The seconds unwind, thin, taut, transparent as a fishing line cast far, far, far out.
I jolt up, grab my brother’s hand. “Let’s get home, Em.”
Emory pulls away. “Not done,” he says firmly. “Not done.” I can see his leg muscles tighten into his “I am a rock, I am an island” stance. His hands flick back and forth, wiping my urgency away.
This is my cue to take a breath, step back. Hurrying Em, pushing him, tends to end in disaster. Instead, I’m grabbing his ketchup-wilted paper plate, untying my apron, calling to Dad, “Gotta get home, can we do this take-out?”
“Not done,” Emory repeats, yanking his hand from mine. “Gwennie, no.”
“Gettin’ slammed,” Dad calls out the service window, over the sizzle of the grill. “Wrap it yourself, pal.” He tosses a few pieces of foil through the window, adding several packets of ketchup, Emory’s favorite.
“Still eating.” Emory sits firmly back down at the picnic table.
“We’ll watch a movie,” I tell him, wrapping his food. “Ice cream.”
Dad glances sharply out the take-out window. He may be brusque with Em from time to time, but he doesn’t like it when I am.
“Ice cream here.” My brother points at the large painting of a double-decker cone adorning one of the fake turrets. Yes, Castle’s is built to look like a castle.
I pull him to the truck anyway and don’t look back, not even when I hear a voice call, “Hey, Gwen. Have a sec?”
I turn the key in Mom’s battered Bronco, pressing hard on the gas. The engine revs deafeningly. But not loud enough to drown out another voice, laughing, “She has lots of secs! As we know.”
Dad, thank God, has ducked away from the service window and is bent over the grill. Maybe he didn’t hear any of that.
I gun the car again; jerk forward, only to find the wheels spinning, caught in the deeper sand of the parking lot. At last the truck lurches, kicks into a fast reverse. I squeal out onto the blazing blacktop of Ocean Lane, grateful the road is empty.
Two miles down, I pull over to the side, fold my arms to the top of the steering wheel, rest my forehead on them, take deep breaths. Emory ducks his head to peep at me, brown eyes searching, then resignedly opens the foil and continues eating his limp, ketchup-soggy fries.
In another year, I’ll graduate. I can go someplace else. I can leave those boys – this whole past year – far behind in the rearview mirror.
I pull in another deep breath.
We’re close to the water now, and the breeze spills over me soft and briny, secure and familiar. This is why everyone comes here. For the air, for the beaches, for the peace.
Somehow I’ve wedged the car right in front of the big white-and-green painted sign that marks the official separation between town and island, where the bridge from Stony Bay stops and Seashell Island begins. The sign’s been here as long as I can remember and the paint has flaked off its loopy cursive writing in most places, but the promises are grooved deep.
Heaven by the water.
Best-kept little secret in New England.
Tiny hidden jewel cradled by the rocky Connecticut coast.
Seashell Island, where I’ve lived all my life, is called all those things and more.
And all I want to do is leave it behind.
“Kryptite the only thing,” Emory tells me, very seriously, the next afternoon. He shakes his dark hair – arrow-straight like Dad’s – out of his eyes. “The only, only thing can stop him.”
“Kryptonite,” I say. “That’s right. Yup, otherwise, he’s unstoppable.”
“Not much Kryptite here,” he assures me. “So all okay.”
He resumes drawing, bearing down hard on his red Magic Marker. He’s sprawled on his stomach on the floor, comic book laid out next to his pad. The summer light slants through our kitchen/living room window, brightening the paper as he scribbles color onto his hero’s cape. I’m lying on the couch in a drowsy haze after taking Em into White Bay for speech class earlier.
“Good job,” I say, gesturing to his pad. “I like the shooting stars in the background.”
Emory tilts his chin at me, forehead crinkling, so I suspect they aren’t stars. But he doesn’t correct me, just keeps on drawing.
An entire day after running into the boys at Castle’s, I’m still wanting a do-over. Why did I let them get to me this time? I should have laughed; flipped them off. Not very classy, but I’m not supposed to be the classy one here. I should have said, “Well, Spence, we all know that with you, it wouldn’t take more than a sec.”
But I couldn’t have said that. Not with Cassidy Somers there. The other boys don’t matter much. But Cass . . .
Kryptonite.
An hour or so later, our rattly screen door snaps open and in comes Mom, her dark curly hair frizzing from the heat the way mine always does. She’s followed wearily by Fabio, our ancient, half-blind Labrador mix. He immediately keels over on his side, tongue lolling out. Mom hurries to push his bowl of water closer to him with one foot while reaching into our refrigerator for a Diet Coke.
“Did you think about it some more, honey?” she asks me, after taking a long swallow. Caffeinated diet soda, not blood, must run through her veins.
I spring up, and the old orange-and-burgundy plaid sofa lets out an agonized groan. Right, I should be making decisions about what to do this summer, not obsessing about the ones I made yesterday – or in March.
“Careful!” Mom calls, waving her free hand at the couch. “Respect the Myrtle.”
Emory, now scribbling in Superman’s dark hair, heavy-handed on the black marker, offers his throaty giggle at the face I make.
“Mom. We got Myrtle from Bert and Earl’s Bargain Basement. Myrtle has three legs and no working springs. Getting off Myrtle makes me feel like I need a forklift. Respect. Really?”
“Everything deserves respect,” Mom says mildly, plopping onto Myrtle with a sigh. After a second, she crinkles her nose and reaches under the cushion, extracting one of my cousin Nic’s ratty, nasty sweatshirts. A banana peel. One of her own battered romance novels. “Myrtle has lived a long, hard life in a short time.” She swats me with the gross sweatshirt, smiling. “So? What do you think – about Mrs. Ellington?”
Helping Mrs. Ellington. The possible summer job Mom heard about this morning, meaning I wouldn’t have to keep working at Dad’s again. Which I’ve faithfully done every year since I was twelve. Illegal for anyone else, but allowed for Nic and me, since we’re family. After five years, for sure, I could use a change from scooping sherbet, frying clams, and slapping together grilled cheese sandwiches. More than that . . . if I’m not handling Dad’s at night, I can help Vivien on catering gigs.
“Is it for the whole summer?” I plop down, stretch back gingerly. If you hit her the wrong way, Myrtle lists like the Titanic before its final dive.
Mom unlaces the shabby sneakers she wears to work, kicks one off, stretching out her toes with a groan. She has daisies delicately painted on her big-toenails, no doubt the work of Vivien, the Picasso of pedicures. On cue, Emory leaves the room in search of her slippers. He would have gotten her the Coke if she hadn’t beaten him to it.
“Through August,” she confirms, after another long draw of soda. “She fell off a ladder last week, twisted her ankle, got a concussion.