Half a Chance

by Cynthia Lord

  Maybe I could paddle out and catch Nate and Emily? But when I looked over at the beach, the pink kayak wasn’t there. Of course the Baileys could do whatever they wanted with their kayaks, but the pink one felt partly mine now. “Did someone go kayaking with Nate and Emily?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Grandma Lilah said.

  Megan? “Um, was it a kid?”

  Grandma Lilah looked concerned, so I changed the subject to one I knew would please her. “I was hoping to get some photos of the baby loon. We’re going to make posters so the boaters will be more careful.”

  “What a lovely idea,” she said. “You can take my photo while we’re waiting. Just like I’m a movie star!” Grandma Lilah rolled her left shoulder forward. Dipping her chin, she batted her eyelashes, pretending.

  Where was Nate? I glanced to the lake, hoping to see him coming. But the water in front of the cottage was empty. When I looked back at Grandma Lilah I couldn’t help giggling because she looked so funny, joking with me. “Okay. Hold that pose. Let me try an angle that’s not straight-on,” I said. “Are you Marilyn Monroe?” It was the only old movie star name I could think of.

  “Doris Day!”

  From somewhere on the lake, a tremolo reverberated. As Grandma Lilah looked toward the sound, I took the shot. “Oh, I hope that’s our loons!” The words were barely out of my mouth before I remembered that she didn’t even know they’d been missing.

  “Can you see what’s happening?” she asked. “The tremolo is a warning.”

  I looked toward the lake, but I didn’t see that familiar dash of black body and head above the water. “Emily said the parents give the chick loonsong lessons,” I said to comfort her. “I bet they’re just practicing.”

  She smiled. “Loonsong lessons.”

  I checked my screen to see the photo of Grandma Lilah. There was worry in her eyes as she stared at something beyond the frame. Anyone who saw the photo would wonder what she was looking at. It added a touch of mystery to the photo: something to think about beyond the image itself. It added a story.

  “I’ve never watched the loons come in the spring and I’ve never seen them leave in the fall,” Grandma Lilah said. “They’re always here when I arrive and they leave after I go.”

  “They’re like the summer people,” I said, trying to make a joke.

  “I might not come back here next year,” she added quietly.

  “I’m sure you will,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I’m not well. My family thinks I don’t know, but I do. Next year everything here will happen without me. But I won’t be the same without it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I glanced to the lake, hoping I’d see Nate coming, but the lake was still empty.

  “Oh, dear. I’m rambling, aren’t I?” she said, blushing. “I’ll be better when I’ve had a rest. What were we doing?”

  “Taking photos,” I said.

  “You must take my photo.”

  “Okay,” I said, relieved to have something to do. “Let’s try another pose. Could you put your hand on the arm of the rocking chair?” One of my contest phrases was “Holding On,” and Grandma Lilah’s hands were so wrinkled and old that they would make an interesting photo.

  “Maybe it’s the weather,” she said, gripping the arm of the chair. “Soon I’ll get back in the swing of things. Maybe tomorrow.”

  I nodded and took some photos of her hand. “It’s been a bad day for me, too. It feels like the universe is being extra mean today. So let’s both hope tomorrow is better.”

  “And not worse,” Grandma Lilah said.

  I picked up a teacup from the table near her. It still had a little tea in the bottom. Her rough, ridged hands would be a wonderful contrast with the glassy smoothness of the cup. “Maybe you can hold this cup now?”

  “It’s almost empty,” she said.

  “That’s fine. It’s only for the picture. When someone holds something, it shows a relationship. It can make for a more interesting picture.” I smiled. I sounded just like Dad.

  As I took the shot of her hands holding the cup, she said, “Let me get you some more tea.”

  “No, thank you.” I hadn’t had any tea at all, and Nate still wasn’t coming, so I zoomed out to shoot her whole body in the rocking chair with the teacup in her hands. The rustic boards of the cottage behind her would make a good background. “Tell me about this cup,” I said, hoping to get some emotion on her face. “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “No? Oh. Well, it doesn’t matter. Do you like tea or coffee?”

  Grandma Lilah’s face clouded over with concern. “This is not my cup.”

  “Do you want a different one?” I asked quickly.

  Grandma Lilah’s eyebrows climbed with alarm. “It’s not mine!”

  My finger pressed the shot. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I took the cup from her. “It’s my cup.”

  “Hey, Lucy! There you are!” Emily called. “We waited for you as long as we could.”

  Thank you, universe! I turned around, so glad to see Emily and Nate coming up the beach that I didn’t even mind that Megan was with them.

  “We saw the loons!” Nate said.

  “I even took some photos with my camera!” Megan said.

  Nate’s smile faded as he got to the porch. He looked from Grandma Lilah to me. “Is everything okay?”

  “Fine!” But my voice sounded higher than usual. Grandma Lilah still looked upset. And it was my fault.

  “Did you see the chick?” I asked.

  “Yes, but we had a surprise!” Emily said. “There isn’t just one chick! There are two!”

  “They’re so cute!” Megan said. “One baby was trying to dive, but he could only dip his head in the water. Then they both got onto their parents’ backs. I got photos of it all for the posters.”

  “Let me see!” Grandma Lilah said, the fear melting from her face.

  Part of me wanted all Megan’s photos to be dark and blurry and awful and unusable, but they weren’t. In fact, one photo of an adult with the two chicks on his back was really good.

  “Two chicks!” Grandma Lilah said. “Two chicks! Write that down, Nate!”

  “I will,” he promised. “Lucy, we’re going to town now so we can get poster board.”

  “I’m going,” Megan said.

  “Me, too!” Grandma Lilah said. She looked okay now, but my insides still felt all twisted for upsetting her. I didn’t even know how it had all gone so wrong so fast.

  “You want to go, Grandma Lilah?” Nate asked, hesitantly. “All right. We won’t walk, then. Let me see who can drive us.”

  I wished we could do this later. But the deadline for the contest was coming up. There might be some photos in town.

  And Megan was going. One thing I know about being in a three-way friendship is that you’d better not let the other two spend too much time without you, or it turns into a two-way friendship, minus you.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me run home and get some money.”

  From the parking lot of Barton’s Grocery, I could see the entire length of Main Street in my new town, from the white, tall-steepled Methodist church at the north end all the way down to the Catholic church at the south end. Between the churches stood a row of little stores and businesses. Good Value Hardware, Frank’s Gas and Auto Body, Mitty’s Snowmobile Rentals (CLOSED FOR THE SEASON), Raven’s Ice Cream Shoppe (OPEN FOR THE SEASON), a white fire-and-rescue building with big red vehicle doors, Pizza Junction, a small post office, and an old house with a sign that read THE LAKEVIEW GIFT SHOP (ONE-OF-A-KIND GIFTS AND TREASURES).

  On the short ride to town, Megan had chatted with Emily in the backseat of the van about the posters we were planning to make to help the loons.

  Those posters had been my idea, but I couldn’t talk to anyone. Grandma Lilah looked fine now, but I was bruised by what had happened. I couldn’t stop rerunning our conversation in my head.

  Nate leane
d my way to whisper, “Is there a good contest word we can find in a grocery store?”

  The contest seemed so far away, but it was a relief to think about something I knew how to do. Point and shoot. And if you did it wrong, you just deleted that shot and tried again.

  I thought about some of the words I still needed to shoot. “Left Behind.” “Lost.” “Collection.”

  “Maybe ‘collection’?” I whispered back.

  He smiled. “How about a collection of fruit?”

  Could fruit be a collection? I supposed so, but when I had stepped out of the van, there were lots of people in the grocery store parking lot, pushing carts and talking and hurrying in and out of the store. It’d be hard to take a photo in the store without being in other people’s way.

  “I’ll catch up,” I said as Mrs. Bailey helped Grandma Lilah out of the van. “I’d like to go in the gift shop for a minute.” The gift shop probably had better choices for “Collection,” and it didn’t feel like anything would be right until I had a minute by myself to think about what happened.

  “What a good idea!” Grandma Lilah said. “Let’s all go!”

  I sighed, but there was nothing I could do.

  White with blue shutters, The Lakeview Gift Shop had no view of the lake, just of Pizza Junction across the street.

  Bordering a walkway to the gift shop door were wooden boxes of daisies, black-eyed Susans, lavender, and herbs. A sign next to the entrance read COME IN! SORRY, NO STROLLERS. LEAVE BACKPACKS AT THE FRONT DESK. WE WELCOME WELL-BEHAVED CHILDREN HELD BY THE HAND.

  Friendly, but don’t push it.

  Stepping into the gift shop, I was greeted with the overwhelming smell of flowery soaps and balsam pillows. On the long shelves were rows and rows of candy, jelly and jam, mugs, stuffed animals, and magnets. This place had collections of collections!

  “Welcome!” said the woman behind the counter. “Nice to see you all back this summer!”

  “Mrs. Stackpole, this is Lucy,” Mrs. Bailey said. “Her parents bought the Alexanders’ house.”

  “Lovely to meet you, Lucy,” she said. “Are you here just for the summer or year-round?”

  I forced a smile. “Year-round.” Picking up a jar of strawberry jam, I held it up to the window light. The red jam was vibrant lit from behind, and a line of different colored jams on the windowsill with the sun shining through might be pretty. But lit from the back, the labels on the jars would just look like black rectangles in a photo, and that would ruin it.

  “All the jam is New Hampshire–made!” Mrs. Stackpole called.

  I put the jar back. Wandering through the kids’ area with picture books, plastic boats, and beach floats to inflate, I considered the shelves of stuffed animals: moose, foxes, chipmunks, black bears, and birds that made their calls when you pushed a button on their back.

  “I wonder if Ansel would like one of these?” I asked, looking through the birds. I pushed the button on the blue jay and it screeched. “Yikes! That would drive Mom crazy,” I said, putting it back.

  “Oh, look, Grandma Lilah,” Nate said. “They have a loon.” He pushed the button and a loon’s wail sounded in the store. I was glad the toy company had picked the loon’s “checking in with each other” call and not one of the danger calls.

  Grandma Lilah smiled. “I’m here! Where are you?”

  Nate pushed the button to answer. “I’m here.”

  “Are you done, Mom?” Mrs. Bailey asked. “We’re heading over to the grocery store. You kids come over when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now. Come on, Megan,” Emily said.

  I held back as Megan walked toward the door with Emily, Nate’s parents, and Grandma Lilah. “I’ll be right there,” I said. “I want to buy something here.”

  “I’ll wait for Lucy,” Nate said.

  Megan shot him a glance, and I wondered if she’d stay, too. But Nate wasn’t looking at her and didn’t see the letdown in her eyes.

  I know what it feels like when you want to matter to someone and they don’t notice. But I was still mad at Megan for deleting my photos and trying to take over my idea of the posters.

  Only when I heard the front door of the gift shop close did I dare peek over. It was just Nate, Mrs. Stackpole, and me now. Whew. As my shoulders dropped, I tried to let go of my hard morning. “I thought this would be a better place to find a ‘collection’ photo,” I said to Nate.

  It was all such a jumble that my photo would look cluttered — not really like a collection. I walked through THE CHRISTMAS CORNER with its ornaments, wooden deer, Santas, and cards. In the back of the shop were lamps, blankets with camp designs, and signs that looked old, but really weren’t.

  I glanced at wind chimes, bird feeders, tiny baskets woven with pine needles, and the displays of books and calendars and tourist brochures near the register. Dad’s book New England Places and People was facing out on the top shelf. It was an older book, all the photos taken before I was born. But seeing a book I recognized and his name on the cover made me miss him so much I could barely look at anything else.

  “What about candles?” Nate asked. “There are lots of different sizes and colors.”

  I tore my gaze away from the books. I had to hurry up and pick something, because I didn’t know how long it’d take Nate’s family at the grocery store. I was ready to settle for the candles when I noticed a jar of rock candy. Each wooden stick ended in a finger-long burst of colored sugar crystals wrapped in clear plastic — a jar full of long, bumpy lollipops. Bright pink, blue, green, yellow, white, purple, red, and orange.

  Nate grinned when I showed them to him.

  None of the candies were exactly alike. I took a light-blue one from the jar. The crystals closest to the middle were darker, packed tight on the stick, but the ones on the outer edges had just a hint of blue. I held it in front of the window and watched the sun shining through, reflecting off all those sharp-cornered little squares.

  I picked as many different colors as I could find. As Mrs. Stackpole was ringing them up on the register, I said, “Wait a sec. I want one more thing.”

  Nate looked surprised when I returned to the cash register with the toy loon.

  “Ansel needs a new toy for New Hampshire.” I plopped it down on the counter with the candy.

  We were ready to leave, but the light coming through the window was great. “Maybe we can shoot the photo here?” I asked Nate.

  “Okay,” he said.

  How best to show a collection? Lined up? In a pattern of colors? I wanted the light to reflect on and through all those little squares.

  “Mrs. Stackpole, would it be okay if I borrowed a cup so I can stand these sticks up on the windowsill? I’ll put everything back when I’m done,” I promised. “I want to take a photo of my candy, and the light is so pretty right now.”

  She hesitated, so I added, “Did you know that you sell a book of photos by my dad? It’s on the top shelf: New England Places and People.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Stackpole looked quickly at her bookshelves. “Do you think he might come for a signing? Or at least stop in and sign the copies we have in stock?”

  “He’s in Arizona right now taking pictures for a magazine,” I said. “But when he gets home, I know he’d be delighted.”

  I took her pleased smile as an “okay” to choose a small ceramic juice glass from the pottery shelves and move the boxes of maple sugar candies away from the windowsill. I handed my rock candy to Nate. “Can you unwrap these? Light will bounce off the plastic. Your brain knows to ignore the wrappers, but a camera only shows what is.”

  As Nate unwrapped, I stuffed the bottom of the glass with leftover plastic so the rock candy would stand higher and I could fan out the sticks to allow light to pass between the different colors.

  When we’d arranged them, I shot photos from different angles. But when I checked the screen, I was disappointed. “The cup makes it look like it’s a bouquet of candy, not so much a collection,” I said. “And w
ith the cup in the shot, it’s about the cup, too.” I tried zooming in, cutting the cup out of the frame.

  Much better. Now all that showed was brilliant-colored, light-filled candy, and in the background, a pleasant gray blur from the window light.

  As soon as I had several shots that could work for “Collection,” we put our rock candy in the bag with the toy loon and returned everything else to the way it was. “Ansel will like that his new loon toy smells like candy,” I said.

  Walking with Nate to the grocery store, I opened my bag and took out a stick of pink rock candy. “Want one?”

  Nate chose orange. “Hey, you didn’t tell me your dad had written a whole book.” He bit off the top of his candy, and crystals scattered down his shirt.

  “He’s done lots of books.” I let my candy sit in my mouth, my tongue dissolving the bumps of sugar. Rock candy was pretty, but it was hard to eat. “I wonder if Emily found the poster board?” I said as we threw our sticks into the trash can just outside Barton’s automatic doors. “It’s probably —”

  “Where’s the door?” Grandma Lilah was screaming from somewhere inside. “Help me!”

  Nate ran into the store and I followed, searching the aisles, until we finally found her in the cereal aisle. A broken bottle of salad dressing was on the floor at her feet, and beside her, Mr. and Mrs. Bailey’s faces were red.

  “Just take her outside,” Mrs. Bailey said. “I’ll pay for this and the other groceries and walk home.”

  “You can’t walk home with all the groceries!” Mr. Bailey said.

  “Well, come back for me, then!” she snapped. “Please just take her home!”

  Nate took Grandma Lilah’s arm. “Come on, Grandma Lilah. The door is over here.”

  Strangers kept talking around us like they didn’t notice, but I knew they did. A lady’s eyes met mine over the top of a display of juice and a family stared at us from the end of the aisle. A boy with glasses and floppy hair, wearing a red grocery store uniform shirt, looked down our aisle and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll get the mop and clean that up.”