North of Nowhere (5 page)

Flake and I tromped back around to the beach. Dee had probably heard that the market was off and hadn’t bothered coming. So much for my new best friend. So much for the wonderful day I was going to have. All I’d managed to do was wake up so early that there was even more day to get through!

I moped along the beach while Flake picked up every bit of wood he could find and dropped each piece at my feet. I threw them for him, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Soon, we were back at the arches. The tide was a bit higher than the last time I’d been down, and there were pools of water under the arch. I rolled up my pant legs over my boots and waded through to the other side. I wasn’t even sure why I was bothering, as the boat obviously wasn’t going to be there. But I couldn’t resist having a look, just in case.

We came out on the other side of the arches and crossed the spit of sand to the jetty.

It was there! The boat was there! Dee
was
in Porthaven after all! But where was she? And if the market wasn’t on, why had they come?

I looked around, searching for anything that might answer my questions. A soft wind blew across the sand in reply.

There was only one thing to do: only one way to find out what she was up to and where I might find her. I was going to have to read her diary again.

I felt bad doing it, and I sneaked aboard the boat feeling more like a burglar than ever, but the mystery was making me even more eager to find her.

The diary was in the locker. I opened it at the most recent entry. It was today’s date!

I stared at the page, tracing the date with my finger. It was definitely today’s date. And she definitely sounded like she had come to the market. Maybe she hadn’t realized it had been canceled, after all. Which meant she was around somewhere — but where? And if she
was
here with her friends, would I really have the nerve to butt in and introduce myself?

I sat on the side of the boat and tried to figure out how I was going to make contact with her, while Flake ferreted around the crab pots.

And then I had a thought. Probably a very bad thought, but once it had come into my mind I couldn’t get it out.

There was a black pen hooked onto a thin leather ring on the spine of the book. Without stopping to think about the ins and outs of it too much, I took the pen and opened the book at the first blank page. Then I looked around.

Should I?

Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I started writing.

I read through what I’d written. Was it OK? Was it enough? Was it too much?

There was nothing I could do about it now, so I closed the diary, shoved it back in the locker, and got up.

“Come on, Flake. Let’s go and throw some sticks.”

Flake jumped up as soon as I said his name, and we climbed off the boat and headed back through the archway.

The second we were back on the beach, Flake stopped in his tracks. Slowly wagging his tail, he stared across the sand. I followed his gaze and spotted someone at the other end of the beach with a little white terrier.

Flake watched the person throw something for the dog — and that was his cue. He was off.

“Flake, come back!” I yelled, but he was already halfway across the beach, and a minute later, he and the terrier were running around, chasing each other in big yappy circles.

I kept calling him, and he kept ignoring me. Finally, I caught up with them. The other dog’s owner was a boy in jeans and a big woolly sweater. He was tall and gangly with a mop of dark hair that flopped over his forehead. He looked a couple of years older than me.

He glanced up as I approached. “Sorry — my dog seems to have stolen your dog,” he said with an apologetic smile.

I smiled back and pointed to the stick in Flake’s mouth. He was trotting around in circles, teasing the terrier with his catch. “Yeah, but my dog seems to have stolen your dog’s stick!”

The boy laughed and we watched the dogs play. The terrier was trying to get the stick from Flake. He was about half Flake’s size and kept jumping up at the stick, yapping constantly.

“Mitch, stop barking!” the boy said.

“Flake, give Mitch his stick back!” I added.

The dogs ignored both of us.

After a while, Flake seemed to get bored of the game and he dropped the stick, came over to me, and sat at my feet, wagging his tail.

I turned to the boy as I patted Flake. “I guess that’s my cue to go,” I said.

“See you around, then,” he replied, and I turned to leave. “My name’s Peter, by the way,” he called, and I turned back around. “We got here on Friday. We’re on a fishing vacation.”

“A fishing vacation? I didn’t know they did those here.”

I didn’t know they did
anything
here, actually.

“Apparently, it’s the first one they’ve done,” Peter said.

“Sounds thrilling,” I told him. “Poor you!”

Peter grinned. “No, it’s great. I’m loving it. I caught six mackerel yesterday!”

If it weren’t for the way Peter’s eyes were shining, I’d have sworn he was being sarcastic. Could catching a bunch of fish really make someone smile that much? Could he honestly think that a fishing vacation in the back end of nowhere was great?

“Look — that’s our boat,” he said. He was pointing at a small boat in the harbor with fenders dangling all the way along the sides and a small wheelhouse in the middle. It looked just like Dee’s dad’s boat. For a moment, I actually wondered if it was the same one, but this one had a big outboard motor on it, and the registration number was SZ2965. Dee’s boat was PN something.

The boat was lying slightly tilted in the sand. The harbor was half filled with water, but not enough to get the boat afloat yet.

“We’re just waiting for the tide to come in, and then we’re off,” Peter said. He looked at his watch. “It’s high tide at one twenty-seven today, so we should get afloat by about ten thirty.”

I looked at him. He sounded like the fishermen around here. They were all obsessed with things like the tides. My grandad was the worst. He always had a tide table with him. He even had a clock in the pub that told you how far in or out the tide was, rather than telling you the actual time.

I couldn’t see what there was to get all that excited about, to be honest. I was about to say so when Peter continued on. “They said we could try for sea bass today.”

He looked at me, eyes all shiny and excited. I was probably supposed to say something that showed I was equally excited. I opened my mouth to reply, but couldn’t think of anything. I mean, if he’d said, “They’re opening a new multiplex theater on the edge of town, and some friends and I are planning to see a movie and go bowling,” I would have understood why he looked so pleased. But fishing for sea bass?
Really?

“Good luck with it,” I managed eventually. I smiled as warmly as I could. I didn’t want to put him off. He seemed really friendly and nice.

It was weird; he wasn’t like the boys I knew back home. For one thing, none of the boys in my class would have known a mackerel from a sea bass if they’d been slapped across the face with the pair of them. But it was more than that. Whenever I talked to a boy back home — especially one a couple of years older than me, as Peter clearly was — I always clammed up and went all red in the face and felt like a complete and utter klutz. But I didn’t feel like that with Peter. I felt — I don’t know — comfortable, I guess.

Which was probably why I said what I said next.

“I’d love to go out on one of those boats sometime.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to chase after them and shove them back in. First of all, I instantly realized that it must have sounded like I was flirting with him, and I really wasn’t. I mean, he wasn’t bad looking or anything, and like I said, he seemed really nice — but nice in a big brother kind of way. The nice big brother I never had, as opposed to the grumpy, sullen one I did.

And secondly, because I could honestly say that I had never, not once, ever, in my entire life had the tiniest, remotest, incy-winciest desire to go out on the sea in a little fishing boat.

“Cool! Hey, I can ask if you could join us one day if you like?” Peter said with a wide smile.

“Awesome!” my mouth replied, without asking permission from my brain. But then, when I thought about it, why not? What else was there to do? His strange enthusiasm must have been infectious, because I actually had a moment of thinking that maybe it
could
be fun, in a sickly, wobbly, scary, fish-smelly kind of way.

Flake and Mitch were running around in circles again. “I’d better be getting back, then,” Peter said. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Well, my real name’s Amelia, but my friends call me Mia.”

“Cool! I’d love to have a real name and another one that everyone called me!” He grinned. “I’ll call you Mia, then. Have a good day — and I’ll ask about the fishing trip.”

“Great, yes, do that!” I replied. And even though I could hardly believe it, I actually meant it!

I headed back to the pub, Flake trotting along beside me, his tail wagging happily as he walked — and for the first time since we’d arrived, I understood how he felt.

* * *

Except, that all changed when we got back to the pub.

“Mom? Gran?” I called, and my voice echoed around the kitchen. I hung up Flake’s leash and went through to the lounge.

They were sitting at a table. Gran had her head in her hands; Mom had an arm around her shoulders.

“Gran, what is it? Has something happened?” I asked, rushing over to join them.

Instantly, Gran lifted her head up, pulled back her hair, and sat up a bit straighter. Then she did this weird thing with her face, which I was fairly certain was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like the kind of expression you make when you’re trying to eat something that tastes disgusting, but you don’t want to offend the person who cooked it.

“Nothing’s happened, dear. I’m fine,” she said, reaching out to pat my hand. Then she did the smiling-through-gritted-teeth thing again, and added, “Did you have a nice walk?”

I paused for a moment before replying. It was
obvious
she wasn’t fine. Why would she never talk to me properly? I could handle it.
I
wanted to know what had happened to Grandad, too. She wasn’t the only one who was worried.

I wanted to say all these things. I even opened my mouth and felt my heart jump into it as I prepared myself to do so. But the words wouldn’t come.

Instead, I found myself saying, “Yeah, lovely, thanks. Should I put the teakettle on?”

Mom gave me a grateful smile that just made me even more upset. “That would be lovely, darling.”

So I went into the kitchen to make tea for three. And then we sipped our tea and pretended that everything was absolutely fine.

And for the rest of the day, that’s pretty much all we did. Pretend. Gran pretended to be OK. I pretended not to be bored out of my skull. Mom pretended to be oblivious to all the pretending that was going on. And the minutes ticked by very slowly.

Monday morning, I woke up thinking about the boat and the diary and Dee. Would she have seen my note? Would we get to meet up? Maybe we’d become really good friends and she’d come and visit us back home — and I’d be a bit happier about coming to Porthaven more often.

We’d made breakfast for the three couples who were staying in the guest rooms. Gran was doing dishes. Mom was drying the dishes and chatting about anything she could think of that didn’t involve the enormous elephant in the room that we all kept squeezing past and pretending wasn’t there — i.e., the fact that Grandad still hadn’t shown up or gotten in touch or
anything.