“We’ll take pictures,” I said at last.
She rolled her eyes. “Whoop-dee-doodle-doo.”
School ended, and summer started, and for the first week of June, it was one big happy party. I hung out at the pool with Cinnamon and Dinah. I played Ping-Pong with Lars and kicked his Ping-Pong-i-licious booty. In the evenings, there was kissing. Lots.
Still, June tenth crept steadily closer, and Cinnamon wasn’t the only one who was grumpy about my leaving. Lars was grumpy, too. I thought he was being unfair, since he’d be leaving five days later anyway. (And to Germany, a whole different country! He had to have a passport!)
But I was leaving first, and part of me said ha ha ha.
“I don’t want you to go,” Lars said the evening of June ninth. We were having a picnic of sorts at Memorial Park, although in reality we were just sitting on a quilt eating cheese puffs from a can. “We’ve hardly had any summer together.”
“That’s not my fault,” I said. “I wouldn’t have made plans if you hadn’t. I just didn’t want to sit around bored while you were gone.”
He looked at me with Eeyore eyes, and I felt a surge of irritation. I tried to hide it, and I think I succeeded, but it made me feel like a jerk.
I offered the canister of cheese puffs to Lars. He stuck his hand in to get some, then couldn’t get his hand back out, and that also got on my nerves.
I tugged the canister, and it came off his fist with a pop. I pried opened his fingers, plucked out the cheese puffs he’d been incapable of releasing, and flung them far away into the grass.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked.
“Because,” I said.
“Because why?”
Arrgh, I thought, because sheesh, every day I found more and more things to be annoyed with him about. The most recent annoyance was the cheese puffs. Before that, there was the whole stupid Germany thing. Before that there was his I dunno, what do you wanna do? lumpishness, and oh, let’s not forget the time he farted and thought it was funny.
And waaaaay back at the dawn of time was the lameness called my birthday. If I were being honest (which, to be honest, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be), that was when my growliness began: When Lars gave me that stupid Starbucks card instead of the cupcake of love I’d secretly yearned for. Which I still yearned for, if I were truly being honest.
But even if I wanted to come clean about why I flung Lars’s cheese puffs to the wind, I could just imagine how such a scene would play out:
Lars: Why’d you throw my cheese puffs away?
Me: Because you didn’t give me a cupcake.
Lars: Huh?
Me: Because you didn’t give me a cupcake.
Lars, scratching his head: Am I missing something here?
Me: Yes, you lout, and it’s called A CUPCAKE. For ME! Is that really so hard to understand?!!!
Y-y-yeah, that would go over well. If I couldn’t stand (or understand) my own pathetic-ness, how could I expect Lars to?
So instead of attempting an explanation, I put my hand on his chest and pushed, so that he was lying down on the quilt. He looked surprised. Then I stretched out beside him, and his eyes grew murky in that way that made me feel powerful.
I brushed my lips over his, so lightly-lightly like a feather. Part of me thought, Ack! What are you doing?! You’re at a park, for heaven’s sake! But my hair made a curtain around us, and there wasn’t anyone around, anyway.
Images flashed in my mind: the swing set, Sandra smiling at Bo, the color blue.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Lars said hoarsely.
Good, I thought. Then a more aching emotion welled up, and I buried my face in his shirt.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” I whispered.
But. I wanted to be strong Winnie, not weak Winnie. So as I packed for DeBordieu, I sang a little song. I sang it to the tune of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” and it went like this: “Winnie at the be-each with sea turrr-tles! Winnie at the be-each with sea turrr-tles!”
Dinah’s dad was going to drive us to South Carolina tomorrow. It would take six-and-a-half hours, but I was cool with that. I liked road trips. I liked the mandatory junk food stops they required.
“You should take your pretty sundress,” Ty said as I tossed cutoffs and tank tops into my duffel bag. He lay on my bed, his chin propped in his palms.
“I don’t think so,” I told him, though I found it adorable how the words “your pretty sundress” tripped so naturally from his tongue.
“But in Camp Rock, Demi Lovato wore a dress,” Ty said. Camp Rock was a made-for-TV movie about kids who spent all summer jamming and dancing and keeping juicy secrets from each other.
“That’s because Demi Lovato is a movie star,” I explained.
“I think Demi looks pretty in her pretty dress,” Ty said. Then, as if worried he’d made me feel bad, he added, “But, Winnie, you look pretty, too, when you wear dresses. Like that one with the birds on it.”
I considered. I did like that dress. It was goldish-yellow with blues and browns swirled in. If you looked close, you could make out two blackbirds, their wings outstretched. It had spaghetti straps.
Only, when would I need a fancy-ish sundress at sea turtle camp?
“But you look pretty no matter what,” Ty continued. He heheheh-ed. “Unless if you wore my groin cup.”
“Gross,” I said, lobbing a balled-up pair of socks at him. He’d gotten his groin cup last week for karate, and he loved it. In fact he loved it so much that on the day he got it, he pranced through the house wearing it and nothing else. He rapped repeatedly on the “cup” part and said, “See? Doesn’t hurt! Even if someone kicked me, it wouldn’t hurt!”
My iPhone mwahaha-ed, Cinnamon’s custom ringtone which she chose and programmed in for herself. I reached for my phone.
“Winnie Perry, at your service,” I said. I motioned for Ty to leave. He shifted his chin to his other palm and regarded me with interest.
“Not at my service, because you’re abandoning me,” Cinnamon said.
“Grouse, grouse, grouse, that’s all you do these days. And I’m not abandoning you.” I pressed my phone against my shirt. “Ty, go.”
“No, thanks,” he stage-whispered.
“Well, I was calling to tell you big news,” Cinnamon said. “But I don’t think I’m going to after all.”
“Oh, come on. What’s your big news?”
“Never mind,” Cinnamon said prissily.
“Cinnamon has big news?” Ty said.
I rolled my eyes and went into the hall. “Did you win the lottery?”
“Nope.”
“D’you meet an incredibly gorgeous boy at the tanning salon, and you’re going to marry him even though he wears a Speedo?”
“Ha ha,” Cinnamon said. “And no, because I’m the deadly Black Widow, remember?”
“The Black Widow got married. The Black Widow got married lots.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cinnamon mused. “She did, didn’t she?”
“I still don’t know what your big news is,” I said.
“Does that mean you give up?” Cinnamon said. Cinnamon loved making people give up.
“Yes, Cinnamon, I give up. Though I think it indicates a serious mental imbalance that you get such pleasure out of it.”
“Uh-oh,” she warned. “Better be nice to me, or I’ll change my mind.”
Since Ty wasn’t leaving, I wandered into baby Maggie’s room and dropped into the green recliner Mom used when she nursed little Mags. It was like a rocking chair, only instead of wooden rockers, it glided noiselessly on metal links.
“Are you going to tell me or not?”
“Yes, I’m going to tell you.” She giggled. “Or not.”
“Is it good news or bad news?”
“Hmm. I think I’ll go with excellent. It’s excellent news.”
“Awesome, let’s hear it,” I said. I waited, and then I waited some more. “It’s actually your turn to talk now, Cin.”
“Well,” she said, “the news has to do with me.”
“Ah.”
“And summer.”
“Omigosh, tell me, tell me!” I said, sitting upright and making the base of the glider thunk.
“Well ... I’m still thinking about that, actually. Whether I will or won’t.”
“What? ! ”
Ty appeared in baby Maggie’s doorway. He was holding my sundress with the blackbirds on it. “I’ll put it in your bag,” he mouthed.
“Ty, leave,” I said. “ I mean it. And Cinnamon, you cannot call and say, ‘I’ve got big news,’ and then not tell me!”
“Is Ty there? Let me talk to him,” Cinnamon said.
“Cinnamon! ”
Ty got close to the phone. He put his mouth right up near mine and said, “Hi, Cinnamon! I’m helping Winnie pack! Don’t you think that’s so nice of me?”
I twisted away and made an aggravated sound. “Ignore him. And no, you can’t talk to him. You can only talk to me.”
“She wants to talk to me?” Ty said, trying to get in front of me. “YES YOU CAN TALK TO ME!” he yelled to her. “TELL WINNIE TO GIVE ME HER PHONE!”
“Sounds like you’re busy,” Cinnamon said sympathetically. “I’ll let you go.”
“Tell me your news! Tell me your news right now, or I’ll be forced to ... do something!”
She laughed. “Bye, babe. Have fun with the sea turtles.”
The line went dead.
Later that evening, after hardly eating any dinner because I was too busy watching my family be silly with each other, I got a bad case of second thoughts about my imminent departure. Jaunting off to the Carolina coast meant leaving baby Mags, who’d just started to laugh. Who knew what I’d miss during an entire month of not being with her? And then there was Ty. Who would Ty turn to if he stole another penguin?
On top of all that, Sandra would be leaving for college in September. She was moving to Vermont of all places, which was far away and, according to rumor, got honest-to-goodness snow in the winter. Was I being a bad sister by not sticking around for her last summer?
I hunted her down. “Hey, Sandra,” I said. “Am I being a bad sister by not staying in town for your last summer?”
“Exsqueeze me?” she said.
“It’s your last summer.” I sat crisscross-applesauce on the end of her bed. “Won’t you miss me?”
She put down her book. She had on one of Bo’s baseball jerseys, which she wore to sleep in, and which she now tugged lower over her thighs. “Maybe,” she said, “but so what? You’ll be at the beach. You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”
“Well, do you wish you were going somewhere? I feel bad.”
“Don’t, and I am going somewhere. And when I do, I’ll be gone a helluva lot longer than you.”
“Gee, that’s comforting.”
“Winnie, get real. You can’t let your life revolve around me any more than I can let my life revolve around you—not that I would.”
My face grew hot. She saw it, I guess, because she nudged me with her big toe.
“What’s going on?” she said. “Don’t you want to go to Dapper Dan’s School for Sea Turtles?”
“DeBordieu,” I said, pronouncing it the southern Debbie-doo way. “And of course I do.”
“Then, great. Just be happy about it.”
I sighed. A moment or two passed, and then I voiced the question I really wanted to ask, though I hadn’t known it till now.
“Sandra ... am I obnoxious?”
“Yes,” she answered promptly.
“No, really. Do you think I’m ... well, I guess I’m just wondering ...”
“Say it slowly,” Sandra coached. “One word at a time.”
“Sometimes ... well, recently ...”
She rolled her hand, go on.
I blew up on my bangs. “Sometimes I feel ... not nice inside. Except I am nice. Deep down, I am. But sometimes I get ... growly in my head, and I think snarky thoughts, and I don’t like it.”
There. I said it. “And I wondered if it shows, that’s all.”
Sandra looked at me with an awwww expression. She swung her legs underneath her, scooched toward me on her knees, and embraced me. “Winners, you poor thing.”
Her hug was sloppy and toppled us over.
“Quit,” I said, giggling.
“You’re fourteen,” she said. “It’s your birthright to be snarky. Own it. Live it. Rejoice in it.”
“Rejoice in being snarky?”
“Absolutely. Just don’t let it poison you.”
We lay on our sides on her bed. She had yet to unclasp me, and we were so close that our foreheads touched.
“You look like a Cyclops,” I informed her.
“And this, above all,” she pontificated. “Stay true, little sister. Even in the snarkiest of times, stay true.”
“Now you sound like a graduation speech.”
“Oh, and as an aside? You’ll find this hard to believe, but I was occasionally obnoxious myself when I was fourteen.”
“No. Way.”
“Way,” she replied. She breathed a warm, intentional huff of broccoli breath on me from the casserole Mom made for dinner, then grinned when I gagged. “And just look at me now.”
Make a Prediction
THIS MUST BE IT,” Mr. Devine said, taking a right off the two-lane highway.
“Eeee!” Dinah said, bouncing in the front seat. She whipped around. “I’m so excited!”
I perched on my butt and took in the view. Unlike what we’d been seeing for the last several hours—flat, flat, and more flat, all of it shimmering with heat mirages—the private drive we’d turned onto took us into a whole new land. A canopy of foliage arched over us, dappling the sunlight. The silver-barked trees were gnarled and ancient, and moss hung from the branches. The moss was magical looking, like something from a fairy tale. Like troll’s hair.
We pulled up to a weathered gatehouse, and Mr. Devine told the aging security guard that we were here for the sea turtle project.
“Ah-right then,” the guard said. “What y’all want is the MacKinnon-Karrer house.” His South Carolina accent was thicker than grits. His stretched-out vowels were grits, taking up so much space in his mouth that there wasn’t room for anything else.
He shuffled to his desk and grabbed a map, which he spread on the ledge of the gatehouse window. “Yer a-gun keep on this here road fer ’bout two miles. You’ll pass the clubhouse on yer right. Best she-crab soup you’ll evah taste, if you git the chance.”
Dinah and I shared a look of delight—not because of the she-crab soup, but because this old man was such a character. I kind of wanted to marry him, only not really. Not at all, actually. But I loved listening to him talk.
“Then you’ll cross on over the marsh,” he continued. “Be sure to keep an eye out for Old Gran’Pappy Blue Heron. He likes to greet the visitors, so he sits way up high on one of them posts by the bridge.”
“Sweet,” I said.
The old man jabbed at the map. “After that, you’ll take a sharp left, and not too much later, a sharp right. More like an S curve.”
Mr. Devine rubbed the spot between his eyebrows.
“Yer not too far now,” the man said. “Jess look for the sign that says MacKinnon-Karrer, and if you don’t see that, look for a big ol’ house with a stained-glass window in the shape of a nautilus.”
“What’s a nautilus?” I asked.
Dinah spoke up. “I know. It’s one of those gym machines they have the infomercials for. I think it’s called the Bow-Flex? ”
The guard looked at Dinah funny. “Naw, it’s a shell. Kinda like a snail shell.”
“Oh,” Dinah said.
“The Bow-Flex,” I said under my breath, flicking her head and making her giggle.
“Well, all righty then,” Mr. Devine said. “Reckon we should get going.”
“All righty then” and “reckon” weren’t words Dinah’s dad normally used, and Dinah gi
ggled harder. I giggled, too.
“Reckon so,” the old man said as Mr. Devine flushed and lifted his hand to his collar. It was as if he was adjusting a nonexistent tie.
The final leg of our journey was jam-packed with yummy, beach-y things, starting with Old Gran’Pappy Blue Heron, who was indeed perched on a wooden post by the marsh. He had long, spindly legs and a long, curved neck, and as we drove past him, Dinah rolled down her window and called, “Hi!”
Old Gran’Pappy swiveled his head and eyed her with his beady black eyes, as shiny and flat as pebbles. Then he spread his wings—which were enormous—and flapped away.
The marsh itself was interesting, too. Pale green reeds stuck up from the swampy water, and snow-white egrets dipped and darted among them. I didn’t know they were egrets until Dinah told me. She’d read up on the Carolina wetlands to prepare for our trip.
One somewhat freaky thing we saw was a wooden sign standing at a tilt at the edge of the marsh. PLEASE DO NOT FEED OR MOLEST THE ALLIGATORS, it said.
“Alligators?” Dinah squeaked.
“Molest?” I squealed. “What does that even mean? And why would anybody want to?”
Dinah blinked at the murky water. “There aren’t really alligators, are there, Dad?”
“It’s a marsh, so probably,” he said. “Did you not come across alligators in your research?”
Dinah gulped, and I suppressed a smile. Knowing Dinah, she probably read up on all the cute South Carolina creatures—egrets, baby turtles, hoppy toads—and selectively blanked out any and all mentions of grinning reptiles with sharp teeth.
“If Cinnamon were here, she’d steal that sign,” I said. “She’d take it home with her and put it in her bedroom.”
“No, she would not,” Dinah said, doing a meaningful head-jerk to remind me that her dad was in the car with us.
“Oh, please,” I said, because what was Mr. Devine going to do, bust Cinnamon for a crime she couldn’t commit even if she wanted to? And then I thought, Ooo, it’s the “stealing” part Dinah wants me to shut up about, because of Mary Woods and the makeup.
I changed the subject. “What is up with Cinnamon, anyway?” I said. “Is she ever going to tell us her ‘big news’?”