Hidden Pieces

by Paula Stokes

  “It was on a good sale,” I assure her. “And it’s the perfect color for you.”

  “It is,” my dad agrees. “And it looks so warm.”

  Mom bought me mostly little things—clothes, candy, a pretty blue shade of eye makeup—but the last thing I open from her is tickets to a photography exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.

  “I wanted to surprise you with something, and I figured since you went to that exhibit in Cannon Beach with Holden . . .” She trails off.

  I look up the exhibit on my phone. “This sounds amazing,” I tell her. “Are you going to go with me?”

  “If you want me to. Embry’s really big into photography,” my mom explains to my dad. “She’s going to be taking a class next semester.”

  “What kind of camera do you have?” my dad asks.

  “Oh, I’m just going to use the camera on my phone. It’s enough for now.”

  “Are you sure? We could go shopping for one if you like,” he offers.

  I shake my head violently. “You don’t have to buy me expensive stuff.” I know he means well, but I never wanted a dad for the things.

  “Well, how about I loan you mine, then,” he says. “I bought one that has detachable lenses on sale a couple years ago, but I never really learned to use the advanced features. You’ll put it to much better use, and maybe by playing around with it you can figure out what kind of camera you want for yourself someday.”

  I nod. “Yeah, that would be okay.”

  “So is photography what you think you want to study at college?” my dad asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe. I’ve also been thinking about marine biology, or marine mammal science.”

  “You do love the ocean,” Mom says.

  “I think it’s good to start college without a definite plan,” my dad says. “Explore all your options with an open mind.”

  Mom snorts. “Like you’ve ever not had a plan for anything in your whole life.”

  “Yes, well. My father informed me that I was going into computer science like he did unless I wanted to pay my own way to college. And sure, I got a good job in tech and made a lot of money and bought a lot of things, but I’ve never been happier since quitting that job, unless you count spending these past couple of days with you two.” He pauses, swallows hard. “I guess what I’m saying is, Claire, I want our daughter to have a better life than I’ve had.”

  Mom starts crying and a couple seconds later Dad joins in. “Hey, hey, you know that’s contagious, right?” I joke, as a few tears of my own stream down my cheeks. It’s weird seeing my parents together and extra weird watching them cry.

  “I’m sorry.” My dad blots at his eyes. “I didn’t mean to upset everyone.”

  “You didn’t,” I say. “Don’t apologize for . . . caring.”

  “I do care,” Dad says. “I hope you know that.”

  “I do,” I reply. “It’s just going to take some getting used to.”

  While I’m in Netarts with Mom and Dad, the O’Riley family has a funeral in Three Rocks for Luke. Mom offers to take me back there for it, but I feel like I should stay away. When we get back to town the next day, she takes me up to the cemetery and I talk to Luke for a while, apologize for not being honest sooner, for not being a better friend and girlfriend. I meant what I said to Frannie—that her brother probably died because he thought he could save someone, not because he was distracted. But I will always regret the way I treated him, and I’ll forever live with the guilt of knowing that my actions may have played a role in his death.

  It’s easy to feel his absence throughout the town. The flag in front of the post office flies at half-mast and the streets seem just a little quieter than they normally are at this time, the people of the town a little quicker to look away when I walk by. Fintastic has been closed for the past couple of days, but people are still showing up. Instead of coming to eat, they’re bringing food and leaving it outside the front door—pot roasts, casseroles, brownies, fruit baskets. There are cards too, and flowers.

  Frannie is arraigned on multiple charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Lourdes said she heard that her lawyer is going to plead temporary insanity due to the trauma of losing Luke. Frannie’s being treated at an inpatient facility over in McMinnville right now. I really hope they make her see that what happened to Luke wasn’t her fault.

  Holden and I both plead guilty to criminal trespass and destruction of property, but since we’re both first-time offenders, the judge is lenient and we end up with only probation and community service. We are liable for the damages to the Sea Cliff, though. Holden plans to sell his motorcycle, and he and his mom are going to move back in with his grandparents in order to be able to pay their share. My dad writes a check for part of what I owe, and my mom works out a deal with the hotel’s owners for another chunk of it.

  She ends up selling equity in the coffee shop to Malachi Murray, Mr. Murray’s eldest son. It isn’t as bad as it sounds because she is still in charge of the coffee shop, but now she has a backer who is willing to invest in things. She tells Malachi about my grandma’s idea to rip out the back wall and put in a window so you can see the ocean, and he goes one better—this summer we’ll be introducing brand-new patio seating at the Oregon Coast Café, sure to be a hit with tourists and locals alike. I’ll also be spending this summer and next summer working as a desk clerk at the Sea Cliff Inn after it’s renovated, turning over all my earnings to the Murray family. All in all, a pretty generous resolution considering the destruction we caused.

  Julia comes by my house during the day on New Year’s Eve.

  My jaw drops a little when I see her standing there on the porch. She’s wearing the same pink sweatpants she had on when I went to see her after she got out of the hospital and a fleece hoodie that I recognize from our trip to the outlet mall. “I thought you were going to DC,” I say.

  “Yeah, that got canceled.” She twirls a lock of her hair around her index finger. “I had a long talk with my parents. After that they didn’t feel comfortable letting me spend a few days by myself with Ness and her family.”

  “Oh. That sucks,” I say. “But I’m glad you told them.”

  “Me too,” she says. “Turns out you weren’t the only one keeping secrets better off shared. And hey, they took it better than I thought. Not great—my mom spent an entire day crying—but I think they’ll come around.”

  “Julia,” I say softly. “I hope you know that has everything to do with who she is, and nothing to do with you at all.”

  “I hear you.” She plasters a fake smile on her face, but I can tell she’s hurting. “Are you going to let me in or what?”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.” I hold the door for her.

  She steps into the living room. “Oh, you guys got a tree this year!” She scoots around the corner of the sofa and reaches out to touch one of the branches. A reindeer ornament I made in third grade out of varnished clothespins dangles from the end. “It’s so cool. I wish my parents would let us have a real tree someday.”

  “But you guys always put up that huge artificial tree, with all the matching ornaments,” I say. “It’s so pretty. It looks like something you’d see in a magazine.”

  “Yeah.” Julia tosses her hair. “But it’s not real, you know. Your tree has personality.” She glances around the living room, from the tree to the mismatched sofas to Betsy stretched out in her plaid dog bed. “Your house has personality.”

  Betsy makes a soft woofing sound, as if to agree. “It’s definitely got character,” I admit, wondering if maybe all my insecurities about where I live are just that—my insecurities.

  Julia touches an ornament from the Tillamook dairy. “Hey, did you hear about Katrina Jensen?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “I don’t know the whole story,” Julia says. “I just heard that the police arrested her stepdad.”

  “Good,” I say. Katrina and I will probably never be friends, but I still d
on’t want anything bad to happen to her.

  Mom pokes her head into the living room. “Hi, Julia! Happy holidays. Can you stay for a minute? Embry has something special for you and I promised her I’d help her out.”

  I raise an eyebrow at my mom. I’m not sure what she’s talking about, unless she’s going to take Julia up to the coffee shop when it’s closed to add her official sandwich to the menu board.

  “Sure, Ms. Woods.” Julia is kneeling on the floor now. She’s petting Betsy, who has rolled over onto her back to display her belly. “Your dog is ridiculous in the best possible ways,” Julia says. “Like a big baby who never grows up.”

  “That’s Betsy, all right.” I grin.

  Mom pokes her head out of her bedroom. “All right, girls. Come here.”

  Julia gives me a questioning look.

  “I know what she’s talking about, but I’m not sure what she’s doing,” I say.

  The two of us round the corner into Mom’s bedroom and I gasp in surprise. Mom has the web page I built for her linked to the Oregon Coast Café’s official domain. It’s up on the screen and she’s added the Julia Worthington to the menu section.

  I tug Julia closer to the screen. “It’s your present,” I tell her. “I figured since you were leaving, the town needed a way to remember you.”

  Julia squints at the screen. “You named a sandwich after me?” She starts laughing. “This is the best thing ever.”

  “It’s our healthiest offering,” Mom tells her. “Whole grain bread, hummus, spinach, low-fat Greek dressing.”

  “Oh, and it’s stacked tall with lots of cheese,” I add with a grin.

  Julia throws her arms around my neck. “This is seriously unforgettable. Look at me—I’m on a menu with Courtney Love and River Phoenix. This is seriously big-time.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” I say. “I’m glad I got a chance to give it to you.”

  Julia leans back to look me in the eye. “Yeah, about that. I miss the hell out of you. Maybe we should talk about how to be friends again.”

  “I’d like that,” I say.

  We head back into my living room, leaving Mom to fiddle around with her new website.

  Julia flops down on the futon. “You would have to be honest with me,” she says. “I want to know about how your mom is doing. More important, I want to know about how you’re doing, even after I go away to college.”

  “Deal,” I say, my eyes growing misty. “I don’t know if I deserve a second chance, Julia. I don’t know if I deserve you.” I swallow hard. “You know, at one point I actually considered whether you might be the person sending me the threats, whether you could have poisoned yourself just to hurt me. There were clues that pointed to you, but I couldn’t really entertain the possibility. I knew you wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Julia shudders. “I wouldn’t do that to me either. I don’t ever want to feel like that again. I now carry three EpiPens with me at all times—one in my backpack, one in my glove compartment, and one in my purse. My parents even gave me a keychain EpiPen holder for Christmas.”

  “Good. And I’m sad that you didn’t get to go see Ness, but does this mean you’re done with the extreme dieting for now?” I chew on my lower lip. “I’m kind of worried about you.”

  “I’m done with that,” Julia says. “I know I got a little carried away.”

  Betsy lifts herself up from her dog bed—first her back legs and then her front. She stretches and then plods over to where Julia and I are sitting on the futon. She looks hopefully at me.

  “Okay, fine,” I grumble.

  Panting with excitement, she hops up onto the futon and splays out between Julia and me. As Julia pets her soft fur, I say, “I decided Holden was only half right about me. I pull away from people I worry are going to leave me, but not physically—emotionally. I knew you’d be hurt by what I did. It wasn’t about you going away. I worried if I told you the truth it would be over for us no matter where you ended up living, so I hid it. I’ve always felt . . . below you, I guess. And not just you. It was the same with Luke. I hid a lot of things I felt like you guys might find . . . unacceptable, because I didn’t want you guys to kick me out of your lives.” I blink back tears.

  “Embry. Being different, wanting different things, doesn’t make you below me,” Julia says. “Or Luke.”

  “I know,” I whisper. At least I’m starting to believe that.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Julia murmurs.

  I swallow back a lump in my throat. “I can’t believe I almost lost both of you.”

  “I’m still here. I’ll always be here, even when I’m not, you know?” Julia pulls me into a hug. “But no more secrets, Embry Woods.”

  “No more secrets,” I agree.

  Mom and I spend New Year’s Eve watching a marathon of Sexy Firefighting Models and eating ice cream. Because it’s a special occasion, we let Betsy join us up on the sofa. When the clock strikes midnight and the kids of the neighborhood light off their firecrackers and bottle rockets, I pull Betsy into my lap and hold her while Mom covers her ears and sings to her.

  It’s basically the best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had.

  The next day I wake up early and grab Betsy’s leash to take her for a walk. I tuck my dad’s camera in the pocket of my jacket—maybe I can capture the sun rising over the water.

  Halfway to the beach, my phone buzzes with a text. My heart leaps into my throat until I see the sender: Holden.

  Holden: New Year’s present for you at our old spot. Go quick though, before the tide beats you to it.

  Me: WTF is a New Year’s present? Why do you keep trying to one-up me on gifts?

  Holden: I’m just an ass like that. Now seriously, get down here.

  Shaking my head, I tuck my phone back into my purse and head down to the beach. I’m expecting Holden at the Pot Hole, but he’s actually out on the main section of the beach, bending down doing something in the sand.

  Not just something. He’s drawing.

  There are lines everywhere—some thick, some thin, some intersecting at strange angles. There are also rocks that seem to be strategically placed. There’s even a tree in the middle of the picture made out of pine boughs he must have collected from up on Puffin Hill.

  “What is all this?” I ask. “Are you signaling your mother ship?”

  “I told you I was experimenting with mixed media, right? So come on, you two. You’re going to love this.” Holden heads toward one of the wooden staircases that lead up to the mansions on Puffin Hill.

  I follow him and Betsy halfway up the stairs. “Okay, stop,” he says. “Turn around.”

  Looking down, I can clearly see the picture. A lot of kids come to the beach and draw hearts in the sand. They write things like I LUV JILL or STEVE WAS HERE. But this . . . this is art on a grand scale. The lines are fallen trees, leaves, bits of debris. The smooth pebbles he’s used make up the outlines of stumps, and the trunk of the lone tree that remains standing. “It’s a logging field,” I say. “With one tree that somehow got missed. It’s beautiful.”

  He rakes his hands through his hair. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth about my tree fascination. I don’t like painting people, so I do portraits as trees. This one is you, Embry. Because no matter how much the world throws at you, you’re still standing.”

  “Holden.” I literally gasp. “That’s . . . so . . . I don’t know what to say.” I lift a hand to my chest, which is actually aching from the way my heart feels right now. “I love it. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” he says. “But stay here.”

  He hurries back down to the beach. While he’s making his way down the steps, I pull Dad’s camera from my pocket and take several shots of the beach. As I’m flipping back through the gallery, it hits me this would make an amazing postcard or greeting card.

  Holden grabs a stick and adds something to the bottom of the picture: WILL YOU BE MY GIRLFRIEND?

  I la
ugh. Betsy barks. Holden takes the stairs back to where I’m standing two at a time. “Now, no pressure,” he says. “But let me know if the tide washes everything away and you need me to rewrite it.”

  “Yes, I’ll be your girlfriend,” I tell him.

  We share a long kiss on the stairs while Betsy paces back and forth on the step below us, her tail slapping repeatedly into my legs as she barks excitedly at seagulls.

  As the three of us head back to the beach, I nudge Holden. “Check this out.” I show him the photos I took of his artwork on my dad’s camera.

  “Wow, that looks incredible,” he says. “I can’t believe I made that.”

  “I know you don’t want to be an Etsy mogul, but this is the kind of thing you could put on postcards and greeting cards and sell online. No worries about expensive postage either.”

  “You will not rest until you commodify my art, will you?” Holden nudges me in the ribs.

  “I’m just saying, I wish everyone could feel the way I felt when I saw that.” I hop from the bottom of the stairs back onto the sand. “What’s the harm in trying? You need money to pay off your debt to the Murrays. The world needs more beautiful things.”

  “Oh, does it?” Holden pulls me close, holds my face in his hands. “I only need one beautiful thing.”

  By my side, Betsy whines in protest.

  “Whatever, two beautiful things.” Holden reaches down, picks up my one-hundred-pound dog, and spins her around in a circle, her paws flailing every which way. She’s so surprised, she doesn’t even make a sound.

  “My turn,” I say.

  Holden sets Betsy down and spins me in a circle. The sky has gone from purple to pink in preparation for sunrise. It’s just a blur of pastels with the occasional splotch of gray and white as seagulls fly by. I feel . . . free.

  “Now your turn!” I do my absolute best to lift Holden, but I succeed in getting him only like two inches off the ground before we both collapse onto the sand. Lifting myself to my knees, I take Betsy off her leash, my mouth widening into a grin as she gallops through the shallow surf. Yanking off our socks and boots, Holden and I chase her up and down the beach. I squeal as the frigid ocean laps at my ankles.