“I have no idea,” I replied, following her into her room. “Maybe you yelling at him the other night got through to him.”
“You think?” she asked, surprised.
“You never know. But I’d be nice to him at breakfast,” I said as she slipped inside her closet. I leaned against one of her bedposts and stared across the street at the windows of the gray house. My heart skipped a beat at the very sight of it, but the place was still. “Maybe you can get ungrounded.”
“And then you’ll go to the party with me?” Darcy asked hopefully, gripping a white sweater to her chest as she came to the closet doorway.
I rolled my eyes but smiled. It was nice, sharing this sisterly moment with her. Feeling hopeful about my dad.
“Fine,” I told her. “If, by some miracle, we get ungrounded, I promise I’ll go to the party with you.”
“Yay!” She jumped up onto her toes, then dove back into the closet to get dressed.
I laughed and started to turn away so I could go get dressed myself, but at that moment, the curtain across the way moved. And this time, I could have sworn I saw a leather bracelet disappear behind it.
Tristan was definitely watching me. Unless good old grandma had a leather bracelet, too. But what about me was so freaking interesting that it had him squatting in a house a tenth the size of his own? And was it possible that it was something innocent? That maybe he just…had a crush on me?
“Everything okay, Rory?” my father asked, looking down at me. My skin was burning over my last thought, and I quickly looked away from him. We were just passing the eerily silent park, where the swings hung still and heavy over the scraggly weeds. The gate was pushed all the way open so that it was flush with the fence on the inside, and as usual, there were no kids in sight.
“Fine,” I said distractedly. “Why?”
“You just looked…serious,” he said with a small smile.
Darcy shot me an alarmed look, and I knew she was wondering if I’d just had a flash. I gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and her shoulders relaxed. I hadn’t told my father about the flashes because I didn’t need him worrying and scouring the Yellow Pages to find me a shrink on the island. Not that I’d seen any Yellow Pages since we’d gotten here, even though back home our mailman was leaving them on our front step, like, every other week. In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen a mail carrier here, either. Or a mailbox. I glanced around at the houses, and sure enough, not a single mailbox in sight. Huh. Maybe everyone here had their mail delivered directly to a PO box. It wouldn’t be the first random, quaint, old-fashioned thing about this island.
“I was just…trying to remember the last time we all ate out together,” I said in answer to my father.
“Oh. It wasn’t that long ago,” my dad said vaguely.
Darcy and I exchanged a look. It had to be at least four years ago. The only instance I could even remember was Darcy’s thirteenth birthday and an ill-advised trip to Friendly’s during which my dad had insisted she eat one of those clown sundae things, as if she were six years old. Since she’d just gotten her first period and started her first diet with no mom around to advise her on either, Darcy had burst into tears and run out of the restaurant. Which was maybe why we hadn’t eaten out together since.
We came to the top of the hill and turned onto Main Street. My dad looked up at the sky and smiled.
Now that I was certain I’d not seen in years. At least not since my mother had died.
Across the street, the fountain at
the center of the park burbled and splashed while two guys with shaggy hair and baggy plaid shorts jumped their skateboards off the pool’s edge. The banner for the fireworks display flapped in the breeze.
“Hey, Darcy, your Rasta boyfriend’s MIA,” I joked, pushing my sunglasses up into my hair. The spot at the top of the path where he normally stood seemed oddly lonely without him.
Darcy looked at me blankly. “What?”
“Look,” I said, lifting my chin toward the park. “Do you think he made enough money to take his act on the road or something?”
I couldn’t see Darcy’s eyes behind her dark sunglasses, but her expression was blank as she turned to look at the park. “Okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I gaped at her, my heart giving an unpleasant, nervous squeeze. My dad had walked ahead and was a few steps from the general store’s outdoor tables.
“Darcy, come on. He’s been there every morning since we got here?” I said, forcing a laugh in my voice. “The Bob Marley–type guy…? You said he was embracing the cliché?”
Darcy looked at me like I was crazy.
“I think you need your head examined,” she said, turning on her heel. Her floral miniskirt swished as she walked away. I felt like my brain had just been switched into hyperdrive. It wasn’t like I imagined the guy. I’d seen him three or four times, I’d seen other people standing around enjoying his music, I could name every song I’d heard him sing, and Darcy and I had talked about him on more than one occasion. Had falling down the stairs and smacking her head somehow affected her short-term memory?
Taking a deep breath, I glanced back at the park one more time before walking into the general store. Dad and Darcy had already found a small booth, just across from the old-fashioned, chrome-rimmed counter. The couple I’d seen getting off the ferry on our first day here sat at the counter, their pinkies linked between them as they sipped their coffee. The taller guy’s fedora hat sat on the counter next to him. He smiled when he caught me checking it out, and I smiled back as I slipped onto the bench next to Darcy.
My father handed me a small plastic menu. I let my eyes slide over the classic diner selections, then trail back to Darcy. She had her sunglasses off and sat with her head casually resting on her hand as she scanned the menu.