“Not so fast,” the warden called. “I’m afraid I’ll have to take those.”
Angel hesitated. She looked at the road, and I could see her weighing the odds of making a run for it. I admit that the hungry part of me wanted her to try. But then she tipped the clams out on the wet sand at her feet.
“Say,” she said. “Since we’re tourists and all, could you tell me what that island is over there?” She pointed out to sea.
The warden turned and shaded his eyes from the lowering sun. “That’d be Monomoy Island. Too hazy today, but if it were clear, you could see Nantucket a little to the west, right about where that trawler is…. You see it?”
But Angel had already set out for the parking lot, swinging our empty basket. I trudged after her, thinking the whole way home about my empty stomach.
When we got there, I collapsed onto the back steps. “I’m too weak to go inside.”
Angel stood in front of me, patting her hips with a funny look. She lifted the hem of her tee and drew something out of her shorts pocket.
A clam. And then another. And another.
One by one, she pulled eleven clams out and laid them beside me on the step. She spread her hands in mock shock. “Go figure. They must have jumped in while Officer Friendly was showing me Nantucket.”
We boiled those eleven clams. They tasted like salty rubber bands coated in sand. Delicious.
Afterward, Angel went out to toss the shells into the driveway. When she walked back in the door, I really looked at her. Her nails were ragged and blackened. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in a week. Worst of all, her shorts were hanging off her hipbones.
Angel and I were three weeks starving and dirty. And no one had noticed. Wasn’t someone supposed to notice?
CHAPTER 24
Thursday morning, I woke up stuck to the sheets in sweat. It must have been over ninety, and the sun was just up. The renters had only a few quick questions about where the water was coldest, and everybody was gone by ten.
“I saw an air conditioner in Louise’s closet,” Angel remembered. “Under her four hundred shoes.” She went up to check and came back down again in a few minutes. “It weighs a thousand pounds—I think we’re just going to have to boil today. But I found this.” She held out a brown grocery bag. “It has your name on it.”
Angel left to stand in a cold shower. I opened the bag.
A package with a UPS label. Whatever was inside bumped in the box like a solid thing with corners. A book. I opened it, and my heart caught: a brand-new copy of Heloise from A to Z. This was the actual dictionary of household hints. I opened the cover, and the spine cracked, it was so full of new promise. And inside, handwritten, were these words:
For Stella.
Happy birthday and happy hinting.
Heloise.
I stared at that page for a long, long time.
Then I picked up the chair Angel used to give her soap opera report and went out to the garden. I settled the chair in a patch of shade beside Louise.
“Hey, Louise,” I said. “Did you ever notice how I used to do that? Say ‘hey’ in front of your name—‘Hey, Louise’—and I’d slide the words together to make it sound like Heloise? I want you to know it was a compliment. I really like Heloise. And I think you were like her. Thank you so much—that book is the best present.”
It was sweltering out there, but I didn’t want to go in. I leaned over and plucked out a few weeds. “Hey, Louise,” I said again. “I’m sorry about what I thought—that you were taking care of us just for the money. I should have known better. I mean, you’re a gardener. Nobody pays you to take care of these plants. You probably figured Angel and I got planted with you, and you were going to take care of us, and make sure we had everything we needed. You were probably looking forward to seeing what we sprouted into.
“Are you okay out here? I really hope we did the right thing—I thought it would be your favorite place, next to your blueberry bushes. I wish you could see them. They’re doing really well now, finally, but I’ve had to work so hard. George helped—he was the one who told me about the gypsy moths. He really did love your pies, you know. For a while, Angel thought he was in love with you.”
I fanned myself for a minute, thinking about how nice it would have been if George and Louise had been boyfriend and girlfriend, keeping each other company. “Well,” I said finally, “thank you again for the present. You couldn’t have picked anything better, and I really appreciate how you thought ahead and got it signed.”
As I got up, I heard a window creak open above me. Angel craned her head out. “You can just leave the chair out there, you know,” she said.
I went inside and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher and wiped down the counters, moving in slow motion because of the heat. Then I decided it was my birthday, and I should quit working early.
I brought my new book up to my room to place it next to my Hints file, to read when I got home from the beach. But it was missing. My folder of Hints from Heloise, the only thing I had from my grandmother, was missing.
I felt a panic rise in me so powerful, it was hard to take a breath. I flew around the house, looking everywhere. The kitchen, the living room, the den, even the bathrooms.
Finally I banged open Angel’s door. She sat in the mess of her bed, pulling her earphones out. “What?”
“My hints!” I cried. I heard the quaver in my voice, but I didn’t care. “They’re gone. You have to help me find them. Someone must have—”
I stopped short.
There was my Hints folder, on top of Angel’s bureau. I ran over and grabbed it and clutched it to my chest. Then I turned to face her. “You took it? Why?”
Angel stared at me. She pressed her lips closed, and then she put her earphones back in and closed her eyes.
I stormed out. Back in my own room, I went through my hints. They were all there, and all still in order. I read over some of them and my breathing slowed. Still.
How stupid I’d been to think maybe we were becoming friends! Six more weeks until Labor Day. Wherever that girl was, I wasn’t. Back to where we started.
I went to my bed with my new dictionary of hints, pulled a sheet over me even though it was about a hundred degrees, and started with A.
CHAPTER 25
That afternoon, Mrs. Sandpiper called me to babysit.
“Daniel has a ball game in Wareham, and it’s just too hot to make Katie sit in the stands all afternoon,” she said when I got there. “She’s a little minnow this week. Take her to Mill River Beach and she’ll be happy.”
“Oh,” I said. “The thing is, I’m not a lifeguard.”
“That’s okay. We were there this morning. She only flops around in the shallows. It’s so hot.” Mrs. Sandpiper pooched her mouth in the mirror and slicked on some coral lipstick. At her waist, Katie mimicked the pooching, and Mrs. Sandpiper dabbed a spot of lipstick on her lips. I had to close my eyes—sometimes when I saw mothers and daughters, it felt like I was being stung by a hot, bright light.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we could stay here?”
Katie raised her eyebrows and hung her painted mouth open in shock that I could even consider not going to the beach.
“It’ll be fine,” Mrs. Sandpiper said. “Katie, you’re not to go out over your knees, you got that?” She stroked a lipstick line across each of Katie’s little knees. “That’s the mark, okay? You do what Stella tells you.”
Katie nodded so hard her fountain-head flopped over. So I said okay to the beach and told myself there was nothing to worry about. Katie and I waved good-bye to her family, then packed up and hiked down to the beach.
I walked her all the way down to the last jetty, taking our time even though the air was like steam and the cool water called. “How about we make a sand castle?” I suggested. Katie ignored me and headed straight for the water. I caught her hand. “Look,” I said, pointing to a line of birds tottering on their toothpick legs along the wat
er’s edge. “Sandpipers. Those are the birds your cottage is named after.” I swept my palm upward, where the sky was full of birds. “Those big ones are gulls. And the smaller ones are terns. Like the other cottages. I wonder if we can find some plovers….”
Katie couldn’t be distracted with birds. She tugged on my hand.
“And look,” I tried. “Way down there, to the west. The sky looks dark there, like it might be raining. We shouldn’t stay too long, in case Daniel’s game gets canceled.”
Katie tugged harder. She wasn’t going to buy anything I offered. I dumped our stuff and let her drag me into the water. And her mother was right—all Katie wanted to do was splash around in the shallows.
After a while, I plunked myself down near her and leaned back on my elbows to watch. Each time one of the tiny waves slapped me on the belly, I laughed at the cold splash, but I still wished we weren’t here. Weeks ago, when Angel was yelling about my rules, she said I must have a hundred rules about swimming. And she was right. Always face the waves—that way you know what’s coming. Never swim at night—jellyfish and other dangers are hard to see in the dark. Never swim alone. Never swim on an outgoing tide. The ocean was unpredictable. It helped to have some rules.
In front of me, Katie draped a hank of seaweed over her head and laughed so hard she fell over backward. I jumped to my feet, but she was up and laughing in a second. Four years old, that kid had no fear. She was like Angel that way. So different from me.
And that’s when I felt the alarm bells at the back of my neck. I stood up and looked around. Katie was dogpaddling in a circle in front of me. A dozen kids were splashing around in the waist-high water. Families all around me were reading and eating and dozing. Everyone was fine. It was a sunny day at the beach, and everyone was fine.
The alarm bells shrilled louder. It didn’t make sense. No one had left me.
I took a few steps up the beach, but there was nothing to see. I walked back to the water. “Katie,” I called. “Come in.”
A woman walking the shore in a red suit stopped. She waved to a little boy in the water, then looked at me.
“Katie! Come out of the water. Now.”
Katie stood up and cocked her head at me, trying to decide if I was serious.
“What is it?” the woman asked.
“Do you have all your kids?” I asked. I didn’t care how foolish I sounded.
The woman just stared at me. I turned back to Katie. “Hurry up, Kate.”
Other parents rose and came to the shoreline, alert to something in my voice. “Bring them in,” I told them.
“What?” the woman in the red suit asked.
She was at least a foot taller than I was, but somehow it felt like I was looking into her eyes on a level. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m never wrong when I get this feeling. Bring them in.”
I rushed out and took Katie by the wrist. “Justin,” I heard the woman in the red suit call. “Come in now, honey.” The other parents started calling in their kids nervously.
And suddenly I understood why I felt someone was missing: The sky was empty of birds. I scanned the horizon. The wall of clouds in the west had gathered itself into a ball, blacker and much closer now. And rolling—tumbling over itself, it was coming so fast, like a bowling ball hurled down the curve of the coast. “Look. There.” I pointed to it, and just as I did, a thread of lightning sizzled down from the thunderheads and danced a second on the sea.
I got Katie to the towels and dried her off, counting to the first muffled clap of thunder. The storm was about three miles away. Parents were running into the water now, grabbing their kids, splashing back to shore.
I tugged Katie’s T-shirt and sneakers on, stuffed everything else into the beach bag. The sky grew darker suddenly, and a cool wind gusted up, chopping into the water, which had turned the color of steel. Around us, the other families were gathering themselves, hurrying.
I glanced up and saw another silver bolt snake through the sky, jagged as broken glass. The crack of thunder followed right away—this storm meant business. “Hurry up, kidlet.” I took Katie’s hand and pulled her along as fast as her little legs could go.
Halfway to the parking lot, it began to rain—fat, cold drops that seemed to be in a hurry to get to the ground before the big show. The wind picked up against us. The rain was pelting down so hard now that each drop sent shots of sand spattering our calves.
“It’s biting me!” Katie cried.
“Faster, Katie, hurry.”
At the parking lot, families who had been at the nearer jetties were already piling into cars and peeling out. I hurried Katie up the road, the rain sheeting down now so that it was hard to see. We ducked into the woods, where the rain poured off the leaves in drenching curtains and the trees shook with each thunderclap. The pine needles and sand made a slippery muck and Katie kept falling, so I scooped her into my arms and scrambled up the path behind the cottages.
In the clearing, the air around us felt like a solid living thing, glimmering a sick yellow through the rain. It suddenly split in two right above us with a crack so loud, I thought my rib cage had exploded. A pine branch crashed to the ground behind us. Katie screamed and dug her fingers into my neck, and I flat-out raced across the yard to Sandpiper. And only as I pulled out the key did I recognize it from every illustration of Ben Franklin discovering electricity the hard way. I dropped Katie, opened the door, and threw the key down, then grabbed her again and tumbled with her to the couch.
I got Katie into dry clothes, and we watched the storm. It was over quickly, racing away as fast as it had come in. Afterward, Katie wouldn’t leave my side. A branch had broken a windowpane in the kitchen, and she sat on her hands on the counter, perfectly still, while I pulled out the shards of glass and taped in a square of cardboard I’d cut from a Wheaties box. Even though the sun came out, she didn’t want to go outside, so we settled on the couch with grilled cheese sandwiches and played Candy Land, her hand curled in mine.
“She was the first one! Nobody else saw it!” Katie told her parents over and over when they got home.
Katie’s mother couldn’t stop thanking me. “We heard about the storm and raced home as fast as we could. We were so afraid you were stuck at the beach.” When she paid me, she gave me an extra twenty. “It doesn’t begin to thank you,” she said. “I really can’t thank you enough for being so responsible. I’m sure you make your family very proud.”
It was like a different day—the sun was low and the air was cool now, and so clear that on the horizon I could see a humped shape that must be Nantucket. I walked across the yard, covered now with branches and leaves, wishing I wasn’t so mad at Angel—I wanted to tell someone about my day.
No. I wanted to tell Angel about it.
When I got inside, the living room was dark. At first I thought the storm had knocked out the power, but no, it was just that the shades were down. I closed the door behind me, and Angel stepped out of the shadows.
“Happy birthday to you,” she sang. Her face was beaming in the light of twelve wooden matches planted in the frosting of a cake. “I made it yesterday when you were at the beach. Mrs. Plover picked up the stuff at the store for me,” Angel said in a rush. “It’s just a mix and the frosting’s canned, so I thought, Hey, that’s easy, I can handle it. But look—it’s all crooked and saggy. That’s why I took your Heloise folder. I’m sorry. I was looking for a hint to fix it, but I couldn’t tell you, because it would ruin the surprise.”
“Oh, Angel…thank you!” I stared between Angel’s face, grinning with pride, and the cake she’d made, feeling stupid because I couldn’t come up with the words I really wanted to say. “Thank you,” I said again. “Thank you, Angel!”
Angel pulled me into the kitchen and sat me at the table. She had set it with Louise’s good china and silver, and a vase of roses and daylilies. She filled two crystal wineglasses with water and cut two big slices of cake. Her smile fell. “It’s all soupy inside. I mess
ed it up—it’s not cooked enough….”
“No, it’s good that way. I hate dry cake. And it’s not your fault. Louise’s oven is out of whack—it runs cool,” I lied. “I should have told you.”
Angel’s face relaxed, and we ate the cake. And it was good—really good—like cake with batter in it.
“Angel,” I said, as we sat at the table licking the last frosting off our forks, “you’re always acting so tough, like you don’t care. About George, about Louise, about me. But then you do these things….” I raised my hands to the cake and the flowers. “You’re such a Yankee!”
Angel put her fork down, wary. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Before I could answer, the phone rang. We both jumped.
Angel snatched it up. “No, we’re fine. Yep, we have power.” She mouthed “George” at me and flicked some pretend sweat from her forehead.
“Tell him a kitchen window broke in Sandpiper. We need a pane of glass.”
Angel did, and then she listened some more. “No, you just missed her. Ah…them. You just missed her and her boyfriend.” Whatever the response was made her squeeze her eyes shut, as though it hurt to hear it. “Well, how about you just mail it, okay?…No…Well, okay, see you soon.”
She hung up and swore. “He’s on his way over. Some papers that won’t wait.” Angel spread her hands.
“We’d better clean up.”
She looked around the kitchen. Her gaze rested on the fancy china and wineglasses on the table. “Or not….”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, maybe he’s not in love with her. But we still need him to believe in Louise’s boyfriend.” Angel ran out the back door, and I heard her clang open the recycling bin.
She came back again carrying an empty wine bottle. She placed it on the table next to the glasses, then dashed upstairs and came down with a can of hairspray and a tube of Louise’s lipstick. Hairspray clouded the kitchen. “Best I could do. No perfume.” Then she smeared some lipstick on and pressed one of the glasses to her mouth a couple of times. She held the glass up and nodded. “Okay, now for the last touch.”
Summer of the Gypsy Moths Page 14