The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

by Ashley Herring Blake

  “Do you feel okay?” Kate asks. “Seriously. Any dizziness or shortness of breath?”

  I tap my chest lightly. “Good as gold in here.”

  Kate nods and then shoots Dave a look. “Listen, honey, Lena—”

  “Can I go to the movie tonight?”

  Kate blinks at me and I hold my breath. If she pushes me too much about Lena, I know I’ll cave like an empty Coke can. I feel all jittery, and I can’t decide if it’s from the ocean or Quinn or hearing the name Lena spoken out loud way too many times in the past few weeks. Probably all three. I squeeze the auger shell in my hand.

  “The beach movie?” Kate finally says, and I let blood back into my fingers.

  “Yeah, I met this girl just now and I really, really, really want to go.”

  “The girl with blue hair you were talking to?”

  “Her name is Quinn. She’s very nice and healthy and probably knows how to administer CPR.”

  Kate cracks a smile, but it fades quick. “Oh, honey, I don’t know…”

  I groan, but it’s not like I’m surprised. Kate goes into total Mama Bear mode whenever I want to leave the house lately. And leave the house without her? Double the freak-out.

  “Kate, come on,” I say. “I did fine just now. And you weren’t even with me!”

  “We could go and spy on her like really horrible grown-ups,” Dave says to Kate.

  “No, you could not,” I say.

  “I’ll wear my Speedo,” Dave says.

  “Kate, chain him in the basement.”

  Kate tries to hide her laugh, but she can’t. She always goes all squishy around Dave, because love.

  “Can we make a big old batch of buttery popcorn?” I ask. “With M&M’s? Oh, and can we go shopping? I need some new clothes. All my old ones suck.”

  “Language, Sunny.”

  “But they do!” I need a New Life wardrobe, stat.

  “Your clothes are adorable. They’re so you.”

  Which is exactly the problem, but I’m on the hunt for a yes right now, and getting all existential about my new heart isn’t the way to do it.

  “Please, please, please!” I clasp my hands and bounce on my feet. Kate wants to press my shoulders down to keep me on the ground, I can tell.

  “Fine,” she finally says. “But no butter.”

  “Katie,” Dave says. “For real?”

  “Whine at her for me, Dave,” I say.

  His back straightens and he pushes up his sleeves.

  “Oh, no,” Kate says. Her voice still sounds kind of watery, but she’s smiling. She backs up toward the dunes and waves her finger at him. “No, no.”

  Dave rolls his shoulders back and clears his throat.

  “Get her, Dave, get her,” I say.

  Kate groans, but Dave cannot be stopped. He starts singing, loudly, one of Truth Lies Low’s most famous songs, “You’re the Sky.” There’s more people on the beach by now and most of them turn their heads to listen.

  You gotta let me cry.

  You gotta let me try.

  You gotta let me tell you that you’re the sun and you’re the sky.

  See? Super-whiny. Dave’s voice is really nice, though, all velvety with a little growl on the end, which he plays up big-time whenever he sings to Kate. She hates it. But she really doesn’t hate it, because soon she’s laughing and says, “Fine, fine, you can have a little butter on the popcorn. But no shopping today. I have to go by Cherry Picked for a couple of hours. And only if you take a nap before the movie. And be sure to take your phone. And charge it fully before you go.”

  Well, it’s not all my wildest dreams come true, but I’ll take it.

  When we get back to our house, Kate and Dave hang out on the porch while I bolt inside.

  “Slow down, Sunny!” Kate calls after me, but I’m already down the hall and turning into my bedroom. Our house isn’t very big. It’s actually the old lighthouse and used to guide ships into the harbor with a lightbulb the size of a small city. Kate grew up in Mexico Beach, Florida, but she inherited this house from her great-aunt, who used to be the for-real lighthouse keeper. It doesn’t function now, because Juniper Island’s not a big trading port anymore. All the ships and boats go into Port Hope, and our island just has the usual speedboats and pontoons. The entrance to the tower is all boarded up—not that Kate would let me climb up there in a million, billion years—but still, it’s pretty neat.

  The house part is a two-bedroom that’s mostly all open, with big windows that show a blue blip of ocean from all sides. I love it.

  I also love my room, which I affectionately named the Reef when I was sick. I spent so much time in here, so Kate tried to make it really awesome. She built a seat under my window, full of bright pillows and flanked by sheer white curtains. Little white lights wrap around the frame like a vine. My bed is a tiny twin, but it’s covered in lots of aqua, turquoise, and sea-green pillows.

  I press my back against my bedroom door and breathe-breathe-breathe. I’m going out. Without Kate. With an actual human person who’s my age. I can’t keep the smile off my face as I set my auger shell on my nightstand and then throw open my closet.

  Red V-neck, green tank top, blue T-shirt, shorts, jeans, more shorts. A whole bunch of boring solid colors that Kate picked out and that remind me of being sick. I don’t care what Kate says—nothing in here looks like New Life Sunny.

  I shut my closet and poke my head out my bedroom door. Kate and Dave are still on the porch. They’re talking low and serious, probably about me. Or worse—Lena.

  I tiptoe down the hall, careful to avoid the floorboards that squeak, and slip into Kate’s super-neat room. It has light blue walls and white linens, dark wood bookshelves filled to the brim and arranged alphabetically by author. I don’t even bother opening her closet, though, because I know exactly what’s in it—a whole lot of the same kind of blah that’s in mine.

  Instead, I head straight for the cedar chest at the end of her bed and lift the heavy lid. Inside is another world. Big tan envelopes filled with pictures; lots of jewelry I can’t imagine Kate ever wearing; and a pair of black stomping boots from her college days, which are exactly what I’m after.

  I take a big breath and grab the boots. I shuck off my flip-flops and plop them onto Kate’s floor. The boots are super-heavy, lace halfway up my calves, and are very un-Sunny.

  Which, of course, means they’re perfect.

  I hook my flip-flops on my thumb and close the chest, which sends a puff of cedar and old rubber up my nose.

  Back in my room, I stash the boots in my closet and flop onto my bed. I promised Kate I’d take a nap, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little wiped out after all that swimming. I turn onto my side and wrap myself around my pillow, waiting for sleep to come.

  The sun is too bright, though, and my brain is all revved up. I roll over and open my nightstand drawer, taking out the picture of Lena that I hide under a bunch of sticky-note pads and pens. She looks the same as she always does—tangly dark hair, amber eyes soft as she looks out the window of whatever room she’s in, long fingers splayed on her big pregnant belly. It’s an artistic kind of picture. Something I might frame so the whole world can see her, so I can say, “Look at my mom, isn’t she amazing?”

  But the thing is, I don’t know if she’s amazing. I don’t know anything about her at all. She’s just a question. A hard one. A mad one. That question is always what makes me start crying and stuff the picture back into my drawer. And the next night, that same question is always what makes me take the picture out again and stare at her until my eyes blur and I can’t see her anymore.

  CHAPTER

  8

  As soon as I see Quinn, I feel totally ridiculous. We meet near the pier for the movie and she runs toward me, waving and calling my name.

  “Hey,” I say, cool as a cucumber when she reaches my side. Her hair has dried curly, with blue-black spirals everywhere. She’s wearing cute white flip-flops and a pair of cute blac
k shorts with a cute white tank top with little red kiss prints all over it and she’s basically the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

  And me? I’m in frayed cutoff shorts, a boring old navy blue T-shirt with a neck that might as well be up to my forehead so it covers my scar, and Kate’s boots, which I now realize are the stupidest choice of all choices for a night on the beach.

  “Hey, awesome boots,” Quinn says, looking me up and down.

  My shoulders let go of my neck. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, totally love them. They’re like rock star boots.”

  My face warms and heats. I finally understand what it means to beam—I am a human lightbulb right now.

  “You ready?” she asks. “My mom gave me some money, so our tickets are on me.”

  “Awesome, thanks. And I’m so ready,” I say.

  Then Quinn loops her arm with mine and my heart feels like a whirligig in my chest. In a good way. It’s been so long since my heart did something that felt this right.

  After Quinn gets our tickets, we find a spot as close as we can get to the water without getting wet. She brought a big blanket and we spread it out over the cool, dry sand. A huge screen and a bunch of speakers are set up by the dunes, so we have to turn our backs to the water to see the movie. But I can still hear the ocean, whispering softly to me like a friend.

  I pull the popcorn out of my bag.

  “Want some?” I ask, and offer the gallon-sized Ziploc to Quinn.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks.” She digs in, grabbing a big old handful of popcorn and chocolate and stuffing it into her mouth.

  I appreciate a gal who eats with gusto. I grin and do the same. The salty butter and dark chocolate are perfect together. I’ve missed tasty food so much.

  “So are you excited to be here for the whole summer?” I ask.

  Quinn is chomping on a mouthful of popcorn, so she doesn’t answer right away. She holds up a finger and chews and chews while the movie screen flickers to life. Finally, she nods.

  “I love it here. These shoots my mom does take months sometimes,” she says. “She has to do about a million shots from a bunch of different depths, and some days, whatever she’s taking pictures of won’t cooperate. There are a lot of bottlenose dolphins off the coast here, but you never know where they are. We’re going out tomorrow morning to see what we can find.”

  I nod, entranced. “What’s the coolest animal she’s ever photographed?” I ask.

  Quinn scrunches up her face in thought. “Probably an octopus. Or the immortal jellyfish. It’s super-tiny and can start its own life cycle over again. They’re so weird-looking. It’s like they shouldn’t exist, because what in the world are they, but they do and they’re really amazing.”

  “Wow. Did you get to see them?”

  She shakes her head. “It was too deep for me to dive, but I saw the photos. And my mom’s really good.”

  “I’d love just to be on the boat.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool, when you’re that far out in the middle of the ocean. It’s really quiet. Like, freaky quiet.”

  “What’s your favorite place you’ve lived?”

  She tosses a single piece of popcorn in the air and catches it on her tongue. Margot and I used to do the same thing all the time, except we’d throw the popcorn at each other.

  “I wouldn’t call it lived,” Quinn says. “But, I guess, maybe…” She trails off and then shrugs. “I don’t know. Alaska was cool.”

  “Alaska? You’ve lived in Alaska?”

  “Yeah. Right before coming here.”

  “Wow. The only cool thing about where I live is that it used to be a lighthouse.”

  Quinn’s eyes go wide. “You live there? That lighthouse is amazing. It’s so pretty, with the red and white stripes.”

  I wave a hand. Lighthouse shmighthouse. Alaska. If I’d been to Alaska, I’d talk and talk and talk about it and never shut up, but Quinn doesn’t seem too interested. Still, my curiosity eats at me until another question spills out.

  “Did you make a lot of friends in Alaska?”

  She doesn’t answer for a second. I’m about to say, hey, whoa, you don’t have to spill your best friend history to me or anything, but finally, she glances at me.

  “One. This girl named Sadie whose mom was a fisherman. Fisherwoman? Fisherperson. She had a big boat and we’d go out on it every week. She was…”

  Quinn trails off and squints toward the movie. Her throat bobbles with a hard swallow.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She shrugs and takes a deep breath. “I had to leave without saying goodbye to Sadie. It was hard, because I, well, I thought we were friends. Maybe even…” She blows out a breath through puffed cheeks. “Anyway, I never talked to her again.”

  “Did she have your number?”

  Quinn nods and shrugs again. “It’s whatever.”

  “Did you call her?”

  “Nah. What’s the point, right? It’s not like I’ll ever see her again. Plus, she was friends with all these mean girls and…”

  More trailing off, more shrugging. But hey, I know about mean girls. Every time Kate brings up how I haven’t seen Margot in a long time, I trail off and shrug too.

  “I don’t get to keep many friends,” Quinn says. “I’ve never even had a best friend. Never stick around long enough. Can you believe that?”

  No. No, I really can’t, because Quinn is so cool and interesting and pretty and smart. But I guess moving around would be really hard on best friend–hood. Just like being sick. Just like thinking you can trust someone when you really can’t.

  “I don’t have a best friend either,” I say.

  Her eyes go wide. “No way.”

  “Major way.”

  She sits up straight and grabs some more popcorn. “We should try it out. You know, the whole best friend thing.”

  I grin so big my face hurts. “For real? You want to? With me?”

  “Of course with you.”

  “What if you…” Don’t like me, is what I almost say, but that sounds like Old Life Sunny. New Life Sunny is cool and calm and confident. So instead, I make my mouth say, “I think we’d be really awesome best friends.”

  She nods and smiles and my heart zings and zips around my body.

  “So totally would. What should we do first?” she asks.

  “First?”

  “Yeah, like, our first best friend adventure.”

  “Oh…” I look up at the movie screen, where this dark-haired actress is riding her bike around Rome. “I guess a movie and greasy popcorn isn’t much of an adventure.”

  “It’s a start,” she says. “Now we just need something… exciting.” She pops up onto her knees and looks around with her hands on her hips, as though something exciting is going to wave its arms above the crowd and yell, Hey, I’m exciting!

  Then it hits me.

  Step Two is completed. Quinn is my best friend. At least, we’re going to act like we are, which will probably lead to being really real best friends. I like her. I like her a lot and she doesn’t seem to think I’m a big old stick-in-the-mud like Margot did, so I think Step Two is totally done.

  On to Step Three: Find a boy and kiss him.

  “I’ve got something we could do,” I say.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Quinn and I face each other, our knees pulled up to our chests. My toes just barely touch hers. Pink and orange streak across the sky as the sun sinks lower and lower and the movie goes on behind us, but we don’t hear a word. There’s only us. There’s only… Step Three, which I’ve now spilled out between us and it’s just hovering there, waiting to see what Quinn thinks.

  “I’ve never kissed anyone before,” I say.

  “Me neither,” she says. “I got close, once. At least, I think I did, but… well, it didn’t work out.”

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  Her nose wrinkles and she glances down. “Nope.”

  “Well, this way, we can do
it together.”

  My face heats up and I know it’s cinnamon-candy red. “I mean, not together together.”

  “No, no, I know that’s not what you meant,” Quinn says. She’s not looking at me and keeps picking at her nails.

  “We look for the boys together, help each other figure out what to do. That kind of stuff.”

  “Right. Boys,” Quinn says, and I relax a bit. My stomach, though. It’s full of bees. Bluebirds. No, eagles. Something huge and screechy.

  “We don’t have to,” I say. “Only if you want.”

  She takes a deep breath and crisscrosses her legs. Then she grabs both of my hands and looks me right in the eye.

  “No, I totally want to,” she says, so serious I almost laugh. But I don’t. Because it’s not funny at all. It’s Major Best Friend Business.

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Really really.”

  I grin and squeeze her fingers. She squeezes back and then I release a squeal that’s been hiding in my chest since… well, since I met her, if I’m being honest.

  “Oh my god, we’re really going to do this?” I say. “We’re going to have our first kisses.”

  “We’re going to kiss so good, they won’t know what hit them!”

  “How do we kiss good?”

  “I have no idea.”

  We crack up, leaning close to each other and giggling with our hands over our mouths.

  Just then, a boy about our age in red board shorts walks by with a giant bag of puffy pink cotton candy. I don’t know him, so he must be a vacationer, but when Quinn and I see him, our eyes go all big and round and we bust up again. He looks at us funny, but it’s super–worth it, just to laugh with Quinn.

  “Hey, guys.”

  The voice behind me makes me choke on the laugh. For real, it’s like a dry cracker stuck in my throat.

  I turn and look up, hoping I’m hallucinating, but nope. There she is, in all her Former Best Friend glory. I don’t smile. I don’t even blink. I probably look like a robot or something, but my heart has different plans. It works hard, as though it’s trying to jump right out of my chest and hop into Margot’s arms. She looks just like she always did—wavy hair back to its natural brown, green eyes, slim arms and legs.