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M
Y PARENTS GOT ALL GUSSIED UP
to look at apartments: a button-down shirt for my dad, a flowered summer dress for my mom. They shouldn't have bothered. If Home Suite Home was craptacular, then the apartments we saw were suckerific. I didn't take any pictures. If there were ghosts in these places, they were sure to be mean ones.

Apartment #1 (a.k.a. “The Carbon Monoxide Special”) was right down the road from Home Suite Home—if you can call a six-lane highway a road. There was no tiny hill between it and the highway, though, no oxygen-producing grass to filter the fumes.

“It's quieter in the winter,” the apartment manager shouted, pulling down a squeaky window, “when it's all closed up.”

“Why can't we just rent something near the beach?” I asked as we drove to the next place. That would make it easier to get out for moonlit strolls with Duncan.

“For the same reason we have to live here in the first place,” my mother said.

Apartment #2 (code word: “Cave”) was in an okay-ish neighborhood of squatty houses and patchy lawns. My mother said the houses on that street cost almost a million dollars because they were on the ocean side of the highway, but I think she was making that up. The neighborhood didn't look beachy at all. It looked like it could be in Amerige, like it could be anywhere.

The Cave was at the end of a cul-de-sac, part of a beat-up blue house that backed up to a hill. The apartment had a side door and a tiny window—and that was it. The rest of it was buried in the slope. Inside it was quiet and cool. Actually, it was kind of cold—and it was over eighty degrees outside. It felt like we were in a tomb.

What would this place be like in January? When my dad (he'd shaved!) asked about fire safety, the homeowner, a grizzled old man who looked about a hundred miserable years old, said there was a door that led to the main house, “But I keep it locked at all times.”

Next!

We ended our “Beautiful Homes of Sandyland” tour at a complex called Valley View Apartments. I spent the entire time there trying to pick a more descriptive name. The Pit? The Hole? The Place Where Ugly People Come to Die?

The apartments weren't so much in a valley as they were in an enormous ditch. It made The Cave seem cheery in comparison: at least there you got sunlight in the yard. At Valley View it, would always be night. It was like December in Sweden or Alaska or one of those other northern places where the sun doesn't shine. Swear to God: it was after one o'clock when we saw the place, and the sun hadn't risen over the hill yet.

On the plus side, I wouldn't want to see this place brightly lit. Even in darkness it looked dirty, worn down, and just plain sad. There were two long, brown buildings that faced each other over a central parking lot. There were no patios or balconies, just straight concrete walkways, both upstairs and down, with a row of front doors. A couple of the doors had fake-flower wreaths or cutesy welcome signs on them, which made them seem even more pathetic, somehow. The complex was filled with fat adults and skinny children, all walking with their shoulders hunched forward, their mouths turned down. Televisions blared behind every door.

I thought, I
would rather die than live here.

Following the apartment manager to “a nice corner unit,” we smelled something nasty, and then we saw it: a pile of pinkish beige vomit right in the middle of the walkway. The manager walked around it. My mother stopped dead and grabbed my arm, as if pulling me back from a speeding car.

“I'll get someone to clean that up,” said the manager, a cigarette-stained woman with yellow hair and gray teeth and a frightening set of boobs that threatened to spill out of a sparkly turquoise tank top.

“We're finished here,” my mother said, her voice hoarse. And then she turned and pulled me to the car, my father following.

We climbed into the Escalade, which looked completely out of place in the lot of junk cars. And then my mother burst into tears. She cried and cried till she almost couldn't breathe, her sharp shoulders hunching forward just like the people who lived at Valley View.

She was still crying by the time we pulled into the lot at Home
Suite Home—which, I gotta tell you, was looking like a five-star resort at this point—but she was breathing a little more normally and cleaning herself up with a worn tissue. I should have felt sorry for her, I guess, but all I could think about was the vomit.

After my father parked the car, my mother stayed in her seat. He came around, opened her door, and helped her out.

I didn't even notice Duncan until I practically tripped over him. He was crouched on the concrete outside our door, writing a note. When he saw me, he grabbed the note, along with a bouquet of wildflowers that had been resting on the ground, and scrambled to his feet.

“Hi.” His eyes looked especially green in the sunlight. The bleached tips of his hair sprouted from beneath his backward baseball cap.

“Hi,” I said. You'd think I'd be worried about what my parents would think of Duncan, but right now I was just mortified to be seen with them, my father supporting my teary-eyed mother's arm like she was out on a day pass from the mental hospital.

“I didn't think you were here,” he said, holding up the note.

“I wasn't.” I took the slip of paper.

“Oh.”

My parents scurried past him with barely a hello. At least my mother wasn't actively crying at this point.

“We were just running some errands,” I lied.

He nodded and handed me the bouquet.

“These are for me?” I said. (All together now: “No, duh!”) There were wild daisies and Queen Anne's lace and some purple flowers I didn't recognize.

“They grow on the hill behind my apartment,” he said. “They
looked really pretty, so I just, like, thought of you.”

“Thanks.” A funny feeling spread through my chest.

“They might have bugs,” he said.

“Oh!” I held the flowers farther away from my face and then looked at him. “There's something different about you.”

He touched his earlobe. “I took my earrings out. I thought I might be meeting your parents.”

My chest tightened further. Anxiety: that's what it was. I wasn't just embarrassed about my mother. I felt really uncomfortable having Duncan so close to my parents, like they were from two different worlds that I'd rather not mix.

“I better see how my mom's doing,” I mumbled.

He nodded. “Yeah, I gotta get home anyway.”

“Where do you live?”

He gestured to the hills beyond the highway. “About a mile from here there's this group of apartments. It's called Valley View.”

My hands clutched the flowers. “I think I've seen it,” I croaked.

“Yeah?” He looked pleased. “It's pretty nice. A lot better than the last place we lived.”

He reached out to touch my cheek, but when he saw my expression, he stopped. “So—I'll see you tonight?”

I nodded at the flowers, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Nine o'clock.”

Inside our room I sat on the couch and opened Duncan's note. It was in all capitals. His handwriting was so weird and spiky, it looked like he had held the pen with his teeth.

I stared at the note for what felt like an hour. And then I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.

T
HERE'S NOTHING LIKE A GOOD FUNERAL
to cheer a person up, and by the next afternoon my mother was downright chipper.

“Mrs. Lunardi was sixty-six years old,” she chirped, kicking off the sneakers she had worn to work. “Cancer. Had it for years. Went away a few times, but it kept coming back.” She pulled off her green polo shirt and stood there in a beige bra while she finished talking. “She lived in Sandyland her whole life—should be a big crowd.”

“Sounds awesome,” I said, the sarcasm completely lost on her.

She took a new-ish peach T-shirt out of her drawer and pulled it over her head. “Two big arrangements around the casket—I did white roses and calla lilies—plus three on the altar. And those were just from the family. We had
eighteen
orders from people around town. Hydrangeas, lilies—no carnations allowed on my watch.” She plucked a comb from the dresser and began to smooth her yellow hair. “The floral manager said she'd never seen anyone work as fast as me. She said I was a natural.”

“I'm really happy for you, Mom. If you're lucky, maybe some other people around here will die.”

Whoops—there was that eyebrow crease.

“I'm just doing this for my family,” she said.

I nodded, feeling ashamed at my jerkiness. But I didn't want to hear about Francine Lunardi or Sandyland or carnations. I didn't care whether the guy in the window was a mysterious spirit or a garden-variety perv. I just wanted to go home to Amerige, where life was normal. Where
people
were normal.

I hadn't gone to meet Duncan the night before. And I knew that was jerky of me (are we sensing a pattern here?), but I couldn't get beyond the way I felt when I'd seen him near my parents. I couldn't move beyond my reaction to his note. I couldn't stop thinking,
He's just like Kyle Ziegenfuss, only cuter.

If Duncan showed up in Amerige, I wouldn't look at him twice. What was I doing, spending time with him here? Sure, I looked like a freak myself, with the awful clothes and the worse hair, but I was still
me
. Deep down, I was still one of the good kids. I could fix my hair and buy new clothes, and I'd be right back to the person I'd always been.

I wasn't sure how I felt about Delilah, either. She was fun for a summer friend, like a temporary, off-the-wall fill-in for Lexie, but I couldn't see us being best buds if I was actually going to live here.

Was I really going to live here? Oh, God. How did this happen?

I kept picturing my house like a photograph in my mind. Our five-bedroom model on Jennifer Road was called “The Tuscany.” It was stucco and stack stone with high ceilings and wrought iron
railings. We'd moved there four years ago, from a smaller, older house across town.

Right away my mother had gotten rid of our old furniture and bought stuff that matched the house: heavy and ornate, with velvet upholstery and touches of gold. Then a couple of years later we went to France for spring break, and my mother ditched it all for “French Country,” which meant distressed wood and checked prints and roosters. Lots and lots of roosters.

Maybe if she had saved that money instead of spending it all on roosters, we'd still have the house. But no. It was more than that: it was the pool, the cars, the televisions. It was the vacations and the dinners out. It was everything that made up our lives.

And now it was gone.

 

When my father got home from work, around dinnertime, he was looking considerably less chipper than my mother. If he'd looked tired after his first day of work, today he looked devastated. Without being asked, I got him a glass of ice water. He nodded his thanks and downed it in one gulp.

“Talked to my boss,” he said. “He's okay with me taking Wednesday off—Thursday, too, if I need it.”

“To go to Amerige?” I asked.

He nodded.

Lexie was back from the lake. What I wouldn't give to talk to her right now. Maybe she could think of some way to convince my parents to stay in town.

“I'm going with you,” I announced.

“It's going to be a really short trip,” my father said.

“I know.”

And then, in a flash, I remembered something Delilah had said about Duncan—that if his father left, he could move in with them.

Of course! I could live with Lexie! Why hadn't I thought of it sooner? Her family loved me, her house was huge, and I was over there all the time, anyway.

“You sure you want to go back?” my mother said. “It's going to be kind of…awkward. And, anyway, I have to stay here; I'm scheduled to work Wednesday.”

“I'm going.”

 

Tuesday morning, I ran into Delilah on the beach, down where I'd photographed Francine Lunardi. I'd snapped probably fifty shots without enjoying any of them—and without a single inexplicable figure showing up. It was starting to feel like I'd dreamed the whole thing.

“Hey, stranger,” Delilah said.

“What do you mean? I saw you, like, three days ago.”

“Just giving you a hard time.” She smiled, but her eyes looked icier than before. “You want to hang out at the shop with me? I started my landfill piece.”

I got the feeling that she was testing me—like she already knew what I was going to say. “Thanks, but I've got to do some things back at the motel.”

“Duncan is at the shop,” Delilah said. “Just, you know—hanging.”

I thought of Duncan's note.
YOU ARE A RELLY NICE GRILL.
If it had happened to somebody else, it would have been funny.

“He missed you the other night,” Delilah said.

“Oh—right. I just got—my parents had some things they wanted me to do, and they wouldn't let me go.” Lame. Very lame.

Delilah nodded, clearly not believing me at all. “He likes you,” she said.

“Yeah, I got that.” Sweat from my hand dampened my camera.

“And do you…feel the same?”

I chose my words carefully. “He's a nice guy.”

“Oh.” Something in her face shut down. What did it matter, though, what Delilah thought about me? And what difference would it make if I liked Duncan?

“I'm leaving tomorrow,” I said. “Going home.”

She looked surprised. “Forever?”

I shrugged. “Probably.”

Of course, I couldn't be sure that Lexie's parents would let me live with them. But even if I came back to Sandyland, I needed a new crowd—that much was obvious.

She crossed her arms. “That's too bad. We all thought you might—whatever.” She studied me with her clear eyes. “It's been fun,” she said finally.

“Right,” I said. “It has.”