Touch Blue (3 page)

A
aron and I barely even look at each other as we walk home together on the wooded road that runs down the center of the island. My flip-flops slap the road, sounding extra loud in the quiet between us.

Near the shore, Bethsaida is a busy place. The houses sit close together, people are often outside, and things are going on — especially in the summer. But once you lose sight of the water, the island is mostly forest and the buildings are far apart. On the inner roads, you can even forget you’re on an island.

But that feeling doesn’t last. A few miles forward or back, and there’s the water again. Because no matter which route you choose, every road on Bethsaida ends at the ocean.

Aaron kicks a rock. It bounces along the cracked and patched-up tar. “What do you
do
out here?”

The flatness in his voice prickles me, like he’s already decided the answer to his question. “Plenty of things! Besides all the stuff I’ve already
told
you, there are picnics. Clubs. Basketball games. Movie nights.” I pause, because even to me that doesn’t sound like a lot. “And I’m fixing up my own boat.”

If I said that to an island boy, he’d say, “Oooh,” but Aaron just stares at the cat-o’-nine-tails growing in the swampy ditch near the post office.

“Come on,” I mutter. “I need to get the mail.” I want to see if Amy sent me a letter. I promised myself I wouldn’t write any more letters to Amy until she wrote to me again, but I miss her. Summer isn’t much fun without her. And Amy was the one person I could tell anything to, and now it feels like all my worries are stacking up inside me. What if this doesn’t work out with Aaron? What if we’ve gone to all this trouble of bringing him here but he hates it so much he begs Natalie to move him? It’ll be extra bad if this whole plan fails because of
our
family.

Or what if Aaron runs away? That’s what Bud did in
Bud, Not Buddy
when he got sent to a foster home he hated. Of course, it’s not really the same. Bud’s foster brother was so mean that he stuck a pen
cil up Bud’s nose while he was asleep. I was so nice that I made popcorn for Aaron — even if he didn’t eat it.

When I push open the door, the postmaster looks over his half-moon glasses at Aaron, then at me. “Hi, you two.”

“Mr. Moody, this is Aaron.” I glance over my shoulder.

“Where are you from, Aaron?” Mr. Moody asks.

Aaron hesitates. I watch his Adam’s apple roll as he swallows. “You mean
right
before here?”

Mr. Moody looks embarrassed. “Oh, yes. I didn’t mean to —”

“He lived in Rangeley,” I add quickly. “Before here.”

“Rangeley? I was up there fishing two years ago,” Mr. Moody says. “We rented a cabin from some very nice people. Let’s see, what was their name?”

I cross my fingers for good luck before I open our mailbox.
Let there be a letter today.
I pull out the stack of mail and flip quickly through bills, advertisements, and an oversized envelope. Glancing at the return address, I see S
TATE OF
M
AINE
at the top.

Oh! My breath catches in my throat. I know I shouldn’t open mail addressed to Mom and Dad, but
this must be the State’s official answer about our school staying open or closing. And that affects me, too.

I pause only a second before ripping open the envelope.

“What was the name of the person you lived with in Rangeley?” Mr. Moody asks, behind me.

“Mrs. Armstrong,” Aaron says.

Hands shaking, I reach in the envelope for the letter. But I’m surprised to find a smaller envelope inside: a lemon yellow one, addressed to Aaron.

For Aaron?
My whole body slumps with disappointment. I suppose I ought to have guessed the State could be sending my parents mail about Aaron now, too. But I thought for sure it was about the school.

I should’ve wished for a letter for
me.
Up in the left-hand corner of the yellow envelope, it says “C. Spinney” with an address in Connecticut. A purple Post-it note stuck to the front says:
Hi, Mrs. Brooks, This letter is from Aaron’s mom. I checked his file, and it says he can receive mail from her. So when you think he’s ready for it, go ahead and give it to him. Sincerely, Emily (Natalie’s assistant)

Today feels like one giant snowball of bad luck, getting fatter with every turn. First, Aaron doesn’t like anything about being here. Then I didn’t get a letter from Amy or an answer about the school. Now
Aaron’s mom writes to him — like she’s claiming him, before we even get to know him! And when I get home, I’m gonna have to admit I opened Dad and Mom’s mail, and —

“Will you tell her, Tess?” Mr. Moody asks.

I startle. Aaron has come up beside me — I didn’t even hear him coming! Mr. Moody looks at me from behind the counter, but Aaron gasps, staring at the envelope in my hands.

Oh, glory. “What?”

Mr. Moody smiles. “I asked you to tell your mother I delivered some packages to the school this morning. I left them inside the door. Looked to me like school supplies or maybe books.”

“Oh, um, yeah. I’ll tell her.” I slam our tiny mailbox shut and spin the combination lock. “Come on, Aaron.”

When we’re outside, he makes a grab for the yellow envelope. I let him take it — it’s his letter. As he’s ripping open the envelope, I take a step closer.

… miss you so much. They took you from me — I never wanted it to happen. I think about you all the time and some nights I can’t stop crying, wondering where you are and if those people are being good to you.

What does she mean, “those people”? I move a little more. Aaron’s thumb’s in the way. His fingers are
graceful-looking, long and smooth. Not like mine, roughed by salt water and calloused from handling rope and gear.

I bet you’ve grown so much I’d hardly recognize you. I’m doing better now. I’m trying to —

“Do you mind?” Aaron shields the letter with his hand.

I pretend I was looking around me, not reading over his arm. “I’m sorry. Is your mom okay?”

“She only just found out my grandma died,” he says, turning the page to read the back. “I tried to tell her when it happened, but no one knew where she was.”

I sigh. “My best friend, Amy, promised she’d write to me when she moved away last winter. I’ve sent her six letters and three e-mails, and she’s only sent me two letters back.”

Why’d I tell him that? I blush. It sounds so small compared to his problems. But still, I don’t think I can stand him being mean about it.

He nods, though. “Don’t tell anyone about my letter, okay? I don’t want my mom to get in trouble. Natalie probably won’t like some of the things Mom says in here.”

I run my tongue over my bottom lip. I don’t like keeping things from my parents. But I also don’t want anyone to get in trouble (including me for opening mail that wasn’t mine).

“Please?” he asks. “It’s been four years since I’ve heard from her. If Natalie gets mad at her, my mom might not write to me again.”

“Won’t Natalie ask about it?”

He shrugs. “Probably not. But if she does, your parents’ll say they never got a letter. That’ll be the truth.”

I sigh. Natalie’s assistant did say he could have the letter. So I’m only speeding up the “
go ahead and give it to him
” part. And I’d be sharing a secret with Aaron — at least that’s sharing something.

“Okay,” I say.

“Thanks.” As he’s folding the letter, I see Eben Calder riding his bike up the road with a Phipps’s grocery bag under his arm.

“Hey, Mess!” he calls. “How’s your orphan?”

“I’m not an orphan,” Aaron says icily.

I take hold of Aaron’s sleeve with one hand to hurry him along. With my other hand, I clutch the rest of our mail so tight that the advertisements crinkle. “Come on. Don’t pay any attention to him.”

I’m relieved when Eben passes us on the post office driveway. “Our island’s only using you, Aaron,” he says over his shoulder. “Once we get those school numbers up, we’ll be shipping all you kids off again.”

“That’s not true!” I say.

“What did you do to get sent to foster care?” Eben asks. “Must’ve been something really bad if your own mother didn’t want you.”

I spin around, ready to scream a whole stream of ugly things at Eben. But Aaron has already wrenched out of my grip and is charging down the post office driveway, right toward Eben Calder getting off his bike — and punches him smack in the face!

I don’t know who’s more surprised: me or Eben or Mr. Moody, who’s just coming out of the post office. Aaron sends Eben reeling sideways, shoulder first into a thicket of sea roses growing beside the steps.

Aaron takes off running. “Wait!” I yell, but he’s fast.

“Why do you have to ruin everything?” I scream at Eben.

By the time I reach the twist in the road, Aaron’s gone. All the way home, I alternate between feeling terrible that Eben hurt Aaron’s feelings and biting back a tiny smile at how funny Eben looked with
his feet in the air, his bike wheel sticking upward, still spinning.

“Mom?” I practice as I walk. “Something happened today.” She won’t be happy that I let Aaron get in a fight and lost him — all on his first full day with us.

As I turn into our driveway, my neighbor calls from her porch swing, “What’s the hurry, Tess?” Mrs. Varney’ll talk forever, so I pretend I didn’t hear her and race up our porch steps.

“Mom, something happen —”

But she’s not in the kitchen. I open the door to the living room, but she’s not there either.

“Mom?” I call up the stairs. Through the open window, I see Libby, Grace, and Jenna outside, sitting at our picnic table playing Monopoly, colorful piles of paper money all around them, each pile held down with a small rock against the breeze. Libby’s wearing one of my sweaters, with the sleeves pushed up past her elbows.

Taking a few calming breaths to slow my heartbeat, I cross back to the kitchen. I’d better get my version in there quick, before Dad hears about the post office incident from someone else. I flip on the VHF radio on the counter, our link with Dad’s lobster boat.

“Punched him right in the face!” a voice on the radio says.

I sigh. Too late.

“Ayuh, your boy knocked Eben right into a bunch of sea roses,” another fisherman says. “Moody said it was quite a sight! Eben was hopping around like a jackrabbit, picking thorns out.”

As I click off the radio, a trumpet note comes from somewhere above me. I would’ve expected a trumpet to sound hard-edged and piercing, but Aaron plays a scale fast and smooth, like a ball being tossed in the air, hovering at the tippy top before falling back to earth.

Climbing the stairs, I hold my breath, listening. I want to tell him I’m sorry about what happened. But even though I knock six times, he doesn’t stop playing. So I open the door and go up the narrow attic stairway. Our attic has two rooms, separated by a half wall. The back side holds trunks, piled-up chairs, paintings stacked up under the eaves, and jumbled old things. The other side is Aaron’s room now.

He’s standing with his back to me in front of the attic’s single, diamond-shaped window. Bordered by stained-glass rectangles — spruce green, bright blue,
and thunderstorm gray — that window has the longest view in our whole house. Beyond the treetops, the sea sparkles, summer calm and postcard pretty.

“Aaron?”

He spins around, his trumpet against his bottom lip. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

I feel the blood draining from my cheeks. “I did knock, but you were playing so loud you didn’t hear me.”

He doesn’t have much stuff. He hasn’t hung a single thing on the walls, and on his bureau is only a collage of photographs in a frame. Beside him is a skinny metal music stand with some sheet music stacked in the tray. The notes are jumping all over the place, like a bunch of paint splatters. His trumpet case is lying open on the new red comforter Mom bought him, and I see the corner of Aaron’s old tan suitcase peeking out from under his bed.

Framed in the light from the window, Aaron seems only shadow.

“Eben Calder’s a jerk,” I say. “Don’t listen to him, okay?”

“Was he telling the truth? Am I only here to keep your school open?”

I open my mouth to deny it, but he’s bound to hear it sooner or later. “It’s one reason. But we really wanted you, too.”

He turns away from me, but not before I see him shake his head.

As I walk down the attic stairs, I pause a few times, hoping he’ll say something. But he doesn’t, and I close his door behind me.

Back in my room, I stare up at the ceiling. I hear his footsteps above me, pacing.

When he stops, the silence is as lonely as one bird calling.

T
he next morning I shut off my alarm at my usual four
A.M
. Though the room’s still dark, I snatch my jeans off my bedroom floor and pull a bandanna, T-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt out of my bureau and dress as fast as I can.

Opening my sock drawer, I scoop my lucky things out of the corner, where I left them last night. Dad says a fisherman without his luck might as well stay ashore. So I always wear pants with pockets when I go fishing. That way I can bring my luck with me.

Two pennies from the year I was born.

A teeny plastic lobster, so I’ll never come ashore without
any
.

A white quartz heart Amy gave me last Christmas.

My new circle of blue sea glass.

And finally, a quarter-sized shard of pottery that washed up on our beach. White on one side, the other has
a blue outline of a sloop sailing on some waves. A long time ago, it was probably part of a whole scene painted on a fancy plate. One day when I was little, Dad and I were walking the shore and he stopped to pick it up. “Here’s your first boat,” he joked when he handed it to me.

I move my fingers over the objects in my pocket and say what I always say: “Bring me good luck.”

Mom likes to say, “You make your
own
luck,” but I don’t think it’s that simple. I believe good luck
does
float out there in the world, sticking fast to some people and leaving others behind. How else can you explain why some lobstermen — like Dad and Uncle Ned — always seem to know where the best “hot spots” are, while others barely catch enough to cover their costs? Or how I’ve lived in the same house with my own parents my whole life, and Aaron has lived in a string of places and has next to nothing of his own?

So when Mom says, “You make your own luck,” I think,
Why take chances?
Especially when it’s so easy to let the universe know what you want by touching blue or turning around three times or crossing your fingers.

I thought Aaron’d feel his bad luck had changed to have a real home with us, but he seems to feel unlucky to be here. Today, Dad and I are taking Aaron
lobstering, though. My fingers are crossed that he’ll like that.

Hurrying along the upstairs hallway, I pass my parents’ bedroom and peek in to see Mom still sleeping, her brown braid trailing off the side of the bed. Last night I heard her arguing with Dad through my bedroom wall about whether or not Aaron should be punished for smacking Eben.

“We can’t treat him differently,” Mom said. “If Tess or Libby had done that, they’d have gotten in trouble for it. And what would the island think if I let this go? I’m Eben’s teacher, as well as Aaron’s foster parent. I can’t be seen as favoring our own kids.”

“What was Aaron
supposed
to do?” Dad asked. “Just take it? I bet it did Eben a world of good to be knocked down a peg.”

Mom won in the end, though. I heard Dad’s low rumbling voice in the attic a few minutes later, talking to Aaron.

I close my parents’ bedroom door quietly, so we won’t wake Mom with our kitchen noises. I tiptoe past Libby’s door and step down the stairs, careful to miss all the creaky spots. Rushing into the kitchen, I say, “Let’s go fishing!”

Dad swings around from the sink, coffeepot in his
hand. “Oh, glory, Tess! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

I grin. “I’m all set to go. Where’s Aaron?”

“Have some breakfast.” Dad pours coffee into his thermos, steam curling around his hand. “Mom made us some muffins last night.”

Usually I love our early mornings together. The kitchen feels extra cozy and shadowy, with just the dim light on over the stove. It’s like the house is barely awake, with only one eye open. But today I’m impatient to show off our lobster boat to Aaron. “Is Aaron awake yet?”

Dad screws the top on his thermos. “I think we should let him settle in today. He could probably use a quiet day, especially after yesterday.”

“Eben asked for it.”

“Even so, you can’t go around hitting people. It’s no way to solve things.”

“But I bet Eben’ll think twice before he messes with Aaron again.”

“Let’s hope so.” Dad smiles, putting a couple apples in the cooler with our lunch. “Got warm socks on, Tess? It’s chilly this morning.”

“Warmest I’ve got.”

“All right, then.” He pulls his overshirt from its peg beside the kitchen door. “Let’s go fishing.”

As we cross the porch, Dad whistles softly, stroking his beard. He always says he has to get all the whistling out of him before he reaches the wharf, because it’s bad luck to whistle on a boat. I hum along to the hymn “This Is My Father’s World.”

I slip my hand into Dad’s big rough one. “Why isn’t Aaron more excited to have a new home and a family?”

Dad stops whistling. “Give him time. This is all new and strange to him.” He sighs. “Let me tell you something. When I picked Aaron up at the office the other day, he was waiting in a room with his trumpet and his suitcase. I said, ‘Let’s go home, Aaron,’ but even as I said it, I knew it was the wrong word. He’d never been to our house before. How could he think of a place he’d never even seen as home?”

“What did Aaron do when you said that?”

“He asked me what name he should call me. I said he could call me Jacob or Dad or even Mr. Brooks, if he wanted. Then he picked up his things and followed me to the car — like it was no big deal.” Dad shifts the cooler in his hand. “This is gonna take work, Tess. We’ve got to earn his trust. We need to be stubborn.”

I tip my chin up to look at him. “I thought being stubborn was a bad thing.”

He smiles. “Not always. Stubborn can also mean ‘I won’t give up on you.’”

“I’ll be stubborn.” Part of me itches to tell Dad about Aaron’s letter. I want to know what it means that his mom wrote to him. But I also want to do what Dad said and earn Aaron’s trust. If I tell, he’ll never share anything else with me.

I peek to make sure Dad can’t read my thoughts, but he’s looking away now. I promised I wouldn’t tell about Aaron’s letter, but I didn’t promise I wouldn’t ask any questions. “Didn’t Natalie say Aaron’s mom and dad didn’t care about him?”

“No! She didn’t say that.” He blows out an impatient breath. “She said he’s never known his father, and his mother can’t take care of him. That’s not the same as not caring.”

“Why can’t she take care of him?”

“Because she’s had lots of trouble with drugs and drinking. When people get hooked on things like that, they can’t even take care of themselves, let alone their children.” He glances at me. “That’s just for you to know, Tess. Not to be repeated, not even to Libby. Okay?”

I nod. “Do you think Aaron’s mom misses him?”

His fingers tighten over mine. “I expect so. It’s very hard to know you’ve hurt someone you love. But his
mom had a lot of chances to make this right, and she didn’t do what she needed to. She didn’t show up to meetings or take her drug tests. I guess the judge decided it was time to stop giving the chances to the parent and give them to the kid instead.”

“But what if —”

“Look, Tess. We don’t get a say in this. The State of Maine decided she can’t have him, and unless they choose otherwise, that has to be good enough.” He closes his mouth, done talking.

I hate when Dad does that, just clams up, like he’s told me all I need to know. “The State of Maine says our school should be shut down.
That
’s not good enough.”

“That’s different,” he says. “In our case, the State’s
wrong
. They’re only thinking about how much it all costs, but some things can’t be undone. A long time ago, many of the islands in the bay had year-round communities. Now there are only six.”

As we crest the hill, the bay stretches into view, strewn with islands. A few of the islands are long, with the roofs of houses poking up through the trees. But most are small and uninhabited, scraps of granite and pine.

I miss the days last summer when I could look at this view and feel happy, not scared I might lose it. Against the
pink sky, the smallest islands look like black, jagged-topped rocks tossed helter-skelter into the bay. I search out my favorites: Gosling Island and Big Goose next door, Hog Island, Baker, Pumpkin Knob, Pound of Tea, and the Three Sisters. A chain of three islands, the Sisters are connected at low tide but separated by water at high. When my skiff is launched, I hope I can talk Aaron into coming with me to the beach on the littlest Sister and walking all the way to the thick trees of the biggest one. I’ve always wanted to do that.

When you live on an island, a boat is freedom. You can go where you want and when you want, without worrying about the ferry schedule.

“Ready?” Dad asks. “Now!”

I pull in a sharp breath, filling myself down to my toes with clammy, early-morning mist and the damp taste of salt. We do this every day we go fishing — breathe in the morning together.

I hold my breath until my lungs feel ready to explode and my heart pounds a wild drumbeat in my ears. When I can’t keep my air back one second longer, I nod at Dad and we let our breaths go together in a whoosh. “The Sisters aren’t visiting,” I say.

“Nope, but they’ll be having lunch together. Low tide’ll be about noon.”

As we near the bait shack, I stop in my usual spot near the mailboxes. Bait stinks. It’s a smell you get used to — briny and sickly sweet at the same time — but I’d still rather stand upwind while Dad drinks another cup of coffee and talks with the other fishermen on the wharf. He calls it his “catching-up cup.” Today, I suspect the talk is of the new kids — especially Aaron.

Out in the bay, the
Tess Libby
, our lobster boat, waits on her mooring. It’s always a comfort to see her there, her nose up and her wide, flat, open deck in the back. No matter how rough the seas are or how hard it rains, she stays right there, waiting for us.

Seems wrong to have a boat named half for Libby when she hates fishing. Hates the smell, hates the rocking of the boat, and especially hates the lobsters’ wriggling legs. She’s even afraid of the ocean itself, unless the sea’s near glassy calm. “Libby didn’t get the fishing gene,” Dad says.

Not like me.

But whenever I ask Dad if he’ll teach me to drive the
Tess Libby
, he always says no. And when I tell him I want to be a fisherman on my own someday, he says, “You’re going to college. Spending the summer lobstering with me is okay while you’re in school. But it’s
a hard, dangerous way to make a living, Tess. Harder’n I want for you.”

“What about what
I
want for me?”

But Dad doesn’t seem to think that question needs an answer. Waiting for him to finish catching up, I scan the bay, checking out the colorful lobster buoys to see where the other fishermen are setting. Some buoys are crowded together, marking the “hot spots” where lobsters are — or were. Others are sprinkled alone, just in case. I take special notice of Uncle Ned’s yellow-and-red buoys and skip right over Eben Calder’s orange-and-black ones. Eben’s one of the “copycats.” They follow the best fishermen around the bay and set their own traps nearby.

Dad and Uncle Ned have those copycats fooled, though. They each have a few buoys they use as decoys. Instead of a trap, the other end of the long rope is tied to a cement block at the bottom of the sea. Dad calls them his “new traps” and moves those cement blocks around the bay to throw off the copycats.

“Hey,
Tess Libby
, how’s them new traps fishing?” Uncle Ned will ask Dad over the VHF.

“Haven’t caught many lobsters,” Dad will say back into the mic. “But I caught a bunch of fools.”

I’d rather catch nothing than be accused of being a copycat. I look around for a new place to try setting my own traps. Near Sheep Island might be good. Not many fishermen are there — which may mean it’s a dud. But the sea bottom around Sheep Island is plenty rocky, and if I were a lobster, I would pick somewhere with lots of underwater hiding places.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my newest good-luck charm: the piece of blue sea glass.

Let me choose the right place.

Then from behind me, I hear a sound I dread: the jingle-jangling of dog tags and the thudding of four big paws pounding up the road. Eben Calder’s dog is one of those huge, angry-looking black dogs that make you want to cross to the other side of the road when you see him coming. A dog that thinks he’s more
owner
than pet.

And if Beast’s coming, so is —

“Hey, Mess.”

I don’t turn around — don’t have to.

“Where’s your bodyguard?” Eben asks.

I shoot a glare over my shoulder, but then my lips lift right up to a smile. Eben’s jaw’s all puffy on one side, making him look lopsided. “I don’t need a bodyguard,”
I say, sweet as maple sugar. “Just a skinny trumpet player from the mainland is enough.”

Eben narrows his eyes. “I’ll get him back. You wait and see.”

“Don’t you dare!” I look for Dad, but he’s over at the bait shack talking to Uncle Ned. “You’re gonna ruin it for all of us, if you do.”

“My dad says it’s a stupid plan to take in other people’s kids.”

“That’s because no one even
asked
your family to do it.” I’m so mad I spit the last words. It’s just a guess, but Eben’s eyebrows fall, angry.

“My mom’ll homeschool me if we lose the school, so I don’t care,” he says.

“Well, I do!”

“And my dad is already teaching me to drive our boat.”

I clench my teeth so my jealousy won’t show on my face.

“Tess!” Dad calls.

I’m relieved to get away from Eben, but as I hurry down the road, I get that prickly feeling between my shoulder blades, telling me he’s watching me go.

I’m out of breath when I reach the wharf. “Can I drive the
Tess Libby
today? Just for a little bit?” I ask
Dad. “We could go way out where there’s nothing to hit. Eben says his father —”

“No,” Dad says, untying our skiff. “And I don’t want you talking to Eben. He’s caused our family enough problems this week.”

“I didn’t mean to talk to him. Words just kept popping out of my mouth.”