Shifting Tides

by Caitlin Ricci

  “Are you looking forward to seeing everyone again?” his mom asked as she started up the SUV and quickly headed toward the highway. Speed limits were more like suggestions to her. Adam knew that he was probably going to have to get his dad to help him get his driver’s license if he had any hope of passing the test. His mom was just not a good example when it came to obeying traffic laws.

  “Yep.” Adam pulled out his phone and set up the music he wanted to listen to for the drive over. Or was he more in the mood for an audio book? He had just downloaded that one with the fairies and the dragon horde.

  “Your dad is going to be on time today. I’m so glad everyone was still okay with him coming to do family time even after we got divorced. He’s still your dad, but you know how it is. Sometimes families can be a bit of a pain when it comes to things like that. But yes, he will absolutely be on time. He promised.”

  His mom said that like it was a surprise, and maybe it was to her, but he’d always been right on time for anything having to do with Adam. Didn’t matter what it was, he always made sure to be there when Adam told him he had to be. His dad was Mister Dependable. Adam wasn’t sure why his mom was still upset about all the times he’d been late for her stuff. They’d been divorced for five years. He was pretty sure that it was time for his mom to get over it.

  “Yay,” Adam said, letting her know that he’d heard her. “Putting in headphones now.”

  “Fine, fine, ignore me. I’m just your mother after all.” She smiled at him, letting him know she didn’t really mean what she was saying. “What are you listening to now?”

  “Time Machine for Death Bunnies.” It was this great little local band Adam heard playing at the coffee shop last month on his way home from school. He had been late getting home because he had stayed so long listening to them. And, admittedly, Adam had also been staring at the guy with curly hair playing the drums. He’d been really cute.

  His mom made a face. “They sound violent. Don’t you want to listen to something more appropriate? I thought you girls were all about Boys, Boys, Boys. They’re the it thing right now, right?”

  Adam shrugged disinterestedly. Maybe if he was a girl, and if he had actually liked computerized voices. “They’re a boyband. I don’t like boybands.” He hoped that his voice conveyed all of the utter disgust he had for her suggestion.

  “Oh, all right. Go on and listen to your Death Heads.” She was already reaching toward her own stereo. He got his music and she listened to hers. It worked for them.

  “Death Bunnies,” he corrected her as he put in his earbuds and turned up his music. Despite the name, the band didn’t play any kind of violent music like his mom apparently thought they did. They were more folk, maybe. Adam didn’t really know how to classify them. But they reminded him of the music of the seventies, only with more drums. They were all acoustic and their music made him want to dance. Even now, sitting in the passenger seat of an SUV covered with more rust and dirt than actual paint, Adam couldn’t help but tap his fingers against his knee.

  Chapter Four

  Blaine rummaged in his closet for something to pack his camping gear in. “Gran, have you seen my duffle bag? I need to get packed for the campout.”

  “Duffle bag?” She appeared in the doorway, wiping ceramic dust from her hands onto her bright tie-dyed shirt. She’d obviously been at work in her pottery studio in the room next to his. “I can’t recall seeing one. What color is it?”

  For a second he stared at her as he tried to remember. “Black…I think.” He knew it was a dark color, but had never really paid a lot of attention to it since his parents had always used suitcases whenever they traveled, and Seth’s bag had a big stylized Indian head on it to represent the Atlanta Braves. They’d gotten it the one time his father took them all to a Braves game several years ago. It had been a great family outing, one of the last they’d ever had.

  His grandmother shook her head. “Sorry, don’t recall seeing a black duffle. You still have a few boxes down in the garage that you haven’t gone through. Think it might be in one of those?”

  “Maybe.” Blaine heaved a worried sigh. He’d put off getting ready until the last second. He’d just gotten Seth’s text that he was on the way. He didn’t have time to go digging in boxes for his bag. “Seth and his folks are going to be here any minute. Do you have something I could use?”

  She pursed her lips and a thoughtful look crossed her tanned, wrinkled face. “I think I do. If you don’t mind bright colors.”

  Blaine threw his hands up in impatience. “It’s just Seth’s family. I don’t think the colors matter.” Although I’d hate for Angela to think any less of me from something bright and outrageous.

  “All right, keep pulling stuff you’re going to take, I’ll run get it.” She smiled at him then disappeared from his door.

  As he yanked shirts from hangers, his phone beeped. He glanced at the text. “Shit.” Seth saying they were two blocks away.

  “Here you go.” His grandmother reappeared with a soft-sided bag that was more a backpack than a duffle bag. It was old, worn and bright green with a series of patches on it. “Take good care of it. This bag and I go way back. It’s been across country several times.” She set the bag on his bed then settled beside it. “Those were the days. Hitchhiking back and forth across country, your mother strapped to my bosom. I think we got more rides because of her than my shapely leg sticking out of my miniskirt.”

  Blaine didn’t bother folding anything, he just jammed it all into the bag. “Gran, I can really go all day without hearing about either Mom or your formerly shapely legs.”

  She held the bag open for him and it made things easier. “Well, that was before she had a chance to grow into a bitch. I really don’t know what happened to her. We were so young and free back then.”

  “I know—it was a different world in the sixties.” He rushed to his dresser.

  Outside a horn honked.

  “Crap. It’s them. Gran, can you go down and let them know I’ll be there in a couple of minutes?” He yanked on the dresser drawer a little harder than he intended to and the drawer fell to the floor, spilling socks and more onto the floor. For the sake of his grandmother, he bit back the curse that tried to come out of his mouth.

  “I can do that.” She stood and walked to the door as he frantically scooped things back into the drawer. “Don’t forget to take a jacket. It can get cool on the ocean in the evenings. Who knows? You might want to spend some time down on the water’s edge away from the fire.”

  “I won’t forget.” He shoved the drawer back where it belonged, hoping he didn’t crack anything as he did. The delays made him even more anxious about the trip. He desperately wanted to let Angela know how he felt, but the idea of it turned his insides to jelly. It had been a while since the prospect of talking to someone had made him so nervous. He hurried down to the car and buckled himself in quickly. “Blaine, your jacket!” His grandmother dashed down the driveway as Seth’s dad started backing out. She had his lightweight black windbreaker in her hand.

  The urge to crawl under the seat engulfed Blaine as Mr. Fleming brought the vehicle to a stop and Blaine’s window rolled down.

  “Sorry about this, Gran,” he muttered as he accepted the jacket.

  “No worries.” She squeezed his hand through the open window. “You’re just lucky I’m still as spry as I ever was. You have fun this weekend. Maybe when you get back, I’ll tell you about some of the times I camped out on the ocean, although most of my time was on the West Coast, not the east.”

  “That would be nice.” Blaine rolled his eyes.

  “You all have fun.” She patted the top of the car and stepped back.

  Seth’s dad looked back at Blaine. “Anything else?”

  Blaine shook his head. “I should be good.”

  Seth laughed as the car started back again. “I bet your gran has some really hot stories about camping on the beach. We might learn a few things.”

 
“Seth!” his mother admonished. “You be good. Mrs. Dell is a really nice lady.”

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t.” Seth shrugged. “I just said we might be able to learn a few things from her experiences.”

  “She was just telling me how she used to hitchhike across the country with my mother, when Mom was just a baby.” Blaine shivered as he recalled most of the tales his grandmother always seemed to tell at just the wrong time. “I really don’t want to hear more about her adventures. I’m old enough to understand where babies come from, and what adults do when we’re not around—I just don’t want to think about such things. Particularly not from my grandmother.”

  A thoughtful look crossed Seth’s face as he cocked an eyebrow. He laughed again. “You know, I never thought about it before now, but I bet your gran was hot when she was younger.”

  “John,” Seth’s mother said loudly as they turned onto the interstate that was just a few blocks from Blaine’s grandmother’s house. “I think it’s time that you had a talk with your son about the proper way to talk about his elders.”

  A deep laugh rolled out of John Fleming. “My son? I think he got his overly open mouth from both of us. We’ve got a very open and liberal household. It might be a bit late to try teaching him manners, Amy.”

  Shutting out the discussion in the front seat, Blaine glared at Seth and dropped his voice. “You know, you’re a bit of an asshole.”

  Seth flashed him an ‘I don’t care’ grin. “I know. But when we get back, I want you to find some pictures of your grandma and see if I’m right.”

  “No.” Blaine crossed his arms and looked out the window as he slipped in his earbuds and tapped the mp3 app on his phone. The country music helped block out the sounds of the other passengers as well as the brief discussion that had helped take his mind off the impending encounter with Angela. He’d been so keyed up about it he hadn’t slept well the previous night. The motion of the car and the music helped him relax. When the car stopped for gas right before the bridge onto Assateague, he couldn’t remember where he’d dropped off.

  Chapter Five

  An hour later, Adam turned off his music and removed his earbuds as they drove onto the island and he saw the first group of stout ponies with their windblown manes and tails. There was a sign at the entrance to the island, and a few more as they drove along the road, that said not to feed them and to keep all windows up. He had been bitten by a curious pony before, so he knew better than to feed them for sure. But there was no way in hell that he was going to go without smelling the perfect sea air. Adam rolled down the window, with a crank of all things. No one he knew had a vehicle as old as his mom’s. That was okay, though. It was just an SUV. He wasn’t a car head, or a gear guy, or whatever they were called. He didn’t much care as long as it didn’t break down on the side of the highway in the middle of summer.

  “Not much longer now,” his mom said. She sounded excited. So was he.

  She pulled up behind a white car that was out of place among all the trucks and SUVs in their camping spot, which was fairly close to the entrance. It got a little noisy when people were driving past, but he’d always been able to easily ignore the sounds of the other vehicles after a little bit. With the symphony of nature and the cacophony of family, there was too much else to focus on.

  Adam jumped out of the SUV before his mom had killed the engine. “Angela!” she called to him before he could get too far away from her. “Help me unload the back.”

  He groaned, which his mom probably couldn’t hear over the sound of the surf, and debated pretending he couldn’t hear her either. But he was let off the hook anyway because his dad came out of the white car right then and came over to help her. For the first time, Adam really looked at his father, who was sporting a new, neatly trimmed beard that perfectly matched his stylish brown hair. There was just a hint of chest hair showing in the open collar of his polo shirt. It made Adam wonder what he would look like when he got to take hormones and begin transitioning. Would he get hairy? Be able to grow a full beard that didn’t look ratty like a lot of the guys at school? Would it be easier for him to bulk up? There were so many things he didn’t know and desperately wanted to find out. Once he was able to be open and honest about who he was, finding out things would be easier.

  “Hey, sweetie, go have fun. We’ve got this,” his dad called to him.

  “Thanks, Dad!” He often figured his Dad’s constantly making things easier for him was a way for his father to work out his internalized guilt at having left Adam’s mother to find a life that had little to do with her and Adam.

  Adam glanced at the passenger side of his dad’s car just to be sure, and he was glad he’d kept his promise to him, and to his mom too. Even though they were divorced, and he was on his second marriage since Mom, he always came to these vacations alone. This was a family time and they were still a family. Not that Adam minded his new wife—or that he’d had a problem with any of the others, either—but he didn’t know her. With Dad living three hours away, Adam only saw him every other weekend and on breaks. His dad and his new wife had been married less than a year. At least as a boy, if Dad kept getting remarried every few years, he wouldn’t have to worry about bridesmaid dresses. He could wear a tux and be on the groom’s side of things, where he really belonged.

  It hadn’t been weird being with Dad over spring break, not really anyway. But the new wife—Adam kept conveniently forgetting her name—had been kinda clingy to his dad and had been really big on making sure she and Adam had what she deemed ‘girl time’, like he had any idea what the hell that was supposed to mean. She’d taken him for a manicure, which made his cuticles bleed, and the pedicure she’d put him through had tickled. Getting a full-body massage had been his limit and he’d gladly sat there looking at a tattoo magazine that was seriously out of place among the high-society mags in the waiting room while his new stepmom had gotten her massage.

  Adam went to go find his cousin. Seth was sixteen, and seriously into girls if his social media posts were anything to go by. He thought Seth was a moron most of the time, especially when he posted pictures of the girls he was going out on dates with, then laughed about it when the other girls got jealous and somehow thought they were the only ones he was into. He was such an idiot, like so many boys their age.

  But he was Adam’s only cousin, and maybe he’d matured some in the months since they’d seen each other at Christmas. Plus, there was the little fact that every year since Adam was five, he’d been bringing his best friend, Blaine, with him on these vacations.

  He heard Seth first because he was laughing loudly and talking to some girls whose families were camped nearby. Blaine was already stretched out on a bright orange beach towel, his black hair slicked back, wet sand clinging to his way-too-good-looking body. Last year he’d been lanky, still cute, but not nearly as muscular as he was currently. It was hard for Adam not to feel a little lightheaded with how he looked. Blaine’s appearance gave Adam something to shoot for as he transitioned from a girl to a boy.

  Adam tried not to act like the biggest idiot around as he plopped down in the sand beside Blaine and pulled his knees up so that he could hang his arms over them and look out at the surf. “Hey, Blaine.” There, that sounded completely normal. Not at all like Adam was head over heels for him, and had been since he’d figured out that he liked boys when he was seven.

  Blaine smiled at him and adjusted his dark sunglasses a little. “Hey, La-La.” Adam cringed, hating that nickname, but Blaine was the only one who used it. That was the only reason he put up with it. Anyone else could have jumped off the nearest bridge before Adam would have allowed it to pass their lips without a harsh reprimand.

  “Hey.” Damn, Adam had already said that. “Uh… How was the drive?”

  He shrugged. The new larger muscles played nicely under his tanned, unblemished skin. “Dunno. I was asleep. You should ask Seth, since he was awake for most of it. He should be striking out with those girls here
pretty soon and coming back over.”

  Even as he said it, Seth sauntered over to them. He’d filled out a lot too, but it wasn’t enough for Adam to think of him as any less of an asshole.

  “Did you finally find two girls who weren’t going to fall all over you?” Blaine joked with him.

  Adam laughed a little.

  “Hey, Angela,” Seth quickly said to him, then turned to Blaine as he laid down in the sand without a towel beneath him. “No, jerk, they just weren’t that interesting. I need more than a pretty face to keep my attention.”

  Not according to the posts Adam had seen. “Since when?” Almost all of Seth’s social media posts were shallow.

  Seth just rolled his eyes at him. “Don’t see you dating anyone yet. Until you do, you don’t have room to talk.”

  Adam blushed and looked away from them. It didn’t help that the only guy he was interested in was lying right next to him. Blaine made it hard for other guys to measure up. He really needed to change the subject. And fast. “Is everyone here then?” The annual family camping trip always consisted of his mom’s sister and brother too. Her sister was here, because Seth would have come with his mom, but he didn’t know if their uncle was there or not yet.