“Want to give me a ride home?”
“I feel like this is becoming a trend.”
She shrugs, but there’s a small smile on her lips, and I realize how nice she looks when she does it. “You’re the one that dragged me into this, the least you can do is give me a ride back home.”
“Fine,” I say. “Get in.”
She smiles wider and hops in the passenger seat. And like that, something that seemed strange and unfamiliar has suddenly become normal. I start the truck and pull out of the driveway, feeling myself calm down, happy to be with someone that understands.
9
Olivia
The muscle working at the back of Ben’s jaw isn’t the only sign he’s still mad about dinner. His hands grip the steering wheel like a vise, and he manages to miss his turn twice.
“Did you even eat?” he asks suddenly.
“Not really,” I reply. “I was too busy watching the show.”
He laughs. “Want some food?”
“I could go for something.”
“Davie’s? Pizza? My treat.”
“Oh, you’re paying. I don’t have any money.”
He spins the steering wheel, pulls into a spot near Pie Whole, and we get out of the car. Bazinga!, the comic book shop my sister worked at during high school, is closed.
“I can’t believe Gabe built a theater,” Ben says, nodding at the building next to the store. “I also can’t believe I brought him up at dinner.”
“Yeah, that was asking for trouble.”
He opens the door to the pizza place and I step in. It smells like warm baking dough and spicy sauces. This was one of their places. Norah, Gabe, and Ben.
“Do you miss them?” I ask, as the waitress seats us.
“Yeah,” he admits, flipping over the menu that I doubt he needs. “That’s kind of how I started my app. Even when they’re in town, they’re busy, and I was bored. It didn’t hurt that I really needed to figure out a way to pay for the truck. I didn’t want to ask my dad for help. There’s always strings attached.”
“I think it’s cool you created your own business. Is it doing okay?”
“I get a couple of calls a day and I’ve had a few reviews show up. I think, as word of mouth grows, it’ll get busier.”
“That’s really cool.”
Conversation dies out and thankfully the waitress comes back over and takes our order. Unfortunately, she leaves again, and Ben and I sit awkwardly across from one another.
“Have you played the new Last Resort game?” he asks suddenly.
I shake my head. “I haven’t been into games much lately.”
“What?” His energy rises. “You were always my biggest competitor.”
I laugh. He’s right. All the other kids were pretty bad at video games. Well, not Sidney, Gabe’s brother, but he was always in his own world. “Why’d you stop playing?”
I shrug. “For a while I just stopped doing everything.”
He watches me. “Because of the depression?”
I run my finger over the top of my cup. “They say it was the medication. Like, yeah, I have depression and anxiety and probably a boatload of other issues, but I was on the wrong medication for a while and it really messed me up.”
“That stinks.”
I look up at him. He’s still watching me. “It did. I feel better—I guess. It’s hard to know.”
“I think we know how to test that out.”
The waitress delivers our pizza. Ben gets a slice with about eight pounds of meat on it. Mine is plain cheese.
I take the shaker and add more cheese. “How exactly do we test my depression?”
“With a video game competition. Fighting zombies in Last Resort will completely show us how you’re doing.” He takes a huge bite and grins.
“I think that has less to do with me than it does with you looking to play with someone.”
He shrugs, still chewing. “Either way, we both get something out of it.”
I roll my eyes, not ready to commit to a competition with Ben. I don’t want to admit it, but it’s nice to be asked to do something, even if it is a pity request from my sister’s best friend.
The town is still quiet when I ride my bike through it on Monday morning to get to the Girls' Home. My mother made me breakfast--eggs and bacon--along with the two tiny pills I take daily. She talks too much, but it’s a clear sign of approval about this job. I only felt a tiny bit guilty when I told her I’d be home after work…at four.
The idea came to me the night before as I lay in my bed texting Nicole and getting no response. There’s no way my mom is going to let me go see her, but I have to find out what’s really going on. I knew she wouldn’t question a longer workday—volunteering, actually. She’d do almost anything to have me out of the house.
I slide my front wheel into the rack and lock up the bike. I’ve never been in the Girls' Home before, but I’ve passed it a million times. It’s a large house, a Victorian style that faces the Pacific. It’s a prime piece of property that has helped kids for decades. I’m sure developers have been eyeing it for just as long.
I’m walking up the steps when a car pulls up to the curb. A girl around my age gets out of the car. She has dark, shiny hair twisted into two French braids, and warm brown skin. She says goodbye to the boy driving the car and slams the door shut. She’s wearing red and black plaid shorts and a black tank top. A tiny star charm hangs on the chain around her neck.
“Hey,” she says, walking next to me. “I’m Melina. Are you Olivia?”
“Uh, yes.” I’m surprised she knows my name.
“I’m the other volunteer—we’ll be working together this summer.”
I feel a sense of relief that she’s around my age and seems okay. Making friends isn’t easy for me. “Nice to meet you. Fair warning; I don’t know what I’m doing.”
She laughs. “That’s okay. I’m not sure I do either, but I also volunteered here during the school year, as an afterschool helper. This should be similar. Just during the morning with more field trips and less homework.”
She opens the door and I follow her in. The house isn’t exactly loud, but it is bustling with people and energy. Music filters down the stairs and a cluster of girls clean up the kitchen. A few older girls are by the door, grabbing backpacks and jackets off of hooks. They’re in work uniforms or headed to summer school, from what I overhear. We’ve barely walked in before they’ve left, calling out, “Bye, Maya,” before they go. I hear Maya shout down the stairs.
Melina points to a rack on the opposite side of the hallway. “We can put our stuff here.” She hangs her bag and hoodie. I do the same. “Come on, let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.”
Familiar anxiety flickers in my chest and all I want is to get back on my bike and run home, but I’m ready for public school, and I’m tired of being treated like I can’t do anything right.
That thought is what propels me to follow Melina down the hallway to take the first step toward independence.
The little girls are a mess.
Adorable, but a mess.
There are six of them, ages seven through ten. They’re like a bunch of kittens, running around, tugging one another, giggling, crying, complaining and asking questions.
So. Many. Questions.
“Where do you live?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Are you in school?”
“Why is your hair like that?”
“Aren’t you too old for school?”
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Round and round. They ask questions while we finish cleaning up from breakfast. They ask questions while we make and pack up lunches for the day. They ask questions as they grab their bags, each filled with a lunch, a towel, and extra clothes. They ask questions as we walk down the sandy path that leads from McKoy Park to the beach.
“Let’s grab that table,” Melina says, pointing to a picnic table in the shade. We pile our belongings on it an
d I drop the soft-sided cooler bag filled with ice and water. Melina takes out the sunscreen and starts spraying.
“Everyone grab a buddy, no going out deeper than your knees, and stay in front of the lifeguard stand,” she says, repeating the rules Maya gave us before we left. The girls squeal with excitement, and we both take a minute to put on our own sunscreen before walking down to the water.
“Here,” Melina says, holding the can of spray, “let me get your back.”
“Oh, uh, sure,” I say, feeling a little awkward. Like everyone in Ocean Grove, I’ve spent my life on the beach and in the water—except the past two years. At the same time the scars showed up, I started hiding my arms and legs. I lost my deep brown summer tan and my love for being outside. As Melina coats my shoulders with the sticky spray, I brace myself for her asking about the biggest scar. It’s awful. I barely remember getting it—or doing it. That was when things were the lowest for me.
“I think that’s got it.” she says. “Can you do mine?”
The coil of apprehension vanishes when I realize she’s not going to comment, and I take the can of spray from her and return the favor. A few minutes later we meet the girls on the edge of the water and for the first time in a long while, I feel the heat of the skin on my bare arms and legs, along with the cool water on my toes.
“Do you go to the Academy?” Melina asks.
“No. Ocean Grove—well, I’ll go there next year. I went to a private school before.”
She nods. “That makes sense, I didn’t think I’d seen you there before. I’m going to be a senior.”
“Me too.”
She shouts out to two older girls, Beverly and Lena, who’ve waded out to their waists to come back in a little. The girls make faces but ease toward more shallow waters.
“Are you working here for your volunteer hours?”
I raise an eyebrow. “We have to do those?”
“It’s not required, I guess, but it looks good on your college applications.”
“Oh, right.” I gaze out at the horizon. “I haven’t gotten that far yet. I really just needed something to do outside the house and when Maya asked, I said yes.”
“Maya’s cool.” She shades her eyes. “How do you know her?”
I’m trying to decide how to answer that when there’s a shriek in the water. We both look over and AJ, a tiny redhead, limps and runs over.
“Something b-b-bit me.”
This, of course, incites all the other girls to panic, squealing and rushing out of the water. “Shark! Shark!”
“It’s okay,” I say, pretty sure it’s not a shark, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Melina picks AJ up and carries the hysterical girl to the shore. Blood drips from her foot and Melina looks up, worry etched on her face. “Go get the lifeguard.”
I run up to the stand, but the guard is already climbing down the ladder. I take a breath and say, “She’s bleeding. I’m not sure what happened.”
His face is covered by sunglasses and a ball cap, but when he turns, holding the first-aid kit, he stops abruptly. “Oh, hey.”
I do a double take of the boy in the red swim trunks with warm, sun-kissed skin. “Spencer?”
Well, that’s a surprise.
“She’s down here,” I say, like he can’t hear the sobs carried up the beach by the wind.
“Let me see what’s going on here.” AJ’s tears slow when Spencer kneels next to her, inspecting her foot. He uses a towel to dry off the wound and says, “Looks like you stepped on a sharp shell.”
“I think it was a shark.”
A wave of hysteria rolls through the girls again.
He wrinkles his nose, trying not to laugh. “Trust me, you’d know if you got bit by a shark.”
Melina holds AJ’s hand while he cleans the wound, plastering a waterproof bandage over the cut. I keep the girls at bay, a few already losing interest to go back in the water, the rest overly concerned by both the blood and the boy.
When he’s finished he helps AJ off the ground and Melina announces it’s time for lunch.
“Thanks,” I tell Spencer. He pulls off the rubber gloves he put on and collects the other trash. Now that the crisis is over, I feel him checking out my bathing suit. It’s modest, for the job, but he has a way of making me feel exposed. “The last thing I need on my first day is for a kid to get attacked by a shark.”
“It wouldn’t look so great for me, either.” He smiles, and I’m met with a rush of feelings. We’d been so close to having our moment until Ben showed up. I scowl in memory. “Something wrong?”
“No, I was just thinking about the other night. I want to apologize for how that went down, Ben—"
“Is a lucky guy,” he says. “I didn’t really know what to expect from you, to be honest, so when I saw you the next day, I realized maybe you were cooler than I thought.”
Huh?
“There’s something about the unattainable, right?”
Does he like me better because I have a boyfriend, or because he thinks I slept over at his house?
The smirk on his face tells me it could be either.
“I should go help Melina.”
“I need to get back on the stand.”
“Thanks for helping,” I say.
He nods. “See you around, Olivia.”
I walk up to the picnic table and realize that six little sets of eyes are watching me. I barely have a chance to sit down before the questions start.
“Who is that?”
“Do you know the lifeguard?”
“Is that your boyfriend?”
I open my bottle of water and glance back over at the lifeguard stand. Spencer is back in his seat, adjusting the umbrella, but he looks in my direction long enough to make eye contact. A swirl of emotions runs through me, one of them a brief flare of annoyance that maybe my mother was right; getting out of the house is a good thing.
10
Olivia
My skin feels raw from the sun and sand as I ride my bike down the shady neighborhood street. Nicole’s house is at the end of the block. It’s a small bungalow with a yard full of sunflowers and a white picket fence that pushes up to the sidewalk.
I hop off my bike and lean it against the fence. I’m nervous but muster up some courage and take the stone path to the door. The house is painted yellow and the chairs on the porch are a lime green. It’s cheerful and it’s hard to place Nicole with her dark eyeliner and blue-streaked hair living here. I take a deep, steadying breath and knock on the door. The curtain behind the window shifts and I see Nicole and wave. She opens the door.
“Hey,” I say, all the things I’ve been thinking bubbling to the surface. “I’ve been texting you. Is everything okay? I got worried when you missed group.”
She’s not wearing any make up and her face is pale and clean. Her eyes are tinged with red. “Well, your mom called my mom the other night and things kind of hit the fan.”
“Yeah, I know. She was waiting for me when I got home, with a list of new rules.”
Her tone is dull, she crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m being sent away for the summer.”
My heart jumps. “What? Where?”
“Some therapeutic camp or something.” She sighs and runs her hand through her hair. “Look, I’m not supposed to be talking to you or anyone else right now.”
“Me either,” I admit. “I snuck over.”
She stares at the porch floor. “Then you probably should go. I’m leaving in the morning and my mom went to get a few things for me at the store. If she comes home and sees you here, it’ll make things worse.”
“Are you mad?”
Her eyes flick to mine, there’s not the slightest bit of friendliness in them. She doesn’t answer my question. “Bye, Olivia. Hope you have a good summer.”
She starts to close the door and desperately I put my hand out to stop it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Yeah, me either, but it
did, and now everything stinks. Ryan and I had plans for the whole summer and you ruined that for us.”
I drop my hand, stunned by how bad her words hurt. She uses my silence as an opportunity to shut the door in my face. I blink back the tears. Not just in reaction to her anger but at the situation. Nicole is—was—the only real friend I’d made in a long time. It’s bad enough that she’s leaving, but the fact she blames me for everything makes it worse.
I walk through the towering sunflowers, along the stone path, away from the house. It feels like my heart is breaking. Maybe it’s better to just not have friends. Opening yourself up to people just means you can get hurt.
I emerge from the path and walk out the front garden gate, so preoccupied with my thoughts that I don’t notice the large silver truck idling by the curb until I hear the whir of the passenger-side window as it rolls down. I look up and see Ben. He waves.
I wipe away a tear. “Are you stalking me?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” His eyes narrow. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I reach my bike. Nudging the kickstand, I grip the handles and then check the time. I have two hours before I need to go home. I have absolutely nowhere to go, but I definitely don’t want to see my mother right now.
I glance over at the truck and see the back is filled with a bunch of garbage bags.
“Where are you going?” I ask him.
“To the landfill.”
I don’t give myself time to think before I ask, “Want some company?”
11
Ben
“Do you remember that time we went to Moore’s Island for Christmas and the temperature dropped below freezing?”
I nod and grimace at the memory. “It was so cold.”
“We all walked down to the pier to watch the firework show—without shoes, for some crazy reason.” Ben takes a swig of his soda. We’re sitting in the parking lot of the Ocean Grove Market. On the way back from the landfill, Ben stopped for a drink. When I tried to pay for my Slushie he waved me off, saying it was payment for keeping him company.
Olivia and the Older Boy: Young Adult Sweet Romance (Love in Ocean Grove Book 5) Page 4