The Baddest Girl on the Planet

by Heather Frese

  “Dammit, Walter,” I say, even though I know he can’t help it. Walter is sixteen and blind. He wanders over and bumps into my leg. Walter is the main reason I made sure our house had laminate floors—I didn’t want our home to turn into Pee Carpet Palace. It’s the first time Austin and I’ve had our very own place, one we didn’t share with Stephen or my parents. I throw my shoe in the sink and grab the spray bottle of cleaner and some paper towels. I’m annoyed because those are the only shoes that go with today’s realtor costume, and I have two minutes before I need to leave to pick up Austin. I shove my feet into the pair of orange Crocs I keep by the door and hightail it to school.

  The parking lot is hopping, and it’s too hot to sit in the car, so I get out and stand with the other moms near the entrance, hoping nobody notices the cloggy ugliness of my shoes. First generation Crocs really are god-awful. I nod to Emma X, who’s been married so many times no one can keep track of her last name. She used to be Emma Midgett. It’s still a little weird to me that this school, the site of my childhood taunting, is now Austin’s, though they remodeled it a few years ago. It looks like a great big beach cottage now instead of the brick squatness of my day. I’m glancing down to see if there are noticeable sweat stains on my blouse when I hear my name. I look up. It’s Daniel.

  “I think Fiona has shoes like that,” he says. He’s wearing tan cargo shorts and a green t-shirt, and he still has those eyes and that face and those shoulders.

  “They were a gift,” I say. “From my mother. The dog peed on my other shoes, my real shoes.” Flummoxed, I run my hand along the beachy planks of the school building.

  Daniel puts his hands in his pockets. “I just meant that you looked nice,” he says. He smiles and the crooked bottom tooth makes my heart flit against my rib cage, which irritates me. I’m not sixteen, for crying out loud.

  “Are you here for Fiona?” I ask. Then I curse myself for saying something so stupid. Of course he’s here for Fiona.

  “Being together helps both of us, I think,” Daniel says. “She’s still a bit flummoxed about the move.”

  Daniel actually says flummoxed. “I was just thinking that,” I say. I wonder why Daniel needs help. “About Fiona?”

  “About flummoxed,” I say. I shake my head. I’m not making any sense.

  “It’s a great word,” Daniel says, like this is the most logical conversational progression ever.

  The bell rings and kids stream out the front doors, wild and raucous. It takes us a second to find Austin and Fiona. All the kids look alike with their backpacks and first-day-of-school clothes. I spot Austin and wave. He grins and runs up to me, then remembers that he’s cool and slows to a walk. “Hey Mom,” he says. “You took off work early.”

  “It’s your first day,” I say. I’m pleased he noticed. “How’d it go?”

  Fiona has found Daniel. He rests his hand on her head. Fiona squints up at me. She’s a cute little thing, freckled and green-eyed with dark hair in a messy ponytail. “Our teacher has a sweet voice,” she says.

  “That’s a good thing,” I say.

  We all walk to the parking lot, Austin and Fiona chattering and giggling. I turn back and see Emma X watching us. She whispers something to Jackie Ballance. I know they’re talking about me and Daniel. I know I have ugly Crocs and no dinner plans, and I’m sweating like a wildebeest, but none of that matters right now.

  “Why are you smiling, Mom?” Austin asks. He shimmies his backpack around on his shoulders.

  I mess up his hair, and he pulls away. “I’m glad you had a good first day,” I say.

  Daniel stops walking and points at a blue sedan parked right beside my car. “This is us,” he says. Fiona climbs in, her backpack bumping the doorframe. She looks like a turtle. “How about this weekend for a tour?” Daniel asks, removing Fiona’s backpack and tossing it in the back seat.

  “Sure.”

  Austin and I climb in the car and drive away, singing along to the radio. “Mom, how old does someone have to be to go steady?” Austin asks over the music. I roll down the windows and my hair blows back from my face.

  “I’d say nine is a good age.” I glance at Austin in the rearview mirror. He grins, and we sing louder. Ba-Ba-Ba, Ba-Barbara Ann. There’s a buoyancy inside me, something bright and arch and new. I drum my hand on the steering wheel as we turn onto Highway 12.

  Stephen texts me that evening. What illness did everyone on the Starship Enterprise catch?

  What? I text back.

  Chicken Spocks.

  That’s illogical, I write. Then I call him. Austin’s asleep, so I keep my voice low and the TV on quietly in the background. “I think Austin’s about to make his move on Fiona,” I say.

  Stephen groans. “Welcome to the realm of relationships, kid.”

  “I think it’s cute,” I say.

  “Is she pretty?” Stephen asks.

  “She’s nine,” I say. “But yes, she’s adorable. Sweet, too.” Walter ambles over and bumps into the sofa. I pick him up, and he settles on my lap.

  “They say boys choose mates who’re just like their mothers,” Stephen says.

  I roll my eyes. But I’m pleased. Stephen goes on to talk about his family, and how his dad’s ready to retire and let Stephen take over the hardware store in Hatteras. “I could make it turn a good profit, Evie,” he says. “I’ve learned a lot.”

  I wonder just what Stephen’s learned. I wonder if he’s changed as much as I have, if we’re really different people from the ones who got knocked up and married too soon and had matching revenge-affairs, or if we’re still the same idiots, only older.

  “I was an idiot,” Stephen says.

  “I was just thinking that,” I say. Then I brace myself for Stephen to yell at me, but he just laughs. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I say. “I was thinking how dumb we both were at nineteen.”

  “And twenty.”

  “And twenty-three,” I say.

  Stephen clears his throat. “I didn’t know what I had until I lost it,” he says. “It’s time I focused on family. On what matters.”

  I pet Walter’s silky head. “On living long and prospering,” I say. Zing.

  Nate and I meet for coffee the next morning at the inn. I’ve just discovered mail-order Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and I wonder where it’s been all my life. It’s windy and a little chilly, and fat gray clouds plump along the skyline. All the guests are inside, but Nate and I sit on the deck. My phone rings, and I jump. I don’t recognize the number. I answer. It’s Daniel, and before I can think, I’m agreeing to show him the island today. I hang up. “Hot date?” Nate asks.

  “Shut up,” I say. “I’m just showing Dr. Garcia’s brother, Daniel, around. It’s professional courtesy.”

  “I thought you were hanging out with me and Lara today,” Nate says.

  Shit. He’s right. “I’m sorry,” I say. I stand up. “I forgot.”

  Nate shakes his head. “You would drop everything for some man.”

  This pisses me off. I turn to Nate. I’m taller than he is since he’s sitting, and I like this. “I’m not the girl I used to be, Nate. I’m not going to let a pair of nice shoulders fool me again.”

  Nate shrugs.

  “Don’t be a dick,” I say. Then I feel bad because I’m the one breaking our plans. “Let’s do dinner instead.”

  Nate agrees, and we take our coffee mugs into the kitchen. “Remember to show Daniel the new baseball dugouts.”

  “Smartass.” I punch Nate in the shoulder and leave.

  When I drive up to the motel, Daniel’s standing at the entrance beside the sign, one foot crossed in front of the other. He waves, and he looks like the Vegas Vic cowboy, minus the hat. He gets in the car, and we drive north to the lighthouse.

  “The Cape Hatteras lighthouse is the tallest in America,” I say, in full tourist-guide form. But this is boring. This is the stuff everybody knows. I change my mind. “Have you heard about the Cora tree?” I ask.

  “No
,” Daniel says. He shuffles his stuff around, and I notice a fancy camera.

  I keep driving north, telling Daniel the story of how long ago the witch Cora was tied to a tree, about to be burned, when she vanished in a flash of lightning that emblazoned her name into the trunk. I pull into the parking lot of the National Park in Buxton and curve around to the lighthouse, which rises in front of us like a giant, striped barbershop pole. “Want me to take your picture?” I ask.

  “Absolutely,” Daniel says. We climb out of the car, and he hands me the camera and shows me what button to push. Daniel stands in front of the lighthouse; he gives a thumbs-up and a big grin, and I click.

  “There’s a museum if you want to see it,” I tell him.

  Daniel takes his camera and goes back to the car. “I’d rather see the Cora tree if you don’t mind,” he says.

  So we head south to Frisco, turning in at Brigand’s Bay, a pretty little subdivision of residential and rental houses. We get out and walk along Snug Harbor Drive, searching for the right tree among the row of twisty live oaks. “This is it,” I say. I point out the spot in the bark.

  “I think it says coma,” Daniel says.

  “It does not,” I say. “What kind of a witch is named Coma?”

  “Because the lightning put her in a coma?” Daniel asks.

  I tip my face to the sky. “Speaking of lightning,” I say. The fat gray clouds from earlier have spread across the entire sky. The wind blows my bangs into my eyes, and I shiver. It’s going to pour soon. We get back in the car.

  “What now?” I ask. Then I remember that Daniel doesn’t know anything about the island, so of course he wouldn’t know what now because that’s my job. “Now is time for a Hatteras-style snocone,” I decide.

  Daniel asks what this is. I pull onto Highway 12 and turn right, telling him it’s ice cream on the bottom and flavored shave-ice on top. “The owners have been here since the 1950s,” I tell him. The rain starts, and I flip on the wipers. We get to the shave-ice place and hold our arms over our heads and run through the rain to order. I get chocolate chip cookie dough on bottom and black cherry on top, and Daniel goes for a classic vanilla topped with orange. He pays even though I protest. We sit in the car and eat, and I’m freezing. Daniel shudders a little, too. I turn on the heat, but this makes the shave-ice melt, so we eat fast, slurping and crunching and shivering the whole time.

  “What brings you to the Outer Banks?” I ask. I adjust the heater so it blows on my legs.

  “A few things happened at once,” Daniel says. He pushes at the sno-cone with a spoon, flattening the top. “My father died, I thought I got cancer, and I got fired.”

  “Wow,” I say. I wipe a drip of black cherry off my arm.

  “I know,” he says. “Scott Bakula would play me in the made-for-TV movie.”

  “I love Scott Bakula,” I say. “I love any man whose name rhymes with Dracula.”

  “Vampires are pretty awesome,” Daniel says. He bares his teeth and makes his fingers into fangs.

  “Anyway,” I say.

  “Anyway,” he says. “It turned out I didn’t have cancer, just a benign thyroid tumor. But it made me reevaluate things, like how the company I was working for was doing some unethical stuff. The short version is, I called them on it, and I got fired.”

  I crunch some shave-ice. “What’s the long version?”

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Daniel says.

  I try to decide if this is fishy or not. I finish the shave-ice and move on to the cookie dough. “So now you’re here,” I say.

  “Now I’m here. You know Rick got some money from our father. That’s how he bought the motel. I got some, too, so I can stay for a while as I figure out my next step.”

  “And help with Fiona,” I say.

  “And help with Fiona.”

  I sit quietly for a second. I wonder if my lips are stained from the shave-ice.

  “Family’s really important to me,” Daniel says.

  “Me too,” I say. I don’t mean to tell him how Stephen and I didn’t plan to have Austin, but it slips out. “He’s my favorite person in the world,” I say.

  “He seems like a great kid,” Daniel says. “I know Fiona loves him.”

  “He has a crush on her,” I say, leaning my head back against the seat. “I hope Stephen does move home, just so Austin has his dad close when he starts trying to figure out girls.”

  Daniel eats the last of his ice cream and squishes the paper cone around the spoon. He tucks it carefully into the cup holder between us and wipes his mouth with a napkin. Then he takes my hand. I let him. We sit and listen to the rain.

  Stephen calls during dinner. Nate and Jennie are over with the baby. I’ve made shepherd’s pie (I always tell Austin it’s made with real shepherds), and Jennie feeds little spoonfuls off the top to Lara, who bangs her fists on the high chair tray and squishes potatoes out of her mouth until they run down her chin. I see Stephen’s number and pass the phone to Austin. “It’s your dad,” I say.

  Austin jumps up, bright-eyed. No pretending to be cool here. He grabs the phone and runs down the hall. “Dad!” he says, followed by a rushing string of sentences that fades away as he closes the door to his room.

  Walter stumbles across the dining room and thuds his head into Nate’s chair. Nate reaches down to pet him. “Did Daniel enjoy the dugouts?” he asks.

  Jennie and I are friends; she knows my history with dugouts. She stops feeding Lara to give Nate a dirty look. “Seriously?” she asks.

  “If you must know,” I say to Nate, “I showed him the Cora tree and we ate a sno-cone and went to the maritime museum. It was entirely innocent.”

  Jennie hands Lara her sippy cup. “What’s Daniel’s story?” she asks.

  I feel weird telling her Daniel’s out of a job and doesn’t know what he’s doing with his life. Aimlessness is not a highly recommended quality in a new guy. “He’s here to help out with Fiona,” I say. Then I remember I’m not starting a relationship with Daniel. “He’s between jobs right now.”

  “Sounds stable,” Nate says. He leans back with his hands laced behind his head. Jennie swats him in the stomach.

  Austin runs down the hall. He trips over Walter, and Walter yelps. “Mom,” Austin says, waving the phone at me. “Dad wants to talk to you. He’s coming home!” Austin jumps up and pumps his fist in the air.

  I get up and take the phone. “What’s up?” I say to Stephen.

  There’s a rattling noise, like Stephen’s blowing his nose or driving through a tunnel. “Austin’s pretty excited that I’m moving back,” he says.

  I walk down the hall, out of earshot of the table. I kick at a loose baseboard I’ve been meaning to fix. “You know you have to do it now, right? Did you quit your job?”

  “I took care of it. I’ve sold my house,” he says. Stephen pauses, and the rustling sound gets louder. “Evie, I’m coming home.”

  Home. It sounds funny coming from Stephen, who always wanted to leave the island and make a new home somewhere else, somewhere less isolated, somewhere landlocked. “I guess you are, then,” I say. I get the zing again. Stephen’s coming home.

  “I think we should spend time together as a family,” Stephen says. “I’m realizing how much I need you guys.”

  I think about Austin’s fist-pumping, face-alighting reaction. It makes me smile. “I think we need you, too,” I say. “You know. Austin does.” We chat a little more. Then I hang up and walk back out to the table. My shepherd’s pie is cold. “Stephen will be moving back in about a month,” I tell everyone.

  “Yes!” Austin shouts.

  Nate raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. He picks the strangest moments to be stoic. Jennie telegraphs me a look that says, We’ll talk later. Lara yells something that sounds like “baba-baba” and smashes potatoes in her hair. For his part, Walter lifts his hind leg and pees on the floor.

  Daniel calls me the next day. We talk for four hours. He tells me about
his first girlfriend when he was ten, how he’s researching medical school applications, how he once wanted to be a jockey before he knew they were only four feet tall. He tells me about his company’s involvement in insider trading, how he was afraid of losing his job and didn’t talk for the longest time, and how he still feels guilty. I tell him about my inordinate love of rhinoceroses, the time I met Mike Tyson, how I stumbled into realty but really love it. I tell him about how my first boyfriend broke my heart, how his mother wouldn’t let him date me because I was the Bad Girl.

  It would be completely illogical for me to fall for Daniel. We’ve seen each other precisely three times. I’m a smart woman, and I’ve been burned by love or lust or one of those L words that’s not logic too many times to let a dark-eyed, broad-shouldered man sway me from my convictions. It’s just infatuation. Weak knees do not a healthy relationship foretell.

  Keep an ear to the ground for deals on residential houses, k? Stephen texts.

  I write back, Which village?

  I’d prefer Hatteras, but Frisco or Buxton would be okay.

  I think about texting Stephen that he wouldn’t be having this problem if he hadn’t prostituted our little white house on Elizabeth Lane to a developer who tore it down and built a pastel vacation rental, but I can’t muster the snark. Will do, I text.

  You’re beautiful, Stephen writes.

  Hey, it’s my job, I text back.

  No, Stephen writes. I mean it. You’re beautiful.

  This time the zing shivers its way up to my heart.

  I borrow Nate’s truck and drive Daniel to the ends of the earth. The village of Hatteras is the last bit of civilization on the island, but if you drive onto the beach access ramp and keep going south, the land stretches along for miles, nothing but sand and sea and dunes. A person can drive right out to the tip end where the ocean and the sound blend together. In evenings this late in the summer, there’s usually no one out but a fisherman or two, sometimes some kids and dogs. You can watch the ferry boats on their way to and from Ocracoke, and it’s a good place to look for dolphins. There’s no one out tonight—Daniel and I are alone on the edge of everything.