“Mm-hmm. Wanna see something?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
He turns the television off. “We’re going!” he calls out, not waiting to hear back from Gramzy, then he leads me outside, and we ramble over our sandy street, without saying a word. He takes me across the two-lane road, past the Beachcomber Motel, and on to the bay side, where the town gets its name. He holds up a shell, purple-spotted and shining. “It’s a lady crab shell,” he tells me. “They shed them as they get bigger and wait in the sand for a new one to grow.” He hands it over. I feel how soft and glossy it is, how the little horns poke out, but they aren’t sharp, just smooth, and rounded, left behind when the lady crab wanders out.
It’s got to be something, doesn’t it, to be able to leave the shell of yourself and walk away? “I’ll keep one for the collection,” I say.
Jeremiah nods, like he meant for that to happen all along.
I hold it in my hands and turn it over and around, inspecting it. “Do you know who lived in your house before you?” I ask.
“Gramzy, I guess.”
“Before her?” I press.
He shakes his head. “It’s hard to imagine anybody before Gramzy. Why?”
I shrug. “Just…I dreamed your house. I think…” I hesitate. I try to remember the details, the water, the shore, the house lit up, but all I can picture are shadows. The blur of people, their hair, maybe, but not their faces or names.
I wonder why this dream felt so full, why I still feel it in my gut every time I look at the water. It’s like Tink’s smoldering firecracker just landed right there. Maybe it did. I shake the feeling.
“You seen Turtle Lady?” he asks.
“Not since yesterday. You?”
“Nope,” he says. “No turtles, either.”
“I wonder where she keeps them. I wonder what else she’s hiding in that house. I wonder—” I sigh. I wonder too much, maybe. I run my fingers over the lady crab shell. It’s smooth and soft and cold. Then I get to wondering how long the lady crab waits for a shell that fits her and if the old shell tricks birds into thinking they’ve found something to eat.
“My dad’s visiting,” Jeremiah says out of nowhere.
I snap my head up, quick. “Your dad?”
He nods.
I’m about to say, I didn’t think you had one, but of course he does. I know how kids are made, and it does take some kind of dad to get things going. I’ve got a dad, too, not one that I know, but he existed once or I wouldn’t be here. “When’s the last time you saw him?” I ask.
“He left when I was a baby.”
I’ve never seen him with a dad. I just know about a mom who died of an infection right after he was born, and her mom, the Gramzy who runs the Pitch & Putt and sorts through fabric swatches for just the right curtains.
“Where does he live?” I ask.
He shrugs. “All over, I guess.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s all artsy or whatever. I guess he, like, dabbles. That’s what Gramzy says.”
I get this feeling Jeremiah doesn’t know much.
“How long’s he going to be here?” I ask.
“Don’t know.”
He breaks a dried stick of seaweed in half and matches the two pieces side by side. His voice gets quiet. “I don’t want anything to change,” he tells me.
I nod, fast, bobbing my head like a dumb bird. “Me either.”
Jeremiah and I dilly around the rest of the day, collecting shells, skipping rocks across the bay, taking our bikes to the dirt road to see who’s around and maybe see if Tanvi will let us take out the kayak from her parents’ store.
Ted Light tails us for part of the afternoon. We’ve got ten-speeds, and he’s still trolling around with his sister’s old banana-seat bicycle that’s called Peaches & Cream. Lindy’s always telling me Ted “means well,” but he doesn’t brush his hair, he talks too much, and his idea of a good time is making up songs about going to space.
Still, there aren’t too many of us poking about Barnes Bluff year-round, so I’ve gotten used to him.
By this time, we’ve come across Tanvi, who is sitting on her rickety old steps with a battered copy of some bodice-ripper romance book, which is nothing new, but she doesn’t even look up when Jeremiah starts knocking on her head. “Yoo-hoo, anybody in there?”
She finally holds a finger up to us to wait a minute, mimes the words she’s reading under her breath, then squashes the book against her legs. “My mom says I have to go outside and get some fresh air, and that is the only reason I’m out here, and it’s as far as I’m going, so don’t get all whiny about doing whatever it is you’re going to be nagging me about in five seconds.”
“We want to take the kayak out,” Jeremiah says anyway.
“Pleeease.” I clasp my hands together in prayer.
Tanvi doesn’t look away from her book. “Do you see these steps?”
We nod.
“I’m not leaving them. It’s stuffy out here, it’s hot, and you know as well as I do if my mother didn’t think I needed fresh air and an education, I’d never even leave my room.”
Ted Light laughs, all snickery and high-pitched, and Tanvi’s chin shoots up, finally taking us in, her cheeks turning flushed when she sees Ted Light hovering over his Peaches & Cream bike.
She’s got a thing for him. She admitted it once. And while I acted like a five-year-old ooh-la-la-ing and singing about Tanvi and Te-ed sitting in a tree, she shut me down real quick, because it was much easier, she claimed, to end things before they began.
“But…” Jeremiah hesitates. “You’ve got a kayak.”
Tanvi shoos her arm ahead, flustered. “It’s all yours.”
“Really?” I ask.
We hear Mrs. Ballard’s unmistakable “Taaaaaaanviiiii” bellow out onto the street from the back of the house, and then she’s at the screen door. “Oh! Summer! Ted! Jeremiah!” she announces us. “Tanvi, when people are here, you invite them in, you do not make them linger on the front steps like dogs.” Then she makes this kind of tsking noise and swings the door open.
Tanvi stands up quick. “They want to take the kayak out.”
“Oh! Yes. Tanvi told you about the kayak, then. There was a mix-up on orders at the shop, so the seller reimbursed us for this. He said it’s a Cadillac of kayaks, that’s what he said, and we should embrace a life on the ocean, am I right, Tanvi?” She swirls her arms around in a circle, gesturing around the bay. “Then you’ll all take it out?” She asks it like a question, but you can tell she means it like a command, especially when Tanvi holds out her book in protest. “I’m read—”
Mrs. Ballard removes the book from her hands. “If you are reading Tolstoy, Shakespeare, okay then, fine, we’ll let you bury that nose of yours farther and farther into the book, of course, am I going to argue that? No, no, of course not. But this is not that.” She makes her tsking noise again and reads the title out loud. “Her Silent Thorn.” She sighs and shakes the book out at us. Tanvi eyes Ted Light, and her face gets even more red. “This is for silly old ladies like me, Tanvi. Show them the kayak. Take the kayak. Show them.”
Tanvi groans and gets all stompy up the steps. “Come on.”
Jeremiah and I let our bicycles fall to their sides, so they’re resting on the grass with the wheels circling in the breeze. Ted Light hesitates. “I’ve got piano lessons,” he tells us.
“Well, there’s only room for two of us, anyway,” Jeremiah says, and I kick his shins.
“Next time,” I say.
“I’m tackling the Chopin waltzes,” Ted continues.
We nod.
“I’m so close to memorizing the Minute Waltz.”
We continue nodding.
“If I memorize it, I get a sticker.”
He ki
cks his heels in the dirt, and I get the feeling I get a lot around Ted, that he’s always sticking around just one minute too long.
“I’ll see you guys in school.”
“Yup,” I say.
Ted smiles. “Bye, Tanvi.”
She doesn’t respond, already leading us to the wraparound porch, which is just like mine and Lindy’s. It takes us to the dock in the backyard. Tanvi kicks at the pointy red kayak and wraps her arms around her chest. “Happy? It’s a two-seater, so I’ll gladly sit this one out.”
She tosses out two life vests, faded from the sun. Then I watch her reach to the front of the kayak, where she pulls out an attached plastic box meant to keep your things dry. But, instead of a wallet and keys, there’s a withered old paperback romance, and she flips to a page.
“You don’t use a bookmark?” I ask. Since she always has her nose in a book, I never noticed.
“Nah.” Then she plunks her hand to her head. “I file page numbers right here.”
“How many books are you in the middle of this time?”
“Let’s see.” She looks up to the sky, thinking it out, counting under her breath.
“I’ve got one at the house, one in the kayak, one in the car, and at least two at school.”
“Don’t you get the stories confused?”
She rolls her eyes, like I’m talking crazy. “They’re all different, Summer.” Then she softens. “I’ll loan you one if you want.”
I reach out, turn the cover so I can see it. A bare-chested man with flowy hair and a woman with sleeves drooping to her elbows stand together in the rain. They’re holding on to one another like if they let go, they’d die. “Love’s Tender Storm,” I read out loud. Then I think of Lindy and Elder standing over our deck table with plasticky cheese and a bottle of smelly red wine. Is that what love’s like? I wonder. Getting all stormed on? “I don’t know.” I hesitate. “They sound kind of—”
“They’re not dumb or silly,” Tanvi chimes in before I can finish. “We have to embrace heroines who are willing to subvert the rules laid out for them and put their desires first,” she huffs.
“I was going to say…sad. I don’t know.” I think back to the book Mrs. Ballard took away. “Her Silent Thorn? What does that even mean? How can a thorn be silent?”
“It’s not about an actual thorn, Summer. Don’t you know anything? It’s about loving someone, desperately”—she clutches her hands to her chest—“but knowing they aren’t good for you. And not to give anything away or anything…but…let’s just say, no thorn stays silent, okay?”
I shrug. “Okay.” I guess Elder is Lindy’s thorn. I guess he just won’t stay quiet anymore. I wish he would.
“A little help here, please?” Jeremiah scolds, trying to drag the kayak onto the dock with his skinny little arms.
I march over. “On three,” I tell him, and we lift it up together, stepping across the planks of the dock toward the canal.
When we’re stuffed like sausages into the life vests, we slip the kayak into the still waters, toss in the two-sided paddles, and scramble in after them until we’re seated and ready.
“Now what?” I ask, my legs sticking out under the plastic point of the kayak, my feet all crunched.
“You don’t know how to kayak?” Jeremiah asks.
I shake my head.
“Me neither.”
“Tanvi!” we call together.
It takes her a little bit to slog over, her book out in front of her while she concentrates on the pages. She’s perfected reading and walking, or so she’s told me, but if she walked a little too far, she’d walk right off the dock. Knowing Tanvi, though, she’d just keep on reading, holding the book open up over her head.
“How do you move this thing?” I ask.
She drops her arm to her side and shakes her head. “You seriously don’t know how to kayak?”
“Nope.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Move the paddles around or something.”
Jeremiah plops one side of his paddle in the water.
“You have to do it together,” she tells us.
I plop mine in and watch our paddles knock each other as we try to move.
She sighs. “In sync, geniuses.”
We paddle in small circles around the dock. My arms are burning as we dizzy around, the two of us grunting and breathing and not saying much. We finally pick up some momentum. It feels like we’re gliding.
I stop for a minute. I close my eyes and feel the freedom of moving while Jeremiah scurries his paddle.
When I open them up again, we’re heading for the dock.
“Which way?” Jeremiah asks.
“Backwards!” I call out. But we’re not fast enough. We just crash into the dock with a giant thud, and the kayak wobbles and tips, and before I know it, I’m sinking and paddling my arms, salt water rushing my insides.
I rise up coughing and take a huge breath, clothes and hair dragging me down as I grab hold of the dock and try to pull myself up.
Tanvi hasn’t moved. Her legs are pretzeled together, hair lopping over the pages. She’s absorbed in the story of two people trying to stay in love through a storm.
I bike up to the Shaky. Even though we tried to dry off in the sun all afternoon, I’m still a little damp from our fall in the water. My arms feel tired from paddling the kayak around. The dock’s full, and a few people are standing at the order window, waiting for fish fry. I circle to the back, where the dumpsters are piled high with garbage, and I lean my bike up against the paint-peeled railing of the back stairs.
Through the kitchen, it’s flaming hot, smelling of fried everything. It’s clanking with all kinds of pots and pans. Coffee cup saucers skid and plates slap against the counter. As I slip on through, I hear Lindy’s voice above it all as she shouts orders. Luss nods his chin at me while he flips crab cakes. Silverware echoes in the sink basin.
I imagine Luss shucking oysters at the bar, tossing half shells on iced platters while the rest collect in giant Tupperware bins. Lindy used to bring me buckets of the leftovers, but there are only so many gnarly and barnacled oyster shells you can dig through before it’s all just more and more of the same.
I push through the swinging door and nearly clip a red-faced Lindy as she spins toward me, carrying plates that line up her arms. “Luss!” she shouts. “I’m going on break in five!” Then she tips her chin at me. “I’ll meet you out back.”
When I get out there, Elder’s sitting at the lopsided picnic table, and he hops up when he sees me, slamming his knee against the wood, then pretending it doesn’t hurt him. “Summer!” He tries to smile between grimaces.
At least the rat dog’s not here, but I can’t help looking toward the kitchen, wishing Lindy’s five would turn into zero.
There’s no escape.
I take my time going down the steps and lift up my bicycle. I actually use the kickstand this time, then I lean against the frame like it’s a seat.
“So. Shells,” he starts.
Here we go.
“What’s the fascination?”
I shrug. “They’re pretty. They’re the same and, also, different.” I don’t know how to explain. It began with my shell necklace and Lindy and me walking up and down the shore with buckets, collecting as many as we could for me to string them into more necklaces to sell on the beach. Then it turned into protecting the most beautiful of them for me, lining them up along the windowsills, until there were too many to count. Lindy joked that I’d bring the shore indoors, a never-ending beach. She helped me store them. She helped me keep the shells the sea had captured and polished and set free. Together, we took them, before the ocean could take them again.
“You guys must have thousands,” he tells me, bobbing his head, nodding like he’s never talked about anything more interestin
g.
“Mm-hmm.”
“So, thanks,” he starts in.
“For what?”
“For agreeing to let me move in. My apartment is much too small for the three of us. It just makes sense, with the space you have.”
Nothing will change, Lindy said, but how could it not?
“I make a mean Bolognese,” he says, out of nowhere.
Bolognese? I wonder what he’s talking about.
“So you and Lindy have been here, what? Ten years?” he asks.
“I’ve been here ten years. She’s been here a little longer.”
“She doesn’t talk about family much.”
“I’m her family,” I argue.
“Well, right, but she’s got a mom, in Delaware, or something?”
I nod. “We visited her once.” I remember the spare kitchen, two cups of coffee, an orange juice for me. The bathroom smelled like powder, and there was a big yellow bottle of something called AFTER BATH SPLASH by Jean Naté. There were no photographs on the walls or shelves. “But they don’t get along.”
“How come?”
I kick my sneakers in the sand and mash it around. I don’t actually know. Lindy always says she’s moved on from Delaware, from that life. I make up an answer. “Artistic differences.” It seems like something Lindy would say.
Elder laughs. “I don’t think that’s what you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” I dig my heel, watching the sand glide to the ground.
“Why did she pick this place?”
“Why don’t you ask her that?”
“She’s got a way of ignoring those kinds of questions.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want you to know,” I say.
I can tell he doesn’t like the idea. His eyes do this thing like they don’t know where to look. The truth is, Lindy doesn’t answer questions like that. She waves them away like you would a fly.
“Lindy’s great,” he tells me. “I’ve never met anyone like her.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes.
A Swirl of Ocean Page 4