“Your dad’s cool about it, isn’t he?” Besides ninth-grade homeroom, I’d had Mr. Vickerson for physical geography just last semester. He was a fair marker. He prepared interesting slide shows and took us on field trips to the nearby provincial park. He always wrote a cornball “joke of the day” on the board before the start of classes.
Sullivan chuckles. “Sure, he’s cool. But he’s everywhere. At school, my locker and his office are less than ten paces apart. Dad’s not the hovering type. He’s not at all restrictive. But he’s...watchful. Like, if he misses one of my volleyball games or a drama club play or even just turns his attention elsewhere for a minute, he thinks I’m going to break out in tumors. Take your turn.”
I put an O in the top right corner. If I know anything, I know what it’s like to have a parent who can’t keep his distance.
“But you know, Sarah,” Sullivan adds, quickly drawing an X in the top center square to block my win, “there’s an upside to having cancer too.” He rests his weight back on his hands, tilting his face up to the sun.
“Let me guess. Spoiled rotten?”
Sullivan sits back up and counts off on his fingers. “Disney World trips during elementary school. Karate and drama and soccer and drum lessons through junior high. My dad promised me a car for my high school graduation. One with a spotless safety rating, of course.”
I draw an O in the bottom center box. Game over. Tied. “None of that explains why they let you spend your summer hanging with juvies.”
“I live with my mother in the summer. My mother lives here in the summer. Besides, both my parents know that none of you ‘volunteers’ would have been sent here if you were real...you know...”
“Criminals?”
“You aren’t a criminal, Sarah.”
“Sullivan, I stole a car and crashed it into a war monument. I was underage, without a license. Isn’t that reason enough to red flag me as a questionable...friend?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I mean, that night you crashed? It was all just an accident, right? An impulsive moment?”
Same as with my mother, it’s easiest for me to just let Sullivan think whatever he wants. Let him assume that the actions that landed me at Camp Dog Gone Fun were just a one-off, maybe a fight with my mother about getting a nose ring. Or a bad reaction to Mom’s growing relationship with Tanner. Normal teenage hysteria gone overboard. Gone wrong.
“Anyway,” Sullivan says, picking pebbles out of his heels, “what does any of it matter as long as whatever happened is worked out now. It is worked out now, right?”
“Sure, Sullivan.” Whatever you say.
“Good,” he says, and he leans over to kiss me.
It’s weird. Until that first kiss in the boathouse a while back, I always worried that, after years of being watched, but never touched, I’d freak if anyone ever did touch me. I worried that a kiss would be like a photograph, something to be taken from me.
But it seems I worried for nothing. Sullivan gives kisses; he doesn’t steal them.
In fact, kissing seems to be as good a diversion as any from Sullivan’s nosy questions. Another bonus: I notice that Sullivan keeps his eyes shut tight while he kisses me; he’s no pervert who needs to watch. Doesn’t a guy deserve points if he’s willing to kiss a girl he knows is covered in dog hair and drool?
“Maybe sharing a glue stick back in first grade was just the start of something,” Sullivan remarks when we break for air.
“Maybe.” But what sort of something, I wonder. And I don’t want to know. I’ve been trying so hard to ignore the white-water river of electricity that runs through me when Sullivan kisses me. Because, realistically, how much of myself can I actually share with him? Even if I didn’t have secret motives for agreeing to help him with his puzzle, at what point would my past interfere?
Never mind about all that now, I tell myself. Concentrate on Sullivan tickling your upper lip with his tongue. Enjoy this while you can. Until the Ratgut concert, when you ditch him at the gates to go picture hunting, and he never kisses you, never speaks to you, again.
That’s the plan.
I’m such a bitch. I’d never use Sullivan—use anyone, even creepy Brant—like this if finding the Polaroids wasn’t the only thing that really mattered in my life.
Judy lumbers to her feet, stretches and shakes half the beach from her thick coat all over us. Sullivan and I recoil, laughing and jumping up, shaking gravel from our own hair and spitting dirt onto the beach.
All three of us plunk back down on the beach to recuperate. “So...want to make it official?” Sullivan asks, nudging me playfully in the ribs. “Want to be my girlfriend?”
I run my fingers through Judy’s damp tail hair, untangling it to prevent mats, and turn Sullivan’s question over—and over and over, like a dozen sizzling blueberry pancakes— in my mind. Maybe I could handle it, being someone’s girlfriend. Short-term, obviously. Sort of like a social science experiment. Romance with an expiration date.
“You mean just for the summer, right?” I play along, knowing already it can only last until the second Saturday in August.
“Well...no,” Sullivan says. “I was hoping...well, maybe it’s a little premature to say forever, but for...as long as it lasts?”
“What? You mean like even through the school year?”
He can’t be serious. I might be his only choice out on Moose Island (Johanna is very “taken” by a beefy senior quarterback, and Taylor’s latest poem was called “Lesbian Love Lessons”), but how could I possibly compete with the entire female population of Riverwood High School once school starts back in September? And what would I do if Sullivan—if any guy—asked me to a school dance? Everyone gets pictures taken at school dances. The Riverwood year-book photographers stalk new couples like paparazzi.
“Why not through the school year?” Sullivan’s eyes, usually flashing humor and enthusiasm, are suddenly seeping with hurt. His nose and his ears turn purplish red, like the beet casserole my father used to make at Christmas. “Sarah, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“I’ve...uh...liked you...for...um...years,” he stammers.
My mouth drops open. All I can think of to say is “Why?” I wonder if Sullivan has some sort of bizarre, flawed ESP that detects something in me that transcends all the damage and all my rage. Something I’ve never detected in myself.
“I used to see you in the school library,” Sullivan says, pouting a little now. I fight off a demented urge to lean over and bite his protruding bottom lip. “I always wanted to go over and talk to you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Your face was always hidden behind a novel. What were you reading, anyway? Thrillers? Classics?”
I give an embarrassed shrug. “Just girly shit. The Princess Diaries. Gossip Girls.”
I really don’t think Sullivan needs to know how greedily I devoured those glossy novels about rich girls trolling for boys and fighting over prom dresses. How captivated I was by their stupid social dilemmas. I envied their worlds, where problems with boys and nails and hairstyles wrapped up neatly by The End and everyone lived happily (and expensively) ever after. In my experience, The End wasn’t the end at all.
I also don’t think Sullivan wants to know that spending my lunch hours and spares in the school library has never had anything to do with me having an obsessive love of reading. It has everything to do with avoiding the noon clubs and sports teams and cafeteria cliques that inevitably lead to “Say cheese, Sarah! Smile for the yearbook picture!”
Sullivan reaches over and scratches Judy behind the ears. He watches my face, his own eager and puppy-like, still waiting for my final answer to his girlfriend question.
When I can’t stand the being-gawked-at feeling any longer, I shriek, “Yes! I’ll be your girlfriend! Just stop staring at me!”
Sullivan grins. “I always liked your eyes, Sarah. They’re so dark and intense, like you have a million secrets.”
&nbs
p; “Don’t go there, Sullivan.” Without my secrets I’d be as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.
But Sullivan keeps right on yapping like a Yorkie, oblivious to my discomfort. “I’ve seen you around school for so many years now. But I can’t really say I’ve ever gotten to know you. Not before this summer, anyway. You know why I think you landed out here at Moose Island this summer, Sarah? I think it was...fate.”
What an idiot.
“You want to know what I like best about you, Sarah?”
Pass.
“You make the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever eaten.”
Okay. That is news I can handle.
EIGHTEEN
Ten minutes after Sullivan leaves to start his afternoon chores, I’m summoned away from the beach.
“Sarah! Sar—SQUAWK—ah! Please—SQUAWK—report to the—SQUAWK—barn!”
I jump up, gather Judy and my belongings together and rush up the path and across the field to the barn.
Dr. Fred greets us at the door, half a lime Popsicle sticking out of his mouth. He offers the other half to me, then pulls a pork roll out of his pocket and tosses it to Judy. She catches it in her mouth and trots off with it to the shady side of the barn.
“Am I in trouble?” I ask. Being summoned over the intercom means that the problem can’t wait until dinner.
“Of course not!” Dr. Fred laughs. “Quite the contrary! I have a great honor to bestow on you! Well...a great favor to ask you. No pressure, of course.”
I suck on my Popsicle and wait for him to tell me what he wants. He’s not my father, so whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.
Dr. Fred cracks his knuckles. “Would you take charge of cooking for the Dog Daze Festival.”
“The what Festival?”
“The Dog Daze Festival is Camp Dog Gone Fun’s annual open house. I invite reps from all the different service clubs that have donated cash or equipment to our program to come out for a day of mixing and mingling. It’s good for our donors to see their money being well spent.” He chuckles. “They may even feel compelled to donate more.”
“When is this...festival?”
“This coming weekend. Saturday afternoon.”
“And how many people are coming?”
“Hmm...oh...two hundred...or so.”
A chunk of Popsicle breaks off the stick and slides down my throat whole. After I’ve finished choking, I sputter. “You want me to cater a picnic for two hundred people? This weekend?”
Dr. Fred laughs. “I usually bring someone over from town to barbecue burgers and throw together a potato salad. Maybe cut up a watermelon and put out a few bowls of chips. This is a dog camp, after all, not the prime minis-ter’s mansion. But my regular caterer just called to say he has food poisoning. So I thought of you.”
I take a deep breath. “I can flip a few burgers, I guess.”
“Actually,” Dr. Fred says, “I was hoping to get away from the barbecued food this summer. Too many hazards with the dogs circling the grills. Not good for business to have an accident with all the media types around.”
His praise is lost on me. Something heavy and hairy, tarantula-like, begins crawling around the pit of my stomach. “Media types?”
“There are half a dozen reporters who always show up,” Dr. Fred replies. “Cute dog photos sell papers.”
“Great,” I say, biting so hard into my Popsicle stick that a splinter pierces my cheek.
Dr. Fred is too happy to notice my cringing. “Anyway, about the food. I thought that a big vat of your terrific homemade chili would be just what we need to replace the burgers. Plus a few salads, a fruit plate, a couple of desserts. Would you do it, Sarah?”
“Will I have to spend all day in the kitchen?”
“Well...probably. But maybe Victoria could help?” Dr. Fred ponders. “So you could take a break? I’d help you out myself if I had any talent at that sort of—”
I suck in a deep breath of relief. Never have two lungs full of smog felt so fresh.
“Dr. Fred?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll do it. All of it. So not a problem.”
Dr. Fred lights up like the sun. “Thanks, Sarah!” He tosses his Popsicle stick into a nearby wastebasket and hugs me. A short, enthusiastic, grateful squeeze.
What those cheerful teen novels might describe as a fatherly hug.
So that’s what it feels like.
NINETEEN
“Too hard,” Sullivan mutters. He and I are having a contest to see who can put the most pieces into the German shepherd puzzle before 11:00 PM—the bedtime Victoria imposes on everyone at Camp Dog Gone Fun.
I am ahead by twenty-three pieces tonight.
Make that twenty-four.
“Yes!” I shout as another piece of the German shepherd’s face falls into place. I glance up to gloat at Sullivan. And know instantly why his progress tonight has been so poor.
“What the hell are you staring at?” I shout.
As if I don’t know. Bent over, distracted by the puzzle and my desire to kick Sullivan’s ass at the jigsaw, I didn’t realize that the neck of my baggy T-shirt is hanging down, giving Sullivan an eyeful. I yank at my shirt and straighten up.
“Sorry,” he says sheepishly.
“I’m done here,” I announce.
Sullivan pries his eyes away from me long enough to steal a glance at his watch. “You’re right. It’s past ten thirty. No way I can beat your score now. You win, Sarah. But tomorrow, just you wait. I’ll—”
I wave my hand over the puzzle, fighting off a red-raged impulse to upend the whole table. “No, Sullivan. I’m done. Done helping you with the puzzle.”
Except I already know I don’t mean it. Because then I’ll have to figure out some other way to get into the city this summer. Maybe I could “borrow” a canoe and paddle it over to the mainland in the dead of night. Hitchhike to the city.
Yeah, stupid, a voice in my head asserts. And end up finishing high school in juvenile detention. Or drowned. Or raped. Or murdered.
Outside, doors slam as people head to their cabins. Victoria has taken to blasting some new-agey CD over the intercom to bore everyone into bed each evening.
Nicholas passes under the light by the shed’s screen door, huffing and puffing as he drags the Camp Dog Gone Fun slop buckets behind him. He drew the Waste Management straw at flagpole this morning; it’s his job to feed the day’s veggie peels and table scraps to the enormous composter across the field. “Badass mosquitoes,” he grumbles. “I’m gonna catch West Nile disease and die.”
“Sarah? Why are you so pissed at me?” Sullivan pokes my arm.
“You were looking down my shirt!” I hiss, yanking my arm away.
“I was not!” he lies, his face distorting painfully as he tries not to laugh. “Is it okay if I look at your eyebrows?”
“My what?”
He reaches out and traces them with his finger and wiggles his own to make the point. “Your eyebrows do this weird thing when you’re pissed off. One goes up, one goes down. I’ve seen you do it when Brant calls you Sarah-ha-ha too. You’re going to have some seriously bizarre wrinkles when you’re forty if you don’t lighten up.”
“Bye.” I turn to pull open the shed door. I’ll have to take my chances escaping Camp Dog Gone Fun on my own. Sarah Greene, fugitive. Nice ring to it.
But Sullivan blocks my way. He gets down on one knee and reaches for my hand. “Sarah, will you puh-leeese forgive me for being a horny teenage guy? Puh-leeese keep helping me with the puzzle?”
He’s not getting off the hook that easily. “Will you stop trying to look down my shirt?”
“Absolutely.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. For you, Sarah...anything.” Sullivan gets up and walks over to the puzzle table. “You’re good at this stuff, Sarah,” he says, jabbing a finger at the German shepherd’s nose. “Maybe I need glasses.”
Here’s the thing: if Sullivan were blind, he’d be th
e perfect boyfriend.
Sullivan is already a good boyfriend, a nagging voice inside me says. It’s you, Sarah, who has the problem.
“If you desert me now, Sarah,” Sullivan continues, “I’ll have to finish this puzzle on my own. It’ll take a year, at least. We won’t just miss the Ratgut concert. I’ll miss school in September.” He sticks his bottom lip out. “I’ll miss... Christmas.”
“Sullivan, enough of the drama club audition, already.”
“So you’ll help me?”
I help you, you help me. That’s the plan. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Come on, Sarah!” Sullivan tugs playfully at my arm. “We’ve got another twenty minutes before Mom lets out the border collies to herd us to bed.” He grabs my hand and leads me back to the puzzle. “Let’s see if we can get the other ear filled in before—”
The shed is plunged into total darkness.
“What the hell?”
“Power’s out,” Sullivan grumbles.
I feel my way to the screen door. A pale moon struggles to cut through the smog. “Why? There’s no storm.”
“This happens a few times every summer,” Sullivan explains. “Humid nights like tonight, too many people on the mainland crank up their air conditioners at the same time.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?”
“Nothing. Wait it out.”
“Will the dogs be okay?”
“Sure. There’s a generator behind the barn that powers up the necessities: the kennel equipment, the kitchen appliances, the emergency lights.”
Footsteps and a strong light beam invade the eerie darkness outside the shed.
“Here comes Luke Skywalker,” Sullivan whispers.
He’s not kidding. Dr. Fred, wielding a three-foot light saber, is banging on cabin doors and handing out flashlights. From the shed’s doorway, I watch him, cast in a lime green aura, circle the barn and check the generator box, jiggling switches and letting out a triumphant “TA-DA!” as the lodge and barn light up like Christmas trees.
Continuing on his rounds, Dr. Fred stops by the storage shed. Sullivan and I are still inside in the dark. “Everything okay in here?” he asks, passing me a flashlight. “Need an escort back to your cabin, Sarah? I’m heading your way.”
Leftovers Page 7