Undercurrent (26 page)

“I’m saying… that I need some time to figure them out.”

I had no right to ask, but I had to know. “How much time?”

“I’m not sure. I hope less rather than more.” He looked at me, his eyes full. “But you have Paige. And your family. Things are okay with them, right?”

Okay, yes. Enough? That was another thing entirely.

“I’ll be there if you need me,” he said softly, backing away. “But if you could try not to need me for just a little while… I’d really appreciate it.”

I watched him go. He continued walking backward for several feet before finally turning around and jogging. Instead of going back inside our house, the way he’d come, he cut across the side yard and headed for his own.

I didn’t move for several minutes. I stood there, barely feeling the cold breeze or hearing the loons crying on the lake, the music playing inside the house, and the trick-or-treaters laughing down the street. I waited for Simon to come sprinting back across the yard, to sweep me up in his arms and tell me he’d made a terrible, awful mistake. That we both had, but that we could work through those mistakes together, since together was what we were supposed to be no matter what.

But he didn’t. And eventually, as the season’s first snowflakes began floating down from the sky, sprinkling the lake and stinging my hot skin, I stopped expecting him to.

I started slowly up the lawn. Reaching the house, I went inside and walked through the living room and past the kitchen, waving to Dad, who was wrapping dishes in bubble wrap and stacking them in cardboard boxes. I continued down the hall and up to the second floor, peering through the stairwell windows at Paige tossing packages of gum into the plastic pumpkins of a trio of young witches. Upstairs, I passed my parents’ room and the spare bedroom without glancing inside. At the end of the hall, I turned and stopped in the open doorway.

Mom was in the room Justine and I had shared, sorting through the summer clothes she’d been unable even to look at when we’d left Winter Harbor at the end of the summer.

“Hi,” I said.

She spun around, gave me a quick smile. “Hi, sweetie. How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” I came into the room, my eyes traveling over the old lobster bake posters and vintage Lake Kantaka postcards taped to the walls. “You?”

“A little crazed, but fine.” She lifted a stack of folded T-shirts from Justine’s dresser and put them in an open suitcase on the bed. “Did your father tell you that we’ve already received an offer? It’s not official yet, but the buyer said he’s ready to move when we are.” She stopped, rested her hands on her hips. “We just have so much stuff to sort through, there’s no telling when that’ll be.”

“I still can’t believe you guys are really selling the house.”

“Well,” she said with a sigh, moving on to a chest of spare blankets, “when the tides change, you have two choices. You can either stand there, letting the water wash over you and your feet sink deeper into the wet sand… or you can get out of the way. You can move up the beach—or off the beach, if you want. The point is not to get stuck.”

“I don’t want to be stuck.”

Her mouth set in a straight line. “Me either.”

After a moment she continued packing, and I leaned against the dresser. I looked across the room, toward the window and the snow falling heavier, faster, outside—and then to the antique hand mirror hanging next to it. The mirror was tarnished silver, but for a brief second, it glinted like new.

“Do you still have all of that college stuff you bought last year?” I asked, joining Mom by the wooden chest.

Her hands stilled only briefly before resuming folding. “What stuff?”

“The mugs and key chains? The umbrellas and sweatshirts?”

“I might’ve saved a few things,” she said.

“Good.” I paused. “I think I’m going to need them.”

She stopped folding and looked at me. “Why?”

And then, thinking of Justine, Mom and Dad, Charlotte and Paige, Simon and Parker, of facing your fears and confronting ghosts you’d rather pretend weren’t there, I revealed something I’d only just realized I’d been contemplating for months.

“Because I’m applying,” I said, “to Dartmouth.”

T
RICIA
R
AYBURN
grew up on the East End of Long Island and was always drawn to the water. She learned how to swim in the Long Island Sound and spent many summers at the beach. But she never went near the open ocean, even though it was only a few minutes away from her home. Spooked by her mother’s stories of being dragged out by riptides and the horrors of the film
Jaws
(inspired by the true story of a fellow Long Islander), it wasn’t until after she’d graduated from college and returned home that Tricia set foot on an ocean beach.

To this day, she is wary of the water, afraid of being stung, bitten, or trampled by waves. And yet, she can’t help being drawn to the sea.

Tricia is the author of
Ruby’s Slippers
and the Maggie Bean trilogy, as well as
Siren
, the first book in the Siren trilogy. You can visit her online at
www.triciarayburn.com
.