August Isle

by Ali Standish

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t—feel good.”

  By now, I knew, my cheeks would be strawberry patches.

  “Do you want me to call your mom?” Jason asked.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t call Sammy’s mom. I’m okay. I just—”

  I took a small step forward. As an experiment.

  Then I imagined being trapped on that flimsy boat in the middle of the ocean, and I felt another swell, this time of terror.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t get on that boat. Couldn’t you just go without me?”

  Jason blinked at me, then looked around. “Bill is up at his bait shop,” he said. “I guess he could keep an eye on you. But wouldn’t you rather come with us? I mean, you’re just going to be stuck here otherwise, with not much to do. He’ll probably make you rake the beach.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Raking the leaves was one of my jobs at home. “I don’t mind.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, Miranda,” he said. “Your call.”

  My stomach dropped at the disappointment that clung to his voice. He hesitated, then lowered a hand to my shoulder and squeezed.

  As he jogged to the top of the beach to tell Bait-Shop Bill I was staying, Sammy lifted her palms in a “what’s up?” gesture. I shook my head.

  When Jason came back, he was holding a rake.

  8

  It felt like Sammy and the others were gone a lot longer than an hour and a half. When I was done raking the beach, I had nothing to do but stare out at the water I was too scared to cross. The sun was beating down, flashing diamonds across the blue harbor, making me squint and wish I had some sunglasses.

  While I waited, a big sailboat drifted into the other side of the harbor. The word “Albatross” was painted on its side.

  “Look what the cat done dragged in,” I heard Bait-Shop Bill drawl.

  “Is that what I think it is?” another man asked.

  But just what it was—besides a big boat—I didn’t find out, because the two of them walked off to get a better look.

  Finally a speck on the horizon turned into a blob, which turned into Jason’s smaller sailboat. I waved as they skimmed closer and Jason lowered the sails. As soon as they were near enough to the beach, Sammy jumped out and ran toward me.

  I was worried she would be mad at me for making her go alone with Caleb. But her eyes were full of concern as she skidded to a stop in the sand.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come,” I said.

  She shook some water from her hair. “It’s fine. I was worried about you. So what happened?”

  I considered making something up. Cramps, maybe, or a headache. But what excuse would I give the next day? I decided I was better off with the truth.

  “I don’t like water,” I said. “Actually, I’m afraid of it. Like, really afraid.”

  Sammy pulled me into a wet, salty hug. “You should have said something earlier,” she said. “Oh, wait—is that why you were so nervous driving over the bridge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We don’t have to do these lessons,” she said.

  “No,” I replied firmly. “Your mom probably already paid for them. I’ll just—figure something out.”

  But what exactly that something was, I had no idea.

  “Then I’ll help you,” Sammy said. “We’ll do it together.”

  I smiled a wobbly smile at her.

  Jason had made his way up from the beach and was leaning against the open window of Aunt Clare’s minivan, which must have just pulled back into the parking lot. Caleb sauntered over, distracting me from trying to hear what Jason was saying. “Sammy didn’t tell me you were royalty,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Miranda the Sand Queen. Has a nice ring to it, right?”

  “Leave her alone, Caleb,” Sammy said, taking my arm. My cheeks burned as we started toward the parking lot.

  “Later, Sand Queen!” Caleb called, staring at me as I turned away.

  When we reached the minivan, Jason shot me a sympathetic look. “Hey, Miranda,” he said. “Tomorrow’s another day, huh?”

  “Are you all right, Miranda?” Aunt Clare asked as we pulled away. She kept glancing at me in the rear-view mirror, her eyes full of concern.

  “She’s not sick,” Sammy said. “She doesn’t like water.”

  Aunt Clare made a clicking noise. “I should have asked you before I signed you up for these lessons,” she said, the lines around her mouth deepening. “It was a last-minute thing, but I should have—”

  “No,” I protested. Seeing how upset she looked was making me feel worse than I already did. “Honestly, it was really nice of you. And I have to get over my fear sometime, right?”

  Actually, until the night before, I had planned to just never face it.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” she said, biting her lip.

  “I am,” I said.

  But I didn’t think I had ever been less sure of anything in my life.

  9

  After I’d sort of survived my first sailing lesson, the day started to look much brighter.

  Once we’d had lunch, Aunt Clare left for the music school on the mainland where she gave piano lessons, which Sammy said she did most afternoons. Sammy and I walked to a shop called the Two-Legged Flamingo. (“Don’t all flamingos have two legs?” I asked. Sammy furrowed her brow, then laughed. “You’re right!” she replied. “I never thought about it!”) There I picked out a pair of sunglasses and a bathing suit that actually fit me and was neither pink nor frilly. Then we went next door to Sundae’s for ice cream.

  Inside was a regular drugstore. But along one wall, there was also an old-fashioned counter with swivel stools. Behind the counter, buckets of ice cream in every color shimmered in a glass case. Looking closer, I saw they came in strange flavors like cantaloupe and caramel apple.

  We asked for samples of pretty much every flavor from the guy behind the counter before settling on our choices. Piña colada for me, and strawberry macaroon for Sammy. Then we took our cones and walked across the street to the August Oak, where we found an empty bench. Sitting there in the shade, I felt my shoulders relax for the first time all day.

  “So what ideas do you have for your story?” I asked. “The one for your school paper?”

  “I’m not sure. The only idea I had so far was sea turtles.”

  “Sea turtles?”

  “Yeah. They’re my favorite animal. The moms make their nests on the dunes around here in the summer. They lay all these eggs, and the sand around the nest gets roped off so no one steps on them. And then those babies will come back to the exact same place when it’s time for them to lay their eggs. How cool is that? Almost like magic.”

  “It sounds like a good story.”

  “Yeah, but not a scoop. What’s my angle? I need something with . . . an edge. I bet your mom would have some good advice.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Probably.”

  I gazed up at the light trickling down through the leaves of the August Oak. Its branches were hung with clumps of wiry, brown stuff that Sammy said was called Spanish moss. The light made it glow. It reminded me of that old fairy tale Mom used to read me, the one with the princess who weaves straw into gold. I wondered if Mom had ever sat on the exact same bench and thought the exact same thing.

  Then, when purple clouds blew the golden light away, we ran for home, scrambling up the steps just as thunder shook the house and rain began to pour. We squished into the hammock on the porch.

  It was cozy and dry there, creaking back and forth, and after a while, Aunt Clare came home and asked if we wanted any lemonade.

  I was still thinking about Mom, though, and about how I had planned to investigate her past while I was here. So far, all I had learned was that she held her breath going over bridges.

  “Hey, Aunt Clare?”

  She stopped in the doorway. “Mmm?”

  “I was wondering . . . what was my
mom like when she was a kid?”

  A smile sailed across her face, like just the memory of Mom was enough to light her up from the inside. “How about I show you?” she said. “I actually pulled some old photos out earlier. I thought you might like to see.”

  Inside, Aunt Clare poured us each a glass of lemonade and led us into the living room. She handed me a stack of pictures. “Thanks,” I said, taking them eagerly and sitting down on the couch.

  The first one was of Mom and Aunt Clare standing on the beach and making funny faces into the camera. They looked like they were about the same age as Sammy and me.

  “Wow,” Sammy said. “You look so much like your mom.”

  I frowned. In the picture, Mom’s limbs were long like mine, but they were willowy instead of awkward. Her hair had streaks of blond where mine was stubbornly brown. And she was beaming. Not with the perfect-doll smile I recognized, but with a real, crooked, ear-to-ear grin.

  “I don’t really see it,” I said, flipping to the next one.

  In it, Mom was on the beach once more, this time holding a surfboard.

  “My mom knew how to surf?” I asked. “She never told me that.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Aunt Clare said. “She was pretty good, too.”

  In the next photo, Mom and Aunt Clare were a little older, standing on a boat and holding up an enormous silver fish. They were surrounded by other kids, all laughing and flashing thumbs up.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “You guys had a lot of friends.”

  “Tourists, mostly. Your mom was really good at making friends with them. That summer she convinced a huge group of us to go deep-sea fishing. It was a really fun day.”

  The photos had started to make me feel oddly dizzy. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to find in them, but they just made me more confused than ever. Why hadn’t Mom told me about the surfing and the deep-sea fishing and all her friends when I’d asked her about the Isle?

  I kept flipping. There was a picture of Mom riding her bike down Oak Street, waving with both hands at the camera, and one of her and Aunt Clare wearing diving suits.

  “You guys really were best friends, huh?” Sammy said. “You did everything together.”

  It wasn’t hard to see why Mom would be best friends with Aunt Clare, if Clare had been anything like Sammy. Mom would have wanted to be friends with a girl like her—fun and brave and adventurous. A girl with edge.

  It was my own fault for asking, but I suddenly wished I hadn’t seen these pictures at all. They made me feel the same way I did when Mom talked about how much fun she’d had on one of her trips.

  I fought back the tears springing into my eyes.

  “She looks so—” I murmured. For a minute, I couldn’t think of the word. Then it came to me. “Different,” I finished.

  She did look different, but that wasn’t really the word I was thinking of.

  Happy. The word I was looking for was “happy.”

  10

  Later that night, when Sammy and I were back in her room watching Netflix, my phone lit up. I looked down at my screen and saw the word “Mom.”

  “Hello?” I answered, chest swelling.

  “Hi, Miranda.”

  “Hi, Mom.” I gestured toward the sliding door. Sammy gave me a thumbs-up as I stepped out onto the porch and into the sticky night air.

  “How’s August Isle?” Mom asked. “Is everything going okay?”

  I could hear a voice in the background calling out boarding groups. She must be at the airport.

  “It’s great,” I said, forcing as much cheer into my voice as possible. “I really like it here. And Sammy and Aunt Clare are so cool.”

  There was a pause, and I could tell she was listening to the announcements at the same time we were talking. “That’s wonderful, sweetie.”

  “Actually,” I said uncertainly, “Aunt Clare was showing us some pictures of you guys when you were kids.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mom asked. “Nothing too embarrassing, I hope.”

  “No,” I said. “You looked like you were having . . . fun.”

  “Well, Clare and I had some good times together,” she said. “I’m sure you and Sammy will, too.”

  There was so much I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. Maybe because I knew better than to think Mom would actually answer my questions.

  Or maybe because, deep down, I was already afraid she would.

  Instead I told her about spitting watermelon seeds and the strange flavors at Sundae’s and Sammy’s plan to find a big scoop to write about for her school paper. “My favorite thing here is the August Oak,” I said. “Did you ever notice how when the light comes through the leaves—”

  “So sorry, sweetie,” she interrupted. “They’re calling my boarding group now. It sounds like you’re having such a great time, though. I’m glad.”

  I really didn’t want to hang up, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. “Okay,” I said. “I hope your flight is safe. I love you.”

  “Me too,” she replied. “It might be a while before I can call again, but I’ll do my best, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Bye.”

  I sat out on the porch for a few minutes after that, just thinking about those pictures and listening to the ocean.

  When I heard voices, I turned around, thinking Sammy might have come out. But after a second, I realized the voices were wafting up from the porch below.

  “I think we have to talk about what happened at the harbor today,” Aunt Clare was saying.

  My chest tightened.

  Uncle Amar let out a long sigh. “I don’t like it,” he said. “Are we sure—”

  He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Well, are we sure this is the right place for Miranda?” he asked. “I mean, considering today’s developments? Should we call Beth and tell her?”

  My heart began to pound. No, no, no, it beat. If they called Mom and told her I couldn’t stay here, then she would have to cancel her trip. Witness magazine would never hire her again. And whatever was broken between us might never be fixed.

  “I don’t think we should,” Aunt Clare replied after a long minute. My heartbeat slowed. “She’s probably on her way to Argentina right now. It’s not like there’s anything she can do from there.”

  “Whatever you want,” Uncle Amar said. “I do think she’s saddled us with quite a big burden here.”

  “I know,” Aunt Clare murmured. “But can you blame her? Look, I don’t want to upset her. Let’s just keep an eye on things.”

  There was another long pause. Then, “Let’s change the subject, okay?” Aunt Clare said. “How was that meeting this morning?”

  I waited silently as Uncle Amar told Aunt Clare about meeting with his boss, not even daring to slap the mosquito I felt biting into my shoulder. Only when they’d gone inside again did I slip back into Sammy’s room.

  “Come watch this video!” Sammy said when I slid back through the door. “It’s a cat that ice-skates!”

  I curled up next to her and laughed at the right moments as she took me on a YouTube tour of her favorite videos. But the laughter was hollow, and I began to yawn obviously until Sammy started to yawn, too, and decided it was time for bed.

  Then I lay in the dark for a long time, Aunt Clare and Uncle Amar’s words circling around my head like bloodthirsty sharks.

  I do think she’s saddled us with quite a big burden here.

  I knew what “burden” meant. It was one of our vocabulary words last year. It meant something you had to carry. Something heavy. Something you didn’t want.

  I know, but can you blame her?

  My mind became a movie reel.

  I saw the time Mom discovered me playing with Batty and said I needed to make real friends . . .

  And the day she took me for my swimming lessons and I clawed at her shoulders . . .

  The plane ride back from Disneyland when I held her hand so tight, it hurt . . .

  The summer I made her pick me up
from camp . . .

  The night she told me about her trip to Argentina and I stole the smile from her face . . .

  Then I saw Mom, grinning in all those pictures with Aunt Clare. So happy.

  It’s no wonder she travels so much, said a voice inside my head. It’s no wonder things have changed between you. You are a burden. She was much happier before you came along.

  A tight knot rose in my throat.

  If she had a daughter like Sammy, the voice hissed, maybe she still would be.

  11

  The next morning, I woke up exhausted but determined. I had stayed awake a long time the night before, thinking. Until finally I came to a decision.

  I would no longer be Miranda, Sand Queen, burden to everyone.

  I would be Miranda, brave and bold, always ready for a new adventure. Then maybe, just maybe, by the time I returned home to Illinois, I would be the kind of daughter who could make Mom happy again.

  And I would start by overcoming my fear of water.

  There was just one problem. When we arrived on the sailing beach that morning, Jason was pulling the little sailboats up onto the sand.

  “Why are you doing that?” Caleb asked.

  “We’re staying on the beach today,” said Jason. “Before I can take you out on the water in your own boats, you’ve got to learn what you’re supposed to be doing out there.”

  Caleb scowled. Disappointment flashed across Sammy’s face for just a second.

  I took a deep breath, buckling my hands into fists. “We don’t have to stay on the beach just because of me,” I said. “I want to go out.”

  One eyebrow lifted above the frame of his sunglasses as Jason considered me. “Good to know,” he said, “but you have to learn the basics before I turn you out in the water. Now, go ahead and claim a boat. We’ll start with learning the parts.”

  As I walked to my boat, I kicked up a spray of sand. But when I finally loosened my fists, my hands were trembling.

  We spent the first part of the lesson repeating back the names of the sails (jib and mainsail), the poles (mast and boom), the ropes (halyards, boom vang, sheets), and edges of the boat (bow, stern, starboard, port). Then we moved on to learning how to tie different kinds of knots with names like old-timey dance moves (bowline, clove hitch, figure eight).