Текст книги "My Life Next Door"

Автор книги: Хантли Фитцпатрик

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Chapter Twenty-five

When I get home from Breakfast Ahoy, with sore feet and smelling like bacon and maple syrup, the only sign of Mom is a Post-it note: Vacuum living room. A task I blow off. The lines from the last vacuuming are still visible. The phone rings, but it’s not Mom. It’s Andy.

“Samantha? Can you come over? Mom’s sick and Daddy isn’t home yet and I have, well, I’m going to see Kyle and…would it be okay if you babysat until Jase gets back? Duff isn’t good with diapers and Patsy has this major rash? You know, the kind you need a prescription cream for? It’s all over her bottom and down her legs.”

I, of course, know nothing about diaper rash, but say I’ll be right over.

The Garretts’ house is unusually hectic. “Mom’s upstairs, sleeping? She really doesn’t feel good.” Andy fills me in while trying to apply eyeliner and put on her shoes at the same time. I redo the eyeliner for her and French-braid her hair.

“Has everyone eaten?”

“Patsy. But the other guys are really hungry? Even though I gave them all Lucky Charms. Alice’s out with Brad or something? I can’t remember. Anyway”—Andy peers out the door—“Mr. Comstock’s here. Bye.” She dashes out, leaving me to Harry and Duff and George, who are practically brandishing forks, and Patsy, who smiles confidingly up at me and says, “Pooooooooooop.”

I start to laugh. “This is what comes after boob?”

Duff opens the refrigerator. Discouraged, he sighs. “Guess so. Mom’s really gonna have to get creative with the baby book. We got nothin’ here, Samantha. What’re you making for us?”

In the end, the Garretts’ dinner that night consists of English muffin toaster pizzas, boxed macaroni and cheese, and my mom’s lemonade and broccoli/sun-dried tomato and pecan pasta salad (less than a success), which I send Duff over to my house to get, explaining about the special ice cubes.

While I’m giving Patsy and George a bath, there’s a commotion from down the hall. Voldemort the corn snake has escaped again. I hear Duff’s footsteps thundering around, and Harry shouting excitedly, and then see this slim shape squiggling into the room, trying to coil itself into George’s dirty Transformer sneaker. I’m so proud of the way I reach out, scoop up Voldemort, and calmly hand him over to Duff. Without even screaming when Voldemort, evidently stressed, does what corn snakes will do, and defecates all over my hand. “Pooooooop!” Patsy shouts delightedly as I go over to the sink to wash it off.

Half an hour later, Patsy’s asleep in her crib, with the five pacifiers she insists on holding in her hands—she never puts them in her mouth. George stretches out drowsily on the couch, nodding over Animal Planet’s Ten Most Startling Animal Metamorphoses. Duff’s on the computer, and Harry’s building what looks like the Pentagon out of Magna-Tiles when the door slams. In comes Alice, whose hair is now a deep auburn with an inexplicable blond streak in front, and Jase, evidently fresh from delivering lumber, sweaty and rumpled. He lifts his chin when he sees me, his face breaking into a broad smile. He heads toward me but Alice blocks him.

“Shower before you smooch, J,” Alice says. “I rode in the Bug with you and you’re officially disgusting.”

While he’s upstairs, I fill Alice in. “Mom’s asleep?” She’s incredulous. “Why?”

I shrug. “Andy said she felt lousy.”

“Crap, I hope it’s not the flu. I’ve got three tests coming up and no time to play stand-in mom.” Alice starts taking the dinner dishes off the table and dumping leftovers into the disposal.

“Samantha’s done here now.” Jase, returning to the room, picks up a yellow plastic backscratcher that is on the kitchen counter, along with a pair of dirty socks, an empty Chips Ahoy! box, five Matchbox cars, Andy’s eyeliner, and a half-eaten banana. He taps the backscratcher on each of Alice’s shoulders. “You’re now officially Mom until Dad gets home. Samantha and I are going upstairs.” And he takes my hand, dragging me after him.

But all that urgency is apparently more about getting away from the chaos downstairs than about luring me to his bed, because once we get up to the room, he just loops his arms around my waist and leans in for a leisurely kiss. Then he tilts back, surveying me.

“What?” I ask, reaching back out for him, wanting more.

“Here’s what I was wondering, Samantha. Do you want to—”

“Yes,” I respond immediately.

He laughs. “Here’s where you need to hear the actual question. I was thinking, a lot, about what we talked about this morning. How do you…? Do you…want to plan it all out or—”

“You mean like the date and the time and the place? I think that would make me too tense. Like some sort of countdown. I don’t want to plan you. Not that way.”

He looks relieved. “That’s how I feel. So I was thinking we should just make sure we’re…well, uh, prepared. Always. Then see when things move there so we’re both…”

“Ready?” I ask.

“Comfortable,” Jase suggests. “Prepared.”

I give his shoulder a little shove. “Boy Scout.”

“Well, they didn’t exactly have a badge for this.” Jase laughs. “Though that one would’ve been popular. Not to mention useful. I was in the pharmacy today and there are way too many options just in, uh, condoms.”

“I know.” I smile at him. “I was there too.”

“We should probably go together next time,” he says, picking up my hand, turning it over to kiss the inside of my wrist. My pulse jumps, just at that brush of his lips. Wow.

In the end, we go to CVS later that night, because Mrs. Garrett wakes up and comes out of her room, rumpled in a sapphire bathrobe, to ask Jase to pick up some Gatorade. So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of…“Trojans, Ramses, Magnum…Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display.

“They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions.

Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.”

“I don’t get what half these descriptions mean…What’s a vibrating ring?”

“Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.”

I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’”

“I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.”

“But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him.

“Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?”

“For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes.

We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave.

“Do you think he knew?” I ask.

“You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?”

“The sales guy. Why we were buying these?”

A smile pulls the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was…a…housewarming gift.”

Okay, I’m ridiculous.

“Or party favors,” I laugh.

“Or”—he scrutinizes the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.”

“Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans.

“Or little raincoats for…” He pauses, stumped.

“Barbie dolls,” I suggest.

“G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.

Brushing my teeth that night, listening to the sound of a summer rain battering against the windows, I marvel at how quickly things can completely change. A month ago, I was someone who had to put twenty-five unnecessary items—Q-tips and nail polish remover and Seventeen magazine and mascara and hand lotion—on the counter at CVS to distract the clerk from the box of tampons, the one embarrassing item I needed. Tonight I bought condoms, and almost nothing else, with the boy I’m planning to use them with.

Jase took them all home, since my mom still periodically goes through my dresser drawers to align my clothes in order of color. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t buy the “supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight” excuse. When I asked if Mrs. Garrett would do the same and find them, Jase looked at me in complete mystification.

“I do my own laundry, Sam.”

I’ve never had a nickname. My mother’s always insisted on the full Samantha. Charley occasionally called me “Sammy-Sam” just because he knew it bugged me. But I like being Sam. I like being Jase’s Sam. It sounds relaxed, easygoing, competent. I want to be that person.

I spit out toothpaste, staring at my face in the mirror. Someday, someday not too far away, Jase and I will use those condoms. Will I look different then? How different will I feel? How will we know when to say when?

Chapter Twenty-six

Two days later, Tim’s following my directions to Mom’s campaign office for an interview. He looks like a completely different person than the one at the wheel for the Bacardi run to New Hampshire, neatly clad in a khaki suit with a red and yellow striped tie. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, lights a cigarette, smokes it, firing up another the moment he’s done.

“You feeling okay?” I ask, indicating that he should turn left at the four-way intersection.

“Like shit.” Tim tosses the latest cigarette butt out the window, punching the lighter down again. “I haven’t had a drink or a joint or anything in days. That’s the longest that’s happened since I was, like, eleven. I feel like shit.”

“You sure you want this job? Campaigning—it’s all show—it makes me feel that way and I’m not even drying out.”

Tim snorts. “Drying out? Who the hell says that? You talk like my frickin’ grandpa.”

I roll my eyes. “Sorry I’m not all down with the current slang. You get my point anyway.”

“I can’t stay home all day with Ma. She drives me up the frigging wall. And if I don’t prove that I’m doing ‘something valuable with my time,’ it’s off to do hard time at Camp Tomahawk.”

“You’re joking. That’s the name of the place your parents want to send you?”

“Somethin’ like that. Maybe it’s Camp Guillotine. Camp Castration? Whatever the hell it is, it doesn’t sound like anyplace I’ll survive. No way I’m gonna have some epiphany about how I need to apply myself to life while living on roots and berries and learning how to build a compass out of spiderwebs or whatever the hell they have you do when they drop you in the wilderness by yourself. That shit is just not me.”

“I think you should go for the job with Jase’s dad.” I point to the right as we come to another intersection. “He’s a lot more relaxed than Mom. Plus, you’d have your evenings free.”

“Jase’s dad runs a goddamn hardware store, Samantha. I don’t know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench. I’m not Mr. Handyman like lover boy.”

“I don’t think you’d have to fix anything, just sell the tools. It’s this building, right here.”

Tim skids into the driveway of campaign headquarters, where the lawn is plastered with huge red, white, and blue GRACE REED: OUR TOWNS, OUR FAMILIES, OUR FUTURE posters. In some of them she’s wearing a yellow Windbreaker and shaking hands with fisherman or other heroic, salt-of-the-earth types. In others she’s the mom I know, hair coiled high, in a suit, talking to other “movers and shakers.”

Tim hops out and walks up the sidewalk, yanking his tie straight. His fingers are trembling.

“You going to be all right?”

“Will ya quit asking that? It’s not like my answer’s gonna change. I feel like I’m about an eight point nine on the Richter scale.”

“So don’t do this.”

“I gotta do something or I’ll lose what’s left of my mind,” he snaps. Then, glancing at me, his voice softens. “Relax, kid. When not too blasted to pull it off, I’m the master of fakin’ it.”

I’m sitting in the lobby flipping through People magazine and wondering how long this interview will run when I get a call on my cell from Jase.

“Hey, baby.”

“Hey yourself. I’m still at Tim’s interview.”

“Dad said to swing by when you’re done if he wants to interview here. Bonus, the guy on staff kinda has a thing for you.”

“That so? And how is this guy on staff—is he running the four-minute mile in army boots on the shore yet?”

“Actually, no. Still coming up short. I think he was kind of distracted by the girl timing him, last few times he ran.”

“That so? He should probably work on his focus, then, shouldn’t he?”

“No way. He likes his focus right where it is, thanks. See you when you get here.”

I’m smiling into the phone when Tim stomps back out and shakes his head at me. “You two are fuckin’ nauseating.”

“How’d you know it was Jase?”

“Gimme a break, Samantha. I could see you quivering from across the room.”

I change the subject. “So how’d you go over with Mom’s campaign manager?”

“Who is that officious little dude? He definitely gives the words ‘pompous dickhead’ a new dimension. But I’m hired.”

Mom emerges from the back office and puts her hand on Tim’s shoulder, clenching tight.

“Our Timothy is an up-and-comer, Samantha. I’m so proud! You should spend more time with him. He really knows where he’s going.”

I nod icily while Tim smirks.

Once we’re out on the sidewalk I ask, “What exactly did you do to deserve that?”

Tim snorts. “Hell, Samantha. I would’ve been kicked out of Ellery years ago if I hadn’t learned how to suck up to the powers that be. I wrote a paper on the Reagan years last winter. In there”—he indicates the building behind us—“I just plagiarized a bunch of phrases from the Gipper. The little dude and your mom practically had orgasms—”

I hold up my hand. “I get the picture.”

“What’s with you and Nan? Damn, you two are uptight,” Tim says. He drives—too fast—for a few minutes, then says, “Sorry! I feel like I’m gonna jump out of my skin. All I really want to do is get spun.”

Hoping, ridiculously, that this will distract him, I tell him about Mr. Garrett’s offer.

“I’m desperate enough to fill my time to try this. But if I have to wear a frickin’ apron, there’s no way I’m taking this job.”

“No apron. And Alice drops in a lot.”

“Sold.” Tim lights up once again.

When we get to the store, Mr. Garrett and Jase are behind the counter. Jase has his back to us as we walk in the door. The way Mr. Garrett is leaning forward, resting his elbows on the countertop, is the same way Jase relaxes against the kitchen table at his house. He’s huskier than Jase, more like Joel. Will Jase look like him when he’s in his forties? Will I know him then?

Mr. Garrett glances up, spotting us. He smiles. “Tim Mason—from Cub Scouts. I was your troop leader, remember?”

Tim looks alarmed. “You fu—er—remember me and you’re willing to interview me anyhow?”

“Sure. Let’s go in the back office. You can take off the jacket and tie, though. No point being uncomfortable.”

Tim follows him down the corridor, looking uncomfortable anyway, sensing that plagiarizing Ronald Reagan won’t help in this situation.

“So, was your dad always a hard-ass?” Tim asks, driving us home an hour later.

I’m automatically defensive, but Jase seems unperturbed. “I thought you’d think so.”

I watch Jase’s profile in the passenger seat of the car, his hair flipping in the wind. I’m in the back. Tim’s again working his way through way too many cigarettes. I wave my hand in front of my face and open my window a little further.

“Helluva condition for employment.” Tim tips the sunshade down so the packet of Marlboros falls into his lap. “Not sure it’s worth it.”

“No skin off my back.” Jase shrugs. “But is it any worse than now? Can’t see how, really.”

“It’s not that it’s worse, asshole. It’s that it’s not a choice.”

“Like you’ve got so many,” Jase says. “Worth a try, I’d say, man.”

I feel as though they’re speaking in code. I have no idea what is going on. When I lean forward to look at his profile, he seems elusive, not that boy who kisses me good night so sweetly.

“Here you two are,” Tim says, pulling into the Garretts’ driveway. “Home again, home again, jiggety jig. Good night, young lovers.”

After we say bye to Tim, we’re left standing on the Garretts’ lawn. I glance over at my house to find, as expected, all the lights out. Mom’s not home yet. I pull at Jase’s wrist and check the time. 7:10. Must be another motivational meeting/civic function/town hall arena…or whatever.

“What’s going on with Tim?” I ask, flipping over his wrist to trace the faint blue lines of his veins with my index finger.

“Dad made ninety meetings in ninety days a condition of employment,” Jase says. “That’s what he says people need to not drink. I kinda knew he’d do that.” His mouth brushes gently against my collarbone.

“Ninety meetings with him?”

“Ninety AA meetings. Alcoholics Anonymous. Tim Mason isn’t the only one who ever screwed up. My dad was a major partier, a very heavy drinker, in his teens. I’ve never seen him have a drink, but I know the stories he tells. I had a hunch he’d figure Tim out.”

I raise my hand, touch Jase’s lips, tracing the full curve of the lower one. “So what if Tim can’t handle it? What if he just messes up?”

“We all deserve a chance not to, right?” Jase says, and then he slips his hands up under the back of my T-shirt, closing his eyes.

“Jase…” I say. Or sigh.

“Get a room, you two,” suggests a voice. We look up to see Alice striding toward us, Brad trailing after her.

Jase takes a step back from me, running his hands through his hair, leaving it rumpled and even more appealing.

Alice shakes her head and walks past us.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Our house is buzzing with this strange energy on the Fourth of July.

The Fourth, you must understand, is the town holiday for Stony Bay. Early in the Revolutionary War, the British burned some ships in our harbor as a quick gesture on their way somewhere more significant, so Stony Bay has always felt personally invested in Independence Day. The parade starts at the cemetery behind town hall, goes up the hill to the Olde Baptist Church, where the veterans lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown soldier, then wends down the hill, running into tree-lined Main Street, past the houses painted regulation white and yellow and barn-red, neat and tidy as the boxes in a watercolor set, and finally to the harbor. Bands from all the local schools play patriotic songs. And since her election, Mom always gives the opening and closing speeches. The valedictorian of the middle school recites the Preamble to the Constitution, and another star student reads a paper about life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice.

This year, that student is Nan.

“I can’t believe it,” she says over and over again. “Can you? Last year it was Daniel and now me. I didn’t even think this Four Freedoms one was my best paper! I thought the one for English on Huckleberry Finn’s and Holden Caulfield’s rebellion against life was much better.”

“But not exactly apt for the Fourth of July,” I point out. To be honest, I’m surprised too. Nan hates creative writing. She’s always been happier with memorizing than theorizing. And that’s not the only weird thing today.

Mom, Clay, Nan, and I are in the living room. Mom’s been listening to Nan practice her speech while Clay goes over the usual Fourth of July proceedings, trying to figure out how Mom, in his words, “can put some extra zing in this year.”

He’s lying on his stomach in front of the fireplace, press clippings and pieces of yellow-lined paper spread out in front of him, a highlighter in one hand. “Seems as though you’ve got your standard stump speech goin’ on here, Gracie. The curse of the ‘common weal.’” He looks up and winks at her, then at Nan and me. “This year we’re going to need fireworks.”

“We have them,” Mom says. “Every year Donati’s Dry Goods donates some—we get the permit lined up months in advance.”

Clay ducks his head. “Grace. Sugar. I mean figurative fireworks.” He slaps the press clippings with the back of his knuckles. “This is fine for the expected line from the local pol. But you can do better. And darlin’, if you’re going to win this year, you’ll have to.”

Pink washes across Mom’s cheekbones, the unmistakable flag of blond chagrin. She comes over next to him, rests a hand on his shoulder, bending to see what he’s highlighting. “Tell me how,” she says then, clicking her pen open and flipping to an empty page on her pad, Nan and me forgotten.

“Wow,” Nan says as we get on our bikes to ride to her house. “That was freaky. That Clay’s really pulling the strings with your mom, huh?”

“I guess,” I say. “It’s like that all the time lately. I can’t figure out…I mean…she’s obviously really into him, but…”

“Do you think it’s”—Nan lowers her voice—“the sex?”

“Yuck, Nan. I have no idea. I don’t want to think about either of them in that context.”

“Well, it’s either that or she’s had a frontal lobotomy,” Nan murmurs. “So what do you think I should wear? Do you think it has to be red, white, and blue?” She slips off the sidewalk onto the road so she can ride parallel with me. “Please say no. Maybe just blue. Or white? Is that too virginal?” She rolls her eyes. “Not that that’s not appropriate. Should I have Daniel film me reading the essay and sub that with my college application? Or would that be dorky?”

She keeps asking questions I don’t have answers to because I’m completely distracted. What’s happening to my mother? When did Mom ever listen to anybody but Mom?

Tracy comes home for the Fourth of July command performance. She’s okay with that because, she tells me, “The Vineyard is jammed with tourists over this weekend.” There’s no point in asking her how a month or so of waiting tables at a Vineyard restaurant has separated her from the tourists. Tracy is Tracy.

Flip’s home too. He’s given Trace a tennis bracelet with a tiny gold racket dangling from it that has spawned lots of new Tracy hand-and-wrist flicking gestures designed to show it off. “The note that came with it said I live to serve you,” she whispers to me the night she gets home. “Can you stand it?”

To me it sounds like one of the T-shirts Nan would sell at the B&T, but my sister’s eyes are shining.

“What happened to the long-distance love thing and how that wasn’t going to work?” I ask. Call me Killjoy.

“That’s September!” Tracy laughs. “Jeez, Samantha. Months away.” She pats me on the shoulder. “You’d understand if you’d ever been in love.”

Part of me so much wants to say, “Well, Trace, actually…”

But I’m so used to saying nothing now, so used to being the audience while Mom and Tracy are the ones with the stories. I just listen as she tells me about the Vineyard and the Harbor Fest and the Summer Solstice Celebration. What Flip Did and What Flip Said and what Tracy did then.

By the time the school bands assemble at eight in the morning on the Fourth, it’s already eighty-five degrees, and the sky is that searing summer slate-blue-gray that tells you it’s only going to get steamier. Despite this, Mom looks cool and poised in her white linen suit topped by a big blue straw hat with a red ribbon. Tracy, under protest, is wearing a navy sundress adorned with a white sash. I’m in a smocked white silk dress Mom loves, in which I feel about ten, tops.

Standing with Mom and Tracy as the parade marchers assemble, I can see Duff balancing his tuba, red in the face before the marching even begins, and Andy, squinting her eyes shut, tightening one of the strings on her violin. She looks up as she perches it on her shoulder, spots me, and gives me a broad grin, braces twinkling.

Garrett’s Hardware isn’t open today, but Jase and Mr. Garrett are selling little flags and bunting and streamers for bike wheels outside the store, with Harry next to them hawking lemonade in an aggressive fashion: “Hey you! Mister! You look thirsty. Twenty-five cents! Hey you! Lady!” Mrs. Garrett is somewhere lost in the throng with George and Patsy. I don’t think I ever realized before how everyone in town really does come to this parade.

The first song the band plays is “America the Beautiful.” At least I think that’s what it is. The band’s pretty bad. Then Mr. McAuliffe, who leads the Stony Bay Middle School band, is off and marching, the parade dragging behind him.

The drummers roll as Mom stands behind the podium. Tracy and I sit on the bleachers right behind her, with Marissa Levy, the middle school valedictorian, and Nan in their assigned seats. From where we are, I can finally locate Mrs. Garrett, on the sidelines with a huge fluff of cotton candy in her hand, doling it out sparingly to George while Patsy reaches for it. The Masons are front row, center, Mr. Mason with his arm around his wife and Tim next to them in a…tuxedo? I know Mrs. Mason told him to dress up. Trust Tim to take that to the extreme. He must be boiling.

Mom gives her speech, all about how two hundred and thirty years of pride have brought Stony Bay to this point, two hundred and thirty years of excellence, etc. I’m not sure how it’s any different from what she usually says, but I see Clay over near the NewsCenter9 camera, nodding and smiling, bending in close to the photographer, like he’s making sure they got the key footage.

After Mom, it’s quiet, and Nan walks quickly to the podium. Like so much in their twin-DNA exchange, the height genes were measured inequitably. Nanny tops me by two inches, at the most five four, while Tim shot over six feet years ago. She has to climb a few steps to peek over the lectern. She sets the paper down, brushing it flat and swallowing visibly, her freckles vivid against her pale face.

Long silence, and I start to worry. Then her eyes meet mine, she quickly crosses hers, and begins. “We are accustomed now, in this country, in this time, to celebrate what we have. Or what we want. Not what we lack. On this day that celebrates what our forefathers dreamed and hoped for us, I would like to celebrate the four freedoms…and to note that…while two, freedom of speech and freedom of worship, celebrate what we have, an equal number celebrate what we are missing…freedom from want…freedom from fear.”

The microphone is a little squeaky, periodically sounding out a high-pitched whine. Mom has her head tilted to the side, taking the speech in intently, as though she didn’t hear Nan rehearse it half a dozen times. Tracy and Flip are knocking their feet together, hands intertwined, but both their faces are somber. I look into the crowd to find Mrs. Mason, her hands clasped under her chin, and Mr. Mason, his eyes fixed on Nan, shoulder tipped toward his wife. I search for Tim, only to find him with his head ducked, his fists over his eyes.

When Nan winds to a close, the applause is thunderous. She turns the shade of her hair, bobs a quick curtsy, and backs up to sit in the bleachers next to Mom.

“Could that have been more beautifully stated?” Mom calls. “The Fourth of July is a day to celebrate what our forefathers chose—and what they refused—what they dreamed for us, and what we made reality from the power of their dreams.”

There’s a lot more in that vein, but what I see is Nan being hugged by her parents, her mom and dad finally celebrating Nan’s accomplishments, not focusing on Tim’s disasters, her face so joyous above their interlocked arms. I look around for Tim, expecting to see him close the circle, but he’s gone.

Mom goes on with her speech, freedom and choice and how we stand strong. Clay, now planted back in one of the last rows, flashes her a smile and a thumbs-up.

The wreath to commemorate soldiers lost is dropped after the slow march down the hill to the harbor, and Winnie Teixeira from the elementary school plays Taps. Then everyone recites the Pledge of Allegiance, and the formal part of the Fourth of July disbands into getting cotton candy, frozen lemonade, and Italian ices from carts set up by Doane’s.

I look for Nan, but she’s in the crowd with her parents. Tracy and Flip are rapidly moving away from Mom, Tracy calling something over her shoulder and waving. Mom’s in a swarm of people, shaking hands and signing things and…erk…kissing babies. Mom doesn’t even like babies, but you would never know it as she exclaims over a series of tiny, bald, drooling citizens. I stand there irresolutely, wondering if I’m supposed to stay by her all day, wanting only to get rid of my itchy childish dress and go someplace cool.

Arms come around my waist from behind me then and Jase’s lips nuzzle my neck. “What, Sam? No uniform? I was trying to guess whether you’d be the Statue of Liberty or Martha Washington.”

I turn in his arms. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

More kissing. I’ve turned into someone who kisses on a public street. I open my eyes, pull back, glancing around for my mom.

“You hunting for Tim too?”

“Tim? No—”

“He came by the stand,” Jase says, “looking kinda grim. We should find him.”

We stay by the turnstile at the top of Main Street for a while, me perching on the white brick stand, Jase using his height to scan around, but there’s no sign of Tim. Then I see him, stark in his black tuxedo with all the festive summer colors, talking to Troy Rhodes, our ever-dedicated local drug dealer.

“He’s over there.” I nudge Jase.

“Great.” Jase bites his lip. “In good company.” Guess Troy makes the rounds at the public school too.

Jase and I wade through the crowd, but by the time we reach Troy, Tim’s vanished again. Jase squeezes my hand. “We’ll get him,” he says.

He’s back with his parents. We reach the Masons just in time to hear old Mr. Erlicher, who runs the volunteer league at the Stony Bay Library, say, “And here’s our shining star,” kissing Nan. He turns to Tim, who’s thrown himself into a slouch in the seat next to Nan. “And your mother tells me you’re having a bit of trouble finding your feet, young man.”

“That’s me,” Tim tells him without looking up, “the guy with lost feet.”

Mr. Erlicher prods him on the shoulder. “I was a late bloomer myself, you know. Heh-heh-heh. Look at me now.”

He means well, but since the biggest achievement we know of his is being nearly impossible to escape from once he starts talking, Tim looks anything but consoled. His eyes search the throng of people, lock on me and Jase, and skip away as though that’s no help at all.