy little frown disappeared, and her mouth opened slightly.
“Excuse me,” Chris said from behind me. He was trying to catch up with my dad, and I was blocking the narrow way next to the pool. I squeezed aside for him, hoping he would intervene.
“We can talk in the gazebo,” he called to my dad.
There was a gazebo just beyond the cyclone fence of the wave pool, for people to snack in since they weren’t supposed to bring food into the wave pool area. The gazebo was usually empty—as it was right now.
“There really ought to be two lifeguards here at all times,” Carla said quietly. “When the waves are going.”
“Then turn the waves off,” Dad said through his teeth.
Carla blew her whistle and yelled in her usual drill sergeant tone, “Waves’ll be off for a few minutes!”
A couple of kids in the pool seemed to droop with disappointment. Carla nodded to the younger male lifeguard across the pool and then followed Dad and Chris.
I followed the three of them, even though I hadn’t been given an invitation. Dad was too riled up to notice and the other two certainly weren’t going to protest.
We’d barely reached the gazebo when Dad started laying into Carla.
“Did you check Morgan Froggett’s lifeguard certification?” he demanded. “Did you make sure she got that information to you?”
“What?” Carla said, crinkling her nose at the question. “She’s not on lifeguard duty. That was just an emergency—”
“Simple question,” Dad interrupted. “Did you make sure she was actually a lifeguard?”
“Well…I guess I thought…You said you wanted her to start quick, and you said—”
“Yes. Quick. But she still needed to be a real fucking lifeguard!”
“Dad,” I growled. I turned to the pool and saw that there was at least one black tankini-clad mom looking at us.
All the Pretty Things Page 13
