Haven Point

by Virginia Hume

  The truth was, she was glad it was raining, because it gave her a chance to get reacquainted with the old house.

  Skye’s neighborhood in D.C. was filled with little colonial-style houses—nice, but predictable. If you looked at the front, you pretty much knew what the rest of the house would look like. Fourwinds looked like some giant kid had made it with building blocks. The roof was different-size triangles facing every direction, and the windows were all different shapes—squares, rectangles, and even a big half circle over the front door.

  The house sat on a piece of land that jutted out from the peninsula, so three sides looked out on the water. (Fourwinds was a good name for it, since the breezes blew from every direction.) It stood right up on the cliff, as if on a dare. Upstairs, unless you pressed yourself against the window, you could see nothing but water beyond. It was like being on a cruise ship.

  Skye wandered around the long living room, with its wall of windows and stone fireplaces at the ends. The middle of the room was the dining area, with a big table in front of a bay window. Shelves along the beadboard walls were crowded with books and mementos, but it didn’t feel cluttered like her house in D.C.

  The bedrooms on the second floor were loosely decorated by color. Skye’s was the “blue room,” with a blue gingham curtain, old blue dresser, and blue coverlets on the twin beds. At the south end of the hall were the master bedroom, which was mostly yellow, and the smaller “green room,” which had a little shallow porch off of it, with screens on the casement windows, and a twin-sized daybed with a quilt and throw pillows. The memory of hours spent reading here when she was younger sent Skye up to the third floor in search of a book.

  She poked around the attic rooms. Servants had once slept up there, when they’d needed lots of them to keep up the house. Now it was mostly for stuff that was not good enough to be downstairs, but not bad enough to be thrown out: old children’s books, suitcases, games and toys.

  Skye found a shelf with a bunch of teenage novels from the 1940s and 1950s. The girls on the covers had high ponytails, or shoulder-length hair curled up at the ends. She grabbed a few and headed down to the green room’s porch.

  When Gran called her for lunch a couple of hours later, Skye reluctantly put the book aside. As she headed for the kitchen, it occurred to her that this was the first time that summer she had allowed herself to get lost in a story.

  Skye would never have admitted it to Gran, but she realized now how exhausting it had been—first worrying that her mother would relapse, then keeping it a secret when she did. She was always on edge, always trying to pretend nothing was wrong. Now it felt like something inside her had uncoiled. She was not altogether hopeful that rehab would be a permanent fix, but at least her mom was someone else’s problem for the moment.

  It rained for three days. Other than a trip into Phippsburg with Gran, Skye spent most of the time cocooned on the little porch of the green room, reading about girls with names like Tippy and Tobey, all of whom had two parents, siblings, and uncomplicated, easy-to-solve problems.

  Ironically, it was when the sun came out that things took a turn. On Sunday, they were invited to go sailing with Gran’s friends Georgie and Cappy and a couple of their grandkids.

  When Skye stepped onto the yacht club lawn, she was hit by a sudden, unexpected wave of grief for her grandfather. Skye had loved her grandfather, and she’d been sad when he died, but Pop had not been that involved in her day-to-day life. Gran was the one who knew when Skye got out of track and hockey practice, what size shoes she wore, and that when the Good Humor man came, she’d want a toasted almond and not a Sno-Cone.

  Skye thought she was done being sad about Pop dying, but when she looked out at the water, she was flooded with memories of sailing on his beautiful boat. They used to go out, just the two of them, and have a picnic on Gunnison Island. He’d ask her lots of questions and was always interested in her answers. He’d called her Skye Bird, which always made her feel good, because she knew how much he loved birds.

  When they climbed onto Cappy’s sailboat, Skye sat in the bow, hoping if anyone saw the tears in her eyes they would think it was from the spray. It wasn’t until they were past Gunnison Island that Skye had pulled herself together enough to look around.

  As they made their way to the east side of the point, Skye noticed a smaller cove, nestled on the other side of the rocks at the end of Haven Point Beach. A bunch of kids were playing on the sand and in the water. She could hear their voices, and strains of music. A lawn led from the beach up a hill to a huge white house, with a few smaller buildings around it. It almost looked like a resort.

  “What’s that?” Skye asked Gran.

  “That’s the Donnellys’ house. You met Mr. Donnelly at the hardware store in Phippsburg.”

  Skye remembered him: a big man, loud and charming.

  “Maren Demarest, I can’t believe you’re old enough to have a grandchild of this age!” he had said when Gran introduced her. Skye got the feeling he was flirting with Gran. (Gran was polite but definitely didn’t flirt back.)

  Georgie’s granddaughter Nora, who was a few years older than Skye, spoke up from her seat in the stern.

  “Guess what! I heard Posy Harwood is dating Kevin Donnelly. They’re, like, super serious. Posy’s cousin told me she thinks they’ll get married!”

  “Oh Lordy, that’ll get the tongues wagging,” Georgie said, shaking her head.

  “Why?” Skye asked.

  “The Donnelly kids hang out with Haven Point kids, but a marriage? That would break new ground.” Georgie smiled, as if she didn’t care one way or another, but when they returned to the yacht club a half hour later, Skye was still turning those three words over in her head: Haven Point kids.

  While Cappy was tying his boat to the mooring, Skye heard shouts of laughter and turned to see a group of kids on the dock that held the prams, the single-person dinghies they used to teach beginner sailors.

  Those are Haven Point kids, Skye thought. The Donnellys were not Haven Point kids. And, Skye remembered, neither was she.

  * * *

  When Skye was little and visited Haven Point, Gran and Pop had filled her days with blueberry picking, exploring the tidal pools, and trips to Freeport to buy clothes for school. Sometimes Gran’s friends brought their grandkids to play, and once, her uncle Billy came with his wife and two daughters. Uncle Billy was in the foreign service. They had just left a posting in Japan and were about to move to Egypt.

  Her cousins, Maren (named after Gran) and Victoria, were older, but they doted on Skye, and she was so blissed out being with them, she didn’t have eyes for anyone else on Haven Point.

  As Skye got older, kids still came over, but at some point they’d have to leave because they “had sailing” or “had golf.” They weren’t “going sailing” or “going to play golf.” These were things they did with other kids, at a specific time.

  And while Skye would come for a week or two, the Haven Point kids were there all summer long, just like their parents had been. They talked about the same people and shared the same inside jokes. Skye felt a little like a foreign exchange student. The kids were nice enough, but they didn’t really expect her to speak their language.

  This was why Skye had felt so ambivalent after her recent visits to Maine. She had realized there was a whole other world on Haven Point, one to which she didn’t belong.

  She got another taste of it that night when Gran took her to the weekly sing-along at the yacht club. They picked up songbooks and found seats, and at first everything was fine. Gran loved the sing-along, and Skye had always liked going with her. She got a kick out of how seriously everyone took it, like when the song leader pulled the rope of a ship’s bell on the wall and everyone immediately turned toward him and quieted down.

  “That’s Julian Stevens,” Gran whispered to her. “His grandfather was the one who started the sing-along during the blackouts back in World War Two.”

  “Good evening, ladies
and gentlemen. Welcome to the Haven Point Sing-Along. Before we get started, some announcements. Children, this one is for you.” He looked over his glasses like a schoolteacher. “I have been asked to comment on a new fashion on Haven Point: bicycle helmets with chin straps hanging down.”

  Some parents in the audience clapped.

  “If you fall off your bike with helmet unbuckled, what will happen?” He looked around. Some younger kids raised their hands.

  “Annabelle?” He pointed to a little girl in the front row.

  “It’s gonna fall off your head,” Annabelle replied.

  The girl had a really loud voice for a tiny person, which Skye thought was funny. She reminded her of Adriene’s little sister, Sophia.

  “That, Annabelle, is exactly right. Seventeen and under, you ride with a helmet … buckled! Remember, freedom with safety!”

  Skye looked around as the audience clapped, and that’s when it hit her. Other than Skye, only little kids sat in the folding chairs with the adults. All the kids her age sat together on the benches along the walls, or out on the south porch behind the piano player.

  Skye tried to push it from her mind as they sang “Loch Lomond,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” and a few others.

  Then Julian pulled out an envelope. Before he could speak, everyone started whooping.

  “All right, all right, quiet down now,” he said, smiling. “It’s time to announce the winning team this week.”

  He opened the envelope like he was announcing an Academy Award.

  “And, it’s … the Blue Team!” All the Blue Team kids cheered, then got up to sing their team song.

  Blue Team has got the spirit

  We’ll raise the roof on this old joint

  The world is gonna sing our praises

  The best team on Haven Point

  It wasn’t just the kids. Even the grown-ups on the Blue Team sang along. A few parents held babies in the air, like Rafiki with Simba in The Lion King.

  When Skye was younger, she was glad when the Green Team won the week. She had never done anything to help them win, but Gran had told her that Demarests were on the Green Team, and that had been good enough for her. This time she was glad Blue won. She would have felt like an imposter joining in.

  After the sing-along, Skye went back to being angry. Most of the time, she stayed inside and read. When she did leave Fourwinds, all she saw was packs of kids together, riding their bikes to tennis or sailing, or gathered on the beach (where Skye sat under an umbrella, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, protecting herself from both the sun and from people noticing she was alone).

  One night, while she and Gran were eating dinner, the phone rang. Gran went to the hall to answer it.

  “Hang on, Bill. She’s here. I’ll ask her,” she heard Gran say. A second later, Gran’s face appeared in the doorway.

  “Skye, I have Bill Jackson on the phone. He has a daughter your age who was supposed to run a leg of the baton relay on Saturday, but she sprained her ankle. Georgie told him you were a runner. He’s wondering if you could take his daughter’s place.”

  “Um, sure, I guess so,” Skye said. She tried to sound casual, but her spirits rose a little. The baton relay was a big deal, the final Blue-Green event of the season.

  She knew she wouldn’t have been asked if Gran’s best friend hadn’t mentioned her, and it would hardly make her a Haven Point kid. Still, if she did something for this team, even once, she might feel like a little of this place belonged to her.

  On Saturday, Skye and Gran headed to the beach club, where her leg of the relay would begin. Skye, curious who she would be running against, scanned the crowd for a blue pinny. She finally spotted it among a cluster of girls about her age. The girl wearing it had a lean, athletic build and obedient brown hair, pulled back in a glossy ponytail. She looked familiar, but it was not until she laughed and rolled her eyes at something one of the other girls said that Skye realized who it was.

  Oh my God, Skye thought. I’m running against Charlotte Spencer!

  Skye hated Charlotte Spencer.

  Once, when Skye was younger, she made the fatal error of going to the kids’ tennis clinic. She only went because she loved the tennis skirt Gran had bought her. It was white with pleats and had a band of navy grosgrain ribbon around the hem.

  Skye felt like an outcast before the clinic even started. Gran had brought her to the courts early to introduce her to the tennis pro, so she saw the other girls arrive together on bikes (all carrying their racquets Haven Point–style, threaded head-up on their handlebars).

  While they were standing around waiting for instructions from the pro, Charlotte had turned and looked Skye up and down.

  “Your skirt looks so new,” she said.

  The moment Charlotte said it, Skye realized her skirt was all wrong. Everyone else wore faded tennis clothes and old sneakers. Next to them, she felt like the bit of titanium white her mom used to make some detail stand out in a painting.

  When she got back to Fourwinds, she had shoved the skirt in the back of a drawer. She never went back to the clinic.

  “Your skirt looks so new” were the only five words Skye could remember Charlotte ever saying to her, and she added no new ones to the count now. Even when they were given instructions about where to stand to wait for the batons, Charlotte acted like Skye was invisible. Skye ignored her right back.

  Gran had explained that the race was sort of a figure eight: up the beach, out one of the gravel lanes to the main road, back south over the causeway, then in a loose circle around the point.

  The youngest pair of girls ran the first leg and then handed off the baton to the youngest boys. The relay alternated between pairs of girls and boys, with each leg getting longer as the runners got older.

  People gathered at spots all along the route. Some kids rode bikes alongside the runners, and others acted as messengers, racing ahead to report on who was in the lead.

  From their spot outside the beach club entrance, Skye could see the start of the race down on the beach. Even when runners were out of sight, cheers echoed around the cove.

  The guys handing off the batons to Skye and Charlotte would be coming from the causeway. When Skye heard the cheering from that direction, she felt a surge of anxiety as she waited to see whether the blue or green runner was ahead.

  The blue pinny appeared first. The Green Team supporters gathered at the beach club groaned, but Skye felt relieved. She didn’t want to be the one to lose the lead for the team.

  The blue runner handed the baton to Charlotte, and she took off. It was at least ten seconds before the green runner reached Skye.

  The first part of their leg was uphill, along the east side of Haven Point Road. Halfway up the hill, they were to turn into the Haven Point Sanctuary, a nature preserve in the middle of the point. They would run through the sanctuary and emerge on the other side, just north of the yacht club.

  As they ran up the hill, Skye did not feel like she was gaining on Charlotte, but she wasn’t falling behind, at least.

  The path through the sanctuary was too narrow for spectators, but a group had gathered outside the entrance. Skye could hear “Go Blue!” and “Go Charlotte!” when Charlotte entered. (She noticed they just said “Go Green!” for her.)

  Skye and Charlotte’s route took them along the little boardwalk path that cut the twenty-acre preserve in half at the longest point. Once Skye entered the sanctuary, she felt like she was in another world. The towering trees blocked out the white noise of the waves crashing into the cliff and voices echoing around the cove.

  The path was not perfectly straight, so from time to time, Charlotte disappeared from view. At one point when she reappeared, Skye thought she looked larger. After the next bend in the path, she was sure of it.

  I’m gaining on her!

  When she was within twenty feet or so, Charlotte sped up, but Skye kept pace. As she got closer, Skye trained her eyes on Charlotte’s twitching ponytail. Charlotte Sp
encer might be Haven Point perfection, but Skye was faster. She knew she was.

  She pulled up the mental image of Charlotte acting so snotty at the tennis clinic all those years before, and used it to fuel a burst of speed. Charlotte was not about to give way on the narrow boardwalk, so Skye waited. When they reached a part of the path with enough clearing on the side, she jumped off, sped ahead, and jumped back on.

  See ya! The sound of Charlotte’s feet behind her grew fainter as Skye increased her lead. Just as she was really beginning to enjoy herself, she heard an “Oh!” followed by the sound of stumbling. She looked back and saw Charlotte on all fours.

  It felt like one of those “angel on one shoulder, devil on the other” situations. In the end, Skye turned and ran back to Charlotte, though not because she listened to the angel. She was just worried what people would think if Charlotte broke her ankle or something, and she hadn’t stopped to help her.

  “Here,” Skye said, sticking out her hand.

  “I can get up,” Charlotte snarled.

  “Okay!”

  Well, that’s nine words she’s said to me now, Skye thought as she turned on her heels and took off again. The sound of Charlotte up and running again came soon after, but by this point Skye heard voices and knew she was near the other side of the sanctuary. It seemed they could hear her, too.

  Someone’s almost out! Who is it?

  She heard other voices yelling at the next runners.

  Get ready! get ready!

  When she emerged around the last turn on the path, she saw light through the trees that formed an arch at the entrance, and faces lining either side. Soon she could see the next two runners, about ten yards past where she would come out.

  It’s green!… She’s ours!

  Skye had been told to pass the baton to a guy named Ben Barrows. As she got closer, she realized she recognized him, too. She’d seen him on the beach, playing football with some friends. He was on that border between cute and goofy—tall and kind of skinny, with a mess of wavy brown hair and a little acne.