there been any fistfights? Are you ever going to choose? Will you have to? Cal might seem like my type, but Mitchell is the one that is stuck in my mind. Maybe that is because I recall his cute butt in those tight jeans from that day I dropped you at the ferry! You did not know your sis was observant of that sort of thing, did you? I cannot tell if it is your influence or Paul’s newfound touch that has me thinking such thoughts. I might survive graduating from high school but I do not know if I will survive this hormonal awakening! Know of any antidotes?
I better go try on my cap and gown, or take a cold shower!
From this new person in your sister’s old body,
With hugs and kisses (but not the Paul type),
Leah
June 14
Dear Leah—
Summer has begun out here, though the date reminds me it’s still a week away on the calendar. You would not believe how busy and crowded it has gotten! It was really bad over Memorial Day weekend, but I figured that was just the holiday. It slacked off a little during the week then picked up again last weekend and hasn’t let up since. This is all good for the restaurant and motel business, and tips in a certain little poor waitress’s pocket, but it drives me crazy to have to wait in line to buy face cream or check my mail, and if one more obnoxious Yankee honks at me (making me jump and giving him a good laugh!) I swear I’ll take a sledgehammer to the headlights of his shiny vanity truck. What’s a city slick (rhymes with another word starting with a “d”) need a four-wheeler with big tires for anyway? Might need to skirt around a garbage truck stopped in his prissy neighborhood? If you read about “girl goes berserk with sledgehammer,” send bail money or a file in your cake. Tip money will only go so far.
There! Brooke vent for this letter! Don’t you feel better? I do.
On a pleasanter subject, Brooke is still playing the field and the guys are still all out there, ripening toward harvest (this girl is nasty today in her thinly veiled allusions!). There have been no fistfights as of this writing, mainly because yours truly is pretty skilled at keeping those ripening fellows from getting too possessive.
But there was one hair-pulling catfight between two drunk mainland girls who had eyes on your favorite, Mitchell. He’s such a tease! He had them both on the line last Saturday night at Edwards Bar till one took exception to the other sitting on his lap which wasn’t that big a deal really since he was on a barstool and all she did was kind of lean against his lap. But Brunette didn’t like it (Lapsitter was blond) and threw her drink in Lapsitter’s face (Mitchell caught a little on his chin and licked it off even though he doesn’t like Toasted Almonds). That was all she wrote! Before you knew it they were clawing and screaming and rolling on the floor and beating the base drums on each other’s backs. Big Harry the bouncer (he’s about three hundred pounds with a shaved head and a permanent scowl) could’ve picked one up in each arm but decided to give us a little late-night show and let them tussle awhile. But then one of them (Blondie—she could scrap!) ripped the other’s dress (can you believe those tarts wore mini-dresses into a beach bar!) and it looked like they were on their way to showing too much skin for an R-rated venue. So Harry took matters quite literally into his own hands and parted the fighters and got one under each arm and carted them kicking and screaming out into the parking lot.
And guess who Mitchell left with? Sorry—don’t want to make you jealous. But it’ll take more than a couple mainland sluts to nibble on this girl’s turf. Mitchell was in my back pocket, catfight or not, the whole time. The rest was just island entertainment.
But my main squeeze has become Onion. Not only do we work together, which means many hours in close proximity in the kitchen, though we hardly ever speak to each other in that hubbub, just lots of order tickets swapped for plates of food and countless hand gestures that would make your sign language look simple. But we also close together, with whoever finishes their clean-up first helping the other. Most nights I get my tables set for breakfast before he finishes in the kitchen. Then I go back and help scrub the fryer or take out the trash. But if I have a bunch of late tables, sometimes he will finish first and come help me. You wouldn’t believe the mess he calls a set table—fork askew, knife upside-down, napkin wrinkled or stained! I think he does it to get a rise out of me, but he swears the mess looks right to his eye. He’s either a mighty good liar or he has some kind of table-setting dyslexia.
So of course we finish up together and are often the last to leave. He has the keys, which means we can lock up but also lock out. We’ve had some late-night fun in the store room (chocolate sauce, anyone?) and the exhaust fan is great at clearing away the smoke from our Onion grass trimmings. Or, if the weather is nice, we’ll walk through the sleeping village out to the beach between the last cottages and the airstrip. There’s hardly anyone out there during the day, and sure as heck no one there in the wee hours of the morning. After one sand-coated escapade, I started stowing a big blanket in a sealed garbage bag tucked in the nook of a dune. Some nights the stars are simply endless out there over the ocean. And lest you think it’s all Roman hands and Russian fingers (by the way, we have not done IT and are nowhere near; in fact, I’m pretty sure he’s a virgin!), let me say that much of our time together is just talking. Onion may not have travelled far (he’s only been off the island three times for things other than doctor’s or dentist’s appointments, and never for longer than four days), but he’s got some really interesting ideas coupled with a Shawnituck attitude, which is, based on my observations so far, relaxed but fiercely independent (sound like someone you know?). His family goes back to the 18th century here and, lest I doubt, he’s shown me the chipped and weathered headstones to prove it. Onion and most of the residents are open to newcomers as long as they don’t impose their outsider ways or encroach on the natives’ turf.
Speaking of a newcomer (like my transition, Miss English teacher?) the residents have accepted me as one of their own. Old Biscuit Crowder showed me his ship-in-a-bottle collection the other day, and Greta claims not even she has seen that (I think maybe she has—she knew the locked room where he keeps it—but was just saying that to make me feel special, and it did!). Marybelle, Onion’s aunt, spent most of one morning trimming and highlighting my hair and didn’t charge me a dime! You’d love the look—so natural and free, like I’d been out here my whole life!
So why don’t you come out here and see for yourself—the new me, but also Shawnituck? Greta needs to go mainland for a week in late July to help out an old friend following surgery. She says she’s willing to leave me on my own but “my sister would have a conniption!” It’s hard for me to picture Momma having a tantrum, but I can sure see the stone-faced, tight-lipped stare. So why don’t you visit that week and save everyone the drama? No one will worry about me with you around. (How’d that happen, anyway? I’m the older sister!) You’ll love it, Leah! We’ll have so much fun. Whaddaya say, Sis—will you? will you?
I’m going to go tell Greta right now. I mean, tomorrow morning. I mean, later this morning. The clock says 1:22—that’d be AM, but what does time mean out here? I guess it means this much—I’d better end this letter and get some sleep. I’m going kayaking tomorrow with Trent. He’s a mainlander and from Maryland no less (double demerit) but has the cutest dimples! What can I say—I’m a sucker for a pretty face! And then I’ve got to work. So better get a dose of beauty sleep—if there’s any left to be had.
Dreaming of you and our week together out here—
Brooke
P.S. I’m so glad you worked it out with Paul. Sounds like you have a comfortable arrangement. And “No, you didn’t do what Brooke would’ve done.” She would’ve found at least twelve ways to have screwed it up. But you did do what Leah would (and should) have done. And that’s all that matters (but then you know that already).
Way to go, Girl! Can you hear my cheering? Can you see me with the pom-poms and my short little bicolored skirt flaring up around my ears? If not, come on out here. I’ll give you an
in-person “Hooray!”
With love from Brooke.
June 24
Dear Brooke,
Great! I would love to spend a week with you on Shawnituck! I was afraid you would never ask. Even more importantly, Momma says O.K. I think she has been worried that Aunty Greta has steered you down a wrong path and is happy to have me go and take a look—as if I could straighten you or Aunty Greta out! Still, it is nice to have her support of the plan. She did say she wants to hear the invitation and the details from her sister, but I am sure Aunty Greta will call or write with the dates and times, etc.
Not only will I be happy to see you and Shawnituck, it will be nice to have a week at the beach. With both you and Matt gone, Momma and Father decided not to rent the cottage at Bogue this year. I guess that made sense. Why spend money on a whole cottage for just three people? And it definitely would have felt lonely without you there, Momma said “Driving me to distraction with worry” and Father just raised his eyebrows in agreement or silent deferral but I knew they both missed your presence, worries or not. The thing I begin to realize about parents is that they will worry about you whether you are near or