“Maybe because it’s not a name, but a small Parisian attic where writers live?”
“Oh, as opposed to a brand of canned pumpkin owned by the Nestlé corporation?” he shot back.
We glared at each other. “Listen, ‘Garrett,’” I began again, and this time I actually used air quotes. He grimaced behind his stupid Clark Kent glasses but didn’t say anything. “I know you don’t want me there, but I’m sorry. You don’t have a choice. I’m going to be there. So we’re just going to have to make this work.”
“Why?” He gestured wildly and then readjusted his grip on his messenger bag as it flapped. “Why are you doing this? Why do you need to be there? Can’t they find someone else to baby-sit me if they have to? Or can’t you just say you’re there and leave me alone?”
“Not an option, ‘Garrett.’” Ha-ha! Each time I air-quoted, he seemed progressively more annoyed. “I do need to be there because I am living with a cat-loving, shoe-hating historical interpreter who wants me dead. And as impossible as it is to believe, you are the lesser of two evils.”
“I’m flattered,” he muttered.
“So deal with it. It’s happening.” I spun on my heel and stalked off. “See you shipboard, roomie!” I called over my shoulder.
“Can’t wait,” he said sarcastically.
I stopped. “Hey, Garrett, 1998 called—it wants its outfit back.”
He did a double take, then said, “Incidentally, when 1998 was on the phone, it also asked for that joke back.”
My jaw dropped. I snapped it shut and went off to finish my sentence in the Hell House without another word. I had the sinking suspicion that I’d just leaped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Four
Needle (noun): 1. A small, slender, usually steel instrument that has an eye for thread at one end and that is used for sewing. 2. A teasing or gibing remark.
One definition described my days at Camden Harbor, the other, my evenings that last week living with Ashling. I was thrilled when Friday afternoon rolled around. As soon as camp ended, I’d be moving my things out of the house and into the harbor. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the parlor windows as we worked on our samplers, and I was filled with peace.
“Miss Libby, Miss Libby!” one of the girls shrieked. Boom—peace shattered. “That boy is back!”
The rest of the girls screamed, chucked their samplers willy-nilly over the settee, and ran to the window.
“Thith time he’th brought flowerth,” Amanda lisped, amid a chorus of oohs.
I stooped to pick up a few samplers, straightened, and looked out the window. Cam was coming up the front walk, with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a small white bag in the other. Not only did he actually have his navy jacket on, buttoned, but he’d also added a waistcoat and even a casually tied cravat—every inch the proper gentleman.
“Miss Libby, I believe he’s come courting,” Emily said, squinting through her glasses.
“A thuuuiter.” More oohs. A what? Oh, “a suitor.”
Cam rapped a little pattern on the door: knock, knock, knock, knock, knock—knock knock.
The girls screamed and dove for the settee, picking up whatever sampler was nearest. They were almost interchangeable, anyway—I’d sketched out patterns of all the different ships in the harbor for them to embroider with indigo-dyed linen thread, and they’d all picked the Anne-Marie. Surprise, surprise.
“Get the door, Miss Libby!” they said collectively with giggles, pretending—and failing—to be very involved in their needlework. “Get it, get it, get it!”
I paused to check myself out in the hall mirror. I hadn’t seen Cam since he’d chopped our wood. How lucky that I’d just happened to choose the pretty pink flowered dress today! Taking a deep breath, I flung open the heavy wooden door.
I was almost finished with Northanger Abbey, mostly because I’d discovered Ashling talked to me less if I was reading, so for lack of a better option, I’d started scouting out the romance novels in the house “library” for my next book. I swear to God, the cover art for Let Sleeping Rogues Lie had leaped off the page and shown up on my doorstep.
“Miss Libby,” he said bowing deeply. “I’ve come calling.” He grinned, shaking the hair out of his eyes, and I was hit with the full force of how unbearably, impossibly gorgeous he was. Yes, sure, the (very small) handful of boys who’d been interested in me in the past weren’t total trolls, but they had left me completely unprepared for the movie-star-hot manifestation of my dream man. It was like I’d opened a door to the magical fantasyland in my head. I was frozen to the step like the little delft milkmaid on the shelf in the parlor.
“Let him in!” one of the girls shrieked. The rest took it up, chanting, “Let him in! Let him in!”
“I think you’d better let me in. Or it might get ugly in there,” he said, widening his eyes.
“I think I’d better,” I agreed, and, heart hammering, I let him in. I closed the door behind me and led him to the parlor.
“Ladies.” Cam swept an elaborate bow. The girls giggled. “Miss Libby,” he stage-whispered loud enough for them to overhear, “can they have candy?” He shook the little white bag.
“Please! Please, Miss Libby, please can we have candy? Please, please, please!” they all begged.
“Of course.” The day was almost over. If they got hyper, their parents would have to deal with it. And how cute was it that he’d brought them candy! Cam went over to the girls and gave them each one of those swirly-stick candies they sold in the gift shop.
“Mithter Cameron?” Amanda asked as she pulled out a strawberry swirl-stick candy. “Where were you all week? Why did you thay away?”
“Ah, fair lady, I was nursing a wound.” The girls gasped. “A broken heart.” More, louder dismayed gasps.
“Who broke your heart? Tell me. Who. Who did it?” Natalie, one of the older, pushier girls, demanded.
“Why, as much as it pains me to say it, our very own Miss Libby.” He shook his head sadly. “She never stopped by with my gingerbread.”
Ohh, right—with all the ghost excitement, the sparring with Garrett, and the possibility of escaping Ashling, I’d completely forgotten. Cam’s gingerbread must have still been wrapped in the towel in the warming oven.
“Oh, Mith Libby, how could you?” Amanda whispered painfully amid general noises denouncing my villainy.
“Yes, Miss Libby, how could you?” Cam echoed, mock-wounded. “Hasn’t she been naughty?”
Wow, I hoped the kids missed the subtext.
“She should be punished,” Natalie said grumpily.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Cam looked like he was about to burst, trying not to laugh. “But even though she doesn’t deserve it,” Cam said, composing himself, “I’ve decided to forgive her. And be nice. Because that’s just the kind of guy I am. Miss Libby”—he displayed the flowers with a flourish—“these are for you.”
The girls paused in unwrapping their candies to sigh, collectively, “Awwww.”
“They’re beautiful, Cam.” I accepted them, blushing. They really were. A boy had never brought me flowers before. Dev was wrong—chivalry wasn’t dead. Gentlemen did exist. And I was face-to-face with living proof. “Thank you.”
“You should probably put those in water.” Emily shook her candy stick at me.
“How right you are,” Cam said, steering me toward the kitchen. “Let me help you, Miss Libby.”
“But the girls, I—”
“Oh, they’ll be fine for a minute,” he insisted, quashing my protest. “They have candy.”
Cam took a jug from the kitchen, filled it with water from the pump out back, and placed it on the kitchen table. The minute I’d put the flowers in the jug, Cam pulled me away from the table, brought my head toward his, and kissed me. Deeply.
“Cam.” I broke away breathlessly, completely taken aback by how sudden this was. “The girls. They’re in the other room. We can’t. Not here, I—”
/> “What are you doing after this?” he asked, cradling my face in his hands.
“I’m—I’m moving into a bunk on the Lettie Mae,” I explained, trying to conjure a coherent thought out of thin air even though my brain appeared to have shut down. “I have to get my things out of the house and into the boat.”
“The Lettie Mae?” He wrinkled his nose distastefully. “I think you’re moving into a bunk on the wrong ship.” Cam stroked my cheek. “You’d have a lot more fun on the Anne-Marie. I promise.”
“Oohhhh, Miss Liiiiiiiiiiiibbby,” one of the girls said in a loud singsong from the other room, “what are you dooooooo-iiiiiiiiiing?” Giggle explosion.
“I—I have to go back in.” I gestured to the parlor, trying to break away, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I’ll help you move.” He kissed me again, quickly, fiercely. “Change and meet me at the wharf at two forty-five.”
“Two forty-five,” I whispered back, as he vaulted out the kitchen window. The man knew how to make an exit.
I tried to collect myself, but my heart was pounding so loudly, I was afraid the girls would hear it. Or that it might burst forth from my stays and leap straight out of my chest. But somehow I managed to keep all my vital organs in the right places as I collected the samplers, put them in the cabinet, and took the girls back to the Welcome Center in a maelstrom of Cam-related teasing and giggling.
There wasn’t any camp on the weekends, so the goodbyes took a little longer. Eventually, everyone had been hugged and handed off, so I was free to hustle my bustle (literally) back to the Bromleigh Homestead. As I changed into my standard-issue polo and nonexistent khakis, I cursed the fates for condemning me to this hideous shirtdress and myself for not having the foresight to smuggle in some makeup. This was a sort of/almost/kind of date, for Pete’s sake, with the hottest guy I ever had or probably ever would cross paths with, and I was going dressed as a half-nudist man. With no eyelashes.
Taking a page out of Scarlett O’Hara’s book, I pinched my cheeks and bit my lips, and then added my own personal touch: the sooty swipe of ashy eye shadow. It would have to do. I locked up the house and made my way toward the wharf, which was at the corner of the museum closest to my house. It served as the unofficial barrier between the historical harbor at the museum and the working harbor in town.
I couldn’t believe Cam had offered to help me move—how could someone so hot also be so sweet? Not like that idiot Garrett, who would barely even fish me out of a barrel, let alone move my hair-care products to a schooner. Not that Garrett had anything to do with this—who knew why he had randomly popped into my head.
Cam was leaning against an old wooden pole in the water, squinting into the late-afternoon sun, and pushing all thoughts of Garrett from my mind. Somehow Cam even managed to look good in the stupid Camden Harbor uniform, which defied all the natural laws of physics.
“Already got her pants off?” He smirked, looping his thumbs casually through his khaki belt loops as he pushed off the pole and ambled over to me. “My kind of girl.”
“No, no, I’m wearing shorts.” Blushing like crazy, I lifted my shirt to show him. “See? Perfectly respectable chinos. They’re conservative. They’re J.Crew.”
Cam laughed. “God, you have no idea how cute you are, do you?” He slung his arm around my shoulder, and we walked together off the museum grounds. “Which way’s your house, babe?”
Babe? Babe? Oh my God, I was “babe”! I was also hyperventilating slightly. Being this close to him, especially with the memory of that kitchen kiss searing my brain, was almost too much to take. He smelled sort of salty, like a sea breeze, which should have been gross but was inexplicably intoxicating.
We chatted—well, mostly he chatted, and I nodded—as I showed him down the sidewalk to my house. The five-minute walk felt a lot shorter without Ashling, much to my chagrin. All too soon, Cam dropped his arm as I pushed open the front door.
“Careful!” I warned. “Don’t let it slam; it—”
Too late. It slammed shut and wobbled dangerously but held.
“Libby!” Ashling called shrilly. “HOW many times I have told you NOT to slam the door! And I know it’s you!”
Cam raised his eyebrows.
“Welcome to my nightmare.” I gestured grandly. “Come on, you can hang out in the living room while I get my stuff together. It’ll only take a minute.”
I’d decided to use my third of my room in the house as my closet, and only to take the bare essentials—Camden Harbor uniform, underwear, toiletries, Chucks, PJs, bathing suit, flip-flops, a book—on the boat with me. I figured that way, everybody won: Ashling and Suze got more space, and I could turn my bed into a shoe rack.
“You might need to hold my hand,” Cam whispered. “It’s scary in here.”
I took his hand and pulled him down the skinny hallway to the living room.
Neil’s long limbs were draped all over the couch, extending off both sides. He shifted slightly over his radishes and hummus to reveal a heavily bandaged shoulder.
“Neil!” I gasped. “What happened?”
“I got shot,” he said through a mouthful of radish, muting the old Monty Python sketches he’d been watching.
“What? Shot?” In my seventeen years, I’ve run across very few situations for which the word flabbergasted was appropriate. This, however, was one of them.
“Turns out some of the last living lighthouse keepers are very, um, territorial about the lighthouses they keep.”
“Yikes.”
“A lighthouse keeper shot you?” Cam looked impressed. “That’s awesome.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I can’t believe you were shot!”
“Shot with what I believe was an 1873 Winchester still mostly in working order—what a find!” Neil finished excitedly.
“I’m, um, happy for you?” I wasn’t totally sure what the correct response was when someone had enjoyed a near-death experience involving a rare historical artifact.
“Yeah, I was really lucky,” he continued. “If the gun had been in mint condition, I would probably be dead. Thank God for pH deterioration, right?” He chuckled.
“Uh, right,” I agreed.
Ashling appeared in the kitchen door frame like a malevolent ghost in a floral apron, stirring a large chipped mixing bowl.
“Libby, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with boys in the house,” she drawled.
“Um, hello, there’s always a boy in the house. One lives here. What about Neil?” I pointed to him.
“A necessary evil.” Neil frowned into his radishes. “I don’t want you parading your men through here at all hours of the night.”
“It’s three in the afternoon! And one guy is not a parade.” I turned to Cam, blushing. “There’s no parade.”
“I’m Cam.” He stuck out his hand to Ashling.
“Do you work at the museum?” she asked suspiciously, slooowly extending her arm.
“Yep. Demo squad.” He jokingly saluted.
Ashling withdrew her hand so fast a casual observer might have thought he’d said “sewage treatment plant.” She hissed and turned away, like Dracula facing a mirror. Or a cat in a bath.
“Cam, I’ll be right back with my stuff.” I sighed. He was going to run screaming for the hills.
“Wait.” Ashling stopped me, disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and then returned with an envelope. It had my name written in ballpoint pen on the front. “These came for us today. It should have everything you need. So you won’t ever need to come back.” She returned to the kitchen.
I jammed the envelope in my back pocket as I grabbed the rest of my things out of the bathroom and stuffed them on top of the pink duffle bag I’d packed the night before. I was steps away from freedom.
“Ready to go?” I asked, coming back to the living room. Cam was leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching Monty Python.
“That it?” He jerked his thumb in the direction o
f my bag.
“Yep.”
“A girl who packs light.” He picked it up off my shoulder and swung it easily over his. He was even carrying my bag! So gallant. “You see something new every day.” Cam readjusted the bag. “Let’s do this.”
“Bye, Neil.” I waved. “Get better soon!” He waved back with a radish, and Cam and I headed down the hall. Suze popped out of the bedroom, squeaked, and popped right back in. We left.
“Wow”—Cam shook his head—“what a bunch of freak shows.”
“They’re . . . different,” I said diplomatically. “But aside from Ashling, they’re not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” He snorted. “Andre the Giant, the hostile bitch, and the mute virgin? Please. You are way too nice. Thank God you’re getting out of there, Libs. You’re gonna love living on a ship. There’s nothing like it.”
He waxed rhapsodic about boats and maritime life the rest of the walk over. Yes, my former roommates were weird, but I thought Cam was being a little harsh. Zoning out somewhere around the time we got to discussing the mizzen, I remembered the envelope I’d stuck in my pocket. I quickly opened it and unfolded the typed sheet of paper within.
It was a “Camden Harbor Summer of Fun Social Calendar.” I quickly skimmed it: Sea Shanty Showdown, Fourth of July Lobsterfest (Featuring Fireworks!), and, finally, the End-of-Season Costume Ball (Period Costume Mandatory).
“Oh yeah.” Cam was reading over my shoulder. “The Showdown’s coming up. It’s awesome. Starts in the boathouse, then moves out to the dock. There’s beer and stuff. Wanna come with?”
“I’d love to, um, come with.”
He laughed at me. It didn’t really sound like my kind of thing, as it involved “beer and stuff,” but it was historical, right? I’d be fine. Plus, it was a date! With Cam! At least, I thought so . . . I mean, sure, he didn’t technically say it, but if we were going together, that meant we were going together, right?
We’d arrived. “Where we going?” Cam ran a hand through his hair.
“The fo’c’s’le,” I pronounced carefully. I’d Googled it earlier.
Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink Page 6