August Isle

by Ali Standish

  “I guess you had lots of friends when you were here,” I said. “Maybe he was one of them.”

  “Probably,” Mom said. “So how are you liking—”

  “Why did you stop coming to August Isle?”

  “What?”

  “If you were so happy here, why did you stop coming? Why wouldn’t you ever take me to visit?”

  I heard her take a deep breath. “Life gets busy. You’ll understand when you get older.”

  “Sammy wants us both to come visit,” I said. “Will you come?”

  “Miranda, you’re acting very strange,” Mom said. “Why don’t we talk about this when you get home? I want to know more about what you’ve been doing there.”

  My knuckles wrapped tighter around my phone. Why wouldn’t she answer a single one of my questions?

  “Maybe I’ll just ask Aunt Clare who Ben is,” I said.

  “Don’t do that, Miranda. If I don’t remember, I’m sure she doesn’t either.”

  “Then why does it matter?”

  “Because I asked you not to.” Mom’s voice was suddenly icy. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight. It seems like you’re trying to upset me.”

  “To ruin things like I always do, you mean?”

  “What?”

  “Do you even miss me, Mom? Do you even want to come home?”

  “Miranda, what are you—”

  Any second, I knew, I would burst into tears. And I couldn’t let Mom hear me cry. “Just never mind,” I said, my words beginning to wobble. “You probably need to get back to your work anyway. Sorry I’m such a burden.”

  She started to say something, but I hung up before I could hear what it was.

  29

  At first, the tears that came were burning hot and angry, like fire ants scurrying down my cheeks.

  But then my anger ran out, and they became tears of sorrow. Regret tugged at my heart. What had I done? I hadn’t meant to get so angry. I didn’t even know I was angry.

  Now everything had crumbled in my hands like a piecrust gripped too tight.

  I stared at my phone, willing the screen to light up with the word “Mom.” But it stayed dark.

  What if I had finally pushed her too far, and she really did stay gone this time?

  Please don’t forget me.

  Please come home.

  Why had I listened to Mr. Taylor in the first place? Why did I think Ben or August Isle or any of it would have anything to do with why things were broken between Mom and me?

  “Miranda?” came Sammy’s voice. “Miranda, what’s wrong?”

  When I looked up, I saw her standing across the rooftop, by the stairs. Caleb hovered behind her. “You okay?” he asked.

  I started to nod but then stopped and shook my head instead. Fresh tears rose as they sat down in the chairs on either side of me.

  “What is it?” Sammy tried again, alarmed.

  “It’s my m-mom,” I stammered.

  “Is something wrong with her?” Caleb asked. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I said, sniffling and wiping my cheeks with my wrists. “It’s me. I’m the one there’s something wrong with.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sammy asked.

  My heart began to race. I had never told anyone the truth about Mom before.

  They were both staring at me, though, eyes round with concern. And I decided that even if Mr. Taylor’s advice about Mom hadn’t worked out very well, he was right about one thing. I could trust Sammy and Caleb. I needed to trust them.

  “My mom and I don’t, um, have a great relationship,” I mumbled.

  Then everything was spilling out. I told them how I remembered a time when Mom’s love felt big as the sun, but how its heat had faded away. I told them how much happier she looked in the pictures taken at August Isle than she ever did at home with me, and how every time she left on another trip, a little part of me wondered if she would actually come home again.

  When I couldn’t talk anymore, the three of us sat in silence for a minute, the ocean humming in our ears.

  Then I felt Sammy’s arm around my shoulders, squeezing it tight. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. That’s really tough,” Caleb murmured. He reached out and patted my head, which was sweet, even if it did make me feel a little like Slug.

  “It’s my fault,” I said. “I’m always ruining stuff.”

  Sammy made a sizzling sound. “You don’t ruin anything, Miranda. Whatever’s going on with your mom, it’s not your fault.”

  “I ruined our first sailing lessons,” I pointed out. “And tons of pies. And it’s my fault that we got caught in Mr. Taylor’s house.”

  “You’re scared of water!” Sammy exclaimed. “Obviously you were afraid to go sailing at first. But you’ve been really brave ever since. And your pie tonight was, like, the best pie ever. Caleb had three slices!”

  “And Mr. Taylor’s house turned out to be pretty cool,” Caleb said. “Sammy’s right. This summer would have been a total borefest without you.”

  “Your parents think I’m a burden,” I said to Sammy. “I heard them talking about it.”

  Sammy made a face and shook her head. “No way,” she said. “They would never say that. You must have misheard them. Seriously, Miranda, they love you! They don’t think you’re a burden, and I’m sure your mom doesn’t either.”

  I shrugged. I wanted to believe Sammy, but I’d heard them with my own ears.

  “I don’t know. I just think—maybe things would be better between my mom and me if I were different. More like you.”

  My eyes swiveled toward Sammy.

  “Me?” she asked.

  “You and your parents get along so great,” I said. “You never fight. You never disappoint them. You make things easier for your family, not harder.”

  “That’s not always true,” Sammy said quietly.

  “I’m not talking about flunking a math quiz,” I said.

  “Neither am I.”

  “So what do you mean?” Caleb asked.

  Sammy ran her fingers through her hair and tugged at the ends. “If you tell anyone at school what I’m going to say to you,” she said, turning and jabbing Caleb in the chest, “I will never speak to you again. Got it?”

  Caleb held up his hands. “Got it.”

  “Fine.” She took a deep breath. “Well, people have gotten my name wrong sometimes, and when I brought dal or chole or other Indian food to school, usually someone would say it looked weird or smelled bad. Things like that. But in fifth grade, there was this new kid, Roger. He started spreading all these mean rumors about what was in my food and what India is like and stuff. And then other kids started teasing me more.”

  “I remember that,” Caleb muttered.

  “Yeah, well, I was really upset, and I told my mom about it, and she got really upset, too. She wanted to call the school and Roger’s parents, but I told her that would just make things worse, and later that night I heard her crying with my dad, talking about how they just felt so helpless to protect me. And that’s when I decided to do something. So I wouldn’t get made fun of anymore.”

  “You mean like change your name?” I said softly. I laced my fingers through hers and squeezed.

  She nodded. “I only brought sandwiches for lunch, and whenever anyone asked me anything about India, I pretended like I didn’t know. When we had to do a project on another country in social studies, I picked Italy. I just didn’t want people to be able to hurt my feelings anymore. Or my mom’s and dad’s.” She lifted her chin up in the air and did her best to sound casual, but I could see that her lower lip was trembling.

  “Then last summer we went back to Mumbai, and it was, like, the best trip ever. My family and the city and the food and the clothes . . . it was all so awesome. But sometimes I got this feeling that I didn’t really belong there either. There was just so much I didn’t know. And some of my cousins told me they saw our dadi get mad at Dad because J
ai and I couldn’t speak any Punjabi, and she couldn’t believe I didn’t know how to make any of her recipes.”

  “You do now,” I said. “You help your dad cook all the time!”

  “Yeah, well, that trip made me realize how much I love being Indian. I love being American, too. I want to belong there, and I want to belong here. But it’s like I’m not enough for either place. Like I just end up upsetting everybody.”

  “Sammy, no!” I cried. I couldn’t believe that Sammy—whose confidence I had wished for, whose family I had envied—could ever feel like this. “You can’t think like that. You’re totally enough, and your family loves you!”

  “I know that in my head,” Sammy said. “But sometimes it’s hard to feel it in my heart.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “It’s not fair that you have to feel like that.”

  “It’s really not,” Caleb said.

  “I know that,” Sammy replied, her voice quiet. “It’s Roger and your other friends who don’t seem to get it.”

  “You’re friends with that guy?” I said.

  Caleb grimaced. “Yeah,” he replied. “He’s kind of my friend. I mean, we don’t hang out that much anymore, but . . . maybe I could talk with him? Tell him that it’s not cool to make fun of you. Especially not if it’s because you’re Indian.”

  Sammy eyed him for a minute. Then she nodded. “That would be good,” she said finally, sniffling. “Thanks.”

  “I still can’t believe you could ever think that you weren’t enough for your family,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you think that either. How could you think your mom would be happier with a different family?”

  “I know mine would be,” Caleb muttered.

  We turned to look at him. He was sitting cross-legged, staring down at the floor.

  “What are you talking about?” Sammy asked.

  “Well . . . my parents are kind of, um, getting divorced,” Caleb said. “Only my dad hasn’t moved out yet, so right now they’re just fighting and yelling all the time.”

  “Oh,” I breathed. In an instant, I understood why he never seemed to want to go home. Whenever I heard Mom and Dad arguing in their room, I got a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if they fought all the time. And I remembered how Caleb had snapped at me after we heard the story about Inkeri, who ran away so she wouldn’t have to marry someone she didn’t love. It all made sense now.

  “Sometimes I’ve wondered whether, if they had a different kid, like a better kid, or maybe even no kid at all, they might still be happy together. And this last year, I tried to be so good in school and stuff, hoping that it would help. That’s why I stopped hanging out with Roger and those guys. But it didn’t make a difference. How could it? My parents were too busy fighting to even notice me.” Caleb glanced up at us and smiled, but it looked like a smile cut out of cardboard.

  “I’m really sorry, Caleb.”

  “Me too,” Sammy said.

  “It’s okay. After a while, you realize that anything is better than the fighting. I’m just scared that my dad will move away. Or get a new family, you know? That always happens in movies.”

  I reached over and patted him the way he had done to me. He didn’t seem to think it was weird at all.

  “I wish we had told each other this stuff earlier,” I said after a minute. “I bet we all would have felt less lonely.”

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” Caleb said. “All three of us have felt bad about stuff we have no control over. Stuff our parents chose.”

  “You sound exactly like Mr. Taylor today,” I said. I told them about the adinkra cloth, and the sankofa in the gate, and how it meant not being afraid to look into your past.

  “So I asked my mom about that name we saw in the sidewalk,” I said. “Ben. And she told me she didn’t remember him. But she sounded really strange.”

  “You mean you think she was lying?” Sammy asked.

  I bit my lip. “The thing is, whenever I ask a question about this place, she always says she doesn’t remember. I didn’t even know it existed until Sammy came to visit.”

  Caleb nodded knowingly. “Sounds like she’s definitely keeping a secret.”

  “Let’s just ask my mom about Ben,” Sammy said.

  I shook my head. “My mom told me I shouldn’t. If we ask, your mom will probably just tell my mom, and then she’ll be even more upset.”

  “Then we have to find another way,” Sammy said. “Because I think Mr. Taylor is right, Miranda.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you act like you’re this horrible daughter, but nobody else seems to think you’re so terrible. I think you’re kind of great.”

  “Me too,” mumbled Caleb.

  I felt a little flurry in my stomach.

  “So maybe there is another reason your mom acts so weird. And maybe it has to do with this Ben person. But it definitely has to do with August Isle.”

  “But what would something that happened here have to do with the way things are between her and me?” I asked. “I’ve never set foot in this place before this summer.”

  “I don’t know,” Sammy mused. “We won’t ever know unless we figure out what the secret is. Which is why we need to find out more about this Ben guy.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. If Mom found out I was investigating the mysterious Ben, she’d be furious. Or worse, disappointed.

  But if Sammy was right, then I had to know. That’s why I had called Mom in the first place, wasn’t it?

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “I’m not—”

  But I stopped short. The hairs at the back of my neck prickled.

  “What’s wrong?” Sammy asked.

  “Shh,” I said. “Look.”

  I stared at the ink blot in the ocean that was Keeper’s Island. For a second, there was just the wind and the waves. Then I saw a soft light burning from the top of the lighthouse. After a moment, the sound came again. The cry. High and long, almost like a scream.

  Sammy gave a little gasp, and Caleb’s jaw fell open.

  “See?” I whispered. “Told you I wasn’t imagining things.”

  30

  After Caleb went home that night, Sammy and I stayed up late, whispering about Keeper’s Island. “Why is someone sneaking around out there at night?” Sammy asked. “No one ever goes there.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “But I have a feeling you finally found your scoop.”

  “I can already see the headline,” she said. “‘Keeper’s Island: The Shocking Truth Behind the Legend.’”

  And we weren’t the only ones thinking about Sammy’s story.

  When we came down for breakfast the next morning, Aunt Clare was flipping pancakes. She looked over her shoulder at us, and for just a second, a frown flitted across her face. Then she was smiling and telling us good morning.

  “How’s your article coming, Sammy?” she asked, setting our plates down at the table.

  Aunt Clare still thought we were spending our afternoons at the library and interviewing people for Sammy’s article. Which, as far as she knew, was still about sea turtles.

  Sammy shot me a glance. “Good,” she said. “Actually, really good. I think I’m on to something.”

  Now Aunt Clare sat down across the table from us. “You’ve been spending an awful lot of time on this story. I can’t wait to read it.”

  “It’s going to be great,” I said, nervously stuffing a bite of chocolate-chip pancake into my mouth.

  “I’m sure,” Aunt Clare replied. “But I don’t want you running around the Isle on your own anymore. Not without supervision.”

  “Why?” Sammy and I asked.

  “Apparently a few people have been pickpocketed on Oak Street this week,” she replied. She wasn’t looking either of us in the eye. “I don’t think it’s safe for the three of you to walk around alone.”

  “I haven’t heard an
ything about any pickpockets,” Sammy retorted.

  “Well, you don’t watch the evening news. Now, let’s go. We’re late for your lesson.”

  Sammy shot me a dark look, but not until Aunt Clare let us out at the sailing beach could we talk about what had happened.

  “I think my mom called yours, Sammy,” I said, once Caleb had arrived and we’d filled him in. “Last night. She must have told Aunt Clare about Ben. Told her to keep an eye on us so we couldn’t investigate.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Sammy said as we tugged on our life jackets. “Well, at least we know for sure that you were right, Miranda. Your mom is definitely keeping a secret from you, and my mom is helping her. But how are we going to figure out what it is if my mom won’t let us go out on our own?”

  “If Miranda even wants to find out,” Caleb said. His voice sounded froggy and tired. “Do you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Which wasn’t quite true. Of course I wanted to know what Mom was hiding. I just didn’t know if it was worth the risk of Mom finding out I had gone behind her back.

  Oh, Miranda, she said in my head. How could you?

  My heart had sunk that morning when I’d seen the blank screen on my phone. I had half expected her to call or text or something. She must be really angry at me already.

  And then there was another voice in my head. The one that said that maybe Mom had a reason for keeping secrets from me. And maybe it was a good one.

  “How would we even find Ben?” I asked. “There must be a million Bens in the world.”

  “Maybe we could start by asking the people who live in the houses near where the names are written,” Sammy said. “Maybe someone there will know who he is.”

  Once we got out onto the water—Sammy and I sharing a boat today—her attention turned back to her own investigation. She kept peering out at Keeper’s Island. I could almost see her mind churning with ideas.

  Suddenly she turned the tiller, and we cut through the water toward Caleb and Jason’s boat.

  “Jason?” she called. “Can we sail out there one day?”

  Jason looked where Sammy was pointing. “You mean to Keeper’s Island?” he asked. “No can do, Captain. We’re not allowed. But I thought after the August Festival, we could finally sail out of the harbor. Maybe even have a little regatta. What do you say, Miranda?”