I think about dumping it down the shower drain, but, no, that wouldn’t be right. I trudge down the steps and try not to see Elder, still there on the couch, or Lindy, with the dishrag still on her shoulder, her legs curled up on her kitchen chair, deep in thought.
She perks up a little as I pass. “Where you going?”
I shake my head, not knowing how to explain, about the ocean and my dreams, and the way I’ve caught it, in jars and within me, to try to understand where I came from. How do I say I’m returning it? How do I let her know I’m taking it back to where I should have always been, instead of here?
I let the screen door smack behind me. The rain has slowed. There’s just this pathetic drizzle, enough to be annoying but not enough to get me even more wet than I already am.
I cross the deck, then the stairs, then the dunes, the same way Tink and Alexis did. I leave footprints in the sand. I squat to the ground and unscrew the lid of the jar.
Then I empty it.
Lindy sneaks up behind me. I stare at her. We look nothing alike. Even the necklace she made to match mine is now a bracelet. Nothing real has ever connected us.
“You okay?” she asks.
I shrug. I sit back on the sand and place the jar in my lap.
She points to it. “What’s that about?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know…a failed experiment.”
She sits cross-legged beside me, letting her hands sink into the sand.
“I love you,” she tells me.
I don’t know how to respond. A few days ago, I would have said it back. But, all of a sudden, three of the most reassuring words in the world make me feel sad. Instead, I ask, “Why?”
At first, she laughs. But, then, it’s like she can see I’m serious. That I need an answer to this. And she softens. “Because I don’t have to, Summer. Because I just do.”
It doesn’t feel like enough. It never does. “But why?” I ask again. I feel like I’ve been asking it my entire life. “That day you found me, what made you do it?”
She says it, like she always says it, “I figured you were mine.”
“But what does that mean?”
“It means I just knew. I just knew it was the right thing.”
“Like you just know Elder is the right thing?” I ask.
She nods. “Exactly.”
I let the jar sit in my lap, and I push my hands into the wet sand. The water inches closer to us. “What if he’s not?” I barely whisper, but then I find my voice and speak up. “What if he’s not the right thing?”
Lindy is quiet. Her face meets the open sky, like she’s drinking in what’s left of this crummy day.
I wish she’d fight me on this, but she doesn’t. She only says, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
I shouldn’t let myself, but I wonder if that’s what it’s like with me. If there’s a time limit to what’s always been the right thing. If, at some point, we’ll reach a day when it isn’t anymore.
It’s not cold, but I shiver anyway as the water threatens to hit us, just a few more inches to our toes. I don’t like being caught in a weird and worthless we’ll see.
At lunch the next day, Jeremiah’s got some kind of pre-tryout meeting for junior varsity track. The kid might laze around with his fishhooks, wandering and poking at things most of the time, but on the track he’s cannon fire, whizzing around in his fluorescent shoes.
He keeps telling me to try out for the swim team this spring, but I hate the stink of chlorine and how it dries out my skin and clumps up my hair. Salt water’s softer and colder, and in the ocean, I don’t have to worry much about my stroke being a perfect straight line. I just let it take me. I like the surrender.
So, lunch is just me and Tanvi, which isn’t much of a lunch when you consider that she’s spending the whole time reading another romance. This one’s called The Lace of Desire.
“What’s lacy about desire?” I ask.
Tanvi plops the book on the stone table and sighs, like she’s had to explain this a thousand times. “It’s a patchwork, Summer. It’s holey and intricate and there’s just a whole lot to it. It’s not some straightforward thing.”
“It seems pretty straightforward to me. You just, like, want it or whatever.”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s not an it. It’s a someone. And it’s never that simple. I mean, sometimes you question whether it’s right. Sometimes other people can totally object to you wanting somebody. Like in sitcoms. How someone’s always getting married and someone else is always racing to the altar just in time to say they object. Which is totally cliché, by the way.” She lifts the book up and continues reading.
I raise my eyebrows at what she calls cliché, considering she’s sitting with a book where the cover’s all designed with a gold locket open to a heart and a woman strewn out in a white gown next to some lace curtains.
Still, I imagine myself running breathless to object to Lindy and Elder getting married someday, and it feels pretty satisfying.
Ted Light slides onto the bench at our table, not bothering to ask this time, and I wait for Tanvi’s obnoxious sigh, which comes right on cue.
Ted’s got his ketchup packets at the ready, and he holds one over a plate of gray meat, drizzling it on like he’s decorating a cake. His movements are in sync with a tune he’s humming, some piano piece he’s trying to master, no doubt.
“So, what’s going on with your dreams?” Ted Light jumps right in, taking the entire hunk of meat and gnawing on it whole.
“I’m done with the dream stuff,” I announce.
I’m surprised when Tanvi drops the book’s spine to the table again with a clunk. “Already?”
I nod. “I think you were right. I think it was just my subconscious, or whatever, getting all mixed up. Nothing real about it.”
Tanvi presses her cheek to her shoulder, like she’s studying me. “I never said it wasn’t real. I said it was an escape. Sometimes I think dreams are realer than anything going on day to day.”
“How so?” I ask.
She shrugs. “They must mean something to you. Or your brain wouldn’t dream it. That’s what I think.”
“It meant something to me…,” I start, but I don’t know how to finish. It meant something to me, but what? It meant something to me, but there were more questions than answers. It meant something to me…“But it shouldn’t.” I settle on that.
“It’s like forbidden love,” Tanvi concludes.
I roll my eyes.
“Yes. Don’t deprive yourself, Summer.” Ted goes to pat my hand, like he’s some kind of grandma, but I swoop it away with a laugh.
“Tink’s story isn’t mine,” I say out loud, and it feels good to say it. “And neither is that.” I point at Tanvi’s book.
“So what? I mean, really. Tink’s story is fun to dream. This book is run to read. Dreaming it is like living it.” She lifts up her book of lacy desire, but I can’t let the idea go.
“I mean, you could have a real romance,” I say. “You could have…” I hesitate. “Ted.”
Ted chokes on his meat at the same time Tanvi slams her book on the table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you could read it or you could live it.” I turn to Ted with a dramatic sigh. I know I shouldn’t say what I’m about to say. I know it’s not my secret to tell. But how can she keep doing that? How can she hold on to all these silly love stories when she could have something real? “She likes you, Ted.” He nods in a fit of coughing.
Tanvi’s eyes grow large. “That’s not true.”
“But it is.”
“It’s not.” Then she turns to Ted, who holds up a finger, like he has something to say, his other hand to his chest. “Don’t listen to her,” she demands.
I fiddle with my own dull meat. “Your call.�
�
Tanvi grabs her backpack in a huff. She swings it over her shoulder, grabs her book, and stomps off.
Ted catches his breath and asks, “Is it true?”
“Of course.”
“Heh.” He thinks this over. “Then dreams do come true. The aspiration kind, in this case. Not the falling asleep kind.”
I nod in agreement, because last night, my dreams went blank. I already put them back in the ocean where they belong.
After school, I ride up to the house and there’s a pickup truck on the pebbled driveway. The front door of the house is wide open, propped up with a rock, like someone’s coming and going. In and out.
The pit of me goes sour.
Elder.
And his things.
I groan when I step off the bike and let it fall. I peer into the pickup truck and wonder what he’s bringing into our house. But it’s just a bunch of fishing nets and empty buckets and some glass beakers on a rack. Probably equipment from his job at the hatchery. Seriously? Our house is going to turn into some kind of boathouse, isn’t it? Stinking of ocean and fish and who knows what.
Elder appears at the door before I know it, his glasses all cockeyed and his hair slicked back straight and a little greasy. He removes the rock and stands at the top of the porch, squinting, then waves down at me.
I don’t wave back, but I don’t look away. I stand rooted, feeling the pebbles beneath the heels of my shoes.
Before I know it, he’s hand-hipped in front of me, squinting past the sun. “Scoping things out,” he tells me before I can ask.
I wrap my hands around my chest. “It’s just a house,” I say. But that’s a lie. It’s our house. “It’s pretty full,” I tell him. “There’s not a lot of room for your things.”
He laughs. “Not to worry. I live light.”
He lives light. Who talks like this? I shake my head. “And we have plenty of furniture already,” I warn.
“You do,” he says. “That’s why I’m selling most of mine. Thought we could use the money for a trip.”
“A trip?” I wonder out loud. “We don’t go on vacation. That’s why we live here.” I spread my arms like wings, circling the driveway, the ocean, the sky.
“Well.” He shrugs. “We could go somewhere else for a spell.”
For a spell? I can’t listen to him anymore. “Well. I’ve got somewhere to be.” But I don’t move. “Don’t you?” It feels a little like a dare, but he’s not taking the bait.
“Right-o. I have a shift at work. Getting the Hatch House ready for November trout. You should stop by sometime. They’ll hatch in December.”
“What makes you think I care about trout?” I ask.
“They’re interesting,” he tells me. “Genetically, they’re more complex than humans.”
“So?”
“It’s worth knowing,” he says. “That’s all.”
I stare him down, crossing my arms and not budging an inch. He shrugs with a small laugh and gets in the truck. He rolls down the window, taps his hand at the side of the car, and smiles all goofy. “I’ll see you later, roomie.”
I lift my bike and pedal as fast as I can to Jeremiah’s. I go in through the Pitch & Putt hut, banging on the kitchen door, where I see him guzzling Gatorade at the fridge, wearing these flimsy little shorts that show off his stick-thin legs. The armpits on his white tee are all stained and sweaty. He’s nodding at somebody, looking vaguely annoyed. I assume it’s Gramzy, but then I see it’s his dad, who is sitting at the kitchen counter, looking like he’s lecturing him. I’m about to turn away when Jeremiah pushes the door open, fast. “Summer, you’re here.” He eyes me like he’s been expecting me, like this is the story he’s given his dad, and I get the hint that I better play along.
“You ready?” I ask.
He nods real fast. “Yup.” Then he slams the refrigerator shut and waves to his dad. “See you later.”
“What was that about?” I ask as he marches us both through the hut, shaking his head, getting to the backyard as quick as possible.
“He’s lecturing me about you. Saying he’s got a bad feeling.”
“About me?” I remember him creeping around the boardwalk, the first time we saw him, before we knew who he was to this place.
“Saying I should stay away from girls. I mean, you’re not a girl.”
“Um…”
“You know what I mean. You’re…you. You’re Summer. Besides, after twelve years, he can just waltz in here and have an opinion? What does he know? I just…I wish…” He says it quietly, like he’s ashamed. “I want him to leave. He needs to leave.”
He sits on the Pitch & Putt grass, and I plop down beside him. “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
“Nope,” he agrees. “He better get that straight.”
“Besides, I’ve got my own intruder,” I confess.
“Who?”
“Elder. He’s moving in tomorrow. We should ship them away together,” I start.
He snorts. “Toss ’em out to sea on nothing but a wooden raft.”
“With prune juice and bologna sandwiches.”
“Feed Elder’s dog laxatives and send it with them.”
Our laughter starts small, but it gets bigger. Until we’re rolling with it in the itchy grass. Until it rages at the pit of my stomach and stays there. Until it hurts too much.
“I miss when it was just me and Lindy,” I tell him.
“Well. There’s no going back.” He lifts himself up and shakes off some pieces of grass. “Come on.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Wherever.”
We walk across the Pitch & Putt toward the dunes. We skid down them, our sandals leaving a trail in the slope of the sand. We crunch over washed-up seaweed and I eye the shells. They stick up from the wet sand in pearly white and pink. There’s the black of crusted mussels and smoothed-over beach glass. I think about snagging a few. I could put them in my pocket.
But I think of all the shells we have in the house already. They don’t seem as special anymore. They all look exactly the same.
Jeremiah skips a flat rock across the water. It gets three skips across the surf and disappears. “I ran the one hundred in 11.57 seconds,” he tells me.
“Is that good?” I wonder.
“It’s real good. It’s a personal best.”
“How do you do it so fast?”
He shrugs. “I just tell myself to push a little bit harder. That’s all.”
“What happens when you can’t push it anymore?”
“I guess that’s it. I guess that’s as fast as I’ll ever go.”
“Have you reached your limit?” I ask.
“No way.”
I wonder how he can be so sure.
Soon enough, Elder’s moving his things in for real. The pickup truck has more than just his fish gadgets. There are suitcases and boxes, sports equipment and a giant bag of dog kibble, which he lugs into the kitchen and plops on the floor. The dog’s still at his old place. Apparently she had a conniption when she saw all their stuff shipping out, and Elder thought it best to let her calm down.
I don’t think calm down is in her wheelhouse, and even Lindy looked skeptical when Elder explained. So I’m expecting we’ll have this strung-out canine devil bouncing around the house for the rest of our lives.
It’s sticky hot, and I stand at the porch, my elbows on the railing, not offering to help even a little.
“Iced tea?” Lindy holds out a tall sweating glass, but I shake my head.
She places it on the railing and nudges up next to me, and we stare out at the boxes. “Elder’s rummaging around in my room,” she says.
I notice she calls it her room, but really, it’ll be theirs. Maybe she’s a little more nervous than I think. Maybe she
didn’t think this through. For a second I even wonder if she’ll change her mind. Right then and there.
But, then, Elder slides out through the open door, slips a kiss past her cheek before bumbling down the steps for the next box, and her face turns that blushing pink again. I get that this is as real as anything. Realer, even.
I scan the front yard and look down the street. There’s a giant truck at Turtle Lady’s house. “What’s going on over there?” I ask.
Lindy squints, shields her eyes from the sun, and shakes her head. “No idea.” She doesn’t look away, and I get this feeling she’s just as intrigued as I am.
I yank at her wrist. “Come on. Let’s see.”
We walk down the steps, together, across the curved pathway, to the end of the driveway, where Lindy puts her hands to her hips and we both look out at the truck. There are two huge dumpsters, and men are coming in and out.
“She’s leaving,” Lindy concludes, now hugging her chest tight. “Or maybe already gone.”
“She didn’t tell me—” I stop. “I mean, I didn’t hear anything about that.”
Then Elder’s next to us, wiping sweat from his brow. “Off to Florida, to live with her sister,” he says.
We both turn toward him, quick, like, How would you know? And he answers without us having to ask. “Heard some people at the Hatch House talking about it. She is one of our biggest donors.”
“No kidding,” Lindy remarks.
“Got a thing for amphibians. Turtles, obviously.”
Lindy’s got this weird look in her eyes, still staring at the house. “Gone, huh? Just like that.” She doesn’t look away, and I see a gulp in her throat. And I get it. It does feel kind of strange, when someone barely anyone ever saw just up and leaves, for a place in Florida, for a sister we didn’t even know she had, like there was this whole life she lived beyond us ever knowing.
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