by Carol Snow
She nodded. "I liked him. And, he was quite good-looking-- tall and athletic, with dark hair and these grayish green eyes. And he had a dimple in his chin. Like you. Of course, I wasn't sure he'd ever go in the water again, after the stingray, but there he was."
Had he been looking for her too? I wondered. Maybe he was plotting to "accidentally" twist an ankle in a child's abandoned hole or cut his finger on a shell.
"He recognized me right away," she said. "Even without the white coat. And we got to talking. He was from up north. He'd just gotten a graduate degree in architecture, and he was traveling around the country before deciding where to settle down."
She grew quiet.
"How long did he stay?" I prodded, hungry for details.
"Just till that Saturday." She shot me a sheepish look. "I called in sick Thursday and Friday."
My jaw dropped. My mother never calls in sick, even when she can barely get out of bed.
"He never promised me anything," she said in a rush. "And I never expected anything in return. We were just ... in the moment. Collecting seashells, wandering through the farmers' market. Making dinner together and laughing. Always laughing."
"You cooked?." That was almost more shocking than a fling with a stranger.
"Okay, he cooked," she admitted. "I watched. Plus I did some
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of the chopping." She paused, and her eyes grew happy and sad all at once, with a distant look, as if she were watching a memory long buried.
"I was sad when he left," she told me. "And, of course, a part of me kept hoping he'd come back. But mostly I was grateful for the time we had together. He showed me I could be happy again."
"But you were pregnant," I said.
"Indeed I was." She blushed.
"Just like Chastity Dunhauser." I couldn't help it: It just slipped out.
She straightened. "But with a medical degree. And a means of supporting myself." Her mouth twitched. "But, okay--kind of like Chastity Dunhauser."
"Did you tell him? About me?" I was almost afraid to hear the answer.
She shook her head. "At first, I didn't think he needed to know. But then, after you were born, I thought he might want to see you. Plus, I figured you'd start asking questions when you got older."
Actually, I'd started asking questions from the time I was old enough to talk.
"So I checked the files at the clinic," she said. "But the only address he had given was his local hotel, and he hadn't filled in his social security number."
"What about a last name?" I asked.
She smiled ruefully. "Smith."
"John Smith." I swallowed. "Great." I remembered what she'd said about the architecture studies. "But he'd just gotten a degree,
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right? Couldn't you check with the university?"
"I tried that." She held my eyes for a moment before looking away. "They had no record of him."
I let this information sink in. "So he lied about going to school?"
She hesitated. "He definitely lied about something."
John Smith. Why not just call himself John Doe? "So maybe that wasn't even his real name." In which case I'd never know who he was. Never.
She nodded and took my hand. "I know how it sounds, but I've never regretted it, not for an instant. He made me want to live again. Besides, I got you out of the whole deal, and you're the best thing that's ever happened to me." She ran a hand along my wet hair. "I should have told you sooner. But I didn't know how to explain that you can love someone you barely know, even if you're not entirely sure who he is. And that you hold on to that love and find joy in it long after he's gone. I don't expect you to understand. I don't entirely understand it myself."
"But I do understand," I whispered. "I understand more than you can know."
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***
27
My mother said I could go to the snack shack with Beanie. She was worried, I could tell, but she loved Beanie, and she knew that Beanie was good for me.
Beanie called her mom to tell her about the swim team and to ask if she could have dinner with me. "The snack shack. With Claire. I don't know--a salad or something. I won't get the onion rings.... I know, Mother. I know."
She closed her phone and blinked back tears. "Do they still have those veggie burgers at the snack shack?"
I shook my head. "No one ever ordered them."
"Why not?"
"Because they tasted like dirt." I was trying to make her smile. It didn't work. "You know, Beanie, training in the pool two hours a day--it's not like splashing around at sea camp. You're going to work your butt off. You'll be starving pretty much all of the time."
"Great," she moaned.
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I shook my head. "You can eat anything, and you'll still lose weight! Not that you need to. Forget what your mother says."
She nodded like she didn't believe me. "Maybe I'll get a chicken sandwich." She checked her duffel bag to make sure she had her wallet. "At practice yesterday? I brought my stuff in a beach bag. I looked like a complete dork."
"Nah," I said. "I bet no one even noticed."
"Oh, and I saw Nate with that blond girl, you know the one we saw at the beach?" She zipped the bag and straightened. "I talked to them for a little bit."
"Really?" I said casually. "What's she like?"
Beanie shuddered. "A total bitch."
"Maybe she's not so bad when you get to know her." I was feeling bad for having judged Larissa so harshly.
She swung her head to look at me. "You're kidding, right?"
I remembered the way I'd treated Beanie: the eye rolling, the stuff with the Snickers bar. "Of course I'm kidding. C'mon, let's get out of here."
At the beach, my mother sat in her car watching us cross the parking lot to the snack shack. "I'm fine!" I called to her. "I'll be home in an hour."
She frowned with concern and then turned the car back on. "I love you," she called out. To my surprise, I wasn't even embarrassed (though I'd wait till I got home to tell her that I loved her too).
Alexei was at the counter. With all the kids back in school, they'd run out of fluent English speakers to take orders. Not that it mattered: Anyone with a fifty-word vocabulary (burger, shake,
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dog, fries--you get the picture) could succeed at the snack shack.
I approached first (Beanie was trying to decide between a grilled-chicken sandwich and a turkey burger). "I'll have a foot-long dog. And a Sprite." I really wanted a bacon cheeseburger and a shake, but I didn't want to torture Beanie.
"Wiv zuh dog, you want zuh everything?" Alexei's face was all seriousness.
"Yeah, the everything. I mean, everything." That meant jalapeños, onions, and pickles. Good thing I wouldn't be kissing Nate tonight. Yeah, real good thing.
Alexei nodded and wrote my order--in slow, spiky letters-- on a green order pad.
"I didn't think you'd still be here," I said. "Are you staying in the United States?"
He shook his head. "I haff work permit--is for summer, just. I leaf, it is in two days."
"But you come back next summer, maybe?"
He glanced at Beanie, who quickly looked away. "I don't know. But I like that. I like that berry, berry much."
I stepped aside to make room for Beanie. "What's better?" she asked Alexei. "The chicken sandwich or the turkey burger?"
He shook his head. "Is neither. Is best is the cheeseburger. You get?"
She scrunched up her nose. "Too fattening."
"Ugh!" Alexei threw back his head. "You American girls, you think too much about is fattening! American girls, so many is too skinny, is all bones! But you--" He looked at Beanie intently. "You is perfect."
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They stared at each other over the counter. Her face flushed red, her eyes shone.
Alexei put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. "You have cheeseburger, yes?"
"Yes," she whispered in a husky voice.
"And onion rings?"
"Yes."
"And--I think a shake? Is chocolate?"
"Oh, yes!" She caught herself. "On second thought, I'll just have water. Wouldn't want to overdo."
When the food came, I went to the counter to get my hot dog and soda. Alexei slid the cheeseburger across the counter to Beanie (I could have gotten my bacon cheeseburger, after all). She reached for the ketchup. He grabbed her hand.
"I do for you," he said. He pulled the burger bun off. With the red plastic ketchup bottle, he drew a heart on top of Beanie's cheeseburger,
"Oh, wow," she murmured.
"Catch you later," I whispered in Beanie's ear. She nodded without taking her eyes off of Alexei.
I started down the road, eating as I walked, until I reached the street that led to the beach houses. They looked different from the road: far less impressive and more like regular old houses--or, worse, like a great, big line of garages. Trash day was tomorrow; the curb was cluttered with green garbage cans.
Outside the Ice Cube House, the pink flip-flop was in the second can I opened, sitting on top of a tied black trash bag. I pulled it out with two fingers, half expecting it to be covered with something
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sticky or slimy or smelly. But it was just the way I had left it, white sand still clinging to the crevices.
The front door banged open. I crammed the flip-flop into the front pocket of my red lifeguard hoodie.
She was wearing the white sundress, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She carried a tropical-print duffel bag over to a worn but clean-looking tan SUV. A man followed her out the door. Even from this distance, I could tell it wasn't Mr. Sealy. This guy was taller and thinner, and he wore a faded blue T-shirt that Mr. Sealy wouldn't be caught dead in. It was the man in the photograph. It was Larissa's father.
I licked my finger and rubbed it around my mouth to remove any traces of mustard. Slowly, carefully, holding my breath, I approached the SUV. Larissa and her father looked up at the same time.
"Hi," I said.
"Howdy," Larissa's father said. I liked that. He went back to packing the SUV--a couple of shopping bags, a laundry basket. "I'm Claire," I said to Larissa.
Her eyes grew huge. She shot a glance at her father and then walked with me to the end of the driveway. "So it was real?" she whispered.
I nodded. It was hard not to stare. She seemed more beautiful than ever: more vibrant than when I'd first seen her on the beach, less self-conscious than when I'd first seen her face reflected in the mirror. Never underestimate the power of a few days in the sun and a whole lot of onion rings.
She blinked, confused. "For a while I thought I was dreaming.
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And then I thought I was dead. There was this angel with red hair...."
"I don't know that I'd call her an angel," I said. "A spirit, maybe."
"Are you a spirit too?"
"Me? Oh, no! I'm just a normal--well, I'm just a person. So, do you ... remember everything?"
She pulled her ponytail forward and played with the end. "Not much. Just a few pieces here and there. I remember pink pills. And sleeping. Then I was kind of floating, up by the ceiling. I saw you go out of the room, and then later you came back. And there was this lady--I guess it was your mom. She looked worried. And this girl walked in."
Here she froze for a moment. When she started speaking again, her voice was soft, almost hoarse. "It was me--the girl. She looked just like me. That's when I thought I was dead."
I looked back at her father. He smiled at us.
"You were never dead," I said. "You just... became part of a greater whole for a while. We're all connected, in a way. Only most of the time, we don't know it. Does that make sense?"
She considered. "No."
"It's probably best if you don't mention this to anyone," I said.
She nodded. "Nobody would believe me anyway."
"Just so you know," I said. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I mean, I didn't do it on purpose."
She smiled a little. "It's okay. It worked out in the end."
Her father was arranging things in the back of the SUV. "Your dad seems nice."
"He is. I still can't believe he's here."
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"I sent him an e-mail," I told her. "You know ... from you." Was there anything else she needed to know? "Oh! And you saved a kid from drowning yesterday. If anyone mentions it, just smile and nod."
"But I can't even swim!"
"It's all in the mind. Trust me. So ... it's okay? The custody and everything?"
She tossed her ponytail behind her shoulder. "The lawyers still have to fight over the details, but yeah, we'll get a lot more time together. He talked to my mother this morning. Her ship was in, like, Crete or something. She knew she was busted. She said me and my dad could be together till she gets back."
"I'm really happy for you." I put my hands in the pocket of my hoodie and touched rubber. I pulled out the flip-flop. "I almost forgot. I lost the other one on the beach. I'm really sorry."
"Don't worry about it." She shrugged. "I never liked them much anyway. A little too girly, ya know?"
I slipped the shoe back into my pocket.
Larissa's father closed the back of the SUV and strode over. He put his arm around Larissa and kissed the top of her head. He looked like her: same mud-colored eyes, same straight nose, same oval-shaped face. His lips were thinner, though, and the pieces didn't fit together quite the same way. Genetics are a funny thing.
"Say good-bye to your cat for me," Larissa said.
"I will."
"You're lucky you're not allergic," she said. "And from what I could see, you're lucky about a lot of things." I nodded. She was right.
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***
28
I ran into Nate at the end of the road.
"Dude," he said, his eyes searching. "Is she still here?"
I shook my head. "You just missed her." It was true: The tan SUV had passed a minute earlier.
Nate's face fell. He stuck his hands into his red hoodie (we matched) and pulled out a pink flip-flop, the mate to the one in my own front pocket.
"I was going to give her this," he said.
"I'll take it," I said, reaching for the shoe. "She gave me the other one to hold on to. You know, in case this one ever showed up."
The rubber flip-flop felt surprisingly warm, almost magical. The pink and orange petals at the V matched the clouds that framed the setting sun. The storm had never made it to land, but the clouds painted a spectacular sunset.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the other shoe, and then I dropped them both onto the sandy street.
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I kicked off one sneaker and then another. "Do you think they'd fit me?" He gazed at the shoes.
"It's funny." He tilted his head back up. His eyes were so green. "I wouldn't have guessed that you and Larissa would wear the same size, but they look like they'd be perfect." With the sun behind him, his golden curls glowed orange at the edges. He looked like an angel.
"Try them on," he said, smiling. "I think they'd look good on you."
In the rosy glow of the sunset, on that cool and sandy street, I took a deep breath and stepped into the pink shoes.
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