by Sarah Dessen
“You can’t kick me out,” she said. “I have a contract.”
“Read it,” I said, gesturing around me. “You’re in violation.”
Now, she actually looked sort of worried. “I have to stay here until I finish this phase of the project. Especially since I’m working alone now.”
“You should have thought about that before you trashed someone else’s house.”
In response, she picked up a Diet Coke bottle from the floor, then another one beside it, tucking them under her arm. “It’s not trashed. It’s just messy. Watch, I can fix it.”
“The outside of the house is scraped clean of paint,” I said, my voice flat. “Can you fix that?”
“Probably not,” she admitted, still gathering up bottles, now at a faster clip. “But you can. Right?”
I just looked at her. “Why on earth would I help you?”
Her arms were full of bottles now. “You help everyone else.”
“What?”
“You do!” she said, turning and dumping them out into the hallway. “You helped Theo, and Clyde …”
“That was different. They’re my friends.”
She looked up at me, one of the laptops now in her hands. “Oh, that’s nice. Thank you so much.”
“Ivy. We’re not friends,” I told her as she walked over to the bedside table, the laptop’s cord dragging behind her, knocking bottles over as it went. Watching the plug approach an open box of Kix, I couldn’t help myself. I went over and picked it up. “You don’t even like me.”
“That’s not true,” she said, dumping the laptop on the bed. I picked up another box of cereal, as well as a couple of more bottles. “I have no feelings about you whatsoever.”
“The feeling’s mutual.” I picked up the two mugs. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going to get a trash bag.”
“Maybe bring the box,” she called out, as I stomped down the hallway, passing Luke on his way back in with his toolbox.
“Are we leaving?” he asked.
“No. We’re cleaning,” I told him. Then I hit the laundry room closet, where just about everything I’d stocked at the beginning of the season—cleansers, wipes, mops, and sprays—remained basically untouched. Even the vacuum cleaner still had a plastic cover on the plug. Unbelievable.
Back in the bedroom, Ivy was still picking up things off the floor, while Luke was working on the hinge with a screwdriver. I walked over to the red stain with some carpet cleaner, taking out my aggression on the pump until it was totally saturated. “This better come up.”
“It’s just tomato juice,” she told me.
“Just?” I said.
Outside the open door, Luke snickered. I looked at him, and he reared back. “Sorry. No offense. But if you could see
your face right now …” He trailed off, biting his lip.
“This is so not funny,” I told him.
“You’re exactly right,” he replied, now straight-faced. “It’s dire.”
Now, Ivy laughed, and I glared at her. “Sorry. I laugh when I’m nervous. What? You are really kind of scary right now.”
“If I were you, I’d stop talking,” I told her. “Otherwise, I’m out of here and you can deal with this on your own.”
For the next thirty minutes or so, we all worked quickly and silently. Luke got the door off, while Ivy and I filled trash bags, dealt with the carpet, and got everything off the floor. I plugged in the vacuum and pushed it at her, then made the bed with fresh sheets from the linen closet, which had also not been used yet. By the time we were all done, it slightly resembled the room I remembered. Which was honestly more than I expected.
“See?” she said, as we all stood by the door, surveying our work. “All better.”
“Not all. And it’s not like it could have gotten worse.”
I heard a buzzing, and she pulled her phone from her pocket. “Hello? Oh, Clyde, hi. I’m on my way, just hit a little snag, so—What?” She glanced at her watch. “But we said ten thirty, so we could really get in some good time …”
Luke nudged me from behind. “You are a serious hard-ass, you know that?”
“What? She wrecked this entire place!”
Ivy shot me a look, then stepped out into the hallway. “All right, then. Well, no, I wouldn’t say I’m happy, but … let’s just say three. But we’ll start right then, yes?”
“It’s just nice to know,” he said, stepping around me to grab his toolbox, “that some things never change. Especially you, Emaline.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a compliment.”
“It is,” he replied, in that easy Luke way. The boy could flatter, I had to give him that. “I’ll be outside.”
Just then, as my own phone beeped. I slid it out and looked at the screen. Going to cape frost with Clyde, Theo had texted. Translation: so far so good.
“All right,” Ivy said. I hurriedly slid the phone back into my pocket. “Let’s just cut to the chase. Are you going to report me, or what?”
I looked at the room again. “That depends. Are you going to leave it like this and agree to pay for the damage to be repaired as soon as I can get someone here?”
“Yes,” she said, without hesitating. She stuck out her hand.
“Not so fast. I reserve the right to check in on this room anytime I choose during the time you’re still here. It creeps back anything close to what it was, and all bets are off.”
“Fine.” We shook, and then I turned and started down the hallway. I was going down the stairs when I heard her say, “You know, he’s not wrong about you.”
I looked up. She was on the landing above. “Who’s that?”
“The pool guy,” she said. “You are a hard-ass.”
“But you don’t mean that as a compliment, I’m sure.”
“Actually, I do,” she said. “It takes one to know one.”
For a moment, we just looked at each other. It occurred to me that maybe under other, crazy circumstances, we might have become friends. But not these.
“Enjoy the view,” I told her. I was pretty sure, however, that it was me she was still looking at as I pulled the door shut behind me.
* * *
“Just wait until you hear this,” Theo said. “You’ll totally understand why it called for the Best Al Fresco Celebration Ever.”
Thirty minutes earlier, he’d sent me a text that said, simply, 5 p.m. You and me. The pavilion. Big news. I’d finished up the last few things I needed to do at the office, clocked out, and then headed over as instructed.
I was trying to move through the throng on the boardwalk when I spied a bouquet of multicolored balloons bobbing in the distance. As they grew closer, I saw that Theo, wearing his sport coat, was sitting right beneath them.
He’d spread a white cloth out on the bench beside him, upon which he’d arranged two champagne flutes and snacks: a tiny plate of crackers and cheeses, some mini-pickles, and a dish of olives. His backpack was at his feet, unzipped. When he saw me, he grinned.
“Surprise!” he said, attracting the attention of everyone else around me. I felt myself redden as I stepped away from the moving crowd, closer to him. “Have a seat.”
I did, looking up at the balloons. “Where did you get those?”
“Helium Helpers, in Cape Frost,” he replied, reaching into his bag and pulling out a bottle. He opened it—pop!—then began to pour. “Clyde told me about them. Nice, right?”
“We can’t drink here,” I said, looking around. Everyone passing was staring at us. “It’s illegal.”
“It’s sparkling cider,” he explained. “Which sounds so much better than fake champagne, don’t you think? The snacks, however, are one hundred percent real. Olive?”
I took one, just because I knew he wanted me to. “So … what’s all this about?”
“Ah!” He lifted his glass, then waited for me to do the same. Once I did, he cleared his throat. “To the Best Future Plan Ever.”
“Which is what?”
I drank, wincing at the sharp, fizzy taste. Theo put his glass down, then reached over and took my hands. “You,” he said, “are looking at the new tour manager for world-renowned collagist and painter Clyde Conaway’s long-anticipated upcoming museum shows.”
This was a long title, not to mention quite a bit of information. “Clyde hired you?”
“Basically,” he said, taking another sip of his cider. He picked up a piece of cheese and placed it on a cracker, then handed it to me before fixing one for himself. “Let’s just say when you create the job description for a person who isn’t even aware they need someone, you’re already halfway hired.”
“Halfway,” I repeated. Above us, the balloons caught a gust, making squeaky, rubbing noises.
“The point is,” he went on, “until today, Clyde had no idea all the help he was going to need for this tour. Now he does. And he also already has, right in front of him, the perfect person for the job. It’s just a matter of putting the two together.”
“Which he did?” I asked, still confused.
“He will,” he said. “We’re having breakfast tomorrow, at which time I fully expect a job offer.”
“Hold on,” I said, putting my glass down. “But isn’t this tour supposed to be happening sort of soon? What about school?”
“Emaline.” He leaned closer to me, fixing me with a serious stare. “This will be Clyde’s first display of work in over twenty years, in conjunction with the release of a documentary by an award-winning filmmaker. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance. School will wait.”
“That filmmaker’s not too high on you right now,” I pointed out.
“True,” he replied, eating another olive. “But even if it wasn’t in her best interest to support the tour, it and the film will be separate entities. But I know Ivy. She likes holding a grudge, but she loves publicity and media attention. Unless she works with me, not against me, she won’t have the access to Clyde she wants.”
“But …” I was trying to tread carefully here. “You don’t even have the job yet.”
“Yet,” he repeated. “Today, I set the factors in motion. Now, all that’s left is to wait for them to unfold. Hold on, that’s my phone.”
As he pulled it out and glanced at the screen, I downed another gulp of my cider, thinking that this all sounded awfully optimistic, if not a little bit arrogant. Then again, I kind of had to admire his ability to go for what he wanted. I agonized and worried before making the safest move; Theo saw his opportunity and took it, risk be damned. No wonder he couldn’t believe I’d turned down Columbia. He would have found a way to make it happen, money or no money.
“Sorry, this is Clyde,” he said to me, typing something.
“Since when does he text?” I asked. “I didn’t even think he had a cell phone.”
“He does. He just let the battery die and never recharged it. It’s been sitting in his truck until today, when I plugged it in on the way to Cape Frost,” he told me. “Then I explained that texting means you don’t have to talk to people, which turned out to be a concept he could really get behind. Took right to it.”
“I don’t know. It seems weird to me,” I said, as his phone beeped again. “Doesn’t sound like something Clyde would need.”
“He doesn’t know what he needs,” he said. “That’s what I’m for.”
That sounded a bit too familiar. Feeling unsettled, I looked out at the water. The ocean had always been my constant and usually all it took was finding it—on the horizon, over the next hill, in the far corner of a window—to feel calmer and know where I stood. Right then, though, with it front and center, even this oldest of tricks wasn’t working. Something was off. And I knew it even before Theo started talking again.
“Okay,” he said, putting his phone down and turning back to face me. “Here’s the thing about the Best Future Plan Ever. It’s not just about the job.”
That you don’t have yet, I thought, but managed not to say this aloud. “It’s not?”
He shook his head, smiling. “Since I’ll be working closely with Clyde to get the exhibit together, I’ll need to keep a base here, even as I’m going back and forth to the city to arrange dates and travel details.”
“You’re going to do this from the trailer?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “I think with what Clyde will be paying me I’ll be able to afford better than that. Nothing like Sand Dollars, of course. But since it’ll be the off season, I’m sure we’ll be able to find something nice and relatively inexpensive.”
With all this big talk, it was ironic—or maybe not—that the one word that stuck out to me was a short one. “We?” I said. “But I’ll be at school.”
“Well, yeah, but only a couple of hours away.” He picked up another olive, popping it in his mouth. “You’ll be coming back weekends. Or I can get up there now and again, when Clyde doesn’t need me here. Oh! That reminds me. I’m going to need to get a second-hand car. Hold on, that’s probably him again.”
He turned away, turning his attention back to his phone. I tried my ocean trick once more, even though I knew it wouldn’t work. Between the we and the fact that apparently I was not moving to East U but basically commuting there, I’d need something bigger and more powerful than even the sea to quiet my now-racing heart.
Calm down, I told myself. He was just high on this whole job thing, not really thinking out what he was saying. Of course he didn’t think I’d change my entire life trajectory based on one very nice, but very short, summer romance. Unless he did.
I turned my head. Sure enough, in the distance I could see the sign for Jump Java, the official gathering place of girls who also made assumptions, only to realize too late they were bad ones. I’d been so worried about being one of them, those left behind, that it hadn’t occurred to me the flip side wouldn’t be easy either. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the one having to douse a flame or helplessly watching it sputter. Either way, it goes out eventually.
I looked at Theo, who was typing something on his phone, a mild smile on his face. He was so happy, clearly, and even more so to share all of this news and future with me. I, however, felt anything but as, while he still texted, I pulled out my own phone and opened the calendar. I scrolled past the current month, into August, flipping past days until, on Saturday the eighteenth, I found what I was looking for. Leave for school, I’d entered way back when my first orientation materials had arrived. Before Luke and I’d split, before Theo, before my father had returned. It felt like an entire lifetime ago. But sitting there next to Theo, facing A Future I Hadn’t Quite Expected, I knew that not only was it closer than ever, but I suddenly felt more ready than ever to meet it. It only took a moment to count the days: twenty-three. Now, I just had to figure out what to do with them.
19
THE NICE THING about a job like mine was that, because total chaos was never more than a phone call away, you could always be busy if you wanted to. I appreciated this especially as July folded into August. My own problems might have been too much to deal with, but I was more than happy to deal with someone else’s.
“The whole thing started,” the woman in the tennis skirt was saying as she led me downstairs, “because we love to grill out. When we’re here at the beach, it’s pretty much all we do for dinner.”
“Right,” I said, as we walked across the game room, past a dusty pool table and some beat-up leather chairs.
“So the first night,” she continued, walking over to the back door and slowly easing the curtain aside, “we made this great grouper with a lime sauce. It was tangy, citrusy. Truly amazing.”
I nodded, glancing down at my notes again. The request form, filled out by Rebecca, said only Outdoor issue. Which could have been anything. It was like choosing Manager’s Special for your lunch: you really had no idea what you were going to get, only that, most likely, it would be good.
The woman was pee
ring through the glass of the door now, looking first one way, then the other. “After dinner, we came out to clean up and noticed this sweet-looking kitten under the stairs, mewing at us.”
Uh-oh, I thought.
“We’re animal lovers,” she explained, peering out again, “and the poor thing seemed so hungry. So we threw him a little bit of fish, then went inside and pretty much forgot about it.”
“Until …” I said.
“Until the next time we tried to use this door, and this happened,” she finished, flipping the lock and jiggling the handle. She kept the door closed. A moment later, she gestured for me to come take a look.
At first, there was just a gray cat, sitting at the base of the grill and staring at us. Then, another, tabby colored, crawled under the steps to join it. Followed by a fat brown one with a bum ear. When a fourth approached, mewing loudly, I dropped the curtain.
“First question: Has anyone been scratched or bitten?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “No. We haven’t even opened the door. Where are they all coming from?”
“They’re beach cats,” I told her, writing this down next to Outdoor issue. “Feral and hungry. Like seagulls, but much worse. Give them food once and they never leave.”
She lifted the curtain again. I didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help myself. At least ten cats were now milling around the patio, and when they saw motion, they all turned at once. I shuddered.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“All you have to worry about is not feeding them again. We’ll handle the rest.”
I started towards the door, already pulling out my phone to find the number for C.A.R.E.—Colby Animal Rescue and Education—the organization that did its best to trap, spay, and neuter the large population of feral cats in town. Run out of someone’s garage, it operated on a shoestring budget, with just a few cages and two very brave women. I’d already had to call them twice this season, even though every packet I handed out at check-in had a page about not feeding the animals. Even the cute ones.