by Jen Malone
“Thank you all for this,” he says. “I’ll never forget such a great group of folks.”
As they continue to tell stories, I look around at my friends. Becca’s laughing along with the seniors. Vi’s making sure all the kids have something to eat. And Sadie catches my eye and gives me a thumbs-up.
I can’t imagine moving to another country and leaving them behind. Who would listen to me complain about my brothers the way Sadie does? Without Vi, I’d have to collect shells by myself and eat store-bought pita chips. And Becca’s always the one making me try new things.
But one day, I will move away. Not for a few years, and probably not to Scotland, but still. When that time comes, I won’t have my best friends around to hang out in a dirty old yacht or light candles on the beach.
I get what Bubby was talking about now. And it makes me want to keep this moment going for as long as I can.
“Sadie couldn’t find anything that wasn’t Scottish,” Becca says as we watch Sadie mute the movie on the Visitor’s Center TV. “And it’s not like this place has any kind of dock to play music from our phones.”
“Bagpipes are better than nothing, I guess.” The food’s pretty much gone, and the kids are standing around like they’re waiting for something to happen.
Some kind of jig blasts from the stereo. Becca and I push the chairs out of the way, and a group of the seniors, Bubby right in front, pulls Mr. Vernon to his feet. They jump right into dancing, laughing and talking the whole time.
But none of the kids move at all. Zach’s friends are headed toward the door again. This isn’t good. Not only would Bubby be upset that her party is a bust, but RSVP’s reputation won’t be so great if everyone checks out early.
“What can we do?” Becca asks.
I’m racking my brains when the last person I expected to see at this party walks through the door.
Zach.
Great. Like I really want my brother here to witness this disaster of a party. I only have one idea, and it’ll either save the whole thing or make me the laughingstock of Sandpiper Beach Middle School. I don’t have time to lay out the pros and cons. I just have to do it—for Bubby, for my friends and RSVP, and for myself.
I yank the note cards from my pocket and toss them onto my backpack in the corner. “Let’s dance!” I yell to Becca as I race through the jig-dancing seniors to grab Sadie and Vi.
“What are you doing? I don’t know how to dance!” Vi gets this panicked look on her face.
“Neither do I! Who cares? Let’s just have fun! And maybe save this party.” I try to follow what the seniors are doing but end up stepping on Sadie’s heels.
“Lauren, you are officially the worst bagpipe dancer ever!” Sadie says over the music.
“I know!” With that, I grab her hands and start spinning in a big circle. Everyone backs out of the way, clapping in time to the music. A lot of the kids have joined the group now, some of them clapping and others sort of staring at me. Which makes sense, since I’m not exactly the dance-in-the-middle-of-a-crowd kind of girl. But I think about Mr. Vernon moving away and about Bubby and Alma, and I don’t care. Right now, I just want to have fun with my best friends.
“Go, Lo! Go, Sadie!” Becca yells.
We spin and spin and spin until we’re laughing so hard and my pom-pom hat flies off and we’re so dizzy that we fall in a heap on the floor.
“Lauren?” Zach’s standing over me, holding out a hand. “What . . . what are you doing?”
I scramble up and do a little jig kind of move. Or what I think is a jig kind of move, since I’ve never really done one before. “Dancing! Come on!”
He blinks at me.
“Look, if I’m dancing, so can you. This is Bubby’s party, so we owe it to her to make it good. If you dance, then maybe everyone else will too.” My breath comes out all huffy, since I’m not really used to this much exercise.
Zach glances at his friends, and then he laughs. But he’s not laughing at me. “All right. But not to this . . . music. I’ve got a dock in my car.”
I want to hug him, but that would be weird. So instead I tell him thanks. When he comes back and plugs in some normal music, the party really starts. I dance and dance and dance with my friends until it feels like my feet will fall off.
A little later, while Becca’s having a heart-to-heart with Bubby (who’s all distraught about Mr. V. leaving and how he hasn’t gone for her Moonlight Mix-It-Up reenactment), I’m eating chip crumbs with Vi and Sadie when I feel someone over my shoulder. The seniors loved Vi’s dip and have been coming up asking for the recipe all night. I pull out the pen for her to write it down again when the person speaks.
But it’s not one of the seniors. Instead, it’s a staff member from Sandpiper Active Senior Living. “Hi, girls. I was wondering if you had a card or anything? You see, my daughter wants this crazy birthday party and it’s going to require a lot of energy and, well, you certainly seem to have that. And you look like you’re having so much fun. Would you be interested in maybe planning her party?”
Sadie jumps out of her chair and hands the woman our business card. “Of course! We’d love to.”
“Great! I’ll be in touch.” The woman takes the card and leaves, and Sadie lets out a squeal. Then she looks at me.
“Thank you, Lauren.”
“Um, for what?”
“For joining and actually having fun with it. And then working so hard to pull it off. I thought we were goners when all those kids from school showed up. But together, we figured it out. And I think you’re the reason why that woman wants us to do her kid’s party.” Sadie throws her arms around me and Vi gives me a high five at the same time.
“Really?” Who knew that letting yourself go like that could actually make you look more professional?
“Absolutely. RSVP is back!”
So we celebrate by dancing, of course.
Becca
Daily Love Horoscope for Scorpio:
Falling stars aren’t the only keepers of wishes—you have more power than you realize to make your dreams come true.
Who wants to check Wikipedia? Someone somewhere has to have figured out a way to get into a sleeping bag on the beach without filling the bottom with enough sand to build a ginormous castle.” I huff my hair out of my eyes and dump my bag. Again.
Almost like the beach is laughing at me, the wind shoots most of the sand straight back into my face.
Vi giggles. Of course, she’s completely in her beachy girl element. She probably brings sand in at night and puts it in her bed on purpose so she can feel all at home while she sleeps.
Lauren and Sadie are on the other side of me, having the same epic battle with nature.
Le sigh.
This had better be worth it.
“This is gonna be so worth it,” Sadie says, almost like she read my mind. “I can’t believe all our parents signed off on this.”
“Well, now that Vi’s living right here, it’s really no different than when we have sleepovers in our yards,” says Lauren.
“Yeah, except instead of sharing a fence with cranky old Mr. Nelson, Vi gets to share her backyard with dolphins,” Sadie says.
“And sand,” I mumble, tossing my bag into a crumpled heap. I give up.
But, secretly, I really do think it will be worth any amount of scratchy sand in between my toes tonight. Because, for the first time ever, our parents are letting us stay out all night on the beach to watch the Perseid meteor shower.
The meteor shower—also known as the Night of a Gazillion Shooting Stars, also also known as the Night of a Gazillion Wishes on Shooting Stars—always happens the second week in August. When I was really little, Mama and Daddy would wake me up in the dead middle of the night (the best time to see the meteors) to watch some of it, but usually I just fell back asleep on Daddy’s shoulder. Last year I was allowed to stay up for it, but I crashed out in bed waiting for it to start and nobody woke me back up. Grrr . . .
But this year
. . . this year I not only get to stay up, I get to stay up WITH my best friends AT a sleepover ON the beach. Um, hello? Perfection-ish. And only “ish” because of the sand-in-the-sleeping-bag dilemma.
Because of the sea-turtle light restrictions plus how far away we are from any major cities (despite how my mom tries to spin it, I DO NOT count Wilmington as major), there’s, like, zip zero light pollution at Sandpiper Beach. (For the record, light pollution sounds way less icky than other kinds of pollution.) That means we can see stars from one end of the horizon all the way to the other all year round, but it especially means we have ah-mazing views of the shooting stars. (And yes, Lauren would say they are meteors, which I actually know, but since they look like shooting stars, I’m so completely going with it.)
“Does anyone want any more ‘Vi s’mores’?” Sadie asks. Our parents drew the line at a campfire, so Vi invented these cold s’mores–cookie bar things that are possibly, for real, even better than the actual thing.
“Hand ’em over,” I order.
We chomp for a while, then take new stabs at getting into our bags. I finally accept that the sand is so totally gonna win this one.
We’re quiet for a bit, listening to the waves crash in the dark and staring at the stars. I try not to blink while I wait (sorta, kinda) patiently for the first streak of light across the sky. I’m just starting to get all mellow in an I’m-just-a-tiny-fleck-in-the-giant-universe existentially way when Sadie says, “So, do y’all think we should go boy band or single act?”
All three of us turn our heads to her. “Huh?” I say at the same time as Lauren and Vi say, “What?”
“For the party next week,” Sadie answers.
“Saaaaadie!” all three of us groan.
“Do you ever think of anything besides RSVP?” I ask.
“Yes!” Sadie answers, and she sounds a teeny-tiny bit defensive. Whoops. Hit a nerve. “But next week is our last full week off school, which means this is probably the last party of the summer, and I don’t know about y’all, but I want to go out with a bang!”
We haven’t talked at all about what happens to RSVP when summer ends. I think we’re just assuming it’ll end too. I pretty much am, because I know Lauren will never be on board with anything that interferes with her four-point-one-zillion grade point average, and Vi plays soccer, so I doubt we’d even have time for it anyway.
So last hurrah it is.
“Becs, I’m counting on you,” Sadie says. “This is right up your alley.”
“What, just because it’s music-themed?”
Lauren laughs. “I think more because it’s boy-band-crush-themed.”
“I DO NOT crush on boy bands!” I screech. Then I mumble “anymore” under my breath.
Vi elbows me through her bag. “So are you saying you do not practice kissing on the poster of Trey Pestas that hangs on the back of your door?”
I elbow her back. Harder than she elbowed me. “Omigosh, seriously, y’all. I haven’t kissed that poster in, like, six months. I barely even look at it anymore.” No one needs to know that I had Daddy paint my bedroom walls the exact greenish blue as Trey’s eyes to match the poster. My friends just don’t appreciate a true musical artist when they see one.
I decide to switch the subject from Trey. “So, what are we thinking? Eight-year-old girls and a boy-band theme, right? Okay, so clearly all the girls need to dress like they’re going to a concert. Rock-star chic. They’ll obviously know what that means, right? Orrrrr, they could wear boy-band T-shirts. I could probably find one or two of my old One Direction nightshirts to donate to the cause.”
Vi snickers. “One or two?”
I ignore her and keep talking. “Omigosh, and we for real have to get all of them sunglasses to wear—they can be the favors—and, like, autograph books for the fake band to sign and . . . man, it would be sooo awesome if we had a real fake band.”
Lauren chimes in. “Actually, ‘real fake’ would be an oxymoron. That’s when—”
“Lauren!” Vi yells, and her shout echoes out across the empty beach. “No vocabulary lessons. Let us enjoy our last ten days of freedom!”
Sadie is quieter when she says, “Well, the idea is a boy band and we do know a few boys we could ask. One in particular, who just happens to play an instrument . . .” I can’t see her in the dark, but I know she’s looking at me when she says, “I know you’ve been kind of weird about Ryan and that’s why we didn’t use him for Mr. Vernon’s going-away party, but, Becs, you have to admit he’d be completely perfect for this. He has the hair and the accent and the guitar. The girls will totally eat him up.”
She’s so right, but aaaaaaah. I’m way too embarrassed around Ryan.
I mean, at least I learned my lesson and I’m not throwing myself at him anymore. No more bike crashes for me. The other day, he and Lance were in the line ahead of me, Sades, and Izzy at mini golf and when Lance asked us to join them, I was the one to say they should just go ahead so we could have girl time. I could tell Ryan was, like, ubershocked. His eyebrows were practically hidden in his bangs. But still. I bet he’s gonna be happy to put an entire ocean between us when he goes back to Ireland.
“Please, Becs,” Sadie asks, and I don’t have to see her face to know her nose is doing that crinkly thing it does when she’s begging for something.
“Fine,” I sigh. “But then, I’m totally behind the scenes on this one. I’m so dead serious. And I am NOT going to ask him. Vi, that’s all you. Because if I ask, he’s never going to say yes.”
“That’s fine. Right, everyone?”
“Sure. I can ask him at volleyball,” Vi says.
“Works for me,” Lauren echoes.
“Totally behind the scenes,” I repeat.
We’re all quiet for a few seconds, peering at the stars some more. After a minute I can’t keep silent anymore. “But we completely absolutely have to have a signature drink and name it after the birthday girl with, like, colored sugar dipped around the rims of the glasses. Rock-star parties always have that, I’m pretty positive.”
Lauren and Vi giggle and Sadie reaches her hand over and tries to grab mine (I’m guessing), except she misses in the dark and ends up gripping my shoulder instead.
“Hey! Look!” Lauren’s hand shoots out of her bag and points to a corner of the sky. We all swivel heads in time to catch the tiny trail of a meteor.
I quickly make a wish before it fizzles out.
• • •
“But, Daddy . . .”
“Don’t ‘But, Daddy’ me, Rebecca Elise. You signed the Allowance Agreement, which stated your room had to be clean before cash was dispensed. Do you need me to produce the document?”
“No, but—”
“So if I was to walk home right now, I’d find a spotless room?”
“No, but—” I prop my elbows on the counter at the Visitor’s Center and peer out through the sheets of rain at the statue of Merlin. I bet his dad never made him clean his seaweed house. Or wherever marlin live.
I’m working on a really perfect can’t-resist argument when the little bells above the door clang and I whip my head up. I almost choke on my own spit when I see Ryan walking toward me with a cup of coffee in each hand.
“Daddy! Go hide!” I whisper-yell.
“We’re in a glass box, Rebecca. Where would you like me to disappear to?”
“Anywhere,” I moan. Luckily, Daddy pretends there’s something he needs in the storage closet. As long as he doesn’t come out with Polly Want a Cracker, we’re good. Ryan reaches the counter.
“Halloo,” he says, all softly, with that super-duper-delectable accent. I can’t help it. Even after Sadie totally called me out on liking the idea of Ryan more than the actual person, my heart still flip-flops. It’s the accent, I tell you.
I have to check behind my shoulder to make sure he’s actually talking to me. Okay, so I really don’t know what’s going on here because once Sades and I had our talk, I kind of, sort of replayed all the Ryan
moments from the summer in my head and basically realized that he pretty much was always trying to get away from me, which I was sooo totally stupid not to notice. So what the what is he doing here?
“Um, hi,” I answer. Hi, and could you please go away because I’m totally embarrassed around you, but also could you maybe not go away?
Ryan holds up one of the cups of coffee. “For you. Peace offering.”
Um . . . I’m kind of ashamed to admit that a few weeks ago I would have totally choked down that coffee if it meant I could have Ryan to myself the whole time I drank it, but I’m way more mature now.
“Thank you, but I don’t drink coffee.” I try not to wrinkle my nose when I say it, but blech!
Ryan looks relieved. “Oh good. Me either. I saw some of the other girls drinking it and, um, I thought maybe you did too.”
“Nope. Mostly sweet tea.”
Ryan smiles. “Yeah, sweet tea is one of the best things about this summer. We have plenty of tea in Ireland, believe me, but not like you have it here. I’ll miss it when I go back next week.”
I smile calmly (I think), but on the inside I’m screaming, What. Are. You. Doing. Here?
“Um, so do you want to go get some sweet tea, then?” Ryan asks.
Daddy coughs like he’s choking on something. He’s reappeared from the closet and is fake-busy rearranging the brochure display for fishing charters.
I decide to ignore him. “Um, sure, okay.”
Ryan drapes his jacket over my head to keep the rain off as we run across the town square, and I have to stop myself from squeeing at how romantic that is. I mean, not romantic, of course, because he probably mostly finds me completely annoying, but still. So gentlemanly.
Once we order the tea (Omigosh—and he PAYS for mine! My mother always said you can tell the good ones by their manners and the way they treat their mamas. I bet she’d call Ryan a true Southern gentleman even if his South is all the way in Ireland), Ryan pulls out a chair for me at a table in the corner.
“So I bet you think this is kind of weird,” he says.
Um, I basically would be less surprised if Lauren skipped school or Sadie forgot an item on her to-do list or Vi wore a dress. Oh wait, Vi did wear a dress. But still.