“She’s not a tourist,” Morgan continued. “She moved in.”
“Where?” Sam perked up.
“Ocean Drive.” I kept our house number to myself. If these kids didn’t like me and found out where I lived, they could come and throw eggs at my house.
“Wow, beachfront property!”
“It’s a dump,” I said, even though I loved the place.
“Well, in any case, you can’t live in this town and live too far from the water,” Sam said. “It’s just a short walk for me. Which house are you in?”
Maybe people didn’t really go around throwing eggs at people’s houses, anyway—what did I know? Mom would say I shouldn’t be so afraid of people my own age.
I took a deep breath.
“Fourteen forty-five. Do you know it?”
I was hoping they’d have some kind of story about my house, an explanation for the haunted feeling, in exchange for me giving up the number, but they both shook their heads.
“This is your family’s shop?” I changed the subject.
“Yep! Mom’s over there.” He pointed to a woman in a green store apron like Sam’s. “Dad grows the produce and Mom runs the shop. We’re all expected to help out. My brothers usually go with Dad and I help Mom.”
I was listening to Sam, I was, but I couldn’t help that a glint of sparkles caught my eye. I looked sideways to see what was glimmering like that. On the ground, caught in the sunlight—just past Morgan’s foot—a sparkly butterfly-shaped hair clip. All alone. Abandoned.
I stretched my foot out sideways, set my sneaker on top of the hair clip, and slid my foot back. I reached to pick up the clip.
“What are you doing?” Morgan asked. It must have been odd to have me practically kick her.
“Just picking this up.” I showed her the clip. “Is it yours?”
Morgan shook her big tangle of rust-colored curls. The hair ties she used were so fat I should have been able to guess that the butterfly wouldn’t have fit into her hair at all.
“Oh, that’s mine,” Sam said, running a hand through his shaggy bangs.
“Shut up, Sam,” she said.
“Are you going to keep it?” he asked me. “You don’t really strike me as the hair-butterfly type.”
I was tempted, but someone would probably come back looking for such a nice clip.
“No. Is there a lost and found?”
“We keep a box under one of the registers. Mostly gloves left over from winter.”
He led me over to the box. It was full of gloves and mittens, and also a small coin purse and a large gold earring and two paperback books. Ooh, a whole box of lost things.
Sam, made curious by my long pause to look at the box, gave it a shake. That woke me up and I dropped in the butterfly. Morgan was looking back and forth between us. Sam put the box back under the counter.
“It’s kind of special, right?” I asked. “So maybe only someone who asks for it and already knows what it looks like should get to see it. That way not just anyone could take it.”
“Yeah, sure, that makes sense.”
“If no one comes back for it, could I claim it?”
“I thought you didn’t want it,” Sam said.
“I don’t want to wear it,” I clarified.
“You’re an odd duck,” he said.
Uh-oh. Already labeled a weirdo and I’d known these kids for ten minutes. All I had to do was take too much interest in a stupid butterfly hair clip. Why hadn’t I been more careful? Things had been going so well, too; maybe I’d have passed for completely normal.
Then Sam said, “I get a break in half an hour. Have lunch with us?”
I went outside the store and sat on the wide porch steps.
Had that really been an invitation to lunch?
I opened my book and pretended to read, but I kept glancing up to watch the people walking by. Tourists walked slow and looked around a lot from under their sunglasses. They wore bright, clean summer clothes with the names of Maine towns printed on them. The people who lived here, at least as best I could spot them, walked more quickly and confidently and were more likely to be in cutoff jean shorts and worn-looking tank tops.
Being new, I wasn’t really a townie or a tourist.
Some other kids my age walked by. They looked at me but didn’t stop to say hi. I was relieved. I could only take meeting so many new people in a day. I was already nervous enough about lunch.
The half hour slipped by. Should I go back inside? Would they laugh at me if they hadn’t really meant to invite me? Was it worth risking?
But I was still sitting there on the porch, so if they saw me they’d think I had at least hoped for a real invitation. Maybe sitting there, waiting, hoping, made me look like a loser. Maybe I should just go. Maybe Sam and Morgan were inside, eating already, laughing at me through the windows.
I turned to check. Someone came through the door, but it was only Sam’s mom, who started straightening the flowers, peering into the buckets to see whether they had enough water.
A minute later Sam came out, looking around. I snapped my head forward as if I’d been looking down the street and not into the store for him.
“Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you’d left.”
“Still here.”
“Oh, good. Mom, I’m on my lunch break!” Sam yelled.
“I’m right here!” she yelled back. “You don’t need to yell!”
“Sorry!” Sam yelled. He stretched out his hand to me and helped me up. I followed him back inside. Morgan abandoned her magazine and came to join us, looking unsurprised that I was still here.
“How much is lunch?” I asked Sam.
“Nothing. Not for my friends, anyway.”
I felt my face flush. Was he really calling me his friend already?
“I should probably pay. Why should your mom have to give us three free lunches?”
“It’s fine,” Morgan said. “She says she’d rather have us here eating than out making trouble where she can’t keep an eye on us.”
“Plus, she’d have to feed us all anyway if we ate at my house, so it’s no big deal,” Sam said. “Her only rule is we can’t eat all day. I have to take a designated lunch break.”
Sam handed me a green lunch tray while Morgan got her own. “You can take anything from the prepared foods, the fresh fruit, or snack stuff like chips. And you can go behind the deli counter to make a sandwich, but you have to put on gloves. We make the sandwiches for regular customers, but if you’re with me, you’re staff.”
“Okay.” It sounded fun to make my own sandwich. I put on gloves and made a fresh turkey on wheat, then grabbed a bag of chips. I filled up a plastic cup with water and joined Sam and Morgan at a table.
“Thanks,” I said to Sam, setting down my tray and sitting next to Morgan.
Sam examined my sandwich. “Looks good. Maybe I should hire you to make mine from now on.” Sam had peanut butter with grape jelly oozing out around the edges. Very sloppy. Where’d he get peanut butter and jelly? Morgan had a salad and had also found somewhere to get a heaping bowl of pudding. Obviously there was a lot of exploring to do here.
“The lettuce on your sandwich—that’s from Dad’s garden.”
“Neat.” I chewed carefully. My stomach felt funny about the prospect of digesting something Sam’s family had grown. Ew, how personal.
“Did you get your tracking yet?”
“My tracking?”
“Yeah, which group you’ll take classes with at school.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t.”
“We won’t know if we’ll have anything together, then,” Sam explained. “Did you pick your elective? That’s outside tracking.”
“Oh, yeah, I picked Philosophy.”
“I thought about taking that, but I didn’t want to be with all those girls with black nail polish.”
I held my sandwich still in front of my face, the polish on my own nails dark against the tan bread.
“Oh.
You’re one of them.”
“Not quite. It’s really dark purple.”
“Sure,” Sam said skeptically.
“Midnight Lilac, actually.”
“I like it,” Morgan said. “I’ll have to borrow it. Maybe then Sam will notice my nails, too.”
I didn’t know what the deal was between Sam and Morgan, so I tried to steer the conversation back. “Which electives did you guys pick?”
“Photography,” Morgan answered, picking up her spoon. “We both did. I don’t know, Sam. There might be girls with black nail polish there, too.”
Sam answered by “accidentally” squeezing a gob of peanut butter at Morgan. It plopped on top of her chocolate pudding.
“Oh, sorry, let me get that.” Sam reached across with a spoon, taking a heap of pudding along with the peanut butter. He grinned while he ate, scanning our faces to see if we looked grossed out. I did my best not to look bothered.
“Do you like it here?” Morgan asked me, ignoring Sam.
“So far.”
When I got home, Lucca was playing on the floor in the living room.
Lucca’s named for an Italian city, too. Mom thought it sounded shining and bright. I’m not sure if he lives up to his name yet, either.
“Hey, kid,” I said.
Lucca held his hands above his head and moved them in circles.
“Again?”
He nodded. I nodded back to show him I was still on it.
“I brought you this.” I pulled the lion book out of my tote bag.
He looked at the book for a minute without touching it. Once he’d studied the picture, I guessed he approved of it, because he grabbed the book and climbed onto the couch, lying down on his stomach and looking through the pages. He wasn’t extending an invitation for me to read to him right now.
I headed into the kitchen.
“How was your day, honey?” Mom came over to hug me.
“Fine.”
I knew she would want to hear about Sam and Morgan, which made me not want to tell her. But better now than having her find out later and think I hid them for a reason like they’re troublemakers or something.
“I met some kids in town.”
“Oh? Nice kids?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s great!” She beamed at me, then pulled me in for an even tighter hug.
I pulled away. “I’m going to Mrs. Lang’s.”
“Who’s that?”
“The old lady who lives next down the beach.”
Mom gave me raised eyebrows, and then thought better of it. She was probably thinking, Why would you hang out with an old lady now that you’ve met people your age? And then changed her mind to Well, okay, I won’t bash your choice of friends, I’m just glad you’re interested in talking to someone.
I headed out and down the beach.
“Hello, Siena!” Mrs. Lang opened her screen door when I knocked.
“Hey.”
“What have you been up to?”
“I walked into town. Went to Nielly’s.”
“Oh, wonderful! Did you like it?”
I nodded. She smiled back at me.
“Today’s beverage is lemonade in summer citrus glasses.” I followed her inside and she set out special glasses with lemons and limes and oranges on them. She got the Uno cards from a drawer in the hallway. We sat down at her kitchen table. I shuffled the cards and dealt and she got to go first.
She put down a red card, and I had one, luckily.
“Are you sure you don’t know more about my house?” I asked. “Something weird’s going on there.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“I just feel like there’s something from a long time ago that was … unfinished, or incomplete, or something. Kind of like ghosts. Not too spooky or scary, just … a feeling. A feeling that kids feel, not grown-ups.”
Mrs. Lang put her next card down. “No ghost stories that I know of. And nothing strange has happened while I’ve lived here.”
I lowered my eyes to search my cards before having to draw new ones.
“Oh, you’re disappointed!” she said. “Let me ask my friend Ella Mae. She’s lived here forever. Maybe she’ll remember something from before I moved in.”
We played three games of Uno—she won all of them—and then I had to go.
“I’m glad you were able to come by,” Mrs. Lang said at the door. “Come again soon.”
“I will. Thank you for the lemonade.” Maybe she’d have some information for me next time. Clues, at least. I felt a small pang of guilt; she’d enjoyed the visit just for the company and I’d wanted something else out of it.
It was funny how I felt much more comfortable with her than I had with the kids my own age. That probably meant we did have some sort of friendship.
As I walked home I wondered if the brother and sister I’d seen on the beach had been tourists and since gone home. But why would they have been way down on this part of the beach?
7
I got home just as Dad was taking the chicken off the grill. As we all sat down inside, Mom asked, “How was your first day of camp?”
“Fine. The kids were pretty rambunctious. Want to come tomorrow, Siena?”
“Maybe.”
“How was your day?” he asked me. “Mom says you met some kids.”
Of course she would have told him first thing. She must have been ecstatic—we hadn’t even been here a week and already her plans for me were apparently working.
“Yeah. Sam and Morgan. At Nielly’s.”
“Boys or girls?”
“One of each.”
“Which is which?”
“Sam’s the boy.”
Mom was looking at us like this was an odd conversation. Dad said, “I met two girls today called Mack and Jack. Short for MacKenzie and Jacqueline.” He put a piece of chicken on my plate as Mom started serving salad. I took the macaroni and cheese bowl and scooped some out for me and Lucca. I plopped his in a big circle on his plate and squirted ketchup on it to make eyes and a mouth: a smiley face, the way he likes his mac and cheese.
After it got dark out, it suddenly felt like there was nothing to do. Lucca was sleeping, and Mom and Dad were watching TV in their room. I sat in my window seat with my library book for a few minutes, but couldn’t get into it. I kept feeling the hairs on my neck standing up; I’d look around and forget about the book. I ended up staring out at the dark water, lit only by the stars and moon. I’d never spent much time looking at the night sky back in the city. The stars faded behind the city’s own lights as if they didn’t even exist.
Mom had suggested writing stories about our house to settle my feelings. But making things up wouldn’t solve anything. She didn’t understand that this problem was real.
Then I remembered the sensation of my hand being guided across the paper to write something unexpected. Goose bumps formed on my arms.
I walked over to the shelves Dad had put up, where I’d arranged my collection and set the pen the other night. I turned it over, studying it.
SEA: Sarah Elizabeth Alberdine. Who was that? Was it someone real, someone trying to talk to me?
Was that possible? How would that work?
Maybe if I used the pen again, I could write something else. That strange feeling of not being connected to what was being written … I shivered, remembering.
But this might be the way to learn something. It was the best option I had, at least.
I found a fresh notebook and went back to sit in the window seat, the notebook on my knees. I tried to clear my mind.
I wrote.
And read:
The morning light came in my window as I woke up.
The light was fresh and clear, the beautiful sunshine of a summer morning. I was in my bed, not in the window seat, and it was time to get up for the day. The birds were up already, I could hear them.
But it was nighttime!
I shook my head and the darkness outside became appare
nt once more. I was back in the window seat, and the stillness of the night had returned, except for the gentle rushing of the waves.
I struggled to breathe. I put my head down on the notebook.
This wasn’t normal. It just wasn’t.
But I needed to be brave if I was ever going to figure this out. What had happened at our house, why we were here, what it really meant.
I lifted my head.
What if the past was something I could decide to see, when I wanted to?
I’d still be sitting here, holding the pen and notebook, after all. I wasn’t really going to go anywhere. At least, I didn’t think I was.
I took a steadying breath, picked up the pen, and put it on the paper.
The morning light came in my window as I woke up, shining on my blankets and wallpaper and my dolls sitting on their small bench. The flowers on my blankets and wallpaper are pinks and peaches and creams; they turn pretty in the sunlight.
I climbed out of bed, untwisted my nightgown, and opened my door.
Other people were awake. Vicky came up the stairs, carrying a basket of dried bed linens, just taken down from the line outside.
“I see you’ve decided to get up. About time.”
I would have buried my nose in the basket of sheets to smell the sunshine on them, to feel their warmth, but I could tell Vicky wouldn’t like my nose buried in the sheets she’d just washed and folded.
Vicky doesn’t like that I can sleep all morning. She says it’s lazy. It’s not my fault I stay asleep so long. She won’t wake me up because it’s not her job, and, because it’s summer, no one else is going to be waking me up.
“Your mother’s having breakfast.”
I went downstairs to the dining room and found Mama reading the morning paper. Without looking up, she said, “You should get dressed before you come to breakfast.”
“Good morning, Mama.” I sat down, helping myself to toasted French bread, scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit from the serving dishes.
I spread thick gobs of butter on my bread, then spoonfuls of jam, and was on my third piece when Mama again revealed that she was paying attention to me from behind the newspaper: “Eat some eggs and fruit, too.”