by Sarah Dessen
“Really?” he said. “That’s crazy. I’ve probably looked at them all a thousand times.”
“Yeah?”
He crossed one leg over the other. “I had a lot of questions about my dad when I was old enough to finally ask. My mom usually just showed me these for her answers. That’s why I was kind of freaked out that first day Jack brought you out to the lake.”
I thought back. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was just when I heard your name,” he said, shifting slightly. His shoulder bumped mine. I didn’t move, even as he did to add space again. “It was like you were actually real. Or something.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess,” I said with a laugh.
“Okay, maybe that’s the wrong word.” He turned, looking at me. “It was just, you know, those pictures were part of a narrative for me. So you were, as well. Does that make sense?”
I wanted to say yes. It wasn’t like I hadn’t spent a fair amount of time lately thinking about stories, the ones we told and those we didn’t. But the truth was, it didn’t exactly track.
My face must has shown this, because he said, “Okay. So when I was nine or ten, I started to get really interested in my dad. I wanted to hear all about him, what he was like, all the time. It wore my mom out, so she’d often just give me these albums and tell me to go nuts. But of course, when I dug through them, I had other questions. Like who you were, and what happened to you.”
“Why me?”
“Because, like him, you were in all these pictures. Until you weren’t. Here, I’ll show you.” He pulled the album over into his lap. “See, this one of you with Bailey and Trinity at the table? That was the day your parents brought you. You just appear, after all these books filled with other faces I still knew. A stranger.”
I looked down at myself, the Popsicle gripped in one hand. “You didn’t remember me.”
“I sort of did,” he said. “But we were four. Like I said, I was in a thing. I had questions.”
I felt my face get a little warm, suddenly, knowing I’d been discussed. It was the same finding that shot of my mom on the fridge: like I, too, had been here all along, even if I hadn’t known it.
“And then,” he went on, turning a page, “this was the first time we met, which was probably a few minutes later. She literally got the exact moment.”
I looked at the picture. It was of the shoreline, littered then as it was now with various floats and beach toys. I was standing at the water’s edge in the same bathing suit, holding a plastic flowerpot, as Roo, crouched in the sand, gripped a shovel and looked up into my face. Behind us, a white boat was sliding past, out of frame.
“I look skeptical,” I said.
“You had good instincts. I was shady.”
I laughed, glad for the release. This felt heavy in a way I couldn’t explain. “Are there more?”
He turned another page, pointing to the bottom corner and a shot taken on a bumper car. The two of us were side by side, me behind the fake wheel while he had his arms up in the air, a gleeful look on his face. “Well, here we have evidence that you used to drive just fine.”
“Maybe that’s where I got traumatized,” I suggested.
“Entirely possible.” Another page turn. “I think we did better off four wheels. Look.”
I did, following his finger to a picture of him and me in the grassy stretch behind Mimi’s house, Calvander’s office in the distant background. I had to look more closely to make out that it was bubbles, tons of them, floating up over us as we stood together. I had one arm looped around his neck, my eyes cast downward while he looked straight ahead.
“Wow,” I said softly.
“I know.” He leaned in a little bit more: now our shoulders touched again. “I’ve always really liked this shot, for some reason. It just looks—”
“Magical,” I finished for him. As soon as I said the word, I felt silly. But that was what had come to mind.
“Yeah.” He turned his head, smiling at me, and I wished more than anything, right then, that I did remember. That day, that shot, those bubbles. But especially him.
“Anyway,” he said, “there are others, too. But those are the ones I remember. As well as that group shot, the one you already saw. Which is . . . here.”
He turned a few more pages until it appeared, this time blown up bigger: me, Roo, Jack, Bailey, and Trinity, all on the bench, side by side. The day I had arrived and seen it beneath the glass in Mimi’s office, every other face had been a stranger. Now, looking at them, I could see things I immediately recognized: the recognizable wry annoyance of Trinity’s expression, how Bailey looked so serious, sitting with elbows propped on knees, framing her own face with her fists. Jack, the oldest, already focused on what would come after the shutter clicked, while Roo’s grin was the same. I looked at myself last, thinking there would be no surprises there, at least. But this time, I did see something different. It was the way I was sitting, leaning against Roo, our knees bumping each other: the ease and comfortableness that comes with familiarity. It was, actually, much like we were sitting now.
“After that,” he said, “you just vanish, never to be seen again. Poof. You can see why I was confused.”
Like I was the ghost, I thought. “Did you think I was dead, too?”
“I was a kid, so it wasn’t that cut and dry. It was more . . .” He sat back again, thinking. “I wondered about you. But it had been a while. And then you show up, at the dock, and you’re Emma but really Saylor, and you don’t know me. . . .”
“I’m sorry,” I said instantly.
“Not your fault.” He turned to look at me. “Look, the point is . . . I’m glad you came this summer. To see you again.”
I stared back at him, feeling a tug in my chest. “I’m real now,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. We were so close, I could see him breathing. “You are.”
It was perfect, that kind of moment when time just stops. Until my phone, in my pocket, buzzed suddenly. When I pulled it out, I had a text from Bailey.
Where are you? Come find me. It’s important.
Of course it was.
“Everything okay?” Roo asked.
“Think so.” I shut the book. “I should go. Thanks for letting me look at this.”
“You can take it, if you want,” he offered.
“Really?”
“Sure,” he said with a smile. “I know where to find you.”
Lake North, I thought. The Tides. Sighing, I stood up, pressing the book to my chest. “Thank you. Really. You have no idea . . .” I trailed off, not sure how to put this. “It means a lot.”
“No problem.” He stood up. “You want a ride? I’ve got the Yum truck. I can play the music.”
I shook my head. “Thanks. But I want to walk. Soak up the ambience while I can.”
“At this hour, it’s more likely to be mosquitoes.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“It’s your skin,” he said amiably, pulling out his keys. I stepped out on the porch, with him behind me. “But we’ll catch up later, right?”
He always said this, and I loved it. But later, like so much else, was now in shorter supply. I held the album closer to my chest, picturing us in all those bubbles. Magic. “Absolutely,” I told him. “We will.”
When I reached Mimi’s dock, it was early evening, some guests from the motel gathered on the swings, while others cooked something on a grill, the smell of charcoal in the air. Just another summer night, to be followed by another, and one more after that. By then, though, I’d be at the Tides, a vantage point from which all of this would look much different, because it was.
I walked up to the house, stepping around a rather rowdy-sounding game of cornhole—“YESSSSS!” someone yelled as I passed—on the way. Gordon was on the steps with her book, alone. She wasn’t reading, just holding it shut on her lap.
“Hey,” I called out as I approached. It was prime home-improvement viewin
g hour, so I was surprised to see her. “What’s going on?”
She looked up at me. “You’re leaving.”
I just stood there, not sure what to say. Finally I asked, “Who told you that?”
“Mimi,” she replied, reaching down to scratch a violently red bug bite on one knee. “She said your dad says he’s coming to get you.”
I wasn’t sure why I’d just assumed my dad would let me break this news by myself. Maybe because it was, well, mine? Clearly, though, he’d suspected I might not mention it, so calls had been made.
“It’s true.” I moved over to sit beside her. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
It wasn’t until she rubbed a fist over her eyes, then looked away from me, that I realized she was crying. And as I looked at her, so small in her pink shorts and T-shirt with a unicorn on it, glasses smudged, her beat-up Allies book in her lap, I felt like I might, too.
“Hey,” I said, reaching out for her, but she quickly moved, out of reach. “You’ll still see me. I’m only going to Lake North.”
“That’s the whole other side,” she said, and sniffled.
“It’s not that far.”
“It’s not here.”
She was right about that. I sat back, stretching out my legs, elbows on the step behind me. Inside, I could hear Mimi and Celeste talking, the TV on low behind them. “You know, I wasn’t even supposed to come this summer,” I told her finally. “I feel really lucky I got to meet you, and spend time with Bailey and Trinity and everyone else. It’s been great.”
“So you’re not sad you’re leaving?”
“Of course I am,” I replied, reaching out to her again. This time, she let me slide an arm over her shoulder. “But I’ll be back.”
“When?”
It occurred to me there was no real way to answer this question. But I had to try.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. She slumped a bit. “But listen. It’s just like the Allies. There is always the rest of the story, right? Even if you don’t know right now what it is.”
She looked down at the book she was holding. “Twenty volumes in this series.”
“See? And that’s just a book!” I said. “In real life, the chapters go on forever. Or a long time, anyway.”
I watched her face as she considered this. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “Do you miss your mom?”
I didn’t know why this question hit me like a gut punch. Maybe because it was unexpected, or since she was young, closer to the age I’d been when my mom died than I was now. “Yes, very much,” I said. “Do you miss yours?”
She nodded, silent. “Do you think I’ll have to leave here, too?”
So that was what this was really about. Not me, but her fear that someone might take her away unexpectedly as well. “Is that what you want?”
“No,” she said, reaching down to run a finger over the face of the chimp on the book’s cover. “I like it here.”
“I know that feeling,” I said. She shifted a bit, my arm still over her shoulder. When I went to move it, though, she surprised me by leaning in closer, resting her head against my chest. “But you know what Mimi says. Even if you do have to go someday, the lake keeps you.”
To this she said nothing. I could feel her warm face against my shirt, accompanied by that little-kid feral smell of sunscreen and dirt. After a moment she said, “What’s that book?”
I’d forgotten about the album, which I’d set on the step beside me. Picking it up, I said, “It’s photos from the first time I came here. Want to see?”
She nodded, sitting up again, and pulled the book into my lap, opening it up. “That’s Mimi,” she said, pointing to one of the first shots.
“Yep,” I said. We looked at it quietly for a moment. “You said the pictures might help me remember. So I borrowed this from Roo.”
Hearing this, she looked pleased. “Are there a lot of them?” she asked as I turned the page.
“Not really,” I said. “But there are enough.”
Now we were on the page with the shot of me with Trinity and Bailey with our Popsicles, as well as Jack in the boat and Roo on the car. “That’s you,” she said, putting a finger right in the center of my swimsuit. “Right?”
“Yep, that’s the first one,” I said. “Now we just need to find the others.”
As she leaned in a little closer, squinting, I heard footsteps behind us in the hallway. When I looked through the screen, Mimi was standing there, watching us. I’d have to talk to her now about leaving, and how grateful I was for the time I’d spent here. There were other things I wanted to say, too. But for now, I turned back to Gordon, who was flipping a page with one finger, her eyes scanning the photos there. Everything changes tomorrow, I thought, but then again, that was always the case.
I wanted to tell Gordon this, share with her the things I was learning, these rules for us outliers. Instead, I got settled, the album square in my lap, and searched with her for my own face among the others that now, I finally recognized. But it was she who spoke first.
“Look,” she said softly. “There’s another one.”
Sixteen
The day I was leaving, I woke up before the sun and everyone else. Or so I thought.
“Well, look who it is,” Mimi said as I came into the kitchen. She was at the table, a mug in front of her. The paper was there as well, but still rolled up, waiting for Oxford, I assumed. “Isn’t this a nice surprise.”
“Didn’t sleep well,” I told her. “Are you always up this early?”
“Oh, honey, I’ve never been much of a sleeper.” She picked up her drink, taking a sip. “Plus I love having the house and lake all to myself. I’m selfish that way.”
“You’re anything but selfish,” I told her, crossing to the cupboard to take out a glass. At the sink, I filled it with water, then went to join her.
“I don’t know about that.” She smiled at me. “I’m wishing you could stay here awhile longer when I know your daddy is more than ready to have you back.”
“I wish I could stay, too,” I said with a sigh. “I feel like I’m just starting to figure things out.”
“Things?”
I sat back in my chair, pulling a leg up underneath me. “I never really understood what this place meant to me. I mean, I knew my mom loved it, because she talked about it. A lot.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” she said. “What did she say?”
“It was mostly stories.” I looked out the big window in front of me at the water, which was still and quiet, the sky streaked with pink above it. “About a girl who lived at a lake and hated the winter. But in the summer, she was happy.”
“Sounds like Waverly,” she said. Her face looked sad, and again I wondered if I shouldn’t have gone into detail. “She had a complicated relationship with this place. And a lot of things.”
“My dad never wants to talk about her problems,” I said, surprising myself. “It’s like he feels like he has to present this sanitized version of her life for my sake. I mean, I never even knew about the accident with Chris Price until Bailey told me.”
“Don’t be too hard on your dad,” she said. “Everyone grieves differently.”
“Part of grieving is remembering,” I pointed out. “He just wants to forget.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she replied. She looked down at her mug. “If it was, you wouldn’t know anything about her, and it sounds like you do.”
“But it’s selective, only what he chose to share.” I looked at my fingers, spread out on the table in front of me. “I feel like I missed so much. Like knowing you, and Celeste and her kids, and the lake. All the stuff I only found here, in these last three weeks.”
Mimi slid her hand, tan and knotted with veins and sunspots, across to cover mine. “We never stopped thinking about you, honey. I hope you know that.”
“That’s just the thing, though,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about you. Because I didn’t know to.”
“But now
you do. So you will.”
I swallowed, hard, and she gave my hand a squeeze. Finally I said, “Thank you for having me. I don’t know how to repay you.”
“By coming back,” she said, and smiled. “And when you do, we’ll be waiting.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I blinked, just as Oxford came downstairs, whistling softly as he did so. Seeing us, he said, “What’s everyone doing up so early?”
“I’m always up at this time, you know that,” Mimi told him, getting to her feet. “You hungry?”
“Wouldn’t say no to some toast,” he replied. As he reached for the paper, he said to me, “You want the obits?”
“I will,” I said as he shook out the main section, glancing at the front page. “But first I have something to do.”
Mimi glanced at the clock over the stove. “You know it’s only six a.m., right?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back soon.”
I pushed back my chair and took my glass to the sink, which still had dishes in it from the night before. Had they even noticed the times I’d washed everything and put it away? Maybe not. But it had made me feel good. Like I was part of all this, in my own fashion.
“You want to borrow the car?” Mimi asked when I came downstairs after grabbing my shoes and wallet and pulling a brush through my hair. “I can get the keys.”
“No, I’m good to walk,” I told her. Then I waved and started down the hallway before she could ask any more questions or, God forbid, insist I drive.
At Calvander’s, all the guest-room doors were closed, the beach empty. When I got to the road, instead of going left, I turned the other way. About a block ahead, just beyond a sign that said LAKE NORTH, 3 MILES, I could see Conroy Market, brightly lit and open. It wasn’t a long way, but enough to at least try to clear my head, which I needed, especially after what had happened between Bailey and me the night before.
“Where have you been?” she’d demanded when she appeared in my room after I got back with the album. “I sent you a text. We need to talk.”
“I went to see Roo,” I told her. “What’s going on?”