“Like a normal person.”
My face heats up. “Yeah.”
“Do you want to keep them here?”
I’d thought about it. Maybe burying my box in the back of the clubhouse. Or setting up some kind of memorial altar to hold it. “I don’t think I can keep them.”
“Are you going to throw them away?”
No. “I don’t think I can do that either.”
We sit there for a while, without talking. It’s Jay Jay who finally breaks the silence. “I have an idea.”
He stands up and starts digging around in the big cooler that holds everything from marshmallows to comic books. There’s some racket and then he makes a eureka sound and holds up a battered old cooking pan. The kind my mom used to make lasagna in. He dumps out a bunch of stuff that it’s too dark for me to see.
I lift my eyebrows. “You want to cook them?”
“Kind of,” he says. “But not quite.”
“What are you talking about?”
He puts the baking pan on top of the grocery cart basket that the boys have used to house their bonfires and reaches back into the cooler. This time, he comes out with a comic book and starts to pull the pages apart, crumpling them up and putting them in the pan.
He doesn’t look at me when he says, “When my grandpa died, my grandma put his ashes into the ocean.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say.
“Right here, in the bay,” he says. “She hired a man with a boat to take us out and we just … we dumped him into the water.”
“God,” I whisper. “Was it awful?”
He looks up at me when the pan is full of crumpled comic book pages. “It was weird. But he loved the beach. I think he wanted it.”
“They aren’t dead, though,” I say. “The kids on the pictures, I mean.”
“Maybe my grandpa can look out for them anyway.” Jay Jay stands and reaches a hand down to help me up. It’s a full moon outside, and the clubhouse is full of cool light. “Do you trust me?”
My stomach feels like it’s full of ice, and my hands and feet are numb. I want to take my box and run away. But I don’t have to.
* * *
I wish that Mom was in the ocean, with Jay Jay’s grandpa. She would look after these kids. She would keep them safe and help them to not be afraid.
I pick up my box and settle it carefully in the nest of comic book pages inside the pan.
Jay Jay finds a book of matches, and the dry pages go up so fast, it takes my breath away. There is no time for me to change my mind. The sides of the box blacken and curl and smoke.
“Christine Adams,” I whisper. “Craig Alphonse. Richard Carlson. Elizabeth Dixon.”
I say their names slowly, as the fire in the baking pan flares and the box ignites. All fifty-eight names. I remember every one of them and that feels good. Like a memorial service, almost.
“Camilla Sampson,” Jay Jay says, next to me. When I look at him, his eyes are squeezed closed. “Joshua Marks.”
“Your parents?”
He opens his eyes. The firelight flickers across his face. “They’re missing. Just like those kids.”
I watch the smoke flow out to the beach. We sit side by side on milk crates, waiting for the fire to burn itself out, until there is nothing but ashes in the bottom of the pan.
It’s late, but I’m not tired. I feel like I might stay awake the rest of my life. Jay Jay pulls his T-shirt over his head and uses it like oven mitts, so he can lift the pan.
We are alone on the beach. There are people nearby, in the houses, including our own families. But right now, we are completely alone.
Jay Jay walks across the sand, toward the water. There is no dock out here, no way to get beyond the edge of the shore without wading in. We kick off our shoes by some kind of silent agreement and walk in until the water is lapping at our knees, dowsing the bottom edges of our shorts.
Christine Adams.
Craig Alphonse.
Richard Carlson.
Elizabeth Dixon.
I say their names again. One by one as Jay Jay tips the ashes into the water.
“Peter and Marvel,” I say at the end. “Peter and Marvel Lewis.”
“Camilla Sampson,” Jay Jay says, louder this time, his face tipped up to the moon. “Joshua Marks. William Sampson.”
William must be his grandfather, I think. I close my eyes and say, “Margaret Hart.”
The water is cool enough to make my skin numb. I float a hand over the surface. In the dark, I can’t see the ashes, but I know they are there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is one of those stories that I dug straight out of my heart. It’s set in the 1980s, when I was Tessa’s age, in the house on the beach my dad and stepmother moved to just before my baby brothers were born.
I shared that cherry-on-the-cupcake room with my sisters and had a killer lemonade stand on the bluff.
So—thank you to Jill, Russel, Alison, Kevin, Austin, Kyle, Patrick, and Ryan—always.
Especially Jill, who was on my mind so much as I wrote this story that I kept seeing her everywhere I looked. And Kyle, who is my first reader and biggest fan.
And our dad, who filled that house with books and encouraged adventure (and still does). He taught me that doing the best you can is enough, and that’s the lesson Tessa learns, too.
And my mom, who never, ever would have let me read Flowers in the Attic or have a lemonade stand on the beach. It was my stepmom who snuck that story to me the summer after seventh grade and bankrolled our enterprise.
Thank you to my friend David, who lent me his real-life hero mama, Kathleen, so that Tessa’s mother could be something special. And for believing that I could find this story and do it justice.
Big, big love to Kevin, Adrienne, Nicholas, and Ruby for putting up with me when I’m deep in the storytelling trenches.
Also, Zach, who keeps my head screwed on straight.
And thank you to every single Ninja Writer for being my tribe.
Elizabeth Bennett, my incredible literary agent, had the dubious job of telling me at the beginning that this story wasn’t working and then staying on the phone with me while I had a complete breakdown. She trusted that I could make it better and told me so as many times as I needed to hear it.
Thank you, Liz Szabla and the whole team at Macmillan, who helped make Center of Gravity real.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shaunta Grimes has worked as a substitute teacher, a newspaper reporter, a drug court counselor, and a vintage clothing seller. Before writing for children, she published two science fiction novels, Viral Nation and Rebel Nation. She lives in Reno with her family, where she writes, teaches, and perpetually studies at the University of Nevada. The Astonishing Maybe marks her middle-grade debut. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Shaunta Grimes
A Feiwel and Friends Book
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
mackids.com
All rights reserved.
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by email at [email protected].
First hardcover edition 2020
eBook edition, March 2020
eISBN 9781250191878
Center of Gravity Page 19