by Mila Gray
I exhale loudly. No mystery as to whom.
Emerson
There’s something about the woods, about the smell—the sweet and musty dampness—and the way the trees creak in the wind as if they’re talking to each other, that makes me feel calm. After everything happened and Jake left the island, I’d often escape here. It was the only place where I felt I could still breathe. The only place where I could be alone, where I didn’t have to handle the looks I was getting or hear the snide whispers that followed me wherever else I went.
The tree house was also the only place I could go and cry. If I cried at home, my mom would talk about the idea of therapy, or my dad would start marching back and forth, shouting furiously and calling down every curse known to man. The fact that it reminded me of Jake was both a blessing and a curse.
Glancing up at the tree house, I instantly know someone has been here. In the next second I realize they’re still here. Instinctively, I reach down and grab for the nearest object I can find—a rock the size of my fist—my heart starting to race despite the voice in my head ordering me to calm down.
I should turn and run. That’s what my instincts are screaming: RUN! Once upon a time, my instincts would have yelled, FIGHT! But that was years ago. Now they always shout, Run!
But not today. It’s my tree house and I’m not going anywhere. There’s a loud ruffle from inside the tree house, the wooden boards squeaking as the person steps out onto the ledge.
I draw in a sharp breath and take an involuntary step backward. It’s Jake. Of course it’s Jake. Who else would it be? For a second, I’m relieved that it’s him and not some stranger trespassing on my property, but the moment passes quickly. I’m shaking with fury. My fingers tighten around the rock in my hand.
Jake hasn’t spotted me yet. I watch him frown as he runs his hand along the railing. I wonder if he remembers how we used to sit up there on the ledge, feet dangling, surveying the forest like we were the rulers and it was our kingdom. He looks down just then, sees me, and trips over something, slamming his head into the doorway behind. I laugh before I can stop myself.
“I’ll do it again if it means you keep smiling.” He grins, rubbing his head.
I stop laughing and scowl at him instead. “What are you doing here?” I ask. I don’t want him here. This is my place. My tree house. He abandoned it. He can’t just walk back in and act like it belongs to him. It doesn’t. Not anymore.
“I was just out for a run and—”
“And what? There’s a whole island to run around, McCallister. You had to come here?”
He cocks his head at me and raises an eyebrow. A tremor of a smirk flickers at the corner of his mouth, and I know it’s because I called him McCallister—something I only ever do when I’m pissed at him. Jake always found my temper hilarious.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize it was private property. Never used to be.”
He has me there. I grind my teeth and take a deep breath. I could turn around and walk away, but that would mean surrendering the tree house. What are you, Emerson, a fifth grader? This is not the Walsh Wars all over again.
As I stand there trying to figure out whether I’m staying or going, Jake starts climbing down the tree. I think about warning him that there’s a rusty nail on the third rung from the bottom, but I don’t. If he cuts himself, it would be karmic retribution.
I watch him descend, moving fast and fearlessly like always. My legs feel suddenly elastic, my stomach jittery. When did he get so . . . tall?
He jumps the last three rungs and then turns to face me. All the air leaves my lungs at once, like someone stamping on a set of bellows.
Jake stands opposite me, studying me with a serious expression on his face. Sweat is sticking his T-shirt to him in places, and though I try very hard not to, I can’t help but notice the outline of his chest and shoulders. He’s ripped. I know he’s a pro skater, that he’s already signed to the Detroit Red Wings, but, hell, how did he get that built? He must be in the gym or on the ice ten hours a day. To say that Jake is imposing is an understatement. I drag my eyes off his chest and back to his face, but it’s somehow even harder to look him in the eye.
I fix on the scar on his chin instead, and on the day’s worth of beard. Neither of us has said anything for a while. I’m not about to go first, though.
“I’m sorry,” Jake finally says, his voice soft.
I blink. That wasn’t what I expected to hear. At all. I narrow my eyes at him. Sorry for what, though?
Jake shakes his head and looks down at the ground before looking up at me through his lashes. Goddamn it. Why does he have to look at me like that? I steel myself against him. “You’re sorry?” I say. My voice sounds robotic, cold as ice. I don’t feel flustered anymore, just angry—it flushes through my veins like antifreeze.
A muscle in Jake’s jaw pulses. He doesn’t speak. He knows me too well. This was always his play. Let me burn off my anger, then say something funny when he knew it was safe enough for me to be defused. And it would always work. Except for this time. “You don’t get to waltz back into my life, say sorry, and expect things to go back to the way they were.”
He stays silent, staring at me with those deep brown Bambi eyes of his, and I think I see something buried in them, something like sorrow, but it’s probably just pity, and it needles the heck out of me.
“Things aren’t the way they were, Jake. Things have changed.” I think about my dad and swallow away the lump that’s materialized in my throat. “They’re different now.”
I’m different now, I want to add. I’m no longer the extrovert with the big mouth that he used to know, no longer the star skater for the Bainbridge Eagles, no longer the kid who used to dare him to do crazy stunts like swim across the bay in winter without a wet suit only so he would double dare me back. I’m not me anymore. I’m someone else, someone I barely recognize.
“I just want to be friends, Em,” he says. There’s hurt and pain but also a note of hope in his voice, and I can’t bear to hear it, so I turn my back and start walking away.
“You don’t get to be my friend anymore, Jake!” I shout over my shoulder. “And you don’t get the tree house either!”
There’s a pause. “How about we divide it in half?” he yells after me.
I can hear the laughter in his voice. He’s trying to make a joke, trying to make me laugh. Trying to defuse me. And a little voice in my head tells me to let him. To laugh.
But it’s like telling a rock to speak. I can’t. It’s been so long since I’ve laughed that I’ve forgotten how. And why should I laugh? Why the hell does he think he can turn up and act like nothing happened?
“Okay, then,” Jake calls when I’m almost out of sight. “I’m down with that. You can keep the tree house. I won’t come back again.”
It’s as if he’s thrown a stone at my back. I almost stumble, but I don’t. I keep on walking.
Jake
It’s stupid. It’s stupid. It’s stupid.
But I’m doing it anyway.
Mrs. Lowe looks at me over the top of her glasses. “Are you sure, Jake?” she asks.
“Absolutely, Mrs. Lowe.”
“Well, I know you don’t need—”
I cut her off. “I have to do something over the summer to keep me out of trouble. May as well be this!”
She smiles at me and when she does, I see Em in her. They have the same eyes—the kingfisher blue of Crater Lake. “Well, okay, then,” she says. “We sure need the help.” She glances around the store with a little sigh, but it’s big enough for me to guess that the business isn’t doing so well. It makes me wonder how they ever managed to buy my uncle out, not to mention how they’re keeping afloat during the nine months of the year when it rains in Bainbridge and the kayaks sit empty.
I didn’t recognize Mrs. Lowe at first. Her hair’s gone completely gray. But she recognized me the minute I walked in the door. She even darted out from behind the counter and hugged me for about five minut
es, squeezing me so tight I thought I’d need a crowbar to pry her off me. I was kind of happy for the hug, especially after the reaction I got from Em.
“Does Emerson know you’re back?” her mom asks me now, and there’s no hiding the note of anxiety in her voice.
“Um, yes,” I admit.
Mrs. Lowe shakes her head. “That’s funny, she didn’t say anything.”
“Well, I’m not sure she’s my biggest fan.”
Mrs. Lowe smiles softly, a little regretfully, and then pats me on the arm. “She just missed you, Jake, that’s all. We all did.”
I clench my teeth together. “I didn’t want to leave, Mrs. Lowe . . . ,” I say, a little more forcefully than I mean to.
Mrs. Lowe says nothing. I glance at her quickly. My throat feels dry. How can she not hate me?
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?” I ask.
“That’s what you’re here to find out, isn’t it?”
I open my mouth to answer her, but the door behind me pings. “What’s going on?”
Em’s standing in the doorway, wearing the hell out of her wet suit. She’s glaring at us as though she’s just caught us robbing the store.
“Why are you wearing that?” Em asks me, staring at the T-shirt I’ve got on. Her eyes, flashing with fury, dart to her mother.
I take a step backward. Stupid. I knew this was a stupid idea. I should have explained to Mrs. Lowe what Em’s reaction was to me yesterday. But if I had, she wouldn’t have said yes.
“Because I offered Jake the job,” Em’s mom says before I can get a word in. “He’s an employee now.”
Em’s eyes fly to the LOWE KAYAKING CO. T-shirt I’m wearing. I give her a massive grin, but inside I’m busy calculating my escape route.
“Listen,” I say, turning to Mrs. Lowe, my hands gripping the bottom of the T-shirt, ready to strip it off and hand it back. “Maybe this isn’t such a—”
Mrs. Lowe cuts me off. “Emerson, you know we need help, and Jake’s perfect.”
Em’s eyes go scarily round. Her nostrils flare. We’re entering the danger zone here. I feel like warning her mother to take cover, maybe pulling her behind the counter for shelter.
“Perfect?” Em says, her voice the sound of a whip.
“Yes,” her mother answers. “You can’t manage all this by yourself.”
I wince. Bad move. Never tell Em what she is or isn’t capable of.
“I have Toby to help.”
“Toby’s only meant to be part-time.”
“I can work extra hours.”
“You know that’s not possible.” Her mother glares at her, reminding me exactly where Em gets her stubbornness from.
Em’s jaw pulses like it’s going into spasm. I back away, remembering the damage she did to Reid Walsh that time on the ice, and there are way more weapons on hand here than there were back then. My gaze lands on a row of steel fishhooks hanging on a rack just to her left. I hope to God she doesn’t notice them.
Em glares at me and I ready myself for the fury that’s about to be unleashed, but . . . There’s no fight in her at all. Her shoulders slump. She turns and walks off, through the open door, not even slamming it behind her. I frown in astonishment. That’s the first time I’ve seen Em back down from a fight. Ever. Some things have changed, then.
“Don’t mind her,” Mrs. Lowe says.
“Maybe it’s better if I just leave,” I say, clearing my throat. “I’m sure you can find someone else for the job.”
“No,” Mrs. Lowe says quietly. She’s staring after Em, who is visible in the distance, striding down to the shoreline. “The job’s yours, Jake. Emerson will come around.”
I turn fully to face her. “You think?” I ask. I’m starting to doubt my so-called epiphany that I had this morning in the shower, remembering the HELP WANTED sign in the Lowes’ store window.
In my head, it sounded ideal: eight hours a day in a confined space with Em . . . She’d have to talk to me. We’d have to work things out. It might take a day or two, but eventually we’d talk and figure things out and go back to being friends.
I let out a sigh.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Emerson
Excuse me? Hello?”
I startle and look around.
The man behind me in the kayak is waving his arms, and there’s an urgency in his voice that pulls me back to the present. He gestures toward the island and my eyes widen. I’m almost at the far end of the bay, paddling furiously toward open water, the shore a blur on the horizon. I smile, make a joke, and quickly steer the kayak one eighty, feeling the ache in my arms and the intractable pull of the current trying to tug me back out toward the ocean.
Tired, I lead the three tourists who are with me back toward the bay. This is my third tour of the day. I’ve been an automaton, pointing out seals and the skyline of Seattle, all the while unable to stop thinking about Jake and the past. But now I force myself to focus on the job, playing the role of enthusiastic tour guide, a role that doesn’t fit me at all well.
I left Jake and Toby to manage the store, but I’ve decided I’m going to draw up a schedule that puts Jake on a different shift from me—that way, we’ll never have to be in the same room together. The only thing is Jake doesn’t know the tours or the spiel that goes with them, so that makes it difficult. I don’t want to have to teach him. I curse under my breath, furious at my mother for putting me in this position.
As we approach the shore, I spot Jake out the front of the store helping a little kid try out a skateboard. I watch the kid fall off. Jake picks him up off the ground, grabs the skateboard, and, much to the kid’s delight, executes a perfect kickback. Show-off. I taught him that. He hands the skateboard over to the kid, who high-fives him in delight. Jake takes off his cap and shoves it on the kid’s head, yanking down the rim. The kid grins up at him like he’s the Messiah. I roll my eyes.
We hit the shore and I jump out of the kayak, pulling on my customer service face like it’s a latex mask. Everyone seems happy at least, busy taking photographs. That’s something. I just hope they leave good reviews online. A rival kayaking company has just opened up in town, so I’m having to pull out all the stops at the moment, and customer service, as Toby so frequently reminds me, is really not my thing.
But it’s obviously Jake’s thing. The kid’s dad is inside, standing at the cash register as Toby happily rings up a sale.
Jake’s standing in the doorway outside the store, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He’s watching me. Our eyes catch. I see the silent plea in his. For a brief moment, something catches inside my chest and I feel an invisible pull toward him. But then I turn around and grab a kayak, pushing it out onto the water, jumping into it the moment it becomes weightless.
My muscles burn from the last tour, but I push out into the deeper water and make for the headland, wanting to disappear around it as fast as possible. I don’t want to feel his eyes on me.
That’s what I’m constantly trying to hide from. Judging eyes. What I’m constantly running from: Shame. Embarrassment. Guilt.
Even after all these years, though I know I have nothing to feel ashamed for at least, I can’t stop those feelings from crippling me. And knowing that Jake looks at me and sees a liar is too much to bear on top of all that.
Jake
(Then)
She walks toward the locker room and I stand there as if Mr. Freeze has just turned me into a statue. I just kissed Emerson Lowe.
Yes!
I punch the air. She sees me do it. Good move, McCallister. Very cool. But I don’t care. She’s smiling at me. And it’s a different smile from any of her other smiles—almost shy—which weirds me out because “shy” is the very last word anyone would ever use to describe Em.
She bashes through the door into the locker room, and I stand there, completely incapable of moving, my lips tingling. I press my fingers to them and realize I’m grinning like an idiot.
Em’s
been avoiding me for months, making sure that we’re never alone together, dragging Shay along to everything except ice hockey practice. I worried it was because she’d figured out that I liked her and was embarrassed about it, but when Reid teased her earlier, her overreaction suddenly made all her behavior make sense.
“You want Jake’s babies!” Reid laughed. “You love Jake!”
We’ve heard stuff like that for years—I mean, people have always teased us for being friends, and we’ve always ignored it. This time, though, Em launched herself at Reid and would have shaved his nose off with her skate if Coach hadn’t dragged her off of him.
Em powered off the ice, face beet red, refusing to look in my direction. I watched her go—knowing she’s like a campfire that needs to cool down before you can cook over it—while Reid smacked me in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Told ya.”
That was when it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Reid was (for once in his life) right. It made a few other things make sense too, like how I caught Em glaring at Lucy Deckers just the other week when she gave me a Valentine card. And the other time a month ago, when I refused to play Spin the Bottle at a party and Em went uncharacteristically quiet, got up from the game too, and said she wanted to go home.
Em likes me. I repeat it in my head just because it’s still so crazy unbelievable. I kissed her. She kissed me back. It’s the most amazing feeling ever. Like the Eagles winning the championships and the Detroit Red Wings winning the Stanley Cup and me winning the lotto, all at the same time.
I’m still staring at the door to the locker room. Where is she? She’s taking her time. How long does it take to pick up a pair of skates?
A sense of dread comes over me. What if she’s hiding? Waiting until I’m gone because she doesn’t want to face me? What if she’s freaking out—regretting what just happened?
No. No, I tell myself. Play it cool. She said she would see me tomorrow at school. She smiled at me. I’m being paranoid. If she sees me waiting out here for her like a stalker, though, she might have second thoughts. My mom’s probably wondering where the hell I am anyway.