“Which they will,” he chimed in.
She shook her head as she paused to think; her mouth was twisted in concentration.
“If they don’t,” she said eventually, “then you have to make me one of your drawings.”
He couldn’t hide the look of surprise on his face. For a moment, it felt as if she’d seen right through him. Graham was always careful about discussing things like this in public, and though his drawings were hardly anything at all—they were just doodles, really, sketches of skylines—it still was a piece of himself that he kept close.
He’d forgotten that he told her about them: a late-night e-mail sent after some premiere party, when he’d sat alone in his room in the big, empty house and written to this girl across the country about how his pencil moved as if on its own. He’d told her that it was an escape, this type of art, the best kind of travel. He’d told her it made him happy.
How could he have forgotten that the person he was writing to all those months was the same one standing before him now?
It took him another moment to find his voice. “Deal,” he said finally, and her face broke into a smile.
“Great,” she said, pushing open the door. “Hope you brought a pencil.”
Inside, the place was at least twice the size of the shop back in Henley, lined with colorful bins of candy and giant lollipops. There were buckets of saltwater taffy, bins full of jelly beans, and a glass case with more than a dozen different kinds of fudge. Graham was eyeing a display of vintage candy when he realized Ellie was watching him. When he caught her eye, she jerked her head toward the cashier, and he wandered over obediently.
He’d forgotten his baseball cap—the thinnest of disguises, but still a kind of shield against recognition—and when he stepped up to the counter, the woman reacted as if she were following a script: a bored glance up, a look away, and then a sudden realization. It was all there: the double take, the widened eyes, the open mouth. At this point, it usually went one of two ways: there were those who cried out, who jumped around and screamed and pointed, and there were those who tamped down all of their instincts to make a scene and simply went about their usual business with shaky voices and trembling hands, waiting until after he’d left to pick up their phone and call everyone they know.
To Graham’s relief, this woman fell into the second category. She gaped for only a moment before lowering her eyes, as if afraid to look at him.
“I was just wondering,” he began as she worked to compose herself, to keep her face carefully neutral, “whether you might have whoopie pies here?”
“Whoopie pies?” she asked, already looking apologetic. “I don’t think we do.”
She began to glance desperately around the shop, as if they might suddenly materialize on one of the shelves, and Graham could almost feel how badly she wanted to come through for him. He was about to wave it away and buy something else when Ellie stepped up beside him.
“Can I ask you one more question?” she said. “Just for research purposes?”
The woman nodded, chewing her lip.
“Have you ever even heard of a whoopie pie?”
“I don’t—” she began, then looked at Graham, who raised his chin up and down almost imperceptibly, and the cashier’s eyes drifted back to Ellie. “Actually, I think I have. Yep.”
Graham beamed at her, just as Ellie gave him a little punch to the ribs. Laughing, he jumped away in surprise.
“Fine,” he said. “You win.”
The woman blinked a few times, and Ellie smiled at her. “Thanks,” she said. “I think we’ll just have some ice cream.”
Afterward, they took their cones outside to one of the picnic tables, where they ate fast, trying to keep them from dripping. They were the only ones out there, alone except for the cars that rushed by, and the occasional seagull.
“This does feel sort of like cheating,” Ellie said, and he looked across at her, his stomach tightening. She’d never mentioned a boyfriend, but then, they’d always avoided anything too specific, and he realized now he’d never even thought to ask. He was still working out how to phrase his question when she held up her ice cream.
“Ah,” he said, realizing what she meant. He felt his shoulders relax. “I’m sure the good folks at Sprinkles will forgive you.”
“Especially since it was in pursuit of a quest.”
“A failed quest,” he pointed out.
“Still.”
“I think you have to be more of a believer for these things to work,” he said, wiping some ice cream from his face. “How are you supposed to find what you’re looking for if you’re not convinced it’s even out there?”
“Yeah, well, if I remember correctly, Ahab caught a few glimpses of Moby-Dick, and Dorothy definitely knew her home was in Kansas,” she said with a grin. “At the moment, the whoopie pie is still nothing but a myth.”
Graham smiled too, and when their eyes met, they remained there like that for several seconds, stuck in an odd kind of staring contest, before Ellie looked away.
“Okay,” she said, tossing the last of her ice-cream cone to the seagulls that were milling about nearby. “Time to pay up.”
She fished a pencil out of her bag, then grabbed a menu from the pile stacked beneath a rock in the middle of the table and flipped it over, sliding it across to Graham. He wiped his hands on his shorts and frowned.
“I never said I was good,” he told her, taking the pen. “Just that I liked doing it.”
“That’s the best kind of good.”
“Any requests?”
“One of your cities,” she said as he bent his head over the paper. He could feel her watching him as he drew, sketching out a series of boxes. He’d been telling the truth; he wasn’t good. It was really more geometry than art, what he did, but he felt himself settling into the motion, the precision of the lines and the sureness of the corners. There was something methodical about it, something cathartic; when he drew, the rest of the world fell away.
He’d filled nearly half the page before she spoke again, and her words startled him enough that his pencil ripped a tiny hole in the paper. He rubbed at it, trying to smooth it out again, then glanced up.
“Sorry,” he said. “What?”
“That woman recognized you.”
He held the pencil very still and felt his muscles go tense. “Yes.”
“That must be…”
He waited for her to say what everyone else always said: That must be cool. Or that must be weird. That must be disconcerting. That must be a dream come true. That must be interesting or awful, crazy or bizarre.
Instead, she shook her head and started again. “That must be hard.”
He raised his eyes, but said nothing.
“It would be for me, anyway. All those people recognizing you. All those cameras. All those eyes.” She lifted her shoulders. “It must be really, really hard.”
“It is,” he said, because it was. Because it was like walking around with your skin turned inside out, tender and pink and shockingly exposed.
But at the moment, the only person looking at him was Ellie, and that was different. He didn’t want to think about all the rest of it.
“You get used to it,” he said, though it wasn’t exactly true. It was just a thing to say when the truth was too hard to explain.
She nodded, and he turned back to his drawing, finishing up the last few buildings, putting in the windows and the doors, tending to the stairs and the sidewalks, adding the occasional flowerpot or fire escape. There was a world to be built right there on the page, and Graham didn’t look up again until he’d finished.
“Ta-da,” he said eventually, sliding it across the rough wood of the picnic table. Ellie propped an elbow on either side of it, and he could see only the top of her red hair as she studied it for what felt like forever.
Finally, she looked up at him. “Seems like a nice place to live.”
“Probably not as nice as Maine.”
“Except they have whoopie pies there,” she said, pointing to a squat building he’d labeled “Whoopie Pie Factory.”
“They have them here too,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find them.”
“Aren’t you gonna sign your work?” she asked, nudging the drawing back over to him, and for a second, he hesitated, all the usual alarm bells going off in his head. But this was different; he knew she wouldn’t sell it online, or let it fall into the hands of bloggers or photographers or journalists, all the many wolves that paced the perimeters of his life. He scrawled his name across the bottom of the page, then started to fold it, matching up the corners, but she reached out and grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” she said, and he stopped. But even so, she didn’t let go. Her hand felt hot against his, and it sent a jolt straight through him. After a moment, her cheeks flushed pink and she pulled away, turning to take a small book from her bag.
“You can’t fold it,” she said, holding the page between two fingers and slipping it neatly inside the cover of the book. “You’ll ruin it.”
“Doesn’t something have to be valuable first?” he joked. “Before it can be ruined?”
“Anything can be ruined,” she said with a little shrug as she rose to her feet.
Graham stood too, and as he did, the stone heart fell out of his pocket, rolling to a stop on the grass near the foot of the bench. Ellie was already making her way back toward the road, but he paused to pick it up, examining it for a moment before slipping it back into his pocket, where he hoped it would remain safe.
From:
[email protected] Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 6:32 PM
To:
[email protected] Subject: if you get lost…
I know you said you didn’t need directions, but in case you’ve forgotten, the address is 510 E. Sunset. It’s the yellow house on the corner. (Which, coincidentally, looks a little like the whoopie pie factory in your drawing…)
They parted at the top of Sunset Drive, and Ellie followed the road the rest of the way on her own. The sea air was heavy this evening, and a fog was rolling in, making everything look indistinct and slightly unreal. But she barely noticed; she was too busy thinking about the last few hours: the way Graham had looked up from his drawing, the way he’d grinned at her across the candy store, the way his hair curled slightly at the back of his neck as she followed him up the beach.
But mostly, she was trying to figure out why—at the time—she’d thought it would be a good idea to invite him over to her house for dinner tonight, and the fact that he’d actually said yes. Now the list of everything she needed to do before he arrived was running through her head like some sort of unending news ticker, and she was trying hard not to panic.
It seemed impossible that this might turn out well, but if there was even the slightest chance that it could, she’d need to make sure Mom left on time for her book club (for once), that the kitchen was clean (for once), and that Bagel got enough exercise beforehand so that he’d act like a beagle instead of a banshee (for once). And that was just for starters. There were about a thousand ways this could go horribly wrong. Hopefully there would be enough food in the house to make something resembling an actual meal. Hopefully Mom didn’t have inventory from the shop all over the living room. Hopefully the air conditioner had miraculously fixed itself while she’d been out.
Hopefully.
The road curved downhill, and she let the momentum carry her faster, her sandals slapping the pavement as she wondered what she could have been thinking. It was just that she couldn’t imagine going out to eat with him in town tonight; not with the photographers there, not after what happened with Quinn just the night before, not with everyone she knew keeping an eye on them. And so when he’d suggested the Lobster Pot again—half joking, she knew, but still—Ellie found herself inviting him over instead.
“I can’t promise much in the way of gourmet food,” she told him, “but I can guarantee there won’t be a lobster in sight.”
“Wow,” he’d said. “You really know how to sell a place.”
But he’d accepted. He was coming over. To her house. In one hour.
Ellie was already halfway up the driveway before she realized, with a start, that Quinn was perched on the porch swing, using one foot to rock back and forth as she examined her nails.
“Hey,” she said, looking up at the sound of footsteps. “Where’ve you been?”
“Out for a walk,” Ellie said, sitting down beside her. The swing creaked beneath their combined weight, and she remembered the two of them coming out here with blankets when they were little. They’d huddle together, pretending the bench was a boat, closing their eyes and letting the waves down the street complete the illusion that they were out at sea.
“Where to?” Quinn asked.
But Ellie knew that wasn’t what she really wanted to know. “With Graham,” she said quietly, looking at her sideways.
Quinn shook her head. “It still seems kind of unbelievable, doesn’t it?”
Ellie could think of nothing to say to this; it was true. The whole thing was nothing if not unbelievable.
“So I have about a million questions,” Quinn said, tucking her legs up beneath her on the swing. “How’d he first start e-mailing you? And really, how could you not tell me you were writing love letters to someone? I mean, even if you take Graham Larkin out of the equation, that’s still something I should know. I’m your best friend.” When she paused to consider this, her face darkened slightly. “Seriously, El. When did you become the kind of person who keeps secrets?”
Ellie looked away, unsure how to respond. Quinn had no idea that she’d gotten right to the heart of the truth about her. She didn’t realize that for the whole twelve years they’d been friends, Ellie had been doing just that: keeping secrets; at first, out of a promise to her mother, and then later, when they were older, out of habit or instinct or maybe both, a muffling of something too big to say out loud.
“I’m not…” she began, but trailed off. “I was going to tell you.”
“Yeah?” Quinn asked. “When?” There was a sudden hardness behind her eyes now. It was as if she’d known she was upset about something, but hadn’t until this moment been able to pinpoint just what it was.
“Soon,” Ellie said, swiveling to face her more fully. “I swear. I just didn’t know what exactly this was, or if it would turn out to be anything at all. I thought it was just some random kid on the other side of the country who I’d probably never meet.” She sighed. “I guess I didn’t know if it was real.”
“And now?”
She glanced down at her hands. Her thumb was smudged with gray from where she’d picked up the pencil Graham used for his drawing earlier. She fought the urge to take the piece of paper out of her bag and examine it again.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe.”
Quinn raised her eyebrows, and Ellie shook her head.
“Or maybe not. I mean, he’s Graham Larkin,” she said, but even as she did, she was thinking the opposite. That he hadn’t seemed like Graham Larkin today. He’d seemed like that random kid on the other side of the country.
Behind them, the screen door opened, and Mom stuck her head out, using her foot to keep Bagel—who was constantly attempting a jailbreak—inside the house. “I thought I heard someone,” she said. “What’re you guys up to?”
“Ellie was just telling me about—” Quinn began, but stopped abruptly when she noticed Ellie’s widened eyes.
“I was just seeing if she wanted to stay for dinner,” Ellie said a bit too quickly.
Mom shrugged. “I’ve got book club tonight, but you two are welcome to whatever’s in the fridge.”
“Thanks,” Ellie said. “What time are you leaving? You probably have to go pretty soon, huh?”
Mom glanced at her watch. “In a little bit,” she said, then ducked back through the door along with the dog.
When she was gone, Quinn turned back to Ellie.
“What the hell was that?”
“Sorry, it’s just that Graham’s actually coming over soon, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it, and she wouldn’t be happy that—”
“So you’re lying to your mom now too?” Quinn asked, her eyebrows raised. “Seriously, what’s with all the secrets?”
“This is different,” Ellie told her. “It’s complicated.”
“How?”
She lowered her eyes. “I can’t tell you.”
“Let me guess,” Quinn said. “Another secret.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really. There’s more to it than…” She stopped and shook her head. “I wish I could explain.”
“Don’t bother,” Quinn said, standing up. “I have to go. I’ve got plans tonight too.”
“Really?”
Quinn’s eyes were cold. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Of course not,” Ellie said quickly. “What are you up to?”
“I’m hanging out with Devon.”
“You are?” she said before she could think better of it. But it was too late. Quinn had whirled around and was watching her with narrowed eyes.
Ellie couldn’t help it. For the last four years, all she’d heard about was how ridiculous Devon was. He was too tall and too skinny; his hair was too curly and his glasses were always lopsided. She and Quinn had spent countless hours laughing about the way he followed her like a shadow, and everyone at school remembered the time freshman year that Quinn’s locker had gotten jammed on Valentine’s Day. When the janitor finally managed to open it for her, a whole pile of pink envelopes came tumbling out, and for months after that, poor Devon was teased about his crush on the janitor, a stooped man in his seventies.
But clearly something had changed last night, and Devon was no longer a punch line. Just like that, Ellie felt like some sort of invisible boundary had shifted, and she found herself on the opposite side from Quinn, who was now glaring at her.