Just a Summer Romance

  “Hi!” she called to him.

  He waved to her, smiling.

  Mel jogged up to him, and he stepped back to read her T-shirt. Then he laughed. “Pretty funny,” he said. “I like T-shirts. I have a collection.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. I save the ones with pictures or slogans that I like.”

  They set off along the boardwalk that would lead them through the wildlife preserve to the restaurant at Watch Hill.

  “What’s your favorite?” asked Mel. “Do you have one?”

  “Sure, but I can only wear it when I’m with my father. He gave it to me, and it’s part of a set. He has to wear the other one. Mine has an arrow pointing to the left and says, ‘I’m his kid.’ Dad’s has an arrow pointing to the right and says, ‘I’m his dad.’ We always have to walk in the same positions when we wear them. Otherwise, we’d point to strangers.”

  Mel laughed. “My grandparents once gave me a T-shirt that said ‘Grandma and Grandpa went to Florida and all they brought me was this dumb T-shirt.’ I was too embarrassed to wear it.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  Mel and Justin ambled along the walk through the preserve. They listened to the sounds of the birds settling down for the night. They looked west and realized that the sunset would be blocked by a bank of clouds. Every now and then a couple or a family would pass them in the other direction.

  “Half the parents here have to leave tonight,” Mel commented. “My father will be gone when I get home.”

  “My father’s been away, but he’s coming back again,” said Justin. “But I won’t see him.”

  “You won’t? Why not?”

  “I’ll explain later.”

  They walked the rest of the way to Watch Hill in peaceful silence.

  When they were seated at an outdoor table at the restaurant, Justin said, “I know what I want—a hot fudge sundae. How about you? What do you want? Do you have a sweet tooth?”

  “Do I have a sweet tooth?” repeated Mel. “I could probably recite the ingredients on any package of junk food you handed me—Yodels, Ring-Dings, Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, fruit pies…You name it—I know it, love it, and eat it. I’ll have a butterscotch sundae. It’s the sweetest thing I can think of.”

  Justin grinned. Then he gave their order to a waitress. While they waited for their food, they peeled the ends off the wrappers on their straws and blew the papers at each other.

  The sundaes arrived and they dug in. Justin chose the moment that Mel was about to pop the maraschino cherry into her mouth to drop his bombshell. “You know,” he said, “I’ve only known you for two days, but it feels like a lot longer.”

  “Yeah,” said Mel, “at least three days.” (She hadn’t gotten to the cherry yet and was scooping the whipped cream up around the edge of her dish.)

  Justin smiled. “I wish it didn’t feel so long.”

  Mel felt something tear inside her. “Why?” she whispered, still absent-mindedly working on the whipped cream.

  “Because it’s going to be so hard to leave.”

  That was when Mel popped the cherry in her mouth. She sat there for several seconds, unable to chew it. “What do you mean?” she finally asked, tucking the cherry into her cheek like a hamster. “We’ve got three weeks before Labor Day.”

  Justin nodded. “But I have to leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Mel exclaimed, stricken.

  “Not for good, just for a week.”

  “Still,” said Mel, “a week is a week. When you come back, we’ll only have two weeks until we have to leave the island. That is, if you’re staying until the end of the summer.”

  “We are.”

  “Well, that’s something. Where are you going tomorrow?” She managed to swallow the cherry.

  “Back to New York.”

  “Why?”

  “Just have to finish up my work.”

  “Your work. What do you do? What’s so important that you have to leave Fire Island for a week?”

  “It’s hard to explain, but look, I’ll be back next Saturday, on the earliest ferry I can get.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Have I ever let you down?”

  “No. Not once in the entire thirty-five hours we’ve known each other.”

  They finished their sundaes, and the waitress brought the bill. There was a little scuffle over who would pay it. The waitress had handed it to Justin, who immediately pulled his wallet out of his pocket. At the same time, Mel took her money out of the pocket of her jeans.

  “I’ll pay,” Justin said.

  “I’ll help,” Mel replied. “Boys shouldn’t have to pay for everything.”

  “But I asked you out, so this is my treat. You can pay next time.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Mel gave in, not wanting an argument. She put her money away. Anyway, all she could think of was that Justin had said “next time.” That meant he wanted to go out with her again!

  They held hands as they walked back through the wildlife preserve to Davis Park. Mel decided that she had never, ever been happier than she was at that moment.

  When they reached the Casino, they separated. “I’ll see you on Saturday,” said Justin.

  “Promise?” Mel asked again.

  “Promise. Meet the eight-thirty ferry. I’ll be on it.”

  “Okay Good-bye, Justin.”

  “Bye, Mel.”

  Mel watched him disappear into the twilight. Then she walked slowly to Moonrise House. As she started up her walk, she noticed Lacey sitting alone on the deck next door. Mel turned and headed for Starfish House instead.

  “Hi!” she called softly. “Where is everybody?”

  “Over at your house.”

  “Oh, good. Lacey, I have to tell you everything! Tonight was wonderful!”

  “I’m busy,” replied Lacey. She was sitting in a lounge chair without so much as a magazine in her hands.

  “Busy doing what? It’s dark out here.”

  “I’m thinking!”

  “But Lacey, tonight—”

  “Mel, excuse me, but I really couldn’t care less. And please don’t think you can use me this way.”

  “Use you!” exclaimed Mel, confused. “Use you what way?”

  “You go off with Justin whenever you feel like it, and then you expect to come back and find me just waiting for you. Like you can squeeze me in around the edges of Justin, whenever it’s convenient for the two of you. Well, did it occur to you that I might have things to do? I might be busy, too.”

  “Lacey,” Mel said slowly, “if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”

  “Then apparently you don’t know better. Of course I’m jealous. You’re changing things. Our summers aren’t supposed to include boys. You’re spoiling everything.” Lacey’s chin began to tremble.

  Mel pretended not to notice. “Well, thanks a lot. That’s a nice thing to say. I thought you’d be happy for me, but I can see that you’re too immature for that.” Mel stomped down the boardwalk and decided to take a moonlight walk in order to cool off before she went home.

  She and Lacey didn’t speak for three days.

  Chapter Seven

  “OKAY, MEL, YOUR TURN. ‘What gooey toy was sold in a plastic egg?’”

  “Oh, easy,” Mel replied. “Silly Putty. We used to have some. Remember, Dee? But Mom and Dad made us throw it out after we left it on the chair in the living room and Dad sat on it and ruined his plaid bathrobe.”

  Dee and Jeanmarie laughed. “You’re on a roll, kid,” said Dee. “Go again.”

  Mel rolled the dice and moved her piece around the Trivia Chase board. “All right.” She sighed. “This is for a piece of the pie. Hit me with an arts and literature question.”

  Jeanmarie withdrew a card from one of the boxes. “‘Who wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame?’”

  “Oh, thank goodness. Another easy one. Victor Hugo.”

  Jeanmarie turned the card over and checked the answer. “Sh
e’s right!” she said to Dee. “How does she know all this stuff?”

  “All she does is read.”

  Mel rolled again. “All right. I just need the geography piece and my pie will be full.”

  Mel was ahead of both older girls, which pleased her, but, quite truthfully, she was bored. And anxious. It was Tuesday afternoon. It had been raining since Monday morning, and Lacey hadn’t spoken to Mel since Sunday evening. Mel was glad for the company of Dee and Jeanmarie, but she missed Lacey, and Justin as well. Besides, she felt as if she’d been playing Trivia Chase for two solid years, instead of just off and on for two days.

  When Mel finally missed a question, she leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes.

  “Everything all right?” her sister asked.

  “I guess.”

  “We know you and Lacey had a fight,” said Jeanmarie. “Lacey can be pretty stubborn. Just ignore her. She’ll come to her senses.”

  “It’s hard to ignore her. She’s my best friend.”

  “Well,” said Dee, “things always work out.”

  “No, they don’t,” replied Mel soberly. “They really don’t. Not always. People have fights and never make up. People move away and say, ‘I’ll write,’ and never do. People go away and say, ‘I’ll come back,’ and never do.”

  “Those are cheery thoughts,” said Dee.

  Mel sighed. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s pouring out there. At least finish the game. I’m about to catch up with you.” Dee rolled the dice gleefully.

  So Mel finished the game, beating Dee and Jeanmarie, and then put on her slicker and headed to the beach for a barefoot, misty walk. She reached the dunes, turned right, and trudged through the damp sand, the wind and spray in her face, the cold gray water biting her feet.

  Words were funny, she thought. If the weather were nice and the ocean blue, she would probably imagine that the water was kissing her feet, not biting them.

  She walked alone along the water’s edge until she realized she was standing opposite Justin’s house. She could barely see it through the mist and rain, but there it was. For some reason, Mel felt comforted by the sight of it, even though she knew Justin wasn’t in it.

  She stared at it for several moments, jumping slightly when a light was switched on in a second-story room. Then she turned and walked back to Moonrise House.

  Trivia Chase was still going on. Dee and Jeanmarie had been joined by Timmy, Jackie, Mrs. Braderman, and Mrs. Reeder. They were playing on teams, the Bradermans versus the Reeders.

  “Come on and join us, honey,” Mel’s mother said as Mel hung up her dripping coat.

  “Thanks, Mom, but then your teams would be uneven.”

  “Well, go get Lacey,” suggested Mrs. Reeder. “She’s been moping around since the rain started.”

  Mel shook her head. “No, thanks. I think I’ll do some writing.”

  She saw her mother and Mrs. Reeder exchange knowing looks as she headed for the bedroom.

  Once in the bedroom, Mel picked up her journal and decided to write some poetry. She turned to a blank page, put the end of her pen in her mouth, and sat thoughtfully. After several minutes she wrote:

  Blackbird, fly away.

  Then she crossed it out.

  She wrote:

  Violet petals on the wind.

  She crossed that out, too.

  She wrote:

  Good-bye, Lacey.

  Good-bye, Fire Island.

  That was very depressing, but she didn’t cross it out. Instead, she closed her journal with a snap, lay down on her bed, fell sound asleep, and dreamed one of the oddest dreams she could remember having.

  In the beginning of the dream, she was walking along the beach in the mist, the water biting her toes. Only it actually hurt, and after a while, Mel realized she ought to stay away from it. She kept moving farther and farther back toward the dunes, but the water drew farther and farther up as the tide came in.

  “Stay away!” Mel cried.

  The biting water turned into thousands of pairs of chattering teeth, the kind sold in joke shops. The teeth had minds of their own, and clickety-clacked after her as she ran up a flight of wooden steps and along a boardwalk. She had to find Justin, and she ran right to his house, but when she reached the back door, she realized it was Starfish House instead. Lacey slammed the door in Mel’s face.

  “Let me in!” shouted Mel. “Let me in!”

  Something was shaking her shoulder. Oh, no, Mel thought. What now? What’s behind me? “Go away!”

  “It’s dinnertime.”

  “Go away!”

  “Mel, come on. Dinner.”

  Mel woke up with a start to find Dee bending over her. “Come on,” she said again. “It’s six-thirty. You’ve been asleep for two hours.”

  Mel groaned. “I don’t feel well. I’m not hungry.”

  She slept fitfully that night, but by the next morning seemed to have recovered.

  So had the weather.

  Mel awoke to a clear, cloudless, brilliantly sunny sky. She raced to the beach and spent the better part of the day there.

  Lacey studiously ignored her all morning and afternoon, but that evening she came over to Moonrise House just as Mel was heading out for the ice-cream stand.

  Mel couldn’t imagine why she had come over. “Jackie’s not here,” she said. “He and Timmy went to the bay.”

  Lacey looked at the ground. “I didn’t come for Jackie. I came to see you.”

  “Me? The summer spoilsport? The one who’s using you?”

  “Mel, I came to apologize. I’m really sorry I said all those things. I didn’t mean them. Well, maybe I thought I did at the time, but I didn’t really. I mean…Oh, you know what I mean. I’m sorry.”

  Mel smiled. “Want to go get ice cream?”

  Lacey pulled a dollar bill out of the pocket of her sweat pants. “I was hoping you’d ask. I came prepared.”

  The girls bought their cones at the stand, then walked out to the end of one of the docks in the bay. It was the same dock where Justin had found Mel four nights earlier, but Mel didn’t tell Lacey that.

  They sat on the end, their feet hanging over the side, and licked at their cones. “You know what’s funny?” said Mel. “I’m fourteen and you’re fourteen, but you’ve always seemed older than me. More sophisticated, I guess. You look older, too.”

  “So?” Lacey prompted her.

  “So isn’t it funny that I’d be the first one of us to find a boyfr—a boy I like?”

  Lacey looked at her wavery reflection in the lapping water. “Yeah.”

  “Have you ever liked a boy?” asked Mel.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?”

  Lacey shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well, have you ever been interested in a boy?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about this, okay?”

  Mel took a long look at Lacey, who sat with her head bent, toying with the remainder of her ice-cream cone. “Hey, Lacey, you’re not afraid of boys, are you?”

  Another shrug. “It’s not so much that I’m afraid of them. It’s more that I’m afraid they won’t like me.”

  “How could anyone not like you?”

  “Oh, Mel, that is such a mother thing to say. Talk to me as a friend, not as a mother. One mother is enough. You know perfectly well how someone could not like me.”

  “But you’re so sophisticated. I mean, you dress the same way in New York that you do here, don’t you? And I just wear jeans and sweats and stuff, and Justin likes me.

  “Somehow I think there’s more to it than that. You know how to talk to people, which I guess includes boy-people. And I don’t…Do you think Justin is going to change us?”

  “Change you and me?” asked Mel. “Well—”

  “I mean, boys were bound to come up sometime. And I suppose one of us was bound to be ready for them before the other one…”

/>   “It’s not easy,” said Mel slowly. “And I guess maybe Justin—or whoever—will change things between us. But we’ll always be friends, won’t we?”

  “Oh, I hope so,” Lacey said, finally turning to look at Mel. “I hope so.”

  Chapter Eight

  MEL WAS UP AT the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. She was bound and determined to meet the ferry Justin would be on, and not look sleepy. In fact, the night before, at Mel’s insistence, Dee had given her a crash course in makeup, and Mel methodically applied blusher, mascara, and eyeliner before she left Moonrise House.

  She reached the ferry dock ten minutes before the boat was due in, and sat on a wooden bench, straining her eyes across the bay for the first glimpse of the Kiki. At last she could see it, moving slowly through the gray water. It chugged toward the island, motor roaring, until it reached the markers a little distance from the dock. Then the motor was cut and the boat purred in lazily.

  Mel spotted Justin on a seat on the upper deck. She waved madly to him, and when he saw her, he waved back, grinning broadly. A few seconds later, he disappeared. When the gangplank was lowered, Justin was the first one off the Kiki.

  He ran to Mel. “Hi!” he cried.

  “Hi! I missed you!”

  “Same here.”

  “Is that all your stuff?”

  Justin was carrying a duffel bag in one hand and a knapsack in the other. “Yeah, that’s it. I travel light.”

  They ambled to the end of the ferry dock. “It’s early,” said Mel. “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s go to my house so I can dump my stuff off and tell Leila I’m here. Then do you want to take a walk on the beach? I could use a little exercise.”

  “Sure,” replied Mel. “That sounds great.” In the back of her mind, she was thinking that if Justin had asked her to come along and pick through trash at a dump, she would gladly have accompanied him.

  They reached Justin’s house, which Mel found out was named Dune House, and Mel waited outside while Justin went in with his bags. He had asked her in, and she had declined. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t feel like meeting Leila just then.

  Justin returned presently, and he and Mel set off for the beach. Mel told him what had happened with Lacey.