by Jenn Bennett
“I need to pay half in a sock full of pennies, half in a check that looks like it’s been dug out of a trash can,” I say.
She lowers her paperback until big eyes outlined dramatically with Cleopatra-style makeup peer at me from beneath thick bangs that have been chemically straightened and smoothed with a flat iron.
“Cousin,” she says brightly, her grin broad and slow as she pulls me into a hug over the counter. We nearly knock over a display of mermaid-topped writing pens near the register. She grasps my shoulders and pulls back to look me over. “See? This is why you should post more selfies. I had no idea your hair is longer than mine now. You should let me snip-snip it into something strange and beautiful,” she says, eyes twinkling like a mad scientist.
Evie cuts her own hair. She’s strange in a very good way and a million times cooler than me. And though her parents moved back and forth between Beauty and a couple hours away in Boston, causing us to miss some time growing up together, we’ve developed a long-distance friendship over the last few years.
She shoves me softly. “Can’t believe you’re here. Thought you’d be arriving after dark?”
“We downloaded an app to avoid police radar,” Mom explains, sliding around the counter to wind long arms around Evie. “You’ve never lived until you’ve been in a U-Haul going eighty in a fifty-five zone.”
“It was terrifying,” I inform my cousin. “Seriously thought the Pink Panther was going to disconnect and fly off.”
“How you and my mama are sisters is a complete mystery, Aunt Winona,” Evie says as she leans around Mom’s shoulder to peer out the front window. “Um, you know you’ll get ticketed if you park there without a permit. Massive fine.”
Mom groans. “Ugh. Beauty. Nothing changes—even the Nook’s counter stool still squeaks. What the hell am I doing back here again?”
“Saving up for palm trees and white, sandy beaches,” I remind her.
“And saving me,” Evie says. “Grandma Diedre left too many instructions—the store window has to be changed out to her exact list of boring books every month, because God forbid anything changes around here. And even though I’ve counted everything a hundred times, the safe has somehow been $6.66 short for two days, because the vengeful spirit of the town is smiting us for selling fiction with dirty words in a town settled by puritans and yachting fanatics.”
“Ah ha! Knew it!” Mom says. “I was just reminding Josie that this place is built over an actual portal to hell, and everyone who lives here is a minion of the dark lord.”
A creaking floorboard near the old printing press makes us all turn our heads at once. A boy about my age stares back at us—at me.
Big, black Doc Martens. Black leather jacket. Dark waves of hair eddy and swirl around his face like fog circling a lamppost, overlapping a network of scars that mark one side of his face and forehead. Part of his eyebrow is missing. A tiny black cat is tattooed on his hand between his thumb and forefinger.
Carrying a book, he grips the strap of a brain-bucket style motorcycle helmet with the words LUCKY 13 curving around the back in a wicked font. He squints at me through a fan of black lashes—first at the camera case hanging around my neck, then at my face.
He stares at me like I’m the ghost of his dead dog. Like he’s surprised to see me.
Like we’re old friends … or enemies.
I feel as if I’ve just been asked a question in a foreign language, and I’m struggling to pick through a tangle of words, syllable by syllable, searching for meaning. Who are you, and what do you want from me?
A funny feeling sprouts in the pit of my stomach. Suddenly there’s a word puzzle in my head, and the blanks are slowly filling in, and it’s dawning-dawning-dawning on me what the answer to the puzzle could be. Because as much time as I’ve spent away from Beauty, the last five years, I did spend my childhood here. And during that childhood, I had a best friend. But I haven’t seen him since I was twelve, and he was twelve, and …
Oh. My. God.
Lucky Karras.
He grew up. Good. And I do mean good. How did he get so big? He looks intimidating … and sort of angry. Don’t think Hey, old pal o’ mine! How about a hug? is the appropriate response.
He was pretty mad at me when I left town. That was five years ago. And not my fault. Surely, he’s not holding a grudge. I wish I would have had time to brush my hair. I didn’t know I was going to be getting out of a moving truck and seeing … Lucky 2.0.
Mom the Obvious, however, doesn’t notice the electric stare-down that’s happening right in front of her very face. She also doesn’t recognize him and is all jokes and fake chagrin. “Oh, sorry. Not you, though,” she calls out to him lightheartedly. “I’m sure you aren’t a demonic minion.”
“Clearly you don’t know me,” he says in husky voice that sounds like smoke and gravel—one that’s changed along with his body.
“But I’d like to. Winona Saint-Martin.” She sticks out her hand, but he doesn’t take it.
“Know who you are,” he says, switching his cool gaze to her briefly.
And as he walks past me, he slows long enough to murmur, “Hello, Josie. Welcome back to the portal to hell.”
Then he tosses the book onto the printing press and strides out the shop’s front door.
I exhale a long, shaky breath.
“Yikes,” Mom says. “Already driving away customers. My mother will be so proud.”
Evie waves a dismissive hand. “That’s just Phantom.”
“Who?” Mom says.
“Lucky Karras. Remember the Karrases? His parents used to own the tiny boat-repair business a block away? They bought the big boatyard across the street. Father’s a boat mechanic. Mother runs the business.”
“That’s Nick and Kat Karras’s kid?” Mom says. “Josie’s Lucky?”
A warmth zips up my chest. “He wasn’t mine. We were just friends.” Good friends.
“Did you recognize him?” Mom asks without giving me a chance to respond. “I don’t think he recognized you.”
“He did,” I say, a little dazed.
“He’s been camped out here, watching the window for your U-Haul,” Evie murmurs, giving me a suggestive smile behind my mom’s back.
“Really would have liked to be warned about this before we showed up,” I say through pinched lips.
“Last time I saw him,” Mom muses, oblivious to Evie’s comment, “he was a snotty-nosed little punk with a head full of black curls. When did he grow up into a dark and disenchanted Holden Caufield?”
Evie snorts a short laugh. “A couple years after you guys left town? I call him Phantom of the Bookshop, because he’s in here all the time, brooding in the back.”
“I thought the Karrases moved?” I say, still stunned.
“They did,” Evie says. “Like I said, their business moved across the street.”
That’s not what I meant. I thought they moved out of town—gone. I had no idea he still lived here. All the times we’ve been in and out of Beauty for the occasional weekend over the past few years, I’ve never once seen him or heard about the Karrases.
“He was in that fire before we left town,” Mom says. “At the lake house.”
“His scars … ,” I murmur. The last time I saw him, it was about a week after the fire, and he was bandaged up, in the hospital, awaiting news about surgery. I remember his parents being worried, whispering with doctors when I’d come see him every afternoon at Beauty Memorial during visiting hours, but they said he’d be fine.
Mom and I left town in such a hurry, I never got to say goodbye.
“He had a lot of skin grafts,” Evie says. “I don’t know … I think it changed him, because he sort of withdrew after that. He’s been in and out of a little trouble ever since, but—”
“Whoa. What kind of trouble?” Mom interrupts.
“This and that. You know Beauty,” Evie says with a shrug. “Hard to know what’s gossip and what’s fact.”
“This
town eats you alive, one way or another,” Mom says. “Hope he keeps his trouble out of this shop.”
“Don’t worry,” Evie assures her. “He just reads and sulks.”
I stare out the bookshop window, watching Lucky straddle an old red motorcycle parked across the street in front of a building with a sign that says: NICK’S BOATYARD. REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE. Matching his tattoo, an actual black cat sits in a patch of sunlight inside the boatyard’s office window.
How could that be the same boy I knew? Impossible.
As he straps on his Lucky 13 helmet, Mom clears her throat, catching my attention.
“Nope. Don’t even think about it,” she warns me.
“I was just looking out the window, jeez.” Is my neck warm? Grandma Diedre needs to invest in some modern AC in this stuffy, old shop.
“The Saint-Martin love curse is stronger here,” Mom insists. “Look at our record in Beauty. My grandfather kept three mistresses in a hotel across town. My dad left my mom for a business deal in California. My sister Franny … well”—she turns to Evie—“you know what happened to your own mother.”
“Mom,” I say sharply. Ugh. Talk about foot-in-mouth disease, my mom has it.
“It’s fine,” Evie says.
But is it? Evie’s father died of a stroke last year. He spent a couple of days in the hospital but didn’t make it. The funeral was awful; that was the last time we were in town, in fact, just for a short time. Evie coped, but her mom kind of had a nervous breakdown and never really got over his death—and Mom thinks that’s why Grandma encouraged her to rent out their house and run off to Nepal, leaving Evie to move in with us in the above-shop apartment. Mom says Evie’s mom was always Grandma’s favorite. You would think two adult sisters with kids of their own would be long past the Petty Jealousy phase, but I guess it’s something you never grow out of.
“Regardless,” Mom says, a little embarrassed, “everyone in Beauty knows I got hit by the Saint-Martin curse too. Tried to leave town to outrun it and ended up a single thirty-six-year-old mom of a seventeen-year-old. Now just imagine what the curse will do to you here, Josie. Heartbreak city, that’s what.”
Before I can protest, Evie picks up her paperback pirate romance and waves it, several slender silver rings clinking together on her thumb and index finger. She exclusively reads historical romance books. Earls and governesses. Princes and governesses. Governesses and governesses. If it involves the moors and a gothic castle, even better. She recently made the decision to give up real-life love in exchange for vicarious romance on the page. “Relationship-free and zero regrets.” Or so she claims …
“Not here for relationships of any kind,” I inform both of them.
Never had one, never want one.
Honestly, all I care about right now is building up my portfolio so that my father will agree to take me on as a photography apprentice in LA next year, after I finish high school. But I don’t say that out loud. It’s my own private secret. If there’s one thing that will break my mom’s heart, it’s not romance—it’s the thought of me leaving her. The ultimate betrayal.
I know it makes me a monster. I know. But the thing is, even though I may be cursed on this side of the family pie, there’s a whole other half of the pie that I don’t even know. Grandparents I’ve never met. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. My dad even has a new wife, a painter. And once I’m eighteen, Mom can’t stop me from traveling to see my dad. I only talked to him about it in a general sort of way, but I think I can convince him to let me apprentice for him. And that would be such a dream—to learn photography from a real master.
To learn how to be a real daughter in a real family.
Maybe one that communicates better than this one does.
That’s my exit strategy. Beauty is my last layover town, then I’m going as far west as I can, seeking meaningful connections. People who eat dinner together and talk about their problems. People who do normal family things—backyard barbecues and trips to the zoo. Parents teaching kids how to swim and ride bikes. I want all that.
And I have a solid three-step plan to make it happen:
Step One: Prove to my father that I’m motivated and talented.
Step Two: Save up enough cash to get to LA.
Step Three: Graduate from high school before my grandma returns from Nepal.
That last one … that’s tough. Next summer, Grandma Diedre’s overseas tour in Nepal is up, and that’s when Beauty will go from Layover Town to Family Fight Zone. My mom knows this; we’re on borrowed time here.
Beauty’s a ticking time bomb. I’m just clearing a path forward before it blows.
“Not here for relationships,” I repeat to Mom and Evie. So I don’t care how good he grew up, Lucky Karras can go sulk in someone else’s bookshop. “I just want to tough it out long enough to finish high school in one piece.”
But when I see the pitiful way Evie’s sad eyes look down at me, as if both my three-step plan and the future are spread out before her like a bad tarot card reading, I begin to wonder if I’ll even survive this town until summer.
BEAUTY HIGH, GO BREAKERS!: This quintessential 1980s plastic school sign molded into the shape of an ocean wave flanks the front sidewalk of the public high school. Last renovated in 1985, the building sits downhill from the well-funded Ivy League preparatory private school, Golden Academy. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 2
June
First impressions can be deceiving. Maybe I shouldn’t have kindled any excitement whatsoever about returning to Beauty, because it only took four months for my initial hope to drain, and now I’m basically functioning on low-power mode and praying my battery doesn’t die completely.
Between third and fourth period on the last day of school before summer break, I summon what’s left of my energy, make myself as small as possible, and head down the western corridor of Beauty High, music thrumming through earbuds that block out the discord of the hallways—all the lockers slamming and all the football players shouting out to their bros. The laughter and buzzy excitement about graduation parties. The freshman kid crying in the restroom. Summer plans being solidified. Drug deals being made.
I keep as far away from these people as possible. Some of them I used to know when we were kids, and some of them might be okay now, but I’m in a full-on survival mentality, and I can’t take any chances. Whenever Mom and I move somewhere new, I usually keep to myself and don’t make many friends. People aren’t disposable. It hurts when you get attached and have to leave them a few months later—something Mom doesn’t seem to understand.
But unlike in other places we’ve lived, the students at Beauty won’t leave me alone. They’ve poked and prodded me as if I’m a prize poodle who’s unwittingly stumbled into some kind of kennel club competition for Worst in Show. Since the day I registered for school here, it’s been one long series of invasive questions. Did you really live in a cheap motel for two months? Were you on food stamps? Is your mother a sex addict? Does your father really know Prince Harry? Why did your grandmother really go to Nepal to live with Sherpas? Is she involved in some kind of cult?
Leering eyes, the constant texted rumors zipping around school … sometimes just walking from one class to the next feels like I’m walking through a war zone. I might step on a land mine and lose a foot—or gain an illegitimate baby, you never know. I’m taking both my life and my flimsy reputation into my own hands every time the bell rings.
Everywhere else Mom and I lived, no one knew us. But here, people know just enough. Intimate details of our life are tossed around for entertainment. Not everything they say is true, but some of it is. And some of it hurts.
I’m starting to think that saving up for my exit strategy to LA to live with my dad might not be worth the torture of staying here for an entire year. But at least I have the summer to recharge. To retreat into the bookshop and my photography.
“Josephine?”
And I may have something els
e—this is the other thing, right here.
Please let me have this.
Pulling out my earbuds, I jog across the corridor to the journalism classroom to meet a bespectacled middle-aged teacher with a shiny bald crown, Mr. Phillips. He’s in charge of the Beauty High yearbook and the school paper. More importantly, his wife works at a regional magazine that’s published right here in Beauty—Coast Life. New England travel, food, lifestyle … that sort of thing. And it’s his wife’s job that interested me most, because where there’s a magazine, there’s photography. And where’s there’s photography, there are internships.
The summer internship at Coast Life is a good one.
“Miss Saint-Martin. See you made it through junior year.” Mr. Phillips smiles as he adjusts round, gold-rimmed eyeglasses that are, style wise, somewhere between John Lennon and Harry Potter. “Got any big plans this summer?”
I always have plans.
“Working at the Nook part-time,” I tell him, anxious for him to give me the news.
“Sounds fun. And what about your photography? Will you be taking more pictures of signs around Beauty for your portfolio?”
“Always on the lookout for a good sign. They’re humanity’s communications, and I’m just the messenger with the camera.”
“Love that,” he says.
Is he making small talk to let me down easy, or to withhold the good news longer? I can’t tell, but it’s making me nervous. Mr. Phillips is nice and one of the few teachers I actually don’t mind here. But the truth is, I need his help if I’m ever going to make it to Los Angeles next year.
The problem is that my famous father is famous for a reason, and he’s notoriously tough. I need to prove to him that I have what it takes. See, I know I can take pictures. I’m mostly self-taught—my dad’s given me pointers—but I’ve got a good eye, and I’ve taken thousands and thousands of photos over the years. I develop my own film, old-school style, in a darkroom. I’ve even got an online funding account—Photo Funder—a photography donation fan site on which I post exclusive photos for paid anonymous subscribers. Most months, it only brings in around a hundred bucks, and I’m pretty sure the majority of my subscribers are Mom’s friends and my grandmother. Not enough to prove to my father that I’m worthy.