Touch Blue (2 page)

A
s we walk home, the narrow island road crackles under our feet, speckled purple and blue from the mussel shells the seagulls have dropped on the tar to break them open. Libby skips ahead of us, pointing out things to Aaron — except she’s showing him things no one needs to be told about. “These are white birch trees, and here are some telephone poles. This is the golf course. And we have swings up at the playground!”

“And there’s a basketball court and tennis courts outside the Community Center,” I say over Libby’s voice. It’s the only way I can get a word in. “They have equipment you can borrow. Not you
specifically
,” I say quickly, in case that sounds like I was offering him charity. Mom had said to be careful not to make Aaron feel embarrassed if he didn’t have something. “Anyone can borrow racquets and nets from there. You just have to sign them out.”

Aaron doesn’t say a word.

I sigh. I’m trying to look on the bright side here. Even though Aaron isn’t the kid I would’ve picked, Anne of Green Gables wasn’t what her new family expected either, and that worked out fine.

“And that’s the MacCreadys’ dog!” Libby continues. “Her name is Roxie.”

Lots of people are outside today, raking leftover leaves off their gardens or working on their fishing gear — painting buoys or repairing traps.

“Hello, Jacob!” old Mrs. Ellis calls to us, watering the window boxes on her front porch. “Is that your foster boy?”

I cringe. “Foster boy” sounds rude, even if it’s right.

Dad squeezes Aaron’s shoulder, then murmurs from the corner of his mouth, “Don’t mind her.”

“This is Aaron!” I yell.

As we walk, Aaron twists just enough to lose Dad’s hand off his shoulder. At the next house, Karen Moody pulls her cell phone from her ear and waves. “Welcome to Bethsaida, Aaron!”

And at Phipps’s Gas and Groceries, Ben Phipps leans out the window by the cash register. “Hey, I see your boy’s here, Jacob!”

With each new person who calls to us, Aaron’s nod looks more forced and his chest droops a little lower. “How come all these people already know about me?” he asks, wary.

“Islands are like this,” Dad says. “You’ll get used to it.”

Living on an island does have its share of good-luck/bad-luck parts. One good/bad thing is how everyone knows everyone else. That’s good luck if you need a stick of butter or help launching your boat. The bad luck is that it’s near impossible to keep a secret on Bethsaida, because everyone knows everyone else’s business.

“You really can only leave here by boat?” Aaron asks. “There’s no other way to get off the island?”

I follow his worried gaze past the familiar mailboxes and dirt driveways of a few summer cottages to the waves glimmering with late-afternoon sunlight.

“You can’t
drive
to the mainland!” Libby giggles, skipping along. “You’d fall off the island! Right, Dad? Kerplunk! Smack in the ocean!”

Willie Buston’s pickup truck speeds toward us along the road. Going that fast, he must be trying to make the ferry. Willie waves as he passes, but Aaron
jumps — right into the blueberry bushes on the roadside.

I bite my lip to keep from grinning. Just then, Eben Calder swerves around us on his bicycle — showing off by cutting it close, even though he’s got plenty of room.

I suppose that’s another good-luck/bad-luck thing about Bethsaida: There are only a few roads (and no speed limits or sidewalks). On the good-luck side, you can’t get lost. But on the bad-luck side, living on a scrap of land only a handful of miles wide by another handful long means it’s harder to get away from the people who annoy you. Not only do I have to see Eben Calder at school, on the ferry, at the store, in church, and swerving his bike around me on the road, but the Calders’ house is right next to the shack where Dad and I get our lobster bait every morning.

Mom says I should be kind to Eben, because he doesn’t get a lot of attention from his mom and dad. I don’t see why that means I have to be nice all the time and he gets to be a jerk, though.

“Afternoon, Margery,” Dad says. I hadn’t noticed Margery Poule kneeling in the garden behind her picket fence.

“Hello, Jacob!” She waves her trowel. “And this must be Aaron?”

“Aaron’s my new brother!” Libby announces, making him flinch. “Except his last name is Spinney, not Brooks.”

“How nice!” Mrs. Poule points her trowel at the case in Aaron’s hand. “What instrument do you play, dear?”

“Trumpet and piano,” he says.

“And he’s not a hundred feet tall!” Libby continues. “But we don’t know yet if he likes green beans or if he can whistle or play Monopoly.” She plants her hands on her hips. “Or read!”

Dad holds up his palm to stop her. “That’s enough, Lib. No need to find out everything in the first half hour.”

As we walk, Libby skips ahead so she can be first to tell Mom we’re here. I match my step to Aaron’s. “Sometimes we have island concerts and sing-alongs.”

Was that a flicker of interest on his face? “And there’s a talent show every August. Some people play instruments in the show.”

“I don’t like to play for other people.”

He says it plainly, but it still feels like a snub.

“We also have a library,” I say, trying again. “It’s probably not as big as you’re used to on the main
land, but our librarian can get any book you want from another library, as long as you’re not in a hurry.”

“I don’t read much.”

“Well, what
do
you like to —?” I start, but one look at Dad’s lowered eyebrows shuts my mouth. Oh, yeah. I’m not supposed to ask a bunch of questions. But talking to Aaron is like trying to start a campfire with a box of wet matches — it’s near impossible to get anything going.

I try to remember everything it said on that checklist Mom and Dad got at foster-parent class: “Your First Days at Home with Your Foster Child” had hung on our refrigerator for the past month and suddenly disappeared this morning. Mom probably didn’t want Aaron to know we were new to this whole thing and needed a list to tell us what to do.

But in all those dos and don’ts about setting up a bedroom, feeding the kid as soon as he arrives in case he hadn’t eaten all day, explaining house rules, giving the child some chores so he’ll feel part of the family faster, and being ready for the new kid to feel sad about leaving his last place behind, it didn’t mention how weird it might feel for us, too.

“Here’s our house,” Dad says as we turn into our driveway.

Mom is waiting on the porch. “Hi, Aaron! We’re so excited to meet you. Supper’s about ready, so come right in.”

“I wanted hamburgers tonight,” Libby says to Aaron. “But Mom said you probably didn’t get to eat ocean stuff all the time like we do. And she told me I have to knock to come visit you in your room. So listen for me, okay?”

Aaron looks at our three-storied house, gray with green shutters and built tall enough for the attic window to look out over the treetops to the ocean. I watch his gaze slide past the stack of wire lobster traps waiting to be repaired next to the shed, to our clothesline hung with newly painted buoys, gleaming with Dad’s colors: navy blue with yellow stripes.

“It’s quicker to hang lobster buoys up when you paint them,” I explain. “That way you can paint and dry them all the way around. Each lobsterman paints his own colors and pattern on his buoys, so he’ll know which traps belong to him.”

Then I follow Aaron’s eyes beyond the clothesline to my new pride and joy: an old wooden skiff, resting on sawhorses. Upside down, the hull is sun-faded white and rounded, like the belly of a porpoise. I have
to remove several layers of old paint, but once she’s scraped down smooth and painted over, she’ll look good as new.

“I’ll live here?” Aaron asks quietly.

The little catch in his voice makes me turn. I don’t know if he’s even expecting an answer, but I nod anyway.

“Welcome home,” I say.

T
he first night, Aaron asks to go to bed early, even though we had rented a family movie and I made popcorn. We watch the movie without him, but it doesn’t feel right — like having a birthday party without the guest of honor.

“It’s been a long day for him,” Mom says, collecting our popcorn bowls after the movie. “Aaron probably just wanted a little time by himself to unpack and get used to things.”

“Tess, maybe you could show Aaron the island in the morning?” Dad adds, turning off the TV. “And introduce him around?”

“Sure,” I say. “I already know lots of places to show him.”

“Can I come, too?” Libby asks. “
Please?
”

“Not this time,” Mom says.

Libby pouts. “If Tess gets to take Aaron somewhere all by herself, I want a turn with just me and him, too!”

As Mom takes Libby upstairs to bed, I follow Dad into the kitchen. “Dad?” I lower my voice, even though no one’s close enough to listen. “What’ll happen if Aaron doesn’t want to stay with us? Can he ask Natalie to move him?”

“Have you given up already?” he asks, pouring water into the coffeemaker for morning.

“No, but he doesn’t seem to like it here. What if this doesn’t work out?”

Dad shrugs. “I don’t know for sure, but I suspect if he’s miserable, Natalie might try to move him somewhere else. Island living isn’t for everyone.”

“If that happens, can we get another kid before the summer’s over?”

Dad frowns, spooning coffee into the filter. “No. We’re not gonna keep borrowing other people’s children just so we don’t have to leave this place.”

“But —”

“No buts.” He lets the top of the coffeemaker slam closed. “Moving isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person, Tess.”

I back slowly out of the kitchen, letting him think he got the last word. But in my head I answer,
Yes, it is.

In the morning, I take Aaron to my favorite places on the island, hoping to find one he’ll like.

At Chandler’s Cove, I lead the way, climbing over huge pieces of driftwood, bleached white as bones. Aaron walks around them.

From the top of Strout’s Hill, I show him how far you can see up and down the bay. It’s a beautiful morning, the waves glittering with sun. I point out the lighthouse and two sailboats, pale as tissue paper, racing out to sea. “Do you see how the sparkles get thicker and closer together the farther out you look? Doesn’t it look like those sailboats are sledding on snow? But don’t keep looking, because if you watch a boat until it’s out of sight, you’ll never see it again.” I turn away before the boats disappear from view, but I don’t need to worry, because Aaron’s checking his watch.

“When does your family eat lunch?” he asks.

“Noontime, but we could stop at the store and get a snack. Come on!”

As we head back to the main road, I introduce Aaron to everyone I know, even the summer people, like Mrs. Palozzi, who is painting her front steps gray.

“Nice to meet you, Aaron,” she says.

He kicks a little rock at his feet. “Hi.”

“Did you have a good winter, Tess?” Mrs. Palozzi asks. “It’s so nice to be back here. Though I can’t believe how noisy the birds were this morning. Did you hear them? I had to get out of bed at five o’clock to close my windows!”

Some summer people get called “summer complaints” by the islanders because they come to Bethsaida to get away from their winter lives, then spend the whole summer complaining that the island’s not more like the place they left behind.

Painted birthday-cake colors, the line of summer cottages looks like a row of life-sized dollhouses. All winter they sit empty, but the Palozzis are back now in the yellow house, and a shiny new barbeque grill sits beside the pink one. It’s easy to tell which houses are year-round on Bethsaida and which aren’t. Summer people never have any broken-down things in their yards.

“After Labor Day, you can cut across those lawns,” I explain to Aaron as we walk, “but the gray house
down at the end is Mrs. Coombs’s house. Don’t ever shortcut across her grass, because she lives here all year, and she’ll call Mom.”

Mrs. Coombs is a
year-round
complaint.

“And on the other side of her house is the parish hall.” I point to the white building with its little belfry rising from the roof peak. “It’s an old schoolhouse from a long time ago when the island had so many kids it needed two schools. But now it’s where we have bean suppers, Lobstering Association meetings, and special events like the summer talent show and the Christmas party.”

Amy and I always did a funny skit together for the talent show — last year we did a fake newscast,
Live from Bethsaida.
Amy was the anchorwoman, Tori Sparkleteeth. She sat behind a desk and pretended to read from a stack of papers. She’d say, all serious, “There was some screaming heard at Phipps’s Gas and Groceries today. Let’s go now to Tess, live on the scene!” Then I would pick someone to interview from the audience. No one knew ahead of time I would be interviewing them. I’d ask questions like “Where were you when the screams came?” and “Can you demonstrate what it sounded like?” Our newscast was a big
hit at the talent show. In fact, Amy and I probably would’ve done it again if she hadn’t moved.

Mom thinks I should do something with Libby this year, but Libby’s only idea so far is that we dress up like puppies and let people pet us.

And there’s no way I’m getting up there alone. I’ll just
watch
the show this year.

“Here’s our school.” I gesture to the small, one-story red building. “There are four rooms in the school building — two on each side of the main door. The two front rooms are classrooms, and then there’s a kitchen where we eat lunch, and a little office with a bathroom. But all the kids only have one teacher — and that’s Mom. She’s a good teacher. You’ll like her, even though you can’t ever say ‘I don’t have any homework’ if you really do, because she knows.”

Some mainland kids would probably hate going to a little island school, but I love it. For me, it sounds like a nightmare to be in a huge building with all those hallways and hundreds of kids, where there are a bazillion buses and you don’t know where to go and don’t know people’s names. I wouldn’t have anyone to eat lunch with — or even know how to get lunch at a big cafeteria. And what if I couldn’t find my classes?

“I’ll be in the same class with
kindergartners
?” Aaron wrinkles his nose.

“You won’t do the same
work
as them. You’ll have a folder, and you’ll work on your own schoolwork while Mom works with other grades. Then she’ll call you up when it’s your turn. You’ll do a lesson with her and maybe a couple other kids, if they have the same lesson as you.”

Aaron shakes his head. “I can’t believe I had to quit my jazz band to come here.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to say, “You would’ve had to leave it anyway.” Aaron’s previous foster mom didn’t want to do foster care anymore, and that’s why he was available for us.

As we turn the corner, I see Jenna and Grace riding bicycles. “We’re going to see Libby!” Jenna yells as they pass us.

Grace grins, pedaling hard to keep up. How come Jenna gets it so easy? Grace looks happy to be with her — like Jenna doesn’t even have to try.

“Do you know Grace?” I ask Aaron.

He shakes his head. “Why would I know her?”

I open my mouth to say, “Because you’re both foster kids,” but stop myself just in time. “Um, you came on the ferry together. Look, here’s the store!” I say
quickly, shifting the subject. “Let’s go in and get something to eat.”

As Aaron and I cross the porch at Phipps’s Gas and Groceries, I wave to the Morrell family in their beat-up station wagon driving by. Their two new foster children are twin brothers, Henry and Matthew. One of the boys is looking curiously out the backseat window. I give him an even bigger wave, and he smiles. I bet the Morrells are showing their new kids around the island, too.

Reverend Beal thought maybe we should have a party to welcome the new kids to Bethsaida, but Natalie said no. She said it might make them feel different from everyone else. “Just getting used to a new family and a new home is enough.”

Walking across the store porch, I love the hollow thud of my footsteps on the wood — it sounds like I’m walking on a wharf. I scan the bulletin board above the newspaper machine and a row of empty milk crates. The Ladies’ Aid Society wants clean things in good condition for their rummage sale. There’s a knitting group forming at the library. And there are plenty of new index-card announcements from islanders advertising caretaking, gardening, and carpentry services for the summer people.

I open the white screen door. Ben Phipps is behind the cash register, Karen Moody is buying milk, and behind her in line, Lee Fowler is holding a loaf of bread. “This is Aaron,” I announce. As they’re all saying “Hi” and “Nice to meet you,” I take a couple of whoopie pies off the plate on the counter and a bottle of my favorite orange soda from the cooler.

I hold the cooler door open for Aaron, but he hesitates. “It’s okay. Mom gave me enough money for both of us.”

Aaron chooses a half-sized can of cola — the smallest they sell. “I’m not really hungry.”

When Ben Phipps rings me up, he nods toward the store’s lobster tank. “Tell your father to catch me some good-sized lobsters, Tess. The tourists are starting to come in.”

I nod. “I’ll tell him.”

For someone who said he’s not hungry, Aaron eats his whoopie pie plenty fast — before we’re even off the store steps. I take my time with mine, holding it sideways so I can stick my tongue into the white, sugary filling between the two round chocolate cake halves.

Outside, at one of the outdoor picnic tables, an old man’s reading the newspaper. I smirk to myself at his
checked shirt, plaid shorts, and black socks. “That tourist must be running low on laundry,” I whisper to Aaron.

He doesn’t smile, and I wonder if it’s because Aaron didn’t come with a lot of clothes either.

“Bye,” I say to the old man.

“You take care,” he replies, barely looking up from his paper.

When we’re away from the store, Aaron turns to me. “Do we have to wave or talk to
everyone
?”

“People are friendly,” I say. “What’s wrong with that?”

“I hate people staring at me. And how can anyone think when you get interrupted all the time?”

Nothing pleases this boy!

We pass the church and the parsonage, two white buildings separated by a parking lot and a red petunia border, but I close my mouth and don’t point them out. Though I suppose the sharp steeple, arched doors, and stained-glass windows are a dead giveaway. The side rear door to the church is propped open. Swells of organ music float out from inside.

Aaron pauses.

“Do you need to rest?” I ask. “I thought walking would show you more of the island, but maybe bikes
would’ve been a better idea — oh, and we have extra bikes at our house. So one can be yours.”

Aaron’s head moves ever so slightly with the beat of the music. His mouth is partly open, his eyes on the side of the church.

“Mrs. Ellis must be practicing for Sunday,” I say. “She keeps threatening to quit. She says the alto section of the choir is getting too big for themselves, wanting new hymnals when the old ones have done fine since forever. Wait! Didn’t you say you play the piano? Maybe —”

“Can’t you shut up for one minute?”

I stare at the side of his face, as shocked as if he’d suddenly turned and bit me. In the pause between the hymn’s verses, I hear the soft whoosh of the wind moving through the trees, a few chirping insects and birds. Then the organ rises up again. Stern as thunder, the bass notes boom so low I feel them in my toes.

Standing on the road beside Aaron, I don’t tell him he hurt my feelings. I don’t ask why he doesn’t try even a little. I don’t point out that he has to live
somewhere
, and at least we want him. And I don’t admit the thing I’m most scared of.

We’ve all made a big mistake.