I laid back on the cool stones, their hard, bumpy surfaces pressing against my back.
A single bright purple streak exploded into what seemed like one million little pink stars in the distance, each one throwing off trails of cotton candy–colored sparkles as they fell toward the island.
“That was awesome.” I found myself smiling in Luke’s direction and, even though I knew he couldn’t see me, I had a feeling he was smiling back.
“When I was a kid, I used to try to pinpoint the exact moment when a single firework fizzled out,” Luke told me before a burst of green shattered into emerald comets that sliced through the sky. “It’s a lot harder than you think.”
Now I tried to do the same thing, fixing my eyes on a spot of green as it lost momentum, the green flare flickering and fading as it gasped for air like a runner reaching the finish line, and then turned and started falling toward the earth. I watched the green dissolve, its spark growing smaller and dimmer, but Luke was right. Even though I could tell the flare was dying out, I couldn’t tell exactly when it was gone.
Long-Distance Relationship Tip #19:
Once upon a time there was something called a love letter.
People sent them through the mail.
And saved them in shoeboxes to read years later.
Very romantic and doesn’t require an internet connection or a cell phone.
It does require an attention span and legible handwriting.
I often wondered how much Josie’s parents knew. In the days following the school assembly, did Mrs. Holden wonder why I wasn’t around? Could she hear Lucy and Josie whispering my name behind a closed bedroom door? Did Josie tell her what happened, and did Mrs. Holden tell Josie’s dad?
If they knew anything, the Holdens never acted like it. Putting aside the fact that Mr. Holden fired me on the very same day I’d been welcomed into their home for the summer, it was as if nothing had changed. When I was in the kitchen, they asked if I was hungry and told me to help myself to anything in the pantry. Mrs. Holden had shown me how to use the washing machine and even gave me my own laundry basket. And, although he’d taken me off the Scoop Shack payroll a little too easily in my opinion, when I’d returned from my unsuccessful morning of job hunting, I’d found a brand-new bicycle pump in the garage. I knew he was being nice, but I couldn’t help wondering if Mr. Holden was also eliminating any excuse I had for not being able to get to my new job.
On my second day, I was better prepared for work, mostly thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Holden. I had my sunglasses on my head, was lathered up in the sunscreen Mrs. Holden left me on the bathroom counter, and had borrowed a baseball hat from Mr. Holden. I even managed to pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and a bag of grapes to snack on, which Mrs. Holden had kept in the freezer so they’d still be cold when it came time to eat them.
I was staring into the refrigerator, trying to decide between raspberry or blueberry yogurt for breakfast before my ride to the marina, when Mrs. Holden came into the kitchen.
“I can pick up more snacks if you write them on the grocery list,” she offered. “It’s over there on the desk.”
I decided on raspberry and closed the refrigerator door.
Mrs. Holden handed me a spoon. “How’s the new job?”
“Great,” I told her, because I knew that was what she hoped I’d say. “I’m learning a lot.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear that.” She pulled two chairs out from the kitchen table, sat down in one, and waited for me to sit in the other.
I didn’t have much time to eat my yogurt if I was going to make it to work by seven, but I accepted her invitation anyway. “Thank you for the frozen grapes, and for having me for the summer.”
“It would have been awfully quiet with just Josie around. Besides, with you girls leaving in the fall, Mr. Holden and I were happy to have you all here, even if . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Even if I screwed up,” I finished for her. “I know. I’m really sorry about that.”
“Well, it all worked out, right?”
“Right. It’s really nice here. I love your house.”
She looked around the kitchen, running her gaze over the window and along the exposed wood beams crisscrossing the ceiling. “There’s something nice about the history of this place, isn’t there?”
“Josie told me that Mr. Holden used to pass by this house when he was a kid.”
“He thought it was the greatest home he’d ever seen, which, considering he was about seven years old at the time, means he was probably infatuated with the big tire swing in the side yard. We hadn’t even been inside when we made the offer, bought it sight unseen. I think Mr. Holden sort of had a wake-up call when we walked through the front door—the floors were scratched raw from the previous owner’s dogs, the walls had twenty-year-old wallpaper, and the plumbing had to be replaced. It needed a lot of work once you got past the blooming hydrangeas out front. His visions of what he thought the house was didn’t exactly match the reality.”
“You’d never know it now,” I told her, scraping one last spoonful of raspberry yogurt from the bottom of the container.
“I thought it would never be finished, there was so much work. It was actually easier to build the other house from the ground up, even though it’s three times the size. There’s a big difference between trying to fix what’s wrong and doing everything right from the beginning.”
“But it was worth it,” I told her.
“Absolutely,” she agreed.
I pushed my chair back and went to the sink to rinse out the yogurt container before dropping it into the recycling can. “I have to go, can’t be late!”
“Have fun!” Mrs. Holden called out as I waved good-bye.
“I will!” I called back so convincingly even I almost believed I would.
• • •
When I made it to the marina, George was already in the office getting ready for the day. According to the clock on the wall, I’d arrived with two minutes to spare.
“So you decided to come back?” he joked, his hands clutching clear plastic bags stuffed with freshly caught bait.
“You bet!” I announced, looking past the pink, blood-tinged water and the bulging eyes staring at me from the bags.
“Well, you have good timing.” George kicked the base of the freezer. “Can you open the top of this? These just came in, and they need to get on ice.”
For the rest of the summer, that’s how my mornings would start. Just me and George and whatever poor sea creatures happened to fall prey to a fishing line and a Ziploc bag.
During the next two hours, I shadowed George around the marina taking mental notes of all the morning rituals I’d be undertaking for the rest of the summer—hosing down the docks, counting the cash in the register, listening to the voicemail for messages left over night. We pumped fuel and ran bait out to the boats when they needed it. Even if we were busy, it wasn’t difficult stuff, and seeing the water just steps away from the office made doing these simple tasks seem less tedious than they could have been anywhere else. Combine the ocean views with the breeze drifting through the open windows and doors, and it was actually pleasant.
Once the morning tasks were completed, George turned his attention to loading up his boat for the day, and I parked myself in the director’s chair on the dock halfway between the office and the fuel pump. Every once in a while, George would call my name and introduce me to his friends and customers, and by the time Nolan arrived for work at nine o’clock, I’d met Dennis, Bobby, and Mr. and Mrs. Martin, who told me to call them Wally and Peg. I quickly learned that there is one question everyone in a marina wants to know: are the fish biting? I made a mental note to ask George the same thing tomorrow morning so I’d have an answer for everyone, instead of doing what I did today, which was turn toward George, whose boat was idling in the slip nearest the office, and let him take over.
The boat was loaded with his fishing rods, fresh bait, and fuel, and
George was ready to take off the moment he spotted Nolan’s car turning into the parking lot. I was perched in my chair on the dock beside the fuel station when George signaled to me to meet in front of the office’s back door.
George went inside and grabbed a water from the refrigerator. “You two are in charge, don’t make me regret it.”
Nolan walked through the office and joined me on the dock just outside the back door, solemnly holding up three fingers and pledging, “Scout’s honor,” to George as he passed him.
“That might mean something if you hadn’t dropped out of the Boy Scouts.”
“I’m sure Emily was a Girl Scout. She can vouch for us.” Nolan looked at me and I nodded, holding up my own oath.
That seemed to satisfy George, because he didn’t protest and instead just reminded Nolan to lock up when he closed. We both watched as George removed the lines holding his boat to the dock, and then backed out of his slip as easily as if he was reversing out of a lined parking space at a shopping mall.
“Why didn’t you come out with us last night?” Nolan asked, flopping down in the director’s chair next to me.
I decided I didn’t have to be right next to the fuel pump in order to see boats arrive, so I went to get my chair and brought it back, setting it beside the office door and across from Nolan. “I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be late for work, considering it’s only my second day.”
“George was probably surprised you showed up at all. He owes me ten bucks.”
“You bet on me?”
“We did. We make bets on everything, though. Last week, George bet me I couldn’t balance a sabiki rod on my chin for more than ten seconds. So don’t take it personally.”
I didn’t. I was just surprised Nolan took my side in the bet. “So who won?”
“George. It was a lot harder than I anticipated.” Nolan moved his chair over into the shade under the office’s overhang.
“What did you all do when you left the Scoop Shack?” I asked.
“Didn’t your friends tell you?”
I never heard Lucy and Josie come home. I’d tried to stay awake, and even alternated closing one eye for a few minutes and then the other in an effort to get some rest without actually passing out, but the last thing I remembered was thinking how grateful I was for my memory foam pillow.
I’d set my phone alarm to vibrate so it wouldn’t wake Josie and Lucy when it went off, but I didn’t try nearly as hard as I should have to be silent as I fumbled around in the darkened bedroom getting dressed for work. I may have dropped my bottle of suntan lotion on the hardwood floor and been a little louder than necessary as I stomped to the bathroom to brush my teeth. They must have had a really fun night, though, because neither of them moved, and neither one answered when I whispered good-bye.
“I was asleep when they got home, and they were still passed out when I left this morning,” I told Nolan. “Our schedules don’t exactly match.”
“In that case, come with me and I’ll fill you in.” Nolan jumped up, and I followed him over to the pump-out station.
He checked the level of the holding tank and gave me the highlights of last night, which consisted of Alyssa getting drunk and throwing up all over the passenger window of Tyler’s car because she didn’t get the window down fast enough, some guy named James losing his keys in the sand for an hour until they found them with a metal detector someone went and got from their garage, and Josie running into the ocean fully dressed on a dare.
I didn’t know Alyssa or Tyler or James, but I knew Josie. And there’s no way she would take that dare. “She did not.”
“She did so,” Nolan insisted.
“But Josie hates the water.”
“Not anymore,” Nolan told me. “Or at least not when eight people are chanting her name.”
“And Lucy let her?”
“I think it was Lucy who offered to hold her car keys, otherwise we probably would have been looking for two sets.”
A delivery truck with an igloo logo on its side pulled into the parking lot, and I trailed Nolan as he went to meet the driver.
I still couldn’t believe it. Josie wouldn’t jump into a crystal clear, chlorinated pool in the middle of the day in her own backyard, but she’d run into a black ocean at midnight—by herself?
“What did she get for doing the dare?” I asked as Nolan piled bags of ice onto my outstretched arms.
“Nothing, as far as I know. Basically, she just got to be a badass.”
A badass? I had to laugh. If Nolan knew about the six-foot long unicorn float Mr. Holden bought for Josie when he opened the pool this year, he might think twice before calling her a badass. Mr. Holden had told Josie he’d had it with her only venturing in up to her ankles on the pool steps, and if a glitter-infused unicorn with room for two couldn’t entice her to finally take the plunge, then he’d give up. Josie loved the unicorn float, with its silver horn and rainbow-colored vinyl mane, but even glitter that shimmered in the sun couldn’t get her to take the unicorn for a ride in the deep end.
Apparently, it wasn’t mythical creatures or six-foot long floats that Josie needed to take the plunge. It was eight people chanting her name. Seven strangers and one best friend from home. I guess one best friend was enough to get the job done.
I followed Nolan into the office, where we set the bags of ice in the freezer, beside the cooler with the bait.
“They said you have a boyfriend who’s on the Vineyard for the summer?” Nolan was making a statement, but he made it sound like a question. It made me wonder who had brought up my relationship status—Lucy and Josie, or Nolan.
“Yeah, he was supposed to work at a lacrosse camp in New Hampshire, but he did something to his knee and now he’s on crutches and waiting to find out if he needs surgery.”
Nolan placed the last of the bags of ice in the freezer and went over to the counter, where he pulled a filing box out from the shelves under the register and thumbed through the tabs until he found what he was looking for. “That sucks. I needed stitches on my forehead once and I practically passed out. I can’t imagine having surgery.”
“First he has to do physical therapy. That’s why he’s staying on the Vineyard—he can’t work and his family friends have a house there.”
Nolan placed the ice receipt into the folder marked I and tucked the file box back into place. “That’s convenient.”
“It is,” I agreed, and then for some reason added, “Or maybe it isn’t, I don’t know. The family has a daughter, Sam, and she doesn’t like me because of something I did months ago.”
“Months ago? She sure knows how to hold a grudge.”
“It wasn’t something I did to her, it was something I did to Luke, my boyfriend.”
Nolan paused before asking me the next logical question, almost as if he wasn’t sure whether to let the subject drop or get me to spill my guts. “Is this where I ask what you did that was so bad, or should we move on to another topic?”
I weighed my options. On the one hand, Nolan didn’t know Luke and he barely knew me, so he would have an objective opinion about Sam’s reaction. On the other hand, if Nolan responded like Sam did, I was basically inviting him to think I was a terrible person, too.
I decided to tell him a sanitized version, leaving out the gory details but giving him enough information to form an opinion. I didn’t know Nolan well, but so far, he seemed like someone who wouldn’t rush to judge me without taking two things into consideration: 1. I’d been a model employee since George hired me, and hadn’t complained about any of the tasks to which I’d been assigned, and 2. Someone who was willing to ride a bike four miles each day to vacuum shit out of boats and pump gas in the blistering sun couldn’t be all that bad.
“So what do you think?” Once I finished telling Nolan the story, I leaned over, set my elbows on the counter, and waited for him to decide. “Do you think it’s weird that she reacted like that?”
“You look like you’re waiting for a verd
ict.” Nolan rested against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m not sure I have one. I mean, let’s face it, all girls are nuts, so I’m not surprised she was a little unhinged, but then again, from what you just told me, it’s not like you’re the picture of sanity, either.”
“Point taken,” I admitted, and then added, “At the time, I mean.”
“On the other hand, Sam?” He paused, waiting for me to confirm her name, and when I nodded, he continued. “Sam does sound a little overinvested in your boyfriend.”
Overinvested? Protective I was expecting, maybe even possessive. But overinvested? What was I supposed to do with that?
“This is exactly why I don’t have a girlfriend,” Nolan continued. “You’re all nuts.”
“Does that mean you had a girlfriend, or that you don’t want one?” I asked, trying to better understand his sweeping generalization of my entire gender.
“I had one—she was there last night, actually—but we broke up a few months ago. What about you and your boyfriend? What happens after the summer?”
“His name is Luke,” I reminded Nolan. “And he’ll be at Tufts, so we won’t be too far away from each other. Not even two hours.”
“You’ll have a car?”
“No. But there are busses.” I could tell Nolan was about to challenge my transportation plans, so I pointed to the wall with nails hammered in every few inches and changed the conversation. “What’s up with those?”
“They’re nautical knots. Like the cleat hitch I showed you? There are about a hundred different boating knots, each with a specific purpose. Like this one.” He reached up and removed what looked like a noose from one of the hooks. “This is a bowline. You can use it for a ton of things, like keeping sheets attached to the clew of a headsail or connecting two lines to make one line.”
Nolan may as well have been speaking in a foreign language.
“Just looks like a noose to me,” I told him.
“Maybe, but the thing about a bowline is that no matter how tight you make it, or how strong the hold, it’s crazy easy to undo.” Nolan demonstrated by pulling the noose tight into what looked like an impossible knot, and then with one tug on the end of rope, the whole knot fell apart. “All it takes is one pull and it comes undone.”