by Sara Biren
With Ben sitting across the restaurant, it’s hard to tell if I could like Simon. But he’s nice. And cute. And he’s sitting right here, eating a slice of coconut cream pie. No time like the present, Hannah would say.
“His name is Ben,” I say in a low voice. “We used to be friends. I mean, his sister was my best friend, and then—well, Ben and I aren’t friends anymore. He’s—I don’t know—we don’t talk anymore.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s a long story,” I say. “Complicated. And it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Okay.” Simon grows quiet. After a minute he says, “What about his sister? Are you still friends with her?”
I swallow. “She died.”
“Oh.” He drags out the word. “I’m sorry.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.” The words rush out.
“If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t be spending so much time looking over there,” Simon says, his voice light.
“Trust me,” I say. “It. Doesn’t. Matter.”
“Okay, okay. I believe you.” He stands up and drops a few singles on the table. “Well, I’m ready for you to show me the town. Let’s go for a drive.”
I stand up. Simon holds out his hand and I hesitate.
“Take my hand,” he whispers. “That will get your boy’s undies in a bunch.”
I can do this. I can. And it’s just for show, right?
I link my fingers with his, warm and soft and strangely comforting. We walk through the restaurant, and Clare winks at me as we walk past.
I get into the front seat of Simon’s car. As we drive out of the parking lot, it’s all I can do to keep my head from swiveling around to see if Ben has come out of the café and is watching us drive away.
“Where to?” Simon asks.
We’re headed north, out of town. “Keenan’s Cloud 9 Vacationland,” I say. “Take a right at the next stoplight.”
“Cloud 9? Sounds euphoric.”
“Oh, you have no idea. It’s this 1950s-themed campground with a water park and an outdoor movie theater and mini-golf. It’s impossible to not have a good time at Cloud 9.”
“Sounds weird,” he says.
I shake my head. “You’re not allowed to dis Cloud 9. It’s like walking onto the set of Grease. And maybe, if we’re lucky, Grease will be playing at the amphitheater tonight, too.”
Simon groans, but after we arrive, the smile doesn’t leave his face. He insists on paying for our two-hour passes, and we weave our way through the crowd—lots of tourists and a few people I recognize from school. We head to Blueberry Hill, the mini-golf course.
“I’m absolutely terrible at this,” Simon tells me as I hand him his club.
He is. There’s no other word for it. I’ve played this course a thousand times and could make par with my eyes closed, but Simon knocks the ball onto the next green, into the stream, everywhere it’s not supposed to go. At one point, we let the foursome behind us go ahead. But he laughs at himself, shakes his hair out of his eyes, and sings along (badly) to the fifties music at each hole.
We don’t bother to add up our scores. We walk back down the hill toward the Snack Shack. He buys a bag of popcorn, and we sit on a bench near the amphitheater.
“That was fun,” he says. “What’s up next? A Grease sing-along?”
I reach into the pocket of my shorts for my phone to check the time and my fingers graze the agate.
I think about the way Ben glared at us at the restaurant.
I want so badly to move on, to just be a normal girl playing mini-golf with her date.
I’m not.
“I need to get home.” I stand up and Simon does, too. I crumple up the greasy popcorn bag and toss it in the trash can next to the bench. “Long day tomorrow.”
“Oh yeah, me too.” He follows me as I walk toward the exit. “I mean, for starters, I’m planning to sleep until at least ten. Then I might hang out down by the lake.”
“Sounds rough.”
When we reach his car, Simon opens the passenger door for me. “I’d love to come back here with you sometime.”
“Sure, we could float down the Lazy River.”
“You must come here a lot.”
I shake my head as I slide in. “Not as much as I used to.”
I don’t say anything else. He closes my door and gets in himself, and we’re quiet for a few minutes as we drive out of the parking lot and back toward town.
“I’m really sorry about your friend,” Simon says softly. “Was it—was it weird for you to be at Cloud 9 without her?”
“Yeah, a little. But it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”
I don’t want him to feel sorry for me. I like that he doesn’t know my history, the details about Trixie’s death. I change the subject as we drive through town, and I give him the grand tour of Halcyon Lake. I point out the candy shop, the used bookstore, the hair salon and the apartments above.
“My uncle and his girlfriend live there,” I say as we drive past. “Daniel’s a cook at the diner and you met Clare—the hostess?”
I tell him about my family and Emily. I pause and hold my breath as we drive past Ben’s house, his Firebird parked in front of the third door.
“The park,” I say, and I wave my hand in that direction. “Sullivan Street Park. Great place for a picnic and the best swimming beach in town.”
“Cool! When can we go?”
“Go?”
“Yeah, go swimming? At the park?”
I shake my head. “I’m not much of a swimmer.”
“Really? You live on a lake.”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t like to swim?”
“Nope.” Too many weeds, too much rocky sand under my feet, too much unknown in the murky lake. “I love to be out on the lake, though. In a sound, sturdy watercraft, of course.”
He pulls into the Clarks’ side of the driveway and walks me to my door, like this is a real date or something.
“I had a great time with you, Lucy.”
For a second I think he’s going to lean in and kiss me. He doesn’t. His cheeks turn pink, and I wonder if he’s thinking about it, too.
“It was fun,” I say.
It’s the truth. I had fun with him. I smile up at him and he grins back.
“See you soon,” he says, and walks across the driveway.
When he’s almost out of sight behind Betty’s gigantic lilac bush, he turns and holds his hand up in a wave.
I wave, too, and then slip my hand into my pocket. The agate is still there, safe.
14 · Ben
He’s holding her hand, for fuck’s sake. Like it’s a date or something. I watch them walk out of the café, throw some bills down on the counter, wait until the count of thirty, and follow them.
Lucy and the dickhead who drives a Volvo.
It’s crazy, I know. Lucy working at the resort for the summer is driving me crazy. She’s so close, right there, but I can’t touch her, can’t talk to her. Emily talks to me, wants to play with me, but Lucy sort of hangs back. Like she never wants to talk to me again. And that’s nobody’s fault but my own.
I’m careful to stay three or four cars behind so they don’t notice. I’m trying to tell myself it’s because I want to make sure she’s safe, that this Simon guy isn’t some psycho killer abducting her in his jackass Volvo. They head out the county road past the Fire Tower toward Stone’s Throw Lake and turn in at Cloud 9.
That’s when I realize how stupid I am.
What am I going to do? Follow them into the park? Walk through the crowds alone, spy on them when they buy ice cream at the Snack Shack and watch cartoons at the amphitheater?
Pathetic.
She’s fine. She likes him.
She’s over it. Me.
I fucked it up and she’s moved on.
I whip the Firebird around toward home.
Dad’s left the liquor cabinet open again. I take a bottle of whiskey up to my room. I’m going to s
it here and stack rocks and drink until I get the picture of Lucy and that shaggy-haired jackass out of my head.
I’m late for work the next morning. I find my dad in the pole barn working on a motor, and he is pissed.
“Well?” he says without looking up from the workbench. “Where have you been?”
Where have I been, he wants to know.
“Well?” Dad says again when I don’t answer him.
“I had something I needed to do.”
What I needed to do was wake up puking, which caused a pretty significant delay.
He lets out a long breath. “You could have let one of us know. John had to take your guests out. They were tired of waiting. Now he’s behind schedule.”
Dad turns to look at me when I don’t say anything. His hands and fingernails are dark with grease, the skin around his eyes grooved with deep wrinkles. We used to spend a lot of time together. We used to have a lot in common. You’d think that after Trixie died, we’d have grown closer, but lately I can’t stand to be around him. And it’s more than the drinking. He’s always in a shitty mood.
Maybe we do have something in common.
“Ben, how many times have I told you? You have responsibilities now. People are counting on you. With employment come certain responsibilities.”
He pauses, and it’s all I can do to stop myself from mimicking him as he says the inevitable next words: “With life come certain responsibilities.”
“You don’t say.” I can’t keep the bitterness out of my tone.
“Don’t get smart with me, Ben. I’m not in the mood for it.”
I’ve heard that one before, too. He’s a broken record. He teaches the same curriculum every year; he gives the same spiel out on the lake; he spews the same parental garbage.
It wasn’t like this when Trixie was alive. We used to have real conversations. We talked about a lot of things—school and fishing and the Firebird. Or sometimes, like it is with Guthrie and me, we didn’t talk. We sat out on the boat and fished and didn’t have to say anything at all, and that was okay, too.
“Those two guys staying in Wolf?” Dad says. “They brought in a nice stringer of sunnies and just finished gutting them. You should probably clean the fish house.”
I turn without a word and walk across the grass to the fish house. Shit. Nothing like cleaning up rotting fish guts in a shack on a hot morning when I could be out on the lake. Thank you, Lucy and the dickhead.
Later, after I’ve finished cleaning the fish house, I tell Tami that I feel like shit—not a lie—and am taking off the rest of the day. I need to walk, clear my head, so I hit the trail that winds along the edge of the lake from here to Sullivan Street Park. I’ll come back for my car later.
The trail is quiet today—usually it’s busy with joggers and bikers and families looking for a quiet place to fish with their kids, away from the crowded park.
I’m about halfway to the park when I reach a group of trees that Trixie and I used to climb, years ago, when our parents first let us walk here by ourselves.
I look around and find a handful of rocks, most about the size of a softball, and I stack them near one of the tree trunks. The top stone topples and I start again, changing the order of the rocks until they’re all balanced.
Satisfied, I hoist myself up into a crook of one of the trees. I lean against the trunk and reach into my pocket to switch off my phone.
I can’t think of a better place to sleep off my hangover.
15 · Lucy
I don’t see Simon much the next couple of days after our “date,” and I do my best to avoid Ben at the resort. But on Saturday morning I walk into John and Tami’s kitchen and he’s there.
He’s sitting at the table. It’s late—he shouldn’t be here. He should already be out on the lake or mowing the lawn or fixing a dock. Something. He lowers his head. I sit down next to Emily.
“Well,” I say, “what’s in store for today?”
“Boat!” she cries. “Let’s go out in the boat. Can we, Daddy?”
“Sure,” John says.
“Ben, would you mind taking them out?” Tami asks.
I’m not sure how the rest of the conversation goes, because all I hear is the roaring in my ears after Tami asks Ben to take us out fishing.
I don’t want this. I don’t want to spend the morning on a boat in the middle of the lake with Ben. This is the worst thing that could happen. I can’t escape him when we’re out on the lake together.
Tami sets a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of me. “Eat something before you go out.”
“We shouldn’t bother Ben, Emily,” I say, the words scratchy. “I don’t want to keep him from his work.”
“It’s no bother.” I’m surprised to hear Ben’s voice. “I’ll get the boat ready while you finish your breakfast.”
Ben gets up so fast he almost knocks the chair over. I know that the boat’s ready. It’s always ready. He wants to get out of here, alone, before he has to suffer with me.
I take my time with breakfast while Emily finishes the red grapes on her plate. When I’m done, I get a washcloth from the bathroom and clean Emily’s face and hands.
“You’ll need your hair up so it doesn’t blow in your face,” I say, and she brings me her comb and a ponytail holder. Next we put on sunscreen. I drag the process out as long as possible, imagining Ben at the dock, doing whatever he needs to do as slowly as possible, too.
“You’re so patient with her,” Tami says as she loads the dishwasher. “No wonder she adores you so much, Lucy.”
“Thanks,” I say, but my face burns. If she only knew the real reason behind my patience today.
Emily declares herself ready. She has a bag with snacks—a juice box, fruit strips, and cheese crackers shaped like little birds—and two Fancy Nancy books. I grab my sunglasses and my phone, and we walk down the stone pathway to the dock.
My heart does its absurd little flutter when I catch sight of Ben standing on the dock talking to Tom, his dad. I’ve done a pretty good job of avoiding Tom this summer, too. He sees us, and I put my hand up in a tiny wave. Emily skips down the rest of the path and leaps into Ben’s arms.
“Thank you for taking us out on the boat, Ben,” she yells.
I catch up with her on the dock. Tom hands me a life vest and Ben fastens a small one on Emily.
“Hey there,” Ben’s dad says to me, “it’s nice to see you.” He doesn’t call me Lulu.
I nod, but can’t find my voice. I take a deep breath and step off the dock into the boat. I teeter a bit—it’s been almost a year since I’ve gone out on the lake.
Ben reaches out and grabs my elbow to steady me, but I wrench my arm away.
“Please don’t touch me,” I whisper, but he’s already crossed the boat to the driver’s seat. I don’t know if he heard me or not.
This is how I get through a miserable morning on the lake: I talk to Emily. Nonstop. If she isn’t talking, I am. I begin by narrating our surroundings, which sets Emily off on a string of questions about trees and loons and fish and the weather that will easily occupy my time.
I love to be out on the lake. Between my dad’s boat and the Porters’, I spent much of my childhood summers fishing and sunning myself on the pontoon. I love everything about it—the bright sun reflecting off the water, the smell of fish and gasoline, wildflowers and weeds, sweet coconut sunscreen. I love the breeze that cools my baking skin, blows my hair back as we speed across the lake. The coolness of the water, murky with pondweed and coontail. The endless shoreline of jack pines and cabins and docks.
For a few minutes, I close my eyes, feel the warm morning sun on my face. I tip my head back and pretend that this is before. Trixie is here with us, and Clayton maybe, or Guthrie, and Ben is at the helm, like he is now, but it’s the old Ben, before he became so angry and cold. It’s my Ben.
“Lucy,” Emily says, and I open my eyes. “How did Trixie die?”
My breath catches. Ben’s head
snaps up.
“Emily, I don’t—I’m not sure that . . . today—” I can’t think straight. I can’t think of a way to talk about this, especially in front of Ben.
And then he’s right next to her, taking her hand. “Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks. “You know this. Trixie’s heart was sick. She went for a swim and her heart stopped working.”
He’s so calm, so gentle, and I can’t speak. I’m not ready for this. She’s too young to really understand. But he told her enough.
Emily turns to me. “Is my heart sick? Will it stop working?”
“Oh, no,” I say. I kneel in front of her and put my arms around her, even though now I’m right next to Ben. “You shouldn’t worry about that, sweetheart. What happened to Trixie doesn’t happen to everyone.”
“Were you there, Lucy?” she says. She pulls away from me and looks at Ben. “Were you?”
I nod, but I don’t look at Ben.
“Hey, I thought you wanted to catch some fish,” he says, and thank God, it distracts her. Her face, so sad a minute before, breaks into a huge smile.
She grabs my hand and pulls me up from my crouching position. “You fish, too.”
“No, that’s okay,” I say, and it’s all I can do to hold back a sob.
“No!” she says with more force. “I want you to fish with me. Ben, tell her that you’ll teach her how to fish.”
Ben doesn’t need to teach me how to fish. I knew how to bait a hook before I could write my own name.
“Okay, I’ll fish with you,” I say.
She scrambles up to a seat in the bow and swings her legs back and forth. To join her I have to pass very close to Ben. I hold my breath. When he steps up to the bow, he hands me a rod and reel and for the briefest second, his fingers touch mine. I don’t mean to, but I jerk away like I’ve been shocked.
He doesn’t move. He’s so close. He must surely hear how loudly my heart pounds against my rib cage.
He leans toward me, and for a split second I have this insane thought that he is going to kiss me, right here, standing in the Crestliner in the middle of Halcyon Lake.
“Lucy?” he says in a low voice. “Are you okay?”