by Terri Farley
She hustled me to the door, hands fluttering as if she were shooing gulls away from a picnic lunch.
I opened the front door and stopped before crossing the threshold. Nana’s car had been moved around to the front of the Inn. It was a block-long white Cadillac.
“Totally foolish in terms of gas consumption,” Nana said, fondly. “But it’s a classic, a relic of my midlife crisis, and I plan to be buried in it.”
“Nana,” I yelped. I didn’t know which outrage to address first: her midlife crisis or her funeral plans, so I did neither. “Can you even drive with that cast?” I asked as she took a brass ring of keys from a hook by the door.
“No,” she said. “But you can.” Then she tossed the keys at me and said, “Catch!”
CHAPTER FIVE
“I think I can walk to the curb from here,” Nana joked. She opened her car door and peered down. I was about a foot too far out in the street.
Parking this big boat of a car in a town crowded with tourists and partyers was almost impossible. Siena Bay’s main street was blocked off with sawhorses draped with sparkly lights, so I cruised down side streets until I spotted the last parking space on a steep hill overlooking the bay.
Somehow, I maneuvered us into it, but I didn’t do a very good job.
“I can make another pass through town,” I offered, reluctantly.
“No need, dear,” Nana said, releasing her seat belt and climbing out. “They start shutting down at midnight.”
Ha ha. It was only seven thirty.
“But do set the parking brake, please.”
I set it as hard as I could, then curbed the wheels like I did when I parked on the hills of San Francisco. If Nana’s car started rolling from here, it wouldn’t stop until it was headlight-deep in sea bottom.
Nana leaned on my arm a little as we walked uphill toward the gathering, which sounded a lot more like a street fair than a farmers’ market.
We passed booths with avocados and artichokes; pyramids of kiwi; baskets of blackberries, strawberries, and cherries; but we also saw vendors selling blown glass figurines, hand-carved wooden toys, and pottery mugs in smooth, bulbous shapes.
Music pulsed through the aimless crowd.
“Hear the flute and bagpipe?” Nana asked. “That will be Red and Ian. You remember Red O’Malley, don’t you?”
I didn’t, but the same stiff breeze off the bay that brought the aroma of exotic food brought the sounds of a Scottish pipe band and the thudding of a drum which echoed my heartbeat.
“The food booths are down this way,” Nana said. I let her tug me along, but I was scanning the crowd, looking for a familiar face. One familiar face.
Strings of lights festooned the booths and crisscrossed overhead. Swaying in the wind, they flickered, creating an uncertain twilight.
“Siena Bay has changed a lot, hasn’t it?” Nana asked, as if she’d noticed my head swinging around, taking it all in. “The Chamber of Commerce tries to keep the atmosphere of an old fishing village, but—”
I followed Nana’s gesture and focused beyond the booths.
I remembered coming down to the docks at dawn with Mom. She’d buy me hot chocolate from Sal’s Fish and Chips, which was the only thing open that early. We’d watch sun-browned men shout and sling around nets before putting off into the turquoise water.
Now, though the nautical decorations remained, they draped a dozen places I could find in the Valencia mall.
“Someone must still fish,” I insisted.
“They try,” Nana allowed. “In fact, most of them still put out to sea every morning, but they have to supplement.”
Supplement. Was that a nice word for welfare? Or something shady? Nana had said the gang in town was made up of fishermen’s sons with nothing to do.
“They say it’s fished out and blame the sea lions and tourists,” Nana went on. “I blame it on pollution and the industrial fisheries, but not many listen to an old woman. I’m glad we’re up the coast a ways.”
Somehow, this little talk didn’t dampen our spirits.
Nana bought us savory meat on bamboo skewers and cups of Thai noodles. We drank lemonade, and I kept looking for him.
Nana reintroduced me to old friends of the family. Gina Leoni ran the Siena Bay grocery, Red O’Malley and his brother Ian owned the Buoy’s Club bar. Sadie Linnet had been my second-grade teacher before she opened Village Books.
If any of them thought I was crazy before, they must have wondered if I was medicated now. I admit I was distracted. I nodded and smiled and kept scanning the crowd.
It took Red O’Malley’s comment to catch my attention.
“Now that you’re practically grown, I have a bit of advice for you, Gwendolyn,” he said. His gray-red beard and shaggy hair framed eyes that sparkled with a leprechaun’s mischief, and I felt an instant warmth toward him. “If you should run into that young man again—”
Mrs. Leoni groaned and threw her hands heavenward. Sadie Linnet tsked her tongue. Nana shook her head, and their reactions told me he was recalling that night seven years ago.
“—you’ll want to be checking between his fingers and toes for webbing.”
“Like a duck?” I blurted.
“Somewhat like,” he said seriously. “But I’ve known from the start it wasn’t some ordinary boy you saw. He was a selkie.”
“I’ve thought of that,” I said politely.
“They’re devilish handsome, charmin’, and great seducers of women. They don’t mean anything by it, mind, it’s just their nature, but a girl—”
“Enough, Red,” snapped Mrs. Linnet in her teacher’s voice.
“Save your stories for Midsummer’s Eve,” Nana said, “or Gwen might think you’re serious.”
“Or senile,” Sadie Linnet added.
I laughed, but couldn’t help noticing that Nana was edging me away from her friends.
“It was nice talking with you all again,” I said, and as Nana set out through the throng, I held tight to her. Partly, I was lending her my strong legs, but I didn’t want to lose track of her either. When I found the boy from the cove, I wanted to ask her who he was.
“Oh look.” Nana gestured with her lemonade cup. “There’s Jack Cates. I know you’ll want to say ‘hi’ to him.”
That got my attention, big time.
“Nana, no.”
Whatever questions that man had asked me after “the incident,” they had cut to the heart of my fears. You never forgive someone for that. I’m pretty sure the sheriff brought him in to determine my mental state. Was I hiding something? Repressing some trauma? He must have asked about my dreams, too, because I remember blubbering about sleepwalking and people believing Thelma instead of me. I wonder what he ended up telling the sheriff.
Dr. Jack Cates stood at a fruit stand, a living stereotype.
Rumpled psychologist with salt-and-pepper gray beard and glasses, he considered a sample slice of peach as if he were deciding whether he should buy the entire orchard. That analytical attitude chilled me.
He’d invaded my poor little kid brain. Imagine how fascinating he’d find the fact that I hadn’t returned to Mirage Beach for seven years, that I’d dropped out of diving just short of making regional champion (my parents had gone off about that so much, even I was beginning to wonder what it meant), and, oh yeah, maybe I could tell him about the guy from the cove who communicated his presence telepathically.
On the other hand, he might know more than anyone else what had really happened that night. And I wanted to know.
I tried to pull myself together, gathering energy like I would for a dive, but it didn’t work. Instead of feeling powerful, I felt weak and light-headed.
“Nana, I can’t talk to him.”
“He’s seen us now, dear.” Nana raised a hand in greeting.
“Well, I’m—” This time when I scanned the crowd, I looked for an escape. “I’m going to go shop. I’ll meet you at the—”
“Ice cream court?�
�� Nana suggested. She nodded toward an area with tables and a blue and white striped awning.
“Right,” I said. “In about ten minutes.”
“That’ll be fine, Gwennie,” she said.
I could have kissed her. I should have kissed her. But I bolted instead.
If I’d been with my parents, there’s no way I would have escaped.
Turning left, I moved down a side street. I noticed the yuppie stuff giving way to funkier wares. Then I turned right and kept going.
Looking over my shoulder to make sure I was out of Dr. Cates’s sight, I realized it was darker on this street. Slowing my strides to a normal walk, I looked up and saw fog coming in, haloing the streetlight.
Here, the booths were less formal, and there were fewer shoppers. Tie-dyed tank tops hung from tent poles pounded into a city-maintained flowerbed. On a rickety card table good-luck bamboo plants had been tortured into weird shapes and stuck in mayonnaise jar “vases.”
I spotted what looked like some very cool earrings and headed for them.
“Get outta here, a customer,” ordered a girl wearing more eye makeup tonight than I’d worn in my entire seventeen years.
She wasn’t talking to me, but to a group of sleazy-looking guys.
A brass stud pierced her nostril, and spiky hair the color of strawberry soda gave her the look of a scrappy rooster.
“Jade, you promised,” one of the guys whined, but she made a motion as if to backhand him, and the guys scattered.
A woman in charge, I thought, smiling. As I got closer I realized she was about my age.
Pinned to a big piece of cardboard, the earrings she had on display were made of beach glass, shells, and twisted wire.
“Hi,” I said, bending to look.
She made no response, just lifted her chin as if she were too cool to talk, but maybe she was shy.
I examined a pair of abalone shell ovals, then some loops that looked like hammered silver. Best of all were some dangles with moss green beads that would match a blouse I’d brought to wear while working at Nana’s. I was about to ask how much they were when she finally said something.
“That kid has puppies for sale.” She pointed at a boy squatting on a blanket beside a weary-looking mother dog and her brood. “Maybe you’ll find something you like over there.”
“Oh, thanks, but I have a cat who’d—” When I met her eyes, she was smirking.
If that had been a hint that Jade didn’t welcome people who window shopped for too long, fine. I straightened up and went on my way.
It was already time to go meet Nana. I walked fast, then glanced back the way I’d come. I was a little turned around, but I didn’t ask for help. Jade was watching, smug as if she knew I was lost.
Which I wasn’t. I heard Red O’Malley’s bagpipes, and I was pretty sure I could take a shortcut to the main street, through an alley that looked like the old Siena Bay.
Nana’s silver-and-black shawl had been resting in the bends of my elbows, but now I pulled it up over my shoulders. The heels on my sandals clacked as I entered the alley.
Rotten fish is a smell you don’t forget. I clapped my hand over my nose and tried not to breathe. Maybe the low-hanging fog magnified the stench. I hurried toward the music and the dim light at the end of the alley.
The alley narrowed.
I squeaked as a cat battered his way free of a dumpster lid. A skeletal fish, head intact, was clamped in his teeth. A quarreling knot of more cats, three or four at least, erupted from the same dumpster and scattered in yowling pursuit of the lucky one.
“Somebody’s catching fish,” I muttered, but I didn’t have time to enjoy my own sarcasm.
Dark figures stood between me and the alley’s end.
Turn back. My city instincts told me not to worry about how silly and scared I’d look. If I ran, the worst thing that could happen was I’d be laughed at. If I didn’t run …
But then I took a good look at the three guys. One was too far back to see, but the closest boy was short. I’m five-foot-two, and he looked shorter than me. Plus, his pants were so baggy, he’d lose them in a sprint.
“Looky what we got here,” he growled, and suddenly I wasn’t scared.
Valencia was a middle-class suburb of San Francisco. It had its share of gang members and thugs. As these boys jostled for a closer look at me, I knew they wouldn’t qualify for either group.
Wannabes, I thought. And that was just fine with me.
“Where do you think you’re going, little lady?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, and when he stopped in surprise, I strode toward the open space to his right.
I was slipping through, making it, when the second guy grunted. I couldn’t help glancing his way. He looked like a young Brad Pitt who’d been living behind one of these dumpsters for a week and decided to crawl out for a joint. He reeked of weed. And though he sure wasn’t my type, he was handsome in a doomed way.
I kept walking as he talked. Loud, too, so I’d be sure to hear.
“Guess you been schooled by the little turista, Roscoe.”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t a Spanish word. And a thug should change his name to something besides Roscoe.
I reminded myself there was still one of them lurking in the shadows. Lounging in that inset doorway? Yes.
That guy was tall, and he wasn’t trying to hide. He sort of squared his shoulders.
Of the three, I’d rather face pudgy Roscoe or the moody blond. The one in the shadows was the one to watch.
But I didn’t. The smell of corn dogs crowded out the stench of rotten fish, and the sweet trill of a flute was louder than my heels’ echo on the slippery concrete.
I was out.
Nana was waiting for me under the blue and white striped awning.
“Your ice cream is melting,” she pointed out.
The dish sat across from her on the wooden picnic table. I sat, and even though I wasn’t hungry, picked up the plastic spoon and began eating the vanilla ice cream, saving it from becoming part of the pool of chocolate syrup and sprinkles.
“Sorry,” I apologized. Boy, I really shoveled that ice cream in, as if my scare demanded I refuel. “I saw some cute earrings, though.”
“Did you buy them?”
“No.”
“I have a little cash if you’d like to go back,” Nana said.
My mixed feelings must have shown. I didn’t want those earrings quite enough to return to that dimly lit side street.
“Did something happen?”
“Nothing serious, but I think I ran into some of those bad boys you and Thelma were talking about.”
“Those boys?” Nana asked, looking past my shoulder.
My head whipped around to see Roscoe and the shaggy blond strutting down the middle of the street. They didn’t push people aside, but their attitude said nothing would make them happier than a scuffle.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Zack McCracken, I haven’t seen you for so long,” Nana called out. “Come over here and say hello.”
I sputtered. I didn’t spew my ice cream all over the table, but it was touch and go there for a minute. I barely managed to swallow.
My grandmother was a real piece of work. I mean, they weren’t actual thugs, but they didn’t look like the kind of boys she’d “chat” with.
So this was Zack. He couldn’t possibly remember me.
Stoned as he was, he still looked uncomfortable to be singled out. Something in his expression reminded me I’d met him before third grade, before his bow and arrow attack on the sea lion.
Years ago, Dad had been working on our old station wagon in the gravel driveway, and I’d been bored watching him, when I noticed a kid with a broken down bike up on the road. That was before the traffic increased and it became a serious highway.
“Go ahead and see if he needs help,” Dad had said, glancing out from under the hood.
So I did.
Zack and I had been little if it
was before third grade. I remember noticing an old bruise on his face. One of his knees had been scuffed up, too, like he’d taken a fall. The only thing wrong with his bike, though, was the chain had slipped off those metal things that make it go around. I knew from experience how to fix it.
By the look of his grease-blackened fingers, he’d been trying to get the chain back on those little metal hooks, but he had a rock in one hand, ready to pound it. I guess ten-year-old boys don’t handle frustration well.
I don’t know what we said to each other, but I ended up fixing his bike. He’d hated that. In fact, he jerked his bike up off the asphalt, jumped on, and jammed his bare feet against the pedals. He rode off in a rage.
I didn’t get it then. By now, I’d noticed guys don’t like to be rescued. Especially by girls. So why had I liked him in third grade?
Zack sauntered up, but stopped in the middle of the street, then joined a few other guys—I didn’t see the tall one—to loiter near a store called Merry Mermaid. It was a second-hand clothing store. Maybe they were about to go shopping, but I bet their presence had more to do with the painted wooden statue of a bare-breasted mermaid that guarded the shop’s front door.
Instead of saying anything, Zack stopped about four feet from our table and waited.
“Hello Zachary,” Nana said.
“Hi,” he mumbled. He shot me an appreciative glance before the tough guy scowl locked into place. I guess I looked better under the strings of lights than I had in the alley, but his look wasn’t exactly a compliment.
“You’re out of school, I see,” Nana added.
He made a gesture like “so?” but then he nodded.
“I’m reintroducing Gwendolyn, my granddaughter, to old friends,” Nana said.
He looked skeptical, as if he didn’t fall into that category. If he remembered me, he didn’t care.
“Have a nice vacation,” he said, but it sounded more like a curse.
“Oh, she’s not vacationing,” Nana chuckled. “She’s working for me.”
Skepticism turned to outright disbelief. “Working?” he asked.
“There’s more to do than ever,” Nana said. “In fact, there’s a summer job for you at the Inn, if you want a little extra cash.”