“I know. Sorry. My mom didn’t want me to stay long, though. We still, um, have lots of unpacking to do and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah. Right. Okay, well, I’ll walk you out.”
I followed her down the stairs and watched as her sister bounded through the front door. At least, I assumed it was her sister.
“Juliet, this is Molly. Molly, Juliet. She’s new to my school, starting next week.”
“Hey,” Molly said as she took off her pink Ray-Bans and threw them onto the entryway table along with her keys. “Is Dad home? I need to ask him something.”
The squeeze on my stomach got tighter. If I wanted to ask my dad something, I’d have to call him. Or email him. They were so lucky. And they probably didn’t even know it.
“Yeah,” Emma said. “In his office.”
Outside, on the front porch, Emma reached her arms out and pulled me into a hug. Suddenly, I was sure I had met someone special. She had been curious because she cared. Which was the best kind of curiosity, really. And it’s not like it was her fault that she had a big family while mine was small and broken.
“Okay, cross your fingers someone will read our bottle messages and reply,” she said as I turned to go down the steps. “And that it won’t take three years.”
“I will. It’ll probably be a mermaid,” I teased, turning back to see her face because I knew it’d make her smile. And it did.
“Yeah, probably.” She started singing, “Under the sea—”
“Under the sea,” I piped in.
“Do you remember how many blocks to go before your street?” Emma asked me.
“Four? I think? I know the street name, though, so I’ll find it.”
“Oh!” she said. “Hold on. Let me give you my phone number so we can do something Tuesday.”
I pulled out Mom’s phone and put her number in as she told it to me. So we wouldn’t see each other tomorrow, but I could wait until Tuesday. Maybe. Somehow.
“Call me Tuesday morning,” Emma said. “The bookmobile opens at nine.”
“Okay.” I waved. “See you later. Thanks for the ice cream!”
“Like my dad always says, there’s more where that came from. Bye!”
Once I’d gone a little way, I pulled out the phone and checked the time. It was a few minutes after four. I had more than forty hours to wait until Tuesday morning. Forty hours may have well been forty days—it seemed so far away and I had no idea what I’d do with myself until then. Still, things could have been worse. I could have not met Emma at all.
* The night sky
* Flowers
* Owls
* Cats
* Trees
* Cupcakes
Monday morning, Mom left early for her new job. When I got up, Miranda was gone, too. She’d told us over dinner the night before that she planned on spending most of the break in the ocean or at the nearby pool, training. Training for what, you ask? Well, for some reason, my sister has dreamt of being a lifeguard since she was five years old. And moving to Mission Beach gave her a great opportunity—to try out for the Junior Lifeguard program with the city of San Diego.
Tryouts were coming up in May and she’d told us that in order to compete with other people who had been in the program before, she was going to have to work really, really hard to get in shape.
So with both of them doing their thing, I decided to make Monday an art day. In the morning, I sketched pictures with pencils in my drawing pad. After a couple of hours of that, I got my paints ready so I could spend the afternoon working at my easel. My mom and dad gave me the easel for Christmas last year. It’s a small one that sits on my desk so it doesn’t take up a lot of room.
In between drawing and painting, I made my favorite lunch: a turkey sandwich with lots of pickles. Maybe I should call it a pickle sandwich with a little bit of turkey, which is much more accurate. As I was eating my most delicious sandwich, the phone rang. Mom can’t imagine a world without a real phone in the house, so our landline had been set up as soon as we moved in.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Pooh, it’s me.” Miranda. Yes, we call each other Pooh sometimes.
“You coming home for lunch?” I asked.
“No, I met a couple of girls who are training for the tryouts, too. We’re gonna hang out here, at the beach. Probably get some tacos. Thought I should check in with you, though, and make sure you’re doing okay.”
“I’m fine. I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
I sighed. It means I’m here by myself, in a new place, with my friends and my dad hours away, and I’m trying my best to forget all that.
But all I said was, “Nothing.”
“What are you doing?”
“Eating a sandwich. Then I’m going to paint.”
“Good. I gotta go. I’ll see you later, okay?”
“Okay. Oh, hey, Miranda, do we have Internet?”
“Yeah. The house had it before we moved in.”
“All right. Thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I took my sandwich over to the desk where Mom had set up the desktop computer. I watched a Bob Ross painting video for a few minutes and then switched over to check my email. I had a message from Inca, but I didn’t open it because I was too excited about another message. The subject line said: “I found your bottle.”
My first thought was: WHAT!?!? My second thought was: No way!
I clicked on the message and started reading.
Hi, J.J.,
I got your message. You know, the message you sent out to sea in a bottle?
You’re not going to believe it. I love Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, too! The seascape one is called “Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.” I think it’s my favorite, if I had to choose one.
Do you really want to be a part of something special? Because I have an idea.
I wish on stars all the time. I bet you do, too. And I was thinking about all of the other people like us. Sometimes their wishes come true, but sometimes they don’t. Maybe the stars need helpers now and then. So let’s help! Maybe we could call ourselves the Starry Beach Club (since the Starry Night Club sounds like a place where old people go to dance). Whatever we call it, we’ll make Vincent proud.
But first, you have to prove to me you can do it. Show me that you are clever, creative, sneaky, and diligent. Find someone’s wish. Make it come true. Then email me and tell me about it.
Sincerely Yours,
Some Kid at the Beach
Starry Beach Club Member #1
I read the email three times. I checked the address to see if it gave me any clues as to who might have written it, but it was from
[email protected]. Yeah, no help there at all.
I wanted to call Emma and tell her about it. I couldn’t, though. She was hanging out with Shelby, and she’d specifically told me to call her Tuesday morning.
There was nothing to do but wait.
* When I want to cuddle and my cat doesn’t feel like it, I make a tuna fish sandwich with lots of pickles and share a teensy bit with him (the tuna, not the pickles).
* On the nights I really don’t want to do the dishes, I make sure I have a lot of homework saved up.
* I love getting mail, so I write letters to my grandma and she writes me back.
* I don’t like onions, so when something has onions in it, I tell my brain they’re actually white pickles.
* I save the boring stuff to read for the nights when I can’t fall asleep.
(I feel like this is a really lame list, but it’s all I’ve got.)
Mom didn’t get home until almost seven. I was starving. Miranda had gotten home around three. I almost told her about the email from Some Kid but decided not to. She probably would have said it was a stupid joke and told me to ignore it. Or she would have told me I better not email the person back in case it was an Internet predator. Except what kind of Internet predator wan
ts to make people’s wishes come true? And besides, as long as I didn’t give them any personal information, how would Some Kid know anything about me? I could be an eighty-nine-year-old hippie yoga instructor, or a tourist who’d already gone back to a fancy apartment in Manhattan.
Since Mom was tired from a long first day, we had canned tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Yum. Once Miranda stopped talking about her new friends, I jumped in to ask about plans for the next day.
“Mom, Emma invited me to go to the bookmobile with her tomorrow. Is that okay?”
My mother put her elbows on the table and rubbed her temples. “I suppose. Just please, stick together. You said her parents are generally around, right?”
“Yes.”
“All right. But don’t make a nuisance of yourself. I’m sure they have their hands full with four children.”
“I won’t.”
Mom’s phone rang. She glanced at the number, leaned back, and pushed the phone toward me. “Want to talk to your father? I’m not really up for it right now.”
She got up with her dishes and went toward the kitchen while I picked up the phone.
“Hi, Dad. It’s Juliet.”
“Oh. Hi. Your mom busy?”
“Kind of. Yeah.”
“I see. So, how are you? You girls settled into the new place yet?”
“Mostly. There’s still some boxes of stuff Mom doesn’t know what to do with.”
“Yeah. Moving’s a big job. Think you’re gonna like it, though? Eventually?”
I wanted to say, “What does it matter? You didn’t give me a choice about any of this.” But I didn’t. I said, “I hope so.”
“I bet you will. It’s a wonderful place. Hey, I ran into Inca at the grocery store yesterday. She said to tell you hello. I think she said she’d email you, too.”
“Yeah. I read it earlier and replied.”
“Okay, good.”
It got quiet. Were we really out of things to talk about that fast? It made me realize how different this was going to be. When Dad and I were together, eating cinnamon rolls or going for nature hikes or even just watching The Great British Bake Off, it didn’t matter if we didn’t talk. Now we were supposed to just talk and it wasn’t supposed to matter if we weren’t together. But it did matter. To me, anyway.
When I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I asked, “You want to say hi to Miranda?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. Bye, Dad.”
“Good talking to you. See you in a few weeks, okay?”
“Yeah.”
After I scooted the phone over to Miranda, I picked up my dishes and went into the kitchen. Mom was at the sink, washing the pans by hand.
“Everything all right?” I asked as I put my dishes in the dishwasher.
“Yes,” Mom said. “Just tired. Think I’ll finish up here and go soak in the tub.”
“It’s really tiny.”
She looked at me funny. “What?”
“The tub. It’s not like the one we had at home.”
The confused look disappeared, and in its place was sadness. “Oh. Right. I forgot. Well, guess I’ll go to bed and read for a while, then.”
She rinsed off the pans and put them on the drying rack. As she walked past me, she said, “You girls are good, right?”
Did she mean right now, this minute? Or just in general? Either way, I knew there was really only one way to answer. “Yeah. We’re fine.”
She smiled slightly. “Good night, Juju Bean.”
“Night.”
As she left the kitchen, I heard Miranda tell her, “He wants you to call him tomorrow.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Good night.”
I sat down across from my sister. After I heard Mom shut the bathroom door, I said, “Maybe he misses her. Maybe that’s why he called.”
“I doubt it.”
“I wish there was something we could do,” I said.
“About what?”
“About them. Mom and Dad. Get them to see that they’re better together than apart.”
She stood up and gathered her dinner dishes. “I think they’ve made up their minds. It’s just going to be hard for a while, Pooh. For all of us.”
I put my chin in my hands and sighed. “Want to help me set up the DVD player and watch a movie?”
“No,” Miranda called from the kitchen. “I have plans to play a game online with a friend.”
She went to her room and I sat there alone for a minute before I remembered that in my email I’d asked Inca if she wanted to Skype later. I checked my inbox, but she hadn’t responded. Since I was there, I read Some Kid’s note again. And then I printed it out. Because no way would Emma believe it unless she saw it for herself.
After it printed, I heard Miranda mutter something to herself about her dinosaur of a laptop. Mom came out of the bathroom and gave me a little wave before she went into her bedroom. The cottage was super tiny, so my mom and sister weren’t far. I mean, they were so close I could practically hear them breathing. Still, it felt like that giant ocean outside our door was actually inside the house—me on one side and them on the other.
I thought of Dad, back home, probably feeling the same way. I opened my email and started typing.
Hi Dad,
Sorry I didn’t talk to you very long when you called earlier. I’m not really used to talking to you on the phone. And all of this is just really different. I miss you. I miss my friends. I even miss the sound of cars driving by outside my window. I know a lot of people love the sound of waves, but I’m not used to it. I’m not used to any of this. Since you’re probably not used to living by yourself either, I bet you understand.
Guess I’ll go to bed now. It’s early, but I can read a book. Then I’ll try to fall asleep listening to those waves. Maybe someday I’ll like that sound like everyone else. Not tonight, though. Tonight, all they do is make me miss the sound of the cars even more.
There’s something I’ve always remembered from when I took swimming lessons. On the first day, when I was holding on to you because I didn’t want to go to the teacher, you told me that every time I got in the pool, I’d feel a little less afraid. You told me that I just had to get the hardest part out of the way first. Maybe right now, we’re getting the hardest part out of the way. Which means, things can only get better. I hope so.
Love you!
Juliet
* not fun.
* kind of sad.
* the opposite of exciting.
* a weird word.
* very boring!
I called Emma the next morning and we agreed to meet near Mr. Dooney’s house at nine, since it was about halfway between hers and mine. I stuck the printed email in my pocket, along with my Tic Tacs to share, and headed out.
When Emma saw me walking toward her, she waved and looked like she was truly happy to see me.
“I have to tell you something,” she said when we met up.
“Me, too.” I reached into my pocket and fished out the mints. I took one and then offered one to her.
“Thanks,” she said. “You go first. I can wait.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d gotten an email, too. I guess I’d soon find out. I put the Tic Tacs back and pulled out the printed email. “I already heard back.”
She gave me a funny look. “Heard back?”
“Yes. Someone found my message in a bottle and wrote to me.”
Her mouth opened wide as her hands grabbed my arms. “No way! Already?” She looked at the piece of paper in my hand. “Is that it? The email you got back?”
“Yes.”
She reached for it. “Can I see it? Please?”
I smiled. “That’s why I brought it.” She grabbed hold of it, but I didn’t let go. “Before you read it, there’s something you should know, or it won’t make sense.”
“What?”
“In my note, I talked about my favorite painting, The S
tarry Night. I know this might sound weird, but …” I paused, wondering if I should say more. It was one thing to tell a stranger what I’d said in my letter. But tell Emma? I didn’t want to do anything to mess up this new friendship. Her green eyes stared at me, full of questions, but I saw something else there, too. I saw a safe place. She would understand. I knew it as sure as I knew a cinnamon roll with hot chocolate is the best breakfast in the entire world.
So I said, “I talked about how I sometimes wish I could live in that magical painting. That I want to be brilliant, like the stars he painted, and feel like I’m a part of something special.”
“Wow,” she whispered, like I’d just told her a very important secret and she really appreciated that. “When I said make it good, you really went for it.”
I let go of the message and nervously pulled on the strings of my hoodie. “Once I started writing, it all just kind of … came out. I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Anyway, wait until you see the reply. You won’t believe it.”
She fanned the piece of paper in front of her face. “I think I need to sit down for this.” So we headed for the beach and plopped down on the sand. It was a cloudy day and kind of chilly. I zipped my hoodie up all the way.
You know how it feels when you get your report card in the mail and your mom makes you sit there while she opens it and reads it? That’s kind of how I felt as I waited for Emma to read the letter. When she finished, she looked at me and said, “The Starry Beach Club? Is she for real?”
“Sounds like it to me.”
She stood up and started pacing.
“When did you get the email?” she asked.
“Yesterday afternoon. It must have washed ashore really soon after we left on Sunday.”
“Or someone saw us throw the bottles in and went out and grabbed one before it went too far.” She stopped and looked at me. “I know! I bet it was Henry and his friends.”
I shook my head. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because they wouldn’t have known the name of the seascape painting. And can you even see one of them using the word ‘diligent’?”