“Well, have you? Have you done anything to plan out what you’re going to do…” His eyes drifted back and forth as if calculating. “…six weeks from now?”
He had me there. I had just admitted to not wanting to go back home after the summer was over, which was slowly creeping up, and I had nothing to back me up. My dad sat on the edge of Rachel’s bed with his arms crossed and lifted his eyebrows questioningly. I always hated it when he did that.
“No,” I answered quietly.
“Do you want to go to school out here?”
The way he said out here was as if I’d stumbled on some deserted area where only zombies crawled around.
“No,” I said, this time frowning at the question.
“Okay. Did you want to stay here and work at the club all year round and not go to school?” he asked calmly, as if it were something he’d be open to.
“No!” I answered quickly and sternly.
He stood and walked over to me. “Pumpkin.” He put his hand on my shoulder. It was what he said and did when he was trying to comfort me but still make me see things his way. “You’re not ready for this. It was an admirable attempt, but I don’t want to see you waste a year or two or the next five because I didn’t do anything to help you when you needed me.”
He was right. The last month that I’d spent in Madison seemed to have collapsed over me. It felt as rough and hard as when I’d crashed into the water after leaping forty feet from the edge of a cliff. Like my life was flashing before me. I couldn’t believe that he was right. And it wasn’t just my dad. Chris had tried to warn me too. All this time, I was hoping the pop-up ad in my laptop was a sign. I remember being desperate for that sign right after finals were over—anything that could lead me someplace far and new. And what ended up happening is I literally took anything.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to accept it. I didn’t want to accept that what had felt so right to me the entire time was turning out to be a…waste of time?
“I need to go.” I ran out, shutting the door behind me and leaving my worried father in the darkened room.
I ran down the same deck I had moments ago. I felt like a different person, a completely lost person who knew and understood nothing except what she had back home.
The rain started to come down even harder. The deck drummed with every step I took over the scattered puddles. I finally ran down the last set of steps and onto the boardwalk.
It wasn’t until the thick raindrops hit my head that I realized I’d left my umbrella back at the room when I went back for it. I threw my hood over my head and continued down the path to Bays Café, where Rick had been waiting for me. I watched the rain fall on the beach as I ran. The sand displayed tiny polka dots, jumping like beads on a bare floor. I felt a chill go down my spine when the first sound of thunder struck. I put my head down and picked up the pace. I lifted my head every few seconds to consider the distance left to my destination.
Suddenly I felt myself crash hard into a male body. I bounced back and he grabbed my arms to steady me. I didn’t need to look up to know it was Rick.
“Whoa,” he called.
I looked up at him. His face was dripping, and his clothes were soaked. He was wearing jeans and the same hooded jacket I’d first seen him in that night at the pool.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted over the combined sound of the thick raindrops falling onto the wooden boards and the crashing waves a few yards away. “I thought we were meeting at the café.”
“Yeah, twenty minutes ago.” He sounded angry, regardless of the thunder that had struck again.
“I’m sorry.” I stared, breathless. “I forgot my umbrella, so I went back for it and then…” I stopped, debating if I should tell him about my father’s surprise visit.
Rick frowned, scanning me head to toe as if to point out that I wasn’t carrying the umbrella I had supposedly gone back to get. I was about to explain why when he took my hand and led me to an awning-enclosed corner storefront on the boardwalk, a closed-for-business bar and grill that must have offered outdoor seating at one point.
Rick leaned me against the cold brick wall. I turned away from him and toward the ocean. I felt restless and emotionally drained. I gazed out into the dark clouds as they fell lower. I hoped for more thunder to drown out the sobs I felt at the top of my throat.
He leaned in close to me and put his hand on my cheek. “Look, I don’t care that you were late,” he said softly. “But you look like you’re about to fall apart. Is there anything I can do?”
I burst out in a short laugh, and the first strand of tears fell. I felt Rick flick one off my chin. “No,” I said flatly. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Okay, is it me?”
That made me burst. “Why is everyone so self-absorbed?” I pushed him off me. But his expression wasn’t shock or anger, to my surprise. He just let his hands fall to his side and watched me—patiently, and with no trace of judgment.
“Why can’t anyone just let me be? Maybe this was a mistake. All of this. Maybe they’re all right.”
“Who?”
“My dad. Em…Chris.”
Rick looked down at the ground, nodding at that last person I’d named.
“I can’t do this.” I said quietly.
He popped his head up. “You haven’t even tried.”
“Exactly.” I threw my arms in the air. “I haven’t even tried. I’ve been avoiding having to make choices, and maybe… maybe that’s because there’s really only one choice for me: to go back home.” I blinked a tear away just as another round of thunder struck in the distance. Absently, I turned in the direction of the sound. I felt him glaring at me and faced him. This next thing had to be said. “I don’t belong here.”
“Is that how you really feel?”
I felt even more tears coming and sniffled them away. “Chris tried to make me understand that life shouldn’t be just a guessing game or taking wrong turns or something like that, and I just got angry and ran off.” I laughed silently at myself and gave a light shake of my head, realizing I was probably not making any sense to Rick.
“Well, then, maybe you should be spending your time with Chris. ’Cause I’m certainly no good to you. I’ve barely got my shit together, right?” His angry words cut through me like a sharp knife.
“That’s not what I meant.” I realized I’d hurt him by mentioning Chris and reached for his arm. He pulled away before I could touch him and started walking toward the soaked wooden fence along the boardwalk.
The clouds were still dark, and the storm was ongoing. A flash of lightning flickered in the distance and then disappeared. It was followed by a rolling sound of thunder.
I caught up with him at the fence. I could almost feel the tension in his biceps as he held on to it and watched the crushing waves. He inhaled slowly. “When are you leaving?” he asked without looking back at me.
“What?”
Rick turned to glare at me. His eyes were dark, and I couldn’t tell if it was just the reflection of the stormy clouds. “You’ve finally figured out that you don’t belong here. So… when are you leaving?” His demonic tone brought me back to the present.
“My dad got me a plane ticket for this weekend, and—”
“Wait, you’re not even finishing out the summer?”
“What? How can you think that? Of course I am. I mean, I was going to but—”
“But what? Then you realized that it’s okay to abandon the camp, your kids?” He ran his fingers through his wet hair, frustrated. Then he let out a short laugh. “Well, I’m glad we were able to contribute to your trial period. Sorry we didn’t make the cut.”
I shook my head vigorously at his nonsense. I attempted to get my dilemma across. “It’s not that easy to have it all figured out, Rick.” It sounded like the same thing I had felt like telling Chris and Emily at one point.
“Well, it sounds like you’re about to head in the right direction. Don’t let me stop you.”
With one last disappointed stare, he turned and walked away from me.
CHAPTER 22
Three sugars?” My dad asked me at the coffee shop the next morning. I’d told him that if he wanted to have breakfast with me, then he’d have to meet me at seven a.m., since my first class started at eight.
“One, Dad.”
“One.” He said matter-of-factly, as if he’d known it all along. “Really, one?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. But in your defense, it used to be three. I just like to taste the coffee now.”
“One sugar,” he said, pouring the packet in my foam cup.
“So how are you feeling this morning?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“You’ve sort of been walking around like a zombie since you got back from meeting your friend yesterday.” He glanced at me. Somehow I had the feeling he knew it wasn’t just a friend I went to meet.
I stared at my coffee, stirring it slowly.
“Amy, I don’t want you to think I’m here to pack you up and take you home like you’re some runaway teenager.”
I looked up at him. “Then why did you buy me a plane ticket home?”
He shrugged. “To make it easier for you. Amy, you made this decision too fast. You just got up and took off.”
“I got a job at a summer camp, Dad. What’s the difference if I got one a few towns over or on the East Coast? I’d still be coming back at the same time, give or take a few days.”
“Will you? Will you be coming back?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I started picking at my corn muffin. If I were honest with myself, I wasn’t so sure I was.
“Because when you were applying for colleges two years ago, you asked me what I thought about NYU and my reaction…well, I wasn’t exactly supportive and didn’t leave much room for argument.”
I stared into my coffee, revisiting the memory. My dad and Marci had just been friends and meeting for lunch occasionally. Seeing that he’d seemed to find a companion, I started to open myself up to more options for college. My dad was open to it, until I mentioned one across the country, and he broke down in a scenario of leaving him alone in this world and not caring about his well-being. Then he brought up Mom. It got ugly.
“I guess this is your way of testing the waters.” He rolled his eyes. “Literally and figuratively speaking.” He added with a smirk. I had told him about my forty-foot dive.
“I haven’t even thought about NYU since I’ve been here,” I admitted. “A friend of mine, my roommate actually, said she’d left Ohio to go to school in upstate New York. She got a swimming scholarship.” I don’t know why I felt the need to mention Rachel. Probably for him to see that this is what people do, and family should be supportive.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so emotional when you started talking to me about your dreams. I shouldn’t have interfered.”
I shook my head. “No, Dad. I don’t think I was ready then.”
He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. “Do you think you are now?”
“I know I don’t want to go back to Denver. I’m ready to move on. I just don’t know the where or what yet.”
“Well, then, come back with me and we’ll figure it out,” he pressed.
“I have to finish out the summer here, Dad. I love my kids and the camp.” I couldn’t believe I had to even explain this part to him. I had committed to a job here, but it was beyond that. I wanted to stay. I felt a part of something.
“Right. Of course you’re right.” He held his hand up.
“Well, maybe you can swap out my ticket for one later in the summer. Then you can come back and help me pack. I’m sure wherever I end up, I’ll need help packing regardless.
He nodded agreeably to the idea and cut into his muffin. “Do they at least pay you well here?”
“Not really. This one’s on you, right?”
The next few days, Dad and I spent a good amount of time together. In between my camp hours, I’d meet him for lunch or at the beach. I helped him pick out some things for Marci and Marci’s grandson, Trevor, a three-year-old kid who’d been monstrous when he came to visit last summer. Had I known my dad was coming, I’d have preordered a T-shirt that said, “Grandma’s stepdaughter took off to Connecticut, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” I laughed to myself at the image of Trevor wearing it.
Took off. Yeah, I suppose that could summarize what I did.
But it didn’t feel like that at the moment. I felt like a reporter who just got a new lead on a story she’d been working on. Except this story wasn’t going to make the front page. This story was more like trying to figure out what you want the middle of your book to be about. And I didn’t want it to be anything like the first half. Not that my life in Denver had been deprived in any way, growing up, but it was certainly starting to feel mundane, and it was only going to get worse. The last few months before the end of the semester, the urge to do something more had been getting stronger, until I finally gave in.
Even after calling and apologizing to Emily, I still felt like we were growing apart. Emily and I were super close in high school. We always had each other’s back. She was my gallon of ice cream after a breakup and the number I’d always dial when anything remotely interesting happened, and vice versa. But it couldn’t be that way forever. She had to suspect that too, on some level. Mostly because she was still a big part of the life I was trying to leave behind.
That was probably the first time I’d admitted to myself that I was trying to leave it. I had been stubbornly convincing myself that this was just a long trip. Even when I packed, I’d left my art books behind as proof of my planned return at the end of the summer.
Friday morning, I took my dad to the airport and we had a heartfelt “See you later” at the gate. He made me promise to keep him up to speed on any plans or ideas and to call him if I needed advice. He said now that he’d had time to “grow up,” he could let me do the same.
I didn’t need to run to make my first class that morning, since I asked Sarah if Molly could cover it. Molly happily agreed, saying she’d been wondering what the fuss was about my nature art classes. I had been hoping to run into Rick, but his classes had almost conveniently been on the opposite side of town as mine the past week. I didn’t try calling him to let him know that I wasn’t leaving, partly because I was ashamed to admit that I had considered it when my dad’s words started to make sense. The other part was the stubborn need I had for him to call me—to find me at the airport still under the impression that I was leaving, to knock on my door and drag me to some other nature adventure. None of which happened, so I refrained from calling and hoped every moment that went by on camp grounds that I would see him. Which shouldn’t have been impossible, given that my first few days here, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into him.
Oddly enough, it was.
CHAPTER 23
Early Saturday morning, I grabbed my coffee and headed for the beach. Despite defeating the purpose of sunrise rituals, I closed my eyes as I settled into my spot not far from shore. My eyes opened as I felt a body next to me.
“Thought I’d find you here,” a familiar female voice said.
Those were words I wanted to hear, but not exactly the person I wanted to hear them from.
“Hey, Sarah,” I said as she plopped into the sand next to me. “Were you looking for me?”
“Well, not exactly. I was out for my morning run, and I know you usually come down here for the sunrise,” she said, looking at the horizon. “Fascinating habit.”
I nodded and focused on the lines I was engraving into the sand. I felt her glance at what I was doing then turn her head back to the horizon.
“You know, I’d never admit this to anyone, but I didn’t always like kids.”
My expression went blank. I looked at her and waited.
“Twelve years ago, I knocked on Mr. Myers’s office door with a sales pitch for personalized pens.”
I burst laughing and quickl
y stopped myself, out of eagerness to hear more.
Sarah just smiled and continued. “It was the third year in a row I’d done that, and every year, Tom would say ‘no thank you’ and closed the door. Then one year, he said, ‘You do remember coming here last year and the year before and me telling you we don’t need them, don’t you?’” She looked down and laughed at the memory. “And I said, ‘I do, sir, but I also remember my mother telling me to never give up, and I have a feeling, Mr. Myers, that one day you’ll ask me to put you down for four boxes.’”
“So, what did he say.”
“He stood from his chair and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, put me down for one box now, and I would like to offer you a summer job here just until camp is over, and you can still sell your fancy pens on the side. If you get through more than two pens until the end of the summer, I’ll buy ten more.’”
“Wow. I guess you took his offer.”
“Yep. I thought, hey, make some extra cash for the summer and sell eleven boxes in the meantime? Great!”
“So did you get through the first box of pens?”
“I barely used my first one three times. We use pencils for checklists and attendance, the computer for schedules, posting payments—and, well, most everything else.
“So no more boxes?”
She smiled. “I would have considered him a fool to have bought even one more out of pity.” She shook her head, laughing. “No, he was happy with my work and asked me to come back the following summer. Eventually, I started doing more of the planning and decision making that he decided to sit out on most summers. Mrs. Myers would still come for her music sessions twice a week.”
I listened and nodded through the rest of her story. When she was done, I went back to letting the sand fall through my fingers, absently hoping to find a small seashell.
She watched me for a moment. “It’s not knowing what you’re looking for, Amy. It’s the fact that you showed up to find it. No matter where you go or how many wrong turns you take, you’ll always end up exactly where you belong.”
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