by Susan Wiggs
“Guam,” she said, enjoying the shape of the word in her mouth. “What’s it like?”
“Tropical. Like Hawaii, only with snakes.”
“Sounds amazing. I’d put up with the snakes if it was like Hawaii, which I’ve never been to, but I bet it’s beautiful. I’ve only ever lived here.”
“I think right here is pretty awesome.”
“In the summer,” she agreed. “Ever visited in the winter?”
He shook his head. “Let me guess. Cold, dark, and wet.”
“The worst.” Every year her parents talked about closing the restaurant for a whole month in winter and taking the family someplace warm. All they did was talk, though. Then they’d start worrying about what to do about the dog. And the house. And the restaurant. And they’d worry about being able to afford a big trip with five kids, and the older girls missing school, and eventually they’d talk themselves out of leaving.
Will lifted the rusty latch of the barn door. The hinges creaked as he opened it. Sunshine poured through the cracks in the walls, creating long bars of light and shadow and illuminating ancient swags of spider webs. Dust motes swirled with movement. The tall, arched ceiling made the space feel huge, bigger than a church sanctuary.
“My granddad keeps saying we’re going to clean this place out,” Will said, “but we never get around to it. I bet some of this stuff goes back to his grandfather, who built the place.” He pointed out a carved wooden plaque that read justine. “That’s from a ship that took the oysters down to San Francisco.”
Caroline studied a wooden ship’s figurehead of a woman’s bare-breasted torso. “And is that Justine?”
He blushed so hard, his freckles disappeared. “Whatever. Give me a hand with this bike. I don’t think anyone’s used it since I was here last summer.”
They extricated the bike from the clutter and wheeled it outside. She helped him pump up the tires, glad her dad had taught her how to do it so she didn’t look like a klutz. He found a can of WD-40 and sprayed the chain, and everything seemed to work well enough.
“Better make sure there aren’t any spiders in that helmet,” she cautioned him.
He held it up to the sky to inspect it. She was grossed out, but not surprised, to see a shaggy-legged wolf spider clinging to the underside. She was surprised when he calmly picked it up and sent it on its way, then brushed off the cobwebs. Maybe after the snakes of Guam, he wasn’t afraid of a mere spider. He clipped on the helmet. “Ready?”
She jumped on her bike and led the way down the main road. She went fast, showing off a little, raising both arms and calling out, “I love summer!” She was no match for the boy, though. He easily glided past her and took the lead. It was a long fast ride down the road to the south end of the peninsula. They passed the poky little golf course, where big-bellied men were drinking beer and hacking away with their clubs. The main town of Long Beach was crammed with traffic and people browsing through the shops. She and Will didn’t talk much, although she pointed out some of the places visitors loved to explore—Marsh’s Museum of Oddities, the go-kart track, the saltwater taffy factory, the shooting arcade.
“Let’s ride the boardwalk,” she said, turning toward the archway that framed a magnificent view of the beach, endlessly flat and dotted with people. They followed a scenic path through the dunes at the edge of the beach.
“That’s our restaurant—Star of the Sea,” she said, pointing out the big weathered building with its shaded decks and umbrella tables.
“Hey, we went there for razor clams the other night. I like that place.”
“Almost everybody likes it,” she said. “It’s real busy in the summer, especially since there were some articles about it in the New York Times and Condé Nast Traveler. Oh, and a crew from the Travel Channel came out one time and filmed for a whole day just to make a half-hour show.”
“Really? That sounds cool.”
“I wanted to be on TV so bad. I even made a new outfit to wear and talked about it on camera, but that part all got cut out. They showed my parents because they’re the owners, and then my sister Virginia on account of she’s drop-dead gorgeous and she pretended to be a customer on the deck.”
He was looking at her funny. She flushed. “I talk a lot, I know. Mom says it’s because I’m the middle child, and when you’re in the middle, you learn to speak up, or people forget about you.”
“I doubt anybody’d forget about you,” he said.
“Huh. You haven’t seen my sisters and brothers. I got two of each. Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Nope. Just me.”
“Lucky you.”
Dodging sun seekers and people with fishing gear and kites, they rode all the way to the fishing village of Ilwaco, its marina filled with charter boats and commercial vessels. “Ever been up to the lighthouses?” she asked. “There are two of them.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
The twisty, hilly climb nearly did her in, but she didn’t let on that her legs were about to give out. The ride took them up to a rocky headland with damp pathways leading through the dense forest to the lighthouses, North Head and Cape Disappointment.
At a viewpoint overlooking the place where the Columbia River surged into the Pacific Ocean, they stopped to rest near the first lighthouse—North Head. They peeled off their helmets and each took a long drink of water at the park fountain. Then they climbed out past the safety fence to the promontory, a rock-strewn perch with a view of the coastline as far as the eye could see.
“Awesome,” said Will, staring down at the dizzying sight of waves crashing against the cliffs and rocks. Some of the breakers exploded hundreds of feet in the air.
“In the spring and fall, you can see the gray whales migrating,” she said. “You should see it in a storm. The surf gets huge and there are giant thunderheads. Wind and fog like you wouldn’t believe. It’s super dangerous for boats around here. Does your dad work on a ship?”
“Sure. Next January we’re moving from Guam to Coronado. That’s in Southern California.”
“Oh, California sounds nice.”
They stood on a rocky outcropping, feeling the salt spray on their faces. “This is my spot,” Caroline told him, gazing out at the seam where the ocean met the sky. “I mean, it doesn’t personally belong to me, but I come here to think sometimes.”
“It’s a good one.” He stared out at the blue horizon. Then he picked up a loose stone and hurled it far. She tracked it until it disappeared. He started walking along a trail that wound around the towering cliffs. She followed, trying to picture the place called Coronado. Whenever she thought of California, she envisioned the world of Beverly Hills, 90210, a boring show her sisters were obsessed with.
“California will be okay, I guess,” he said. “I’ll go to a regular school, not a DoD school.”
“What’s a DoD school?”
“Stands for Department of Defense. They have ’em on all the bases. Once we’re stateside, I’ll go to public school.”
“Will your dad work on a different ship then?”
He shook his head. “Shore duty. He’ll be working on base because it’s just him and me now, so he can’t go on deployment.”
“Oh. Did your folks split up?” That’s what happened to some of her friends. One or the other parent left, an idea that gave Caroline chills all through her body. The kids usually stayed with the mother, though.
“My mom’s dead.”
Caroline stumbled and nearly lurched into him. “That’s terrible. That’s . . .” Her mind was so crowded with questions, she didn’t know where to begin. “What happened?”
“It was something called pulmonary edema. She had an undiagnosed heart defect.” His voice was quiet and flat, which somehow made it sound worse than if he’d fallen apart crying.
“That’s the worst thing I ever heard. When?”
“Just after New Year’s last year. Dad was on shift, and I thought she overslept. She died in the night.”
Caroline tried to picture what that must have been like, finding your mom dead one morning. “I don’t . . . Gosh. That’s horrible. I can’t think of anything else to say.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Her chest felt tight and a shiver went through her. “Oh, man,” she said. “I feel really bad for you. Even just the thought of losing my mom scares the bejesus out of me. Without my mom, I’d be a total goner. I’d be like that fishing trawler that broke loose last winter and got sucked out by the tide and then smashed against the rocks right down there where the Columbia River flows into the ocean.” She pointed, and they stopped to look down at the exploding waves.
“I thought you couldn’t think of anything to say,” he said.
“Guess I got over it. Anyway. If something happened to my mom, that’s how I’d probably feel.”
He was quiet for several moments, staring out at the view. The colors were amazing, from the summer blue of the sky to the deep indigo waters and the snow-white spray foaming on the cliffs where the waves broke. The crashing surf made a deep-throated roar, echoing through the rocky caverns under the cliff.
“Sorry,” she said. “I hope that didn’t make you feel worse.”
“It didn’t. And what you said about feeling lost and smashed on the rocks—that’s about right,” he said. “No. That’s exactly right.”
She stared at the seething surf exploding against the breakwater at the mouth of the river. “We learned in school that there’ve been thousands of shipwrecks here.”
He turned and looked back at the cliff-top sentinel. “I thought the lighthouse was supposed to keep shipwrecks from happening.”
“That only works if there’s someone at the helm.”
That summer, Caroline and Will fell into an easy friendship. Something inside her recognized that it was special, not like a passing acquaintance with a random kid in a beach volleyball game, but real and alive. It was different from the bond she felt with her school friends, the ones she saw all the time. This was separate, and it felt rare, somehow, maybe because they both knew it would end with the summer.
Sometimes she wasn’t quite sure what to make of this boy. It was so easy to talk to him. The two of them got along in a way that seemed natural and effortless. He was kind of on the quiet side, and she was kind of a chatterbox, so maybe that was the reason they got along so well.
They made the most of each day, finding adventure at every turn. They both loved the smell of the sea, the quality of the salt air. She told him Long Beach had the best digging sand anywhere, not that she had dug in any other sand. There were sandcastle competitions, and people came from all over to build crazy sculptures of mermaids and towers, working all day on creations that would be swept away by the tide.
They went on hikes with his dog and hers—Duffy and Wendell. It was obvious that Duffy was the smarter of the two, obeying commands and easily finding his way through the forests and meadows and sand dunes. Wendell was playful and useless, but so ridiculously cute that everyone loved him.
“Wendell and I have the same birthday,” Caroline said. “Well, we don’t actually know his exact birthday, but they rescued him as a puppy the year I was born, so we assigned him my birthday.”
“He gets around pretty well for an old dog,” Will said.
“Wendell’s not old,” Caroline objected. “I guess maybe he is, but I try not to think about that. I can’t imagine life without Wendell.”
“Then don’t,” Will said. “And then one day he’ll be gone and it’ll be the worst thing ever and you’ll get used to it.”
She wondered if that was how he felt about losing his mom. She didn’t ask, though. It was bad enough that he’d lost her. She shouldn’t make him talk about it.
The beach in summer felt like her reward for getting through the dark, rain-soaked winters—glassy calms, the wild waves rearing up, all of it was part of her heart and soul. They went clamming, bringing their harvest home by the bucketful. They pooled their money to buy toffee apples and wispy cones of cotton candy. With Will, the season felt like a hidden passage to a special world. She imagined only the two of them could find it, slipping through an invisible gate and vanishing forever, like kids in an adventure novel.
Will was a super-strong swimmer, and fearless in the water, whether he was on a boogie board or in a kayak. She tried to keep up with him, but he was always waiting for her to catch up. She showed him the long string of beaches, each with its own special vibe, like the one called Klipsan, with the rollers that seemed to come from across the globe, maybe all the way from Guam, where he had lived with his dad.
She discovered that they both went to Oceanside Congregational Church, squirming impatiently through Sunday services and trying not to make eye contact because it gave them the giggles.
They couldn’t wait to get back outside. Sometimes they’d join in with other kids, locals Caroline knew from school.
Will usually rode his bike down to her house and they’d go from there. They explored all her favorite places, including the marshy woods where sometimes, during the salmon run, the fish would actually swim across the pavement and through the forest during their migration. They discovered new wonders together, like the nest of blue heron they could perfectly observe from the widow’s walk of his grandparents’ house. She showed him how to sew on her grandmother’s old treadle machine, even though he admitted he couldn’t think of anything he needed to sew. In turn, he demonstrated his grandfather’s power tools, and together, they made a purple martin house out of old lumber.
After they’d watched an old Bruce Lee movie, Will revealed that he’d been studying self-defense, because his dad believed every kid needed fight training.
“I’ve never been in a real fight in my life,” she said. “Have you?”
He nodded. “There was a gang of bullies at my school in Guam. I came home with a split lip one day, and that’s when my dad put me in Krav Maga.”
“Never heard of that. How does it work?”
“The best self-defense is not to get into a fight at all. But if you can’t avoid it, then the idea is to end it as fast as you can. You learn to keep your cool,” he said. “Most people in a fight are mad, which only makes them more vulnerable. And don’t fight the way your opponent wants you to—fight the way you know.”
“Sounds like wishful thinking to me. I’m the middle of five kids. If somebody wants to fight, I wouldn’t be able to stop it.”
He walked a few paces away. “Rush me like you’re going to attack.”
“What? That’s dumb.”
“You wanted to know how it works. Don’t worry about hurting me, ’cause I promise, you won’t. And I won’t hurt you because it’s just a demo. Pretend I’m a bad guy and charge me.”
Well, that was next to impossible, but she was challenged by the idea. She ran at him, trying to act like one of the characters in the movie. The moment she got close, Will made a quick move, and Caroline was on her back in the grass, looking up at the sky.
It took her a moment to catch her breath. “Hey!”
He went down on one knee and put his forearm on her neck. “If this was a real fight, I’d press down until you surrendered or passed out.”
She stared up at his face. He smelled of mown grass and sweat, and his eyes were as blue as the sky above, and she was close enough to count the freckles on his nose. Flustered, she said, “I get it. Remind me never to attack you.”
One day they saw Caroline’s dad loading his surfboard and wet suit into the back of the pickup. “Hey, Mr. Shelby,” said Will. “Where are you going?”
“Sunset Beach, just for a couple of hours. Are you a surfer, Will?”
“I wish. Maybe I’ll learn once we move to Coronado,” he said.
“Caroline’s a pretty good surfer,” said Dad.
“Yeah?” Will turned, looking at her in a new way. “I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask,” she said. “I’m not that good
. But I can get up.”
“Tell you what. I’ll load up some boards and wet suits for you guys, and we’ll give it a go.”
Will’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning. “Cool,” he said. “Thanks, Mr. Shelby.”
Dad got the boards and suits. Will and Caroline piled into the club cab of the truck. At the last minute, her younger brothers tumbled out of the house, insisting on coming along. Caroline was annoyed, but Dad seemed delighted. “You all have to take turns,” he said. “I can’t take everyone into the surf at once.”
“We’ll take turns,” Jackson said. “We’ll be good, Dad. We will.”
“Promise,” Austin echoed.
Caroline caught Will’s eye and shrugged. He merely grinned. He seemed to like the novelty of her big family, and he had a lot more patience with the boys than she did.
Her sisters were both in high school, and they worked at the restaurant. Next summer, Caroline was expected to do the same, starting out in the steamy, horrible dishwashing area with the big hand squirts, working her way up the ladder, as Mom put it. Dad called it paying your dues. Each of the Shelbys would start at the lowest level, and they’d be bumped up if they did a good job. Georgia, aka Miss Perfect, had lasted only a week in dishwashing and did so well that she was already in the front of the house at the hostess stand. Virginia, aka Miss Gorgeous, wasn’t far behind.
Caroline wondered how long it would take to prove herself, bussing tables and washing dishes next year. She dreaded the prospect. Georgia and Virginia said they liked the energy, the noise, the ebb and flow of people coming and going. Caroline knew that the clatter and heat, the chef and foul-mouthed line cooks rushing around, and the constant demands of the customers would drive her nuts. She much preferred sketching or making things on her grandmother’s old sewing machine. Most of all, she loved running around in the great outdoors, preferably with Will.
Dad drove them to the beach and parked the truck. Surfers were already floating out beyond the break, bobbing like buoys as they watched for a wave to ride. Several of them got up, black stick figures against the blue-green waves. Caroline could see Will checking out the scene, every muscle tense. Caroline wasn’t very good at surfing, but sometimes she lucked out. Maybe today would be a lucky day.