A Million Miles from Boston

by Karen Day

  “Yep, five lobsters, one pound each.”

  Kiki rang him up at the register. “I heard your wife’s sick.”

  “She’s better,” he said. They talked about his wife and the weather. Then he thanked her and left.

  I didn’t exactly know what I wanted. I just felt good around Kiki. “What are you making?”

  “Don’t you think we need some color? I’m going to put them on the shelves.” Kiki held up the flower. It was thick and full, like a blossoming rose. She put it on the shelf behind her, next to the mousetraps and scouring pads. It looked perfect.

  “Yes,” I said. “It must be fun working here.”

  She nodded. Everything about her was great—her smooth skin, her green eyes, her chipped fingernail polish. I brought my hand up to my sore ears and twisted my earrings. Kiki started to make another flower.

  Mei elbowed me, then mouthed, Tell her about your camp.

  I nodded. “So, you know I’m running this camp? Well, it’s pretty fun.”

  Kiki scrunched up her nose, as if she didn’t know what I was talking about, then slowly smiled. “Oh, yeah. That’s so cool. You should feel proud of yourself.”

  I wanted to tell her everything. That I was saving to buy a kayak for my dad. That science was my favorite subject. That someday I’d work at the marina, too.

  But Mary, Pete’s wife, called from the back room. “Need you back here, Kiki. Meat to slice.”

  “Coming. It was nice to meet you, Mei. Have fun.” And then she disappeared into the back room.

  We started back to the cottage, my feet barely touching the ground.

  “She’s nice,” Mei said. “She thought your camp was so cool.”

  I grinned.

  We were out of the woods and on the road when we heard Dad yell for us. We ran. Then it was time to take Mei to meet her parents.

  We hugged extra hard in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. As I watched the car drive away, I didn’t want her to go.

  “That went well, huh?” Dad said as we drove back to the Point.

  “It was great.”

  “She’s a good friend,” he said. “I hope she can come back.”

  “Yes!” I looked out the window. You could do so much with a good friend. Be silly on the rocks. Talk to the most annoying boy on the planet. Laugh and laugh.

  Maybe the next time I saw Kiki, I wouldn’t be nervous.

  sat at the computer, staring out the window. A mist hung over the water, then thickened farther out so you didn’t know what you were seeing. Could have been a pond or a river. Could have been Lake Superior.

  Mom had grown up on Lake Superior, which was so big Dad said it looked like the ocean. I’d been there once, but I’d been too young to remember. Dad said he and Mom had walked the beach after a storm. The water had been so rough that it had churned up iron ore in the sand, making the waves red.

  At home, we had a photo of Mom and Dad on the lake; it looked just like the open ocean off Pierson Point.

  When Dad turned off the shower, I ducked into my room. I knew he wanted to talk about the PT. I grabbed my notebook and bird book, and Superior and I headed over to babysit at the Dennises’.

  Lauren and Stevie were waiting at the door. After their mom left, Lauren flipped through my notebook, pointing to her favorite drawings. Then we walked down to their dock to draw. The fog had begun to burn off; the tide was high, the water still.

  Lauren drew Priscilla, a magical horse who talked and lived in the woods between here and town. She colored the horse purple. “She eats corn and hay.”

  “If she lives in the woods, where does she get corn and hay?” I asked.

  “She wishes and it comes.”

  Stevie nodded, and I laughed. Had I had such a big imagination when I was their age?

  The past summer I’d been able to see way out into the bay, but now the new dock next door blocked my view. I closed my eyes, trying to remember how it had looked, then opened them when I heard a splash. Allison bobbed to the surface next door.

  She swam to us, climbed the ladder and stood, dripping water.

  “You’re all cold.” Lauren pointed to Allison’s legs, covered in goose bumps.

  “No, I’m not,” she said.

  Lauren darted a look at me.

  Allison shivered as she leaned over Lauren. “What’s that?”

  “It’s Priscilla, a magical talking horse. She lives in the woods over there.”

  “Right.” Allison looked at me but I closed my notebook and bird book. “Let’s see.”

  I sighed and showed her my eagle.

  She studied it. “Not bad. Nice beak and the eyes work. Put the book away. You don’t need to copy. Just draw from what’s in your brain.”

  “I’m not good at drawing from my imagination.”

  “Sure you are. I took a couple of classes. I’ll help you. But I’m going to be pretty busy. Ian, too. He’s going to sailing camp. I’m so insanely bored that I got a job at the marina.”

  I sat up and smiled. “Kiki works there.”

  “Yeah, she’s got the easy job, working inside. I have to work in the yard.”

  I nodded. “Everyone has to start outside. But the harder you work, the easier it is to move up. Kiki’s been behind the counter for two summers now.”

  Allison tilted her head and stared at me. Had I said something wrong?

  “Anyway, wish I’d started today,” she said. “Before Ian’s idiot friend arrives.”

  “Who’s coming?” I asked.

  “When Ian and his friends are around, they take over. My mom lets them get away with anything.” She raised her eyebrows. “What’s he like in class? Annoying? Obnoxious?”

  Ian was both of those things, but who cared right now? Who was coming?

  “Come on.” Allison gathered her long hair behind her. Silver studs sparkled in her ears. “Give me some inside scoop.”

  “I don’t know him …”

  “You’re protecting him.” She laughed. “Everyone protects him. Just know that he’s not so nice the other way around.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said he knows you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “You don’t want to know.” She dove into the water, then swam away on her back, grinning. “Just kidding!”

  Was she?

  “Let’s go,” I said. We gathered the markers and paper and I marched the kids up to the cottage. I wanted to punch something. Did he tell lies about me to his family, too?

  We sat in the kitchen and ate Popsicles, both kids on my lap. Lauren told another story about Priscilla, but I barely listened. The talent show was that weekend. Ian and his friend—maybe Michael?—would probably stand in the back of the Big House, making fun of everything.

  If only Mei were still here!

  he PT wore the ugliest bathing suit I’d ever seen, blue with big yellow sunflowers. I couldn’t stop looking at it as we all stood on the dock, waiting for Mr. Ramsey to take us tubing. She talked about how beautiful the Point was, how she’d never been tubing. Every time she laughed, her shoulders shook and the sunflowers bounced.

  “I’m nervous. Lucy, do you have any pointers?” she asked. Dad smiled at me.

  “No,” I said. Then I stomped up to the cottage.

  I sat at the computer and wrote Mei, telling her that Ian had a friend here, although I didn’t know who. Then I pushed away from the computer and picked up Dad’s manuscript.

  Eagles were such a big deal on the Point that Dad had given them a whole chapter. I read about how they mate for life and return to their nests every spring to make them stronger for their babies. Dad had written in the margin How quickly does eagle find new mate after first mate dies?

  I stopped reading.

  If an eagle mates for life, how can it just go out and find a replacement?

  I jumped up and went to my room, Superior behind me. I threw myself on my bed, burying my face in my quilt.

  A sob filled my che
st. Dad was in love with the PT.

  Would they get married? A girl from school said that when her dad remarried, her stepmom repainted the whole house and got new furniture.

  I loved the leather couch in our living room back in Boston, even with the screwdriver holes in the cushion. And I wouldn’t let her fix the cracks on my bedroom ceiling.

  If they got married, she’d live up here, too. In our cottage.

  Superior put her nose on my bed and I reached over and rubbed her head, closing my eyes. I must have dozed off, because when I opened them, the sun was shining across my floor at a different angle. Superior was asleep on the rug.

  I wiped my sweaty forehead on my quilt and watched it turn a checked octagon dark blue. Dad said this piece of the quilt came from a bandanna Mom had worn. I knew where every octagon came from. The S on the gray background was from Mom’s Smith College shirt. The pink flowers were from her sundress. The denim was from her jeans.

  A knock.

  “Lucy?” The PT. I stuffed the quilt into a ball and opened the door.

  Her long white arms and legs were splotchy with sunburn and she wore red lipstick that made her mouth look huge. In her ears were silver hoop earrings. I brought my hand to my right ear and twisted my stud.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” But I didn’t invite her in.

  “I know this sounds crazy, but … Well, I think someone is spying on the cottage.”

  This was the last thing I’d expected. She walked in and leaned over my desk to look out the window. I leaned next to her. The lotion she had on smelled like herbs, the kind Mrs. Steele grew in her garden.

  “The first couple times they walked by slowly, looking at the cottage. Then they stood behind a tree and watched. Now, where are they? There, behind that tree. Look!”

  Ian and Charlie stood behind a pine tree, looking around it at our cottage.

  “That’s Ian and Charlie.”

  “Ian’s the new boy?”

  I nodded and stepped back so they couldn’t see me. They shoved each other, laughing, then walked away. We watched until they were out of sight. I wished Mei had come up that weekend, too.

  “Is Ian shy?” the PT asked.

  “No. He’s popular and I’m … He never talks to me. Except … Well, he teases everyone, not just me. I don’t know why they came over here.” This was the most I’d ever said to her.

  “Maybe he likes you.”

  My eyes popped out. Mei and I had done the same thing, spied on Ian, and not because we liked him. “No, you don’t know Ian.” But I watched her, my heartbeat quickening.

  “True.” She put her hands on her hips, then began spinning a pencil on my desk. “I was thinking about a boy, Doug Henney, but everyone called him Harry Hen. In sixth grade he used to unhook the rubber bands in his braces and shoot them at me.”

  I smiled. Harry Hen sounded like a name Dad and I would make up.

  “So, I saw him at a class reunion not too long ago and he said he’d had a crush on me since first grade. Shocked me to death.” She laughed, still spinning the pencil.

  She wouldn’t be here if she’d married Harry Hen, would she? Dad said she’d been married before.

  “Sometimes what seems to be one thing turns out to be another.” She spun the pencil so fast that it flew off the desk and landed on Superior. “I’m sorry, Superior.” She reached for the pencil, then quickly drew back her hand.

  Superior didn’t move. I put the pencil back on my desk. Maybe the PT wasn’t so much clumsy as something else. What?

  I leaned over my desk and looked out the window again. No Ian. The PT smiled and pointed to my ears. “They’re a little red. Do they still hurt?”

  I hesitated. The week before, I’d emailed Jenny about my swollen earlobes and she’d written back I’m all thumbs with things of fashion. Tell your dad! But I didn’t, because then he’d worry. “Kinda. But I take care of them.”

  “Come with me.” In the bathroom she pulled a small bottle out of a flowered bag. She poured from the bottle onto a cotton ball, gently pushed down the back of my earring and pressed the cotton ball to my skin.

  “It’s rubbing alcohol. The trick is to make sure you pull down the earring so the alcohol gets inside,” she said. “Otherwise you’re only treating the outside.”

  I nodded. “Is this normal, that they still hurt? I’ve been putting stuff on them.”

  She held the cotton ball to my other ear. “Everyone’s different, but I think mine hurt for a month or so. I remember sleeping on my back because having my ears against the pillow kept waking me.”

  Just like me.

  “So just keep putting alcohol on them,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She smiled. “You’re welcome.”

  We stood there, looking everywhere but at each other. When she left, I locked the door, turned on the shower and stared at myself in the mirror.

  I had freckles on my nose, lips that were too thin and extra-long eyelashes. Nothing else about me stood out. Not like Annie, with her long blond hair and blue eyes. The boys thought she was really pretty. The PT was wrong. Ian didn’t like me.

  I opened her flowered bag. Lipstick, mascara, bandages, toothpaste, mouthwash, lotion. I unzipped a smaller bag and pulled out a pair of gold hoop earrings.

  I held them to my ears. I liked how the gold looked against my brown hair. They made me seem older, at least Allison’s age. I put them back and unscrewed the cap on the lotion bottle. Strong, clean. Like the PT.

  What kind of lotion had Mom used? I remembered the loose rings on her finger and how her hair fell on her shoulders. But I couldn’t remember her smell. I put the lotion back and moved the bag to the floor, where I wouldn’t see it anymore.

  Time to get ready for the talent show.

  he temporary boards that had been on the Big House had been pulled off and now there was a gaping hole next to the stairs. Someone had blocked off the area with yellow tape.

  I ran up the stairs. People had already filled the chairs lined up in front of the fireplace. Others stood along the sides. Kiki sat squeezed between Tonya and Danielle on a table in the back of the room. They swung their legs underneath them.

  I walked through the crowd until I was only a few feet away from them. When Kiki turned toward me and smiled, I raised my hand. “Hi!” Maybe I could sit with them.

  But then Jake jumped onto the table next to Danielle. They all started talking.

  Lauren ran up and pulled my arm. “Lucy, sit with me.”

  “I will, just a minute,” I said. Lauren ran off.

  “You like them.” Allison stood next to me.

  My cheeks got red, but Allison wasn’t laughing at me. “Yeah, of course.”

  “You could hang with us sometime.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Allison sat next to Tonya.

  “Let’s get started,” Mr. Ramsey said into the microphone. When I sat next to Lauren, Stevie crawled into my lap.

  Ian and Charlie leaned against the wall, whispering, laughing. Would they do that through the show? When Mei had been here, we laughed the whole weekend.

  Lauren was first. She sang “Over the Rainbow,” smiling at her mom and dad. She was great and Stevie and I high-fived her when she finished. Becca played her violin and Jake Ramsey juggled tennis balls. Mrs. Graham showed her paintings, Mr. Dennis told a really bad joke and the Averys sang the Cornell fight song.

  I glanced back at the older girls. What would Allison say to them about me?

  “Okay, anyone else?” Mr. Ramsey said. This was a perfect place for Ian to show off. But he just kept whispering to Charlie.

  “Lucy!” Becca and Peter pulled on my arm. She said, “We’re playing chase, right?”

  “My cousins are here, so they’re playing,” Peter said. “And Ian and his friend.”

  Everyone shushed them.

  “I guess I’m last.” Mr. Ramsey put a straw in a glass of water, t
hen stuck the other end up his nose. He breathed in and the water disappeared up the straw into his nose. Everyone screamed with laughter.

  “And that’s the end of our show,” Mr. Ramsey said. “We don’t usually do business here, but we need to talk about something. Kids, you don’t have to stay.”

  Was this about the Big House? Ian and Charlie walked out behind the older girls. I wanted to listen but I didn’t want them playing without me.

  Outside, the younger kids stood by the swing with Charlie and Ian. It was dusk but the lawn was lit from the Big House lights and the hundreds of stars in the sky. Lauren cupped a firefly in her hands and peeked inside them.

  “Hey,” Charlie and I said to each other. He was tall and skinny, like Ian, with black hair. I’d known him forever.

  I explained the rules.

  “I don’t get it,” Charlie said. “Why do you have to team up to free someone?”

  “Makes it harder for the person who’s it,” I said.

  “Ian, can I be it?” Peter asked. “Okay?”

  “Hey!” Why didn’t he ask me?

  “Sure.” Ian grinned at me. Peter started to count and we scattered.

  Peter captured Lauren and me, and we waited in jail until Ian and Charlie freed us. Peter’s cousins never got caught. That night was super fun. No one wanted to stop, not even when the lights were turned off in the Big House.

  The air was warm and muggy, the crickets and bullfrogs loud. Sweat dripped down my back as I ran along the road to the far side of the bushes. Charlie grabbed my arm, pulling me behind a bush, where he hid with Ian. I crouched behind them. Through an opening in the leaves, we saw Becca guarding the jail in front of the Big House stairs.

  “She’s got everyone else,” Ian whispered.

  “We gotta come up with a plan.” Charlie slapped at a mosquito on his neck.

  “Let’s sneak around the back,” Ian whispered. “Then run out, a full blitz.”

  “If we do that, Becca can just call our names and we’re caught,” I whispered. “I’ll go around the long way, come out on the path and make a noise. She’ll come toward me; then you guys run around the back and free everyone.”

  “You’ll be a decoy,” Charlie said. “Brilliant.”