At least, when I didn’t have tears in my eyes, he looked like a man.
“Gonna”—she took a deep breath—“be so happy.”
No, no I wouldn’t.
Unless she was talking about herself. Because then, maybe she’d be right.
Faye coughed weakly just as the first streak of lightning lit up the sky around us.
I felt my insides tense, then realized something.
We weren’t going back inside.
A, she wouldn’t let me.
B, I didn’t have the strength to get her there.
“The first time I met you,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the whipping wind. “You were talking to your mom. You were telling her how you had no friends, and the only way you would ever make friends was if you were allowed to go down to the creek beside your house and play with the boys that were always there.”
Faye weakly squeezed my hand.
But she didn’t say anything, which hurt my heart even worse.
“When I rolled up on my bike, I rode right up to your porch and confirmed your story. Even though I’d never been to that creek in my life,” I continued. “You were so wide eyed that I almost laughed right then and there. Instead, I controlled myself. Then, five minutes of convincing later, we both walked down into that creek for the first time together. We caught frogs and threw them at the boys that were down there.”
Faye’s squeeze this time was barely more than a brush of butterfly wings.
But I still felt it.
“You were great that day. Stuck up for me against Todd Martin. The boy who threw the frog back at me and it got in my hair. From that day forward, we were the best of friends, and not a day went by where we weren’t together in some way.” I paused. “Do you remember the time that you tried to sneak into the car with us on the way to the beach? Your mom was so mad.”
And she had been.
By the time my dad had realized that she was with us, we’d been halfway there. Only, Faye’s mother had realized it before my dad did, and drove nearly the whole way to us on her own to get Faye.
“I love you so much, Faye,” I said, watching another streak of lightning cross the sky. “I don’t know what I’ll ever do without you.”
I didn’t.
I talked to Faye every single day. Had since childhood. Not a single day went by that I didn’t see her or speak to her. Even when she got on my nerves.
There was no squeeze this time to my comment, and that terrified me.
I was too afraid to look.
So I kept talking until the hand in mine grew limp.
Until that hand grew cold.
Until that hand slipped from mine when I finally admitted the truth.
Faye Goodstart had died in the middle of a hurricane on the beach, with a smile on her face.
CHAPTER 3
Karma Café: no menus here. You get what you deserve.
-T-shirt
PRICE
Only an idiot would be at the beach in the middle of a hurricane.
And, apparently, I wasn’t the only idiot, because my entire family, sans my mom and dad, were there, too.
Though, from the moment we’d arrived, and I’d found out that I was near the kids’ room, I realized a few things.
One, I wasn’t going to be spending much time in the house for the next week because holy fuck, were the acoustics bad in the house. Hearing not only my sister on one side of me having sex, but my sister’s kids on the other side of me screaming about what show to watch, had pretty much frayed my nerves before an hour had passed of us being there.
Two, I was going to highly dislike my family when we finally left.
Why?
Because they were fucking loud, and we hadn’t ever gotten over the whole no fighting thing.
We could literally fight about anything.
As in, when I’d left, Tide and Shine had been getting into it about who was cooking dinner.
I’d left just as the thunder started, walking down the length of the beach.
I’d started out in the dry sand, but at some point, the tide started rolling in higher and higher until I was now wet from the knees down.
Which, I supposed, was my fault for wearing jeans to the beach.
But I didn’t own any shorts but swim trunks, and I hadn’t wanted to go back to my room to get them because of obvious reasons.
The beach was fucking empty.
I’m talking, not even the damn birds were out.
In the distance, I’d seen some dolphins jumping up and down, but other than that, no signs of life could be detected anywhere.
At least, at first.
At one point, I’d taken a break from walking and had stared out at the ocean, remembering being out here when us kids were small.
I’d always liked the beach… for a few days.