Local Girl Swept Away (4 page)

My mother, standing nearby, overheard me and sparked to life. “Tragedies never make sense, Jackie!” She sounded completely exasperated. “You kids, you don't think terrible things can happen, but they can. If you don't respect the power of the water, it'll take you down. Have you forgotten that the ocean stole your uncle from us? Nature is unpredictable. It has no mercy!”

There was no point arguing with her, at least not now, but she was wrong. Yes, the weather had been wild that night, and yes, we took a stupid chance walking out on the breakwater in such a storm. And if any of the other three of us had been swept off the rocks, I could blame the untamed natural world. But we weren't. It was nature's child, the breakwater ballerina who was carried off, and there had to be something more to it than chance.

A buzzing noise behind me seemed to be growing into a rumble. I turned around to see Ms. Waller standing in front of the coffee urn, trying, without much luck, to calm Carla down.

“You know that's not true, Mrs. Trovato. You're just upset. Why don't you have a cup of coffee?”

“What do you know about it?” Carla said, her voice slurred. She shoved aside the Styrofoam cup Ms. Waller held out to her and coffee slopped over the side.

Ms. Waller tried again. “It was a terrible accident—”

“It was not an accident!” Carla screamed. Everybody in the hallway turned to look at her. “She did it on purpose. To hurt me! Everything Lorna did was to punish me! Don't you know that?”

Mrs. Waller looked stunned and her smile wobbled.

“You people are idiots,” Carla said, sneering at those closest to her. She grabbed the coffee cup from Ms. Waller's hand and threw it on the floor, splashing coffee on all the surrounding shoes and ankles. Everybody squealed and jumped back. While they grabbed for napkins to wipe off the hot liquid, Carla made for the double doors and escaped.

“What do you mean he's
gone
?” Finn said. “Gone where?”

I leaned against the doorjamb at his house, breathless, having run the last six blocks. “I just saw Simon . . . at the grocery store, and he said they put Lucas . . . on a bus to New Hampshire . . . yesterday afternoon . . . right after the memorial service.”

“What?” Finn came outside, slamming the door behind him. Without thinking, we started walking our usual path down to the bay beach. “He left town without even telling us he was going? Not a phone call? Not an e-mail? What the hell is wrong with him?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. All I could get out of Simon is that he's going to be a counselor at some summer camp in New Hampshire.”

“Are you kidding me? How can Lucas be a camp counselor? He can barely swim, he's never ridden a horse, and he's scared of bugs!”

“I don't know. Maybe he'll play the guitar at campfires or something.”

“This is insane.” Finn plowed through the sand at a fast clip and I had to scurry to keep up. We passed the skeleton of a washed-up goosefish being picked over by half a dozen screeching gulls. I'd seen these garish corpses all my life, but their big-mouth death grins gave me the creeps every time.

“I've never heard Lucas say one word about wanting to work at a summer camp.” Finn was so angry, he was snorting. “He's running away from us. He's been avoiding us all month and now he's left town altogether. There has to be a reason! But what is it?”

I shrugged. “There must be something we don't know.”

“What could he possibly know that we don't? He's been acting like this ever since . . . does he think it's our fault or something?” He stopped beneath a deserted pier and I finally caught up to him.

“I think Simon and Billy know more than they're telling us,” I said. “But they're not going to rat out their own kid.”

Finn leaned up against one of the old pilings and let his eyes close for a second. “God, Jackie, sometimes I feel like I just can't take one more thing. Do you feel that way? Losing Lorna was so
huge
and so
awful
that I'm barely holding on as it is. Any other little problem—in school or with my parents or this thing with Lucas or whatever—it's too much. I can't take one more thing!”

“I know.” I put my hand on his bare arm and watched his face dissolve into hopelessness.

Will this ever end for us?
I wondered. The two of us had been slogging down the beach as if it were quicksand, day after day, our hearts cracked wide open. I felt like I was seeing everything through a gauzy veil now. Nothing was bright anymore, and there were no sharp edges. One shape bled into the next, and I stumbled on stairs and bumped into people on the street as if I were wearing glasses that belonged to somebody else. Not one thing was easy.

And Finn was obviously in terrible shape. He'd lost weight the past month, and there were dark circles under his eyes now. I stood there staring at him as he opened his eyes and let them fall on me. He looked so destroyed, it killed me.

I didn't plan what happened next—I'd never have had the nerve to do it if I'd thought about it at all. It was the way Finn looked at me with, well, longing. Not that I thought he was longing for
me
, of course not. But I was there, and I was suffering too, and it just seemed for a moment as if I might be able to fix things, make him, make us both, feel a little bit human again. But really, I wasn't thinking at all, because if I had been I'd never have reached up and put my lips against his.

For a second or two, the fog seemed to lift. I started to believe my kiss could penetrate Finn's grief, push it back, replace it with gentle hope. His hands reached for my shoulders and mine stretched up behind his head, clasping his neck. But then, as I pressed closer to him, I realized that his arms were not actually wrapping around my shoulders, not at all. In fact, they were pushing at me, pushing me away.

I jumped back, horrified at what I'd done.

Finn was glaring at me as if I'd betrayed us all. “Jackie! What the hell are you doing?”

“Oh, my God! I'm sorry! I don't know . . . I just thought . . .” It was a bad dream and I was not waking up from it.

Finn held his arms straight out in front of him, as if defending himself against any further attacks. “Is everybody going crazy? What did you think—?”

“No, I wasn't thinking. You just looked so sad, Finn, and I . . . I don't know. I'm so sorry!”

“Of course I'm sad! Isn't
sad
who we are now? Did you really think that was going to help anything?”

“No! I—” I couldn't even look at him. “Please, can we just pretend it never happened? I
am
crazy. I don't know what I'm doing.”

I turned my back to him and we didn't speak at all for a minute or two. I could hear him breathing hard, huffing like a bull in the ring. Oh, my God, I was an idiot. I'd loved Finn for so long. I'd imagined kissing him hundreds of times, but I'd kept my secret locked up tight. How could I have let it get loose? I'd ruined everything. Everything! Finn's anger ballooned behind me, and I felt suffocated, as if a plastic bag were tied over my head.

“Okay,” he said finally, his voice tight. “I guess neither of us knows what we're doing these days. I get that. But, Jackie—”

I turned and answered his question before he could ask it. “It'll never happen again. I promise you.”

He nodded, but he didn't look convinced.

“Finn, I promise. Please don't be mad at me. I need you.”

“I know. I need you too, Jackie. Just not like that.” Which was obvious, but still felt like a punch in the gut.

“I should get back,” Finn said. “I'm on the boat for the afternoon whale watch.”

I followed him down the beach, keeping a decent distance between us. The goosefish smiled at me with its hideous teeth as I passed. Trying to find a normal tone of voice, I said, “Has the boat had big crowds?”

“Not bad.”

I shuffled along behind him, hating my idiot self. “And you've been seeing whales?”

“Some. Two finbacks yesterday and a minke that swam right under the boat.”

“Cool.” There was a long silence during which I replayed my lunge at Finn and was mortified all over again. Would I ever be able to erase that scene from my consciousness? Would Finn?

Keep talking. Act normal
. “I wonder if Lucas will have e-mail at that camp,” I said.

Finn turned and gave me a scornful look. “Why? You're not going to write to him, are you?”

His anger was right there, just barely below the surface. He wasn't just mad at Lucas anymore—he was mad at me now too. Maybe he was even mad at Lorna.

I was beginning to come to terms with the idea that we'd never be “the four of us” again. With Lucas gone we weren't even three.
And now maybe I'd ruined the possibility of even two of us remaining friends. The thought of being without all of them, of being alone, was terrifying. Who was I on my own?

I weighed my words carefully, so they couldn't be misconstrued. “I thought I would,” I said. “We can't just ignore him.”

“I can,” Finn said. He picked up a rock from the beach and hurled it far out into the water. “Whatever his stupid secret is, I don't want to know it.”

“It's cool that your dad trusts us to close up the café this afternoon,” I said. The two of us were in the kitchen of the Blue Moon, me refilling sugar dispensers, Charlotte washing coffee pots.

“Believe me, he doesn't trust us,” she said. “He just didn't have a choice. My grandma had a doctor's appointment up-Cape and she can't see well enough to drive herself.”

I swiped an arm across my sweaty forehead. It was early July and the kitchen was steamy. “He doesn't even trust you? You're his kid. You grew up in the Blue Moon.”

“If he could, Dad would run this whole place by himself. Fry every egg, pour every cup of coffee, figure up every check. Unfortunately, he's only one person. Oh, Jackie, you spilled sugar on the floor—sweep that up right away.”

“I will after I finish filling these,” I said.

Charlotte grimaced. “You should really stop and do it now so you don't slip in it. I know it sounds crazy, but I've had restaurant safety drummed into my head since I was two years old. Dad would have a fit if he saw that on the floor.”

“Okay.” I put down the sack of sugar and dutifully got the broom. Charlotte had a few idiosyncrasies, but I was willing to put up with them in return for the friendship that had blossomed between us the past few weeks as we worked together at the café. Finn was apparently no longer comfortable around me—we hadn't walked on the beach together since the day of the humiliating kiss—and Charlotte was filling a little bit of the void left by the loss of all my other friends. I was more than grateful that the friendship we interrupted years before seemed to have picked up where it left off in the fourth grade.

The two of us enjoyed each other even though the fun we had was neither hilarious nor wild. It didn't make people stare or smile or shake their heads in disapproval. It was never breathtaking. But it calmed me, and I couldn't think of anything I needed more at the moment.

I finished filling the sugar containers and moved on to the small tabletop maple syrup bottles, topping them off from a big jug. “Remember that time when we were kids and we played ‘restaurant' in your kitchen?” I asked Char. “We mixed all kinds of disgusting stuff together and tried to get your mother to eat it.”

Charlotte grunted. “She played along until she saw the huge mess we'd made.”

“There was ketchup on the walls, the floor, the countertop . . .”

“You were squirting it at me!”

“You started it by throwing that grapefruit,” I said, laughing.

Char turned from the sink, smiling, but her face closed in on itself when she saw what I was doing. “Those bottles are awfully close to the edge of the table, Jackie.”

I shoved them back a little. “We used to have fun together. How come we . . .” A thought crossed my mind all of a sudden, and I wondered if it could be possible. “It wasn't because of Lorna, was it? I mean, I know she and I got to be friends right away, but I wasn't . . . I didn't hurt your feelings, did I?”

I guess I was looking at Charlotte and didn't notice that the jug I was holding had nudged one of the bottles to the very edge of the table. When it hit the tile floor, it exploded with a sickening crash. Glass shards swam in rivers of syrup that raced off in all directions.

“Jackie!” Charlotte threw her sponge into the deep sink, her face livid, her voice bubbling with anger. “What's wrong with you? You're so careless! My dad would
kill
you!”

I was as surprised by Charlotte's response as I was by the accident itself. Murder seemed like an overreaction to my crime. “I'm sorry! I'll clean it up.” But the syrup was already seeping into my sneakers and when I tried to move, I left gooey footprints.

“Don't move!” Charlotte ordered. She grabbed a rag and dragged over a garbage can.

“I'll do it,” I said, but I wasn't sure what to do first. “I should probably take off my shoes.”

Charlotte picked the large pieces of glass out of the syrup and threw them in the trash, then sighed. “Wait a minute. I'll get you a towel to stand on so you don't cut your feet.”

A few minutes later I was standing barefoot on a towel in front of the sink, washing maple syrup out of the ruts of my sneaker soles while Charlotte mopped up the floor in silence. “I'm sorry,” I said again. “I guess I wasn't paying attention.”

“I guess you weren't.”

“God, Char, it was an accident. Why are you so mad?”

“Are you kidding? If my dad was here he'd still be screaming at you.”

“Okay, but you're not your dad.”

Charlotte stopped mopping and met my eyes. “Sometimes you don't think, Jackie! Of
course
you hurt my feelings. What did you think? I felt totally rejected. The day you met Lorna was the day you stopped talking to me!”