by Kate Brian
“Unbelievable,” she said, shoving the chair back and crossing to the cabinet. “The wallflower is officially off the wall.” She grabbed a box of Froot Loops and brought it back to the table. “So would that have been when Joaquin walked up to you outside and gave you that totally intimate hug?”
I felt my skin warm. “You saw that?”
“Everyone on the block saw that,” Darcy replied, tossing a Froot Loop into her mouth. “I bet someone out there was inspired to write a blog about it. I don’t think there was one inch of your bodies that wasn’t touching.”
I shuddered. The very thought gave me the skeeves. “Darcy—”
“Are you and Joaquin, like, having a thing behind my back?” she interrupted.
I snorted a laugh. “What?”
Darcy walked around to the far end of the table so she could look me dead in the eye. The expression on her face, the pointed, knowing set of her chin, the slight apprehension in her eyes, made my heart stop. Did she know about Christopher and me? Was that why she was imagining some tryst between me and Joaquin?
“He keeps asking me about you, first of all. And then there’s all the hugging and smiling and complimenting…Tell me the truth, Rory. I’m a big girl. I can handle it,” she said. The tips of her fingers turned white as she gripped the cereal box.
“Darcy, I can one hundred percent guarantee you that I have no interest in Joaquin,” I told her firmly. “I promise.”
She eyed me for one moment longer before walking back to her chair and digging into the cereal bag with her hand. “Good.”
I watched as she came out with a handful of the colorful loops. There was no way she could know about me and Christopher. I hadn’t told her, I was sure he hadn’t told her, and no one else on Earth knew. I was just being paranoid. As usual.
“What, exactly, did Joaquin say to you?” I asked, leaning my chest into the table. “Why do you think you have to bring me?”
“He fed me some weird thing about there having to be an even number of guys and girls…” She trailed off, popping cereal bits in her mouth as she narrowed her eyes. “It made sense at the time, but he did have his arm around me, so I was a little distracted…”
“What a jerk,” I mused, reaching for my orange juice.
“Whatever,” Darcy said, placing the box down on the table. “But this is good! You’re already going, so no big deal.”
This was insane. How could she still want to go? How could she still like this guy after he was feeding her such obvious crap? I was never going to understand Darcy’s brain. Never in a million years.
“Except that I’m not going,” I said, shoving away from the table.
“Uh, yes, you are,” Darcy said.
“No. I’m not,” I said as I dumped my bowl and glass into the ceramic sink. God, I wished we were back home. If we were home, I’d be in calculus right now, solving problems I could solve. Not dealing with the quandary of whether I should help keep Darcy’s social life alive—a quandary I never thought I’d have to deal with in a million years and had no clue how to handle. “And you’re not, either. We’re grounded, remember?”
At that moment, my dad stopped inside the open doorway between the kitchen and the entry hall. He was fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his face cleanly shaven and his hair slicked back. He’d started to get a tan, probably from all the running, and he looked different. Healthy.
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you girls about that.” He did a double take and his face fell slightly. “Oh. Did you eat already?”
“Not really,” Darcy said warily, her cheek still full of cereal.
“I just had cornflakes,” I said. “Why?”
“Let’s go out to breakfast,” he said. “I heard the general store has excellent pancakes.”
Darcy and I exchanged a look. Who was this person and what had he done with our real father?
“Um…I’d have to get dressed,” Darcy said, swallowing.
“Me, too,” I added, looking down at the T-shirt and sweatpants I’d slept in.
“I can wait,” he said with a semblance of a smile.
Neither one of us moved.
“Come on, girls,” my father wheedled. “It’s just breakfast.”
“Okay,” I said finally.
“Sure,” Darcy added.
Then we both padded out of the room past him.
“What’s with him?” Darcy whispered as we climbed the creaky steps.
“I have no idea,” I replied, following her into her room. “Maybe you yelling at him the other night got through to him.”
“You think?” she asked, surprised.
“You never know. But I’d be nice to him at breakfast,” I said as she slipped inside her closet. I leaned against one of her bedposts and stared across the street at the windows of the gray house. My heart skipped a beat at the very sight of it, but the place was still. “Maybe you can get ungrounded.”
“And then you’ll go to the party with me?” Darcy asked hopefully, gripping a white sweater to her chest as she came to the closet doorway.
I rolled my eyes but smiled. It was nice, sharing this sisterly moment with her. Feeling hopeful about my dad.
“Fine,” I told her. “If, by some miracle, we get ungrounded, I promise I’ll go to the party with you.”
“Yay!” She jumped up onto her toes, then dove back into the closet to get dressed.
I laughed and started to turn away so I could go get dressed myself, but at that moment, the curtain across the way moved. And this time, I could have sworn I saw a leather bracelet disappear behind it.
Tristan was definitely watching me. Unless good old grandma had a leather bracelet, too. But what about me was so freaking interesting that it had him squatting in a house a tenth the size of his own? And was it possible that it was something innocent? That maybe he just…had a crush on me?
“Everything okay, Rory?” my father asked, looking down at me. My skin was burning over my last thought, and I quickly looked away from him. We were just passing the eerily silent park, where the swings hung still and heavy over the scraggly weeds. The gate was pushed all the way open so that it was flush with the fence on the inside, and as usual, there were no kids in sight.
“Fine,” I said distractedly. “Why?”
“You just looked…serious,” he said with a small smile.
Darcy shot me an alarmed look, and I knew she was wondering if I’d just had a flash. I gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and her shoulders relaxed. I hadn’t told my father about the flashes because I didn’t need him worrying and scouring the Yellow Pages to find me a shrink on the island. Not that I’d seen any Yellow Pages since we’d gotten here, even though back home our mailman was leaving them on our front step, like, every other week. In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen a mail carrier here, either. Or a mailbox. I glanced around at the houses, and sure enough, not a single mailbox in sight. Huh. Maybe everyone here had their mail delivered directly to a PO box. It wouldn’t be the first random, quaint, old-fashioned thing about this island.
“I was just…trying to remember the last time we all ate out together,” I said in answer to my father.
“Oh. It wasn’t that long ago,” my dad said vaguely.
Darcy and I exchanged a look. It had to be at least four years ago. The only instance I could even remember was Darcy’s thirteenth birthday and an ill-advised trip to Friendly’s during which my dad had insisted she eat one of those clown sundae things, as if she were six years old. Since she’d just gotten her first period and started her first diet with no mom around to advise her on either, Darcy had burst into tears and run out of the restaurant. Which was maybe why we hadn’t eaten out together since.
We came to the top of the hill and turned onto Main Street. My dad looked up at the sky and smiled.
Now that I was certain I’d not seen in years. At least not since my mother had died.
Across the street, the fountain at
the center of the park burbled and splashed while two guys with shaggy hair and baggy plaid shorts jumped their skateboards off the pool’s edge. The banner for the fireworks display flapped in the breeze.
“Hey, Darcy, your Rasta boyfriend’s MIA,” I joked, pushing my sunglasses up into my hair. The spot at the top of the path where he normally stood seemed oddly lonely without him.
Darcy looked at me blankly. “What?”
“Look,” I said, lifting my chin toward the park. “Do you think he made enough money to take his act on the road or something?”
I couldn’t see Darcy’s eyes behind her dark sunglasses, but her expression was blank as she turned to look at the park. “Okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I gaped at her, my heart giving an unpleasant, nervous squeeze. My dad had walked ahead and was a few steps from the general store’s outdoor tables.
“Darcy, come on. He’s been there every morning since we got here?” I said, forcing a laugh in my voice. “The Bob Marley–type guy…? You said he was embracing the cliché?”
Darcy looked at me like I was crazy.
“I think you need your head examined,” she said, turning on her heel. Her floral miniskirt swished as she walked away. I felt like my brain had just been switched into hyperdrive. It wasn’t like I imagined the guy. I’d seen him three or four times, I’d seen other people standing around enjoying his music, I could name every song I’d heard him sing, and Darcy and I had talked about him on more than one occasion. Had falling down the stairs and smacking her head somehow affected her short-term memory?
Taking a deep breath, I glanced back at the park one more time before walking into the general store. Dad and Darcy had already found a small booth, just across from the old-fashioned, chrome-rimmed counter. The couple I’d seen getting off the ferry on our first day here sat at the counter, their pinkies linked between them as they sipped their coffee. The taller guy’s fedora hat sat on the counter next to him. He smiled when he caught me checking it out, and I smiled back as I slipped onto the bench next to Darcy.
My father handed me a small plastic menu. I let my eyes slide over the classic diner selections, then trail back to Darcy. She had her sunglasses off and sat with her head casually resting on her hand as she scanned the menu.
“Hey, folks! What’ll you have?” A waitress in a blue-and-white gingham dress appeared at our table, pen at the ready.
“Girls?” my dad asked.
“I’ll have a short stack of blueberry pancakes,” Darcy said, shoving the menu across the table. “And coffee.”
“Toasted bagel and orange juice, please,” I said.
“I’ll try the whole wheat pancakes with a side of bacon and coffee as well,” my dad put in. He stacked up the menus and handed them to her. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile, then turned and sauntered away.
My father blew out a sigh and laced his hands together on top to the table. “Listen. I owe you guys an apology.”
I gripped the edge of the vinyl seat on either side of my legs. Next to me, Darcy stopped breathing.
“It’s been really hard on me…since your mother died, and I know that’s no excuse, but I didn’t realize until recently how…closed off I’ve been,” he said, looking back and forth between the two of us. “How…angry.”
I cleared my throat. Darcy shifted in her seat.
“Actually, that’s not true,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “I did realize how angry I was, but I didn’t want to admit it, because I was angry at her and that just felt wrong.”
My stomach hollowed out because I knew exactly what he meant. There were times when I felt mad at my mother for leaving me, for leaving us. Like she had any control over it. Last year I’d taken first place in the regional science fair with my study of cancer cells in field mice, beating out Samir Clark and his robotic arm, and while all the officials and teachers and students had been applauding my victory, I’d just stared at the crowd, wishing she was there. She’d been a biology major in college and had taught at Princeton like my dad, and I knew how proud she would have been, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted her there. Somehow I’d gotten through the reception and all the photos, but as soon as I’d gotten home I’d dropped the trophy on the couch, run to my room, and started screaming into a pillow. I’d yelled and yelled and yelled until I’d started to feel stupid for yelling. Until I’d realized she would have been there if she could have been. And then I’d just felt stupid and sorry.
“I don’t think I’ve truly accepted that I’m never going to see your mom again,” my dad said, tears shining in his eyes. Darcy sniffled. Her eyes were full, too. Maybe she did think about our mother. Maybe she did miss her. “And you two girls have so much of her in you…I see her every time I look at you. And it makes me so proud, but at the same time, it makes me so sad. I’ve just never known how to deal with it. I’ve never known how to be the person you need me to be.”
He swallowed hard, containing the tears. Darcy grabbed a napkin out of the dispenser and covered her eyes briefly.
“I get it, Dad,” I said, my voice a croak. “I really get it. I just…I think she’d want us to do better. I think she’d want us to try harder to be…”
“A good family,” Darcy finished, sniffling again. “She’d want us to be a family.”
Dad nodded and looked away. “Do you think we could do that?” he asked after a moment. “Do you think we could try? For her?”
“I think we could,” I said, my heart slamming against my rib cage.
Darcy nodded, still trying not to cry.
“Good,” my father said. He took a deep breath, sitting up straight as he took it in, then blew it out and leaned his arms into the table. “Thank you,” he said. “For hearing me out.”
“Thank you,” Darcy said softly, her voice watery.
There was still a ton of crap between us. All the yelling, all the confusion and anger. But right then, at that moment, my dad looked, sounded, felt like the old him. Like the dad I’d known before the word cancer had entered our lives. I’d loved that dad.
So I forced a smile. “Any time.”
I looked over at Darcy, expecting her to jump at the chance to ask Dad about the party, but she was staring down at the table, her bottom lip trembling as she toyed with her quaking fingers in her lap. She looked broken, like if I touched her the wrong way she would crumble. I swallowed hard. I felt so guilty, all of a sudden, for thinking she didn’t care that Mom was gone. Maybe she just dealt with it differently than I did. Maybe all the parties, the shopping, the cheerleading and hostessing—maybe it was her way of distracting herself. Because wasn’t that all I was doing, studying my ass off all the time, running whenever I had too much time to think?
“Dad?” I said suddenly. “There’s this party tonight, and Darcy and I were wondering if we could go.”
Darcy lifted her chin and looked at me as if she’d never seen me before.
“A party?” he said hesitantly. “I don’t know if—”
A plate of pancakes dropped onto our table with a clatter. “You guys are coming to the party?”
Krista stood next to our table in a blue gingham minidress that made her legs look like toothpicks, her hair back in a high ponytail, and an expectant grin on her face. She placed Darcy’s food in front of her, then mine. I glanced past her and saw that our original waitress was busy making a new pot of coffee.
“This is so great! Tristan didn’t think you were going to come!” Krista said, clasping her hands as she grinned down at me.
“And you are?” my father asked pleasantly.
“Dad, this is Krista,” Darcy piped up. “The party’s at her house.”
“Oh,” my father said, clearing his throat. “Nice to meet you, Krista. Will there be adults at this party?”
“Dad!” Darcy said through her teeth.
“Oh, of course!” Krista replied, giggling. “My mom’s the mayor, so she always makes sur
e to let the police know when my brother and I hold a party. She’s totally overprotective, so they usually send a couple of officers to sort of ‘police the perimeter,’” she said, adding some air quotes. “They’re, like, the tamest parties ever.” Then she looked at me and Darcy and colored. “But still fun!”
“See?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “A party with police presence. Doesn’t get any safer than that, right, Darcy?”
“Totally!” Darcy exclaimed.
“You have to let them come, Mr. Thayer,” Krista said, touching my father’s arm. I glanced at her leather bracelet, which looked stiff in comparison to her brother’s soft, broken-in one. “I’m dying to get to know Rory better.” She grinned at me.
I forced myself to smile back even though the last thing I wanted was for Krista to fire questions at me all night. I couldn’t help but feel like she was looking for a reason to get close to me. For something to bind us together. She held my gaze, and a smattering of goose bumps popped out along my arms.
“All right. If it’s at the mayor’s house, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” my father said finally. “You girls can go.”
“Yay! Thank you thank you thank you!” Darcy cheered.
I blew out a breath. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thayer!” Krista said.
My father smiled. Maybe he was realizing it had been a long time since he’d done anything to make so many people happy at once.
“You guys let me know if you need anything, okay?” Krista said. “I’ll be right behind the counter!”
She practically skipped away, her skirt flouncing, and grabbed the old-school phone behind the counter. After dialing quickly, she turned her back to us to whisper to whoever was on the opposite end. When I heard her squeal, I knew she was telling someone that we’d decided to come to the party. I wondered if it was Tristan. I wondered if he was smiling.
And I wondered why I cared.
I jogged down the street leading to the docks that afternoon, telling myself that I wasn’t going this way because I wanted to bump into Tristan. I was going this way because I wanted to check out the island, I wanted to try different running routes—to be somewhere populated, to feel slightly safer on my first solo run since Nell.