Swans Landing #1 - Surfacing (24 page)

The chair rocked back a bit when I pushed myself to my feet suddenly, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. “You’re already prejudiced against me, so there’s no reason for me to sit here and tell you my story, even if it is the truth.”

“We’re not done yet, Mara,” Mr. Richter said as I stomped across the room.

“
I
am,” I told him. “You’re no different from anyone else around here.” The door hit the wall with a loud crack when I swung it open, the sound echoing down the empty hall. Everyone had left, free to go home for the day.

Everyone, except one person. I stopped short when I saw him seated on the floor across from the guidance office, his back against the wall and legs bent so that his arms rested on his knees.

“Mara!” Mr. Richter called behind me. “We have a lot more to discuss today—”

Josh raised one eyebrow at me, like he had done that day he first took me for a ride on his ATV. A challenge. Did I stay to listen to Mr. Richter’s guidance, or did I dare to go wherever Josh wanted to take me, despite what might have happened with him and Sailor?

I extended one hand toward him, palm up. Josh slipped his hand into mine and stood. Then, fingers entwined, we ran for the front doors of Swans Landing School, bursting out into the bright afternoon sun and stumbling across the parking lot toward freedom.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“So why do you have to see the school counselor anyway?” I walked around the Swans Landing Lighthouse, running my fingers along the white stone. “Did you punch Elizabeth in the nose too?”

Josh laughed as he followed a few steps behind me. “I can’t say that I haven’t considered it,” he said. “But no. My excuse is a lot less exciting than yours.”

“Which is?” I asked.

After we left school, Josh and I had run hand-in-hand down Heron Avenue, dashing around people walking by. We didn’t even stop by his house to get his ATV, we just kept running until we were out of breath and sweating, eventually finding ourselves at the lighthouse, the farthest point north that we could go before running into the water.

“Mr. Richter thinks I have a bad attitude,” Josh said, “all relating back to my dad’s death and my mom’s breakdown. He says I haven’t allowed myself to come to terms with what happened and move on.”

Sand had worked its way inside my boots, but I barely noticed as I kept walking in circles around the lighthouse. “Like he knows anything,” I said. “I think a person is allowed to have a bad attitude when they’ve lost a parent.”

“Or two,” Josh said. “My mom may be here physically, but mentally I lost her a long time ago.” He paused, taking a deep breath before continuing. “My mom took my dad’s death really hard. She’s not always herself.”

I looked out at the crashing waves on the shore, only a few yards away from the lighthouse. The building was closed to visitors since the lighthouse was still in operation, but the grounds were open for exploration. It was nice being here and not back at Pirate’s Cove, surrounded by the memories of Sailor in Josh’s arms.

“The cancer took my mom away from me long before she died,” I said, my gaze focused on the horizon. “Sometimes I would dream about going back in time, back before she got sick, when everything was okay. But whenever I woke up, it never was. My mom was still dying and so I started to hate sleeping. Because waking up always brought me one day closer to her being gone.”

I started walking again, feeling the sandpaper texture of the concrete under my fingers as I followed the circle of the lighthouse until it brought me back to Josh.

He stood with his back to me. His shoulders shook a little and I realized he was crying. I stepped back, unsure what I should do. Did he want to be left alone?

But something told me that being left alone was the last thing he needed. So I stepped toward him, slipping my arms around his waist. The echo of his heart beat steadily when I pressed my ear against his back. All the questions I had about his relationship to Sailor died on my tongue.

“I’ve done everything I can to help her and make her better, but it’s never been enough,” he said. “Is it weird to miss someone you don’t even know? Because every day I miss my dad even though I was a barely a year old when he died.”

I closed my eyes, remembering all the days I would sit in front of my window and wish as hard as I could that the next car driving down the road would be Lake. “It’s not weird,” I told him. “But sometimes, the reality never lives up to the person you think you’re missing.”

Josh turned around so that he could wrap his arms around me and hold me pressed close to him. I leaned my head against his chest and he rested his chin on top of my head, his fingers knotted in my hair. The day had grown too warm for jackets, so we’d tossed ours into the grassy sand nearby, along with our backpacks and my camera.

If I closed my eyes, it felt like Josh and I stood on the edge of the world in the shadow of the lighthouse. As if there was no one else but us. In his arms, I could forget everything.

I needed him. When I left Swans Landing, I needed him at my side.

“Stay right here,” I told him, pulling away.

“What—”

I held up my hand to silence him as I dashed back to where we’d left our belongings. I grabbed my camera and turned it on, adjusting the settings for the bright day.

“No pictures,” Josh said. But he was smiling and he didn’t sound very serious.

“Just one,” I told him. “You won’t even be able to really see you because I’m going far enough back to get the lighthouse and everything.”

Josh rolled his eyes, but he said, “Fine. Just one.”

I walked backward with my camera at my eye, adjusting the focus as I moved. Once I got far enough away, I dropped to one knee and tilted the camera a little so that the entire lighthouse stretched from the top of the frame to the bottom, with the silhouette of a boy standing next to it, looking out toward the water.

I clicked. And clicked again. After a few minutes, Josh turned around and called, “I thought you said just one.”

“I lied,” I called back, taking another shot.

Josh jogged toward me and I focused on him, snapping more pictures as he drew closer. He laughed and smiled wider than I’d ever seen before.

“Wait!” I called, laughing as the camera continued to click photo after photo. But Josh didn’t stop. He crashed into me, knocking me back into the sand. We laid there, our legs tangled together, as we laughed and kissed.

“Internet photo,” I said, raising the camera up above us and snapping a few shots.

“Do you ever put that camera down and live in the moment?” Josh asked, trailing his fingers over my chin and neck.

My smile faded a little as I looked back at him. “My pictures help me remember the people and the moments I don’t want to forget. You never know when something might happen and someone won’t be there the next day.”

Josh smiled sadly at me. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

The LCD screen on the back of the camera flashed into life. There were Josh and me, lying in the grass, his nose nuzzled against my cheek and eyes closed while I smiled up at the camera. The photos cycled by onscreen until I found the one I wanted. “Here she is, right before she got sick.”

Josh studied the image of the two of us arm-in-arm, smiling and happy. “She was beautiful,” he said. “You look like her.”

“No, I don’t. I look like Lake.”

“Yeah, but you look like your mom too.”

My fingers traced over the outline of my mom’s face on the screen. “There’s so much I don’t know,” I said sadly. “So many questions I wish I could ask her. So much of her life here that she never told me about. Sometimes I think maybe I never really knew her at all. And I wonder what else did she lie about? I get so angry about all the secrets she kept. And then—” The swollen lump in my throat made it harder to speak. “And then I’m angry at myself for being mad at her. Because she’s not here to defend herself.”

I melted into Josh’s embrace, closing my eyes tight when he trailed his lips over my eyebrows and nose. In his arms, everything was okay. I didn’t have to be the angry, bitter Mara that I showed to everyone else. I could be wounded and raw without worrying that he’d hold it against me or run away.

Josh lived only a few blocks away from Lake, but then, the island was so small that everyone was only a few blocks away. He led me to a house that may have once been a bright and cheery yellow, but now was dull and mildewed. The yard wasn’t well-kept and a few overgrown bushes lined the front of the house on stilts.

“Sorry,” Josh said to me as he led the way up the rotting staircase. “It’s not exactly something you see in
Better Homes and Gardens
.”

I shook my head. “It’s fine. I don’t even have a real bedroom at Lake’s house. Not even a door, just a ladder.” I grinned to show him that the decaying state of his home was no big deal.

The house was quiet when we entered. The front door opened up into a cozy living room that had a well lived in look. When I looked closer, I saw how the couch was torn in a few places and the recliner seemed to be a relic from the first invention of La-Z-Boys. I followed Josh through the room, past a picture of a young, gap-toothed Josh smiling for a school photo, and into a kitchen with cracked linoleum and cabinet doors that hung crookedly.

“Want something to eat?” Josh asked. He pulled open the refrigerator and leaned down to inspect the contents.

What I wanted was more of his lips on mine, but I had suddenly become shy, so I said, “Sure. Anything is fine.”

Josh grabbed a jar of grape jelly from the fridge and then bread and peanut butter from a cabinet. He held the peanut butter jar up and asked, “You allergic?”

“No,” I said. “Peanut butter is good.”

He nodded, then set about undoing the twist tie on the bread. “I have a cousin on the mainland who’s allergic to peanuts. So I always ask.”

“Thanks for the concern,” I said. He kept his head bent over the counter as he carefully spread a thick layer of peanut butter and jelly on two pieces of bread.

When he reached over to another cabinet to grab two glasses, the door came off in his hands. Josh looked embarrassed and didn’t meet my gaze. “I haven’t gotten around to fixing that yet,” he said.

“I understand,” I told him. “You’re busy with school and work and all.”

Josh nodded. His fingers brushed mine as he handed me a paper towel with half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk.

“Thanks,” I said.

We stood at the counter, eating our sandwiches in silence. It was so quiet that I could hear every time Josh swallowed. I shifted from one foot to the other. The silence was killing me.

“So where does your mom work?” I asked.

“She doesn’t,” Josh said.

I turned my attention back to the remains of my sandwich, scooping some peanut butter out with my finger.

“She’s at a doctor’s appointment today,” Josh said after a few minutes. “On the mainland.”

“Oh,” I said.

Josh didn’t look at me when he said, “She tried to work for a while when I was a kid, but she could never last very long at any job. She has a lot of headaches, really bad ones, and she has to take a bunch of different medicines to do the simplest things.”

I pressed my lips together, nodding.

“She’s not crazy,” he said, finally looking up to meet my gaze. His eyes flashed with anger. “She’s unable to cope with things like most people can.”

“I understand,” I said.

Josh’s eyes studied me. “Do you?”

I sucked in a deep breath. “My mom was never the same person she once was after she got sick. For a while, yes, she went on like normal. But when the cancer started really attacking her body, she would spend days in bed sick. Unable to even walk to the bathroom on her own.”

Josh drank the last of his milk and then set the glass down softly on the wooden countertop. He kept looking at me, like he wanted to hear more.

“I became like the mom,” I said, remembering all the times I had to clean her up, bathe her, and urge her to eat when she refused. “I stopped caring anymore about what everyone at school was doing or what movies were coming out. My purpose was to take care of her.”

Josh’s hand found mine on the counter and he laced our fingers together. “But sometimes you resent it,” he said softly. “And her, for making you be the parent. You resent everyone else that walks around at school, worrying about whether they have the coolest stuff or whether someone likes them or not. Sometimes you want to escape.”

“Yeah,” I said softly, tilting my head to one side. “How—how did your dad die?”

“He drowned,” Josh answered. His words hung in the air between us for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Josh squeezed my hand. “I know.”

He turned, pulling me toward him and I raised my chin, tilting my head back so that he could kiss me. When our lips touched, something came alive deep inside me. It was like Josh and I matched, as if we were meant to find each other.

“Come with me,” I whispered into his ear. “Let’s swim away together, just you and me. We can go anywhere, leave all of this behind and start a brand new life where none of it matters.”