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“The thrift shop sounds…fun,” I said.

We walked down the beach, gazing at the ground, finding treasures everywhere. A yellow shovel. A button. An empty suntan lotion bottle. Delilah ignored a damp magazine but snatched up the
National Enquirer.
“The headlines are like gold,” she said. “Look at this: ‘Worst Beach Bodies.' I could glue the headline on a board and then stick some Barbie dolls next to it. Wish I'd saved the headless one….”

I snapped pictures of the yellow shovel, of a volleyball net, a lone beach chair. After each shot I paused to check my display, but there was nothing out of place, no old woman hovering at the edge.

The sun rose higher in the sky; the light became harsh. I put my camera away. The kids in the red bathing suits began to appear, alone and in groups. A tall blond guy, Hollywood gorgeous with a perfect jock body, walked by and smiled. “Hey, Delilah.” He carried a surfboard under his arm and wore a whistle around his neck. He looked like he was on his way to a Hollister photo shoot.

“Hi, Nate,” she said casually. When he was out of earshot, she whispered, “You can't beat the scenery on the beach.”

When we got back to the sandy parking lot, all the spots were filled with minivans and SUVs. The sun was high in the sky, the
air getting hotter by the minute. Delilah's pale skin flushed pink.

“Yo, Dee!” Leonardo and Duncan sat on a green bench, skateboards at their feet, both of them eating. Leonardo's pants were red today. His T-shirt was bright blue. His hair was still the natural, crazy orange. Still, it looked better than my hair. I wished I'd worn a hat. I wished I owned a hat.

“Hey, guys.” Delilah strode over. “Leo, you got some food for me?”

Across the parking lot, a line snaked away from the snack shack's take-out window. The smell of fried food tortured my hungry nose.

Cheeseburger clutched securely in his other hand, Leonardo held out a Styrofoam container filled with fries. “Don't take too many.”

Delilah took a monster fistful and skittered away.

“Hey!” Leonardo said.

She laughed. “I have to share with Madison.” She looked at me. “Want some?”

I wasn't sure what to do. It seemed kind of rude to eat Leo's food; I barely even knew him. But I'd had nothing but the vanilla latte all day, and I was starving. Besides, I liked having Delilah treat me like a friend. I couldn't imagine hanging out with her in real life, but she was perfect for an arty summer companion.

I accepted a fry from her outstretched hand, trying not to think of how recently that hand had been in a garbage can.

“You can have some of mine,” Duncan said, holding out his overflowing Styrofoam shell. He wore long khaki shorts and a white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing lean, muscled arms.

“No, thanks.” I knew Duncan even less well than I knew Leo.

“Have a fry.” He leaned forward. His gold earrings glinted in the sunlight. “C'mon, Goth Girl; you know you want one.”

“Goth Girl?”
I stared at him, mouth open. Okay, sure—with the hair, shirt, and shorts I was a little over the top on the black, but I had
not
crossed the line into Gothic. And Duncan, with his wild hair bleached white at the tips, was hardly one to talk.

A family walked by, hauling enough beach toys for fifty children.

“Or how about I just call you G.G.?” Duncan said. “The black hair is totally working for you, by the way.”

At my stunned expression he cracked up. His laugh was infectious—like a series of hiccups, almost.

I started laughing and couldn't stop. It was the first time I'd laughed in almost a week, and I poured everything into it: my fear, my anxiety, and a moment's relief and release. Delilah and Leonardo joined in, probably amused by my overreaction more than anything, and I laughed even harder, tears forming in my eyes.

Finally, I composed myself and plopped down on the bench next to Duncan, entirely forgetting about my smelly clothes. “Scoot over.” He slid closer to Leo. I peered at his food. “Screw the fries,” I said, tucking my black hair behind my ears. “I want some of your burger.”

I took the burger in both hands and took a shamelessly huge bite. It was just the way I liked it, with lettuce and cheese, grilled onions, and Russian dressing. It was quite possibly the best burger I had ever tasted, though that may have just been because I was
so hungry. Or maybe it was the setting: when the sun was shining, Sandyland didn't suck at all.

Still chewing, I tried to give Duncan back his burger, but he just said, “Nah, have more.” My second bite was slightly less greedy than my first, my third bordering on normal.

“I lived in a town called Madison once,” Duncan said after I finally insisted he take the burger back (trying really hard not to gaze longingly at the remaining half). “Is that your real name?”

It was kind of a weird question. “Well, yeah,” I said, licking my lips. “Isn't Duncan your real name?”

“Nope.” He took a small bite of his burger and then held it out to me. “Finish it.”

I checked his expression to make sure he was serious about the burger, and then I reached for it slowly, as if he might snatch it away. “You really don't want it?” Of course he wanted the burger. Why else would he have ordered it?

“I'll eat the fries.”

My hunger was so intense that I gobbled the burger quickly, before I had a chance to feel guilty.

“So, what's your real name, then?” I asked, using the back of my hand to wipe grease off my mouth in an extremely ladylike fashion.

“I'd tell you.” He held my gaze with his green, green eyes. “But then I'd have to kill you.”

A smile tugged at my mouth. “That would be a waste of a perfectly good burger.”

He grinned, and his green eyes crinkled.

“Is Duncan your middle name, then?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“Nope. I named myself.”

“After the character in
Macbeth?”

He raised his eyebrows. “The donuts.”

Donuts. Mmm.

He said, “Used to be, I'd pick a new name every time I moved. But that got confusing. I've stuck with Duncan for a while now.” He plucked a ketchup-drenched fry from the Styrofoam container and popped it in his mouth.

“How many times have you moved?”

He looked up, thinking. “Twenty-four times? Maybe twenty-three.”

Twenty-three moves? I shuddered. “Wow. I've only moved once, and it was in the same town.”

A gray gull swooped past before circling back to land near our feet. Duncan tossed a fry, and the bird pounced.

He said, “I'm on my eleventh school, I know that. There'd be more, but my father
homeschooled
me for a couple of years.” When he said “homeschooled,” he held his fingers up in quotation marks.

“But he's not moving anymore,” Delilah said. “We're keeping him. My mom said he can stay with us, even if his dad takes off.”

Duncan didn't respond, just chucked a few final fries onto the asphalt before closing up his empty Styrofoam shell. Squawking gulls swooped in from every angle to battle over the scraps.

“You could've given those fries to me,” Delilah said.

“What about your mom?” I asked Duncan.

“She joined a cult,” he said, as if he were talking about a job transfer. He stood up from the bench and headed for the nearest trash can.

“Don't throw that out,” Delilah said, reaching for the container. Duncan gave it to her without question and took his place next to me on the bench. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed like he was sitting closer to me than before.

“A cult,” I said, hungry for details but trying hard to keep all traces of “that's whacked” out of my voice.

“When I was three,” he said. “It wasn't really her fault. She just fell in with this weird-ass crowd, and they just, like, brainwashed her.”

Leonardo, his food all gone, offered his container to Delilah. “Nah, I got enough,” she said. When he walked over to the trash can, she took his seat on the bench. In retaliation, he sat on top of her.

“Get your bony butt off of me!” she yelled, until Duncan pressed himself against my side to make room for her.

“Hey, Madison,” Leo called from the far end of the bench. “You find any more ghosts in your pictures?”

Duncan said, “Any more
what?”

As I powered up my camera, Delilah told Duncan about the mysterious old woman in my photo.

“It's pretty weird,” I said, scrolling through the shots on my display screen until I found the old lady by the rocks. “I'm sure she wasn't on the beach.”

“Maybe she snuck into the camera when you weren't looking,” Duncan said.

I checked his expression. He was kidding, of course. Wasn't he?

“I can ask my dad about it if you want,” Duncan said. “I mean,
we can get together some time and ask him together.”

Leonardo didn't even try to hide his snicker.

 

I'd planned to talk to my parents about our home phone being out of order, but when my dad walked into the room at the end of the day, his face so red and sweaty and his breathing so labored, I was actually afraid he might be having a heart attack.

“Are you okay?” I asked when he stumbled in and collapsed on the bed. I'd never seen anyone so filthy in my life.

He didn't answer my question, just looked at me with dull eyes. “Water?”

I got him a big glass filled high with ice. He winced when I handed it to him, and he held up his blister-covered palm. He took a long, desperate drink before wiping his mouth and saying, “I'll work hard, and we'll get back on our feet.”

He drained the rest of his water and put the glass on the night-stand.

S
ATURDAY MORNING,
I
SPENT AT LEAST AN HOUR
photographing kayaks (Delilah was right: they did look cool), and then I got to the thrift shop ten minutes early. Delilah was already there, waiting in the parking lot, along with what appeared to be half of Sandyland. It looked like the mob at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving—only without the food court, the ear-piercing kiosk, and the nice clothes that had never been worn.

“Get your elbows ready,” Delilah told me, standing at the edge of the crowd.

“Huh?”

“It gets vicious in there.” She narrowed her eyes at the other shoppers. There were all ages: moms with little kids, grandparents, teenagers (girls mostly, but not entirely). One of the teenagers was a girl with striped hair similar to Delilah's, though the other girl's stripes were only white. She looked kind of like a zebra.

Today Delilah wore cutoff denim overalls over a tank top. Now
that I knew about the thrift shop, I couldn't look at anything she wore without wondering who had owned it first.

I really didn't want to be here.

But I had no choice. I couldn't wait to change out of my mildewed black clothes.

At least this thrift shop, a block off Main Street and next to a pretty white church, was a lot nicer than the blocky, dingy Salvation Army fortress at home. Enormous, leafy trees shaded the little white building with green shutters.
Don't think “used clothes,” I commanded myself. Think “vintage.” Don't think “poor people.” Think “treasure hunters.”

“You need to figure out your strategy,” Delilah told me, weaving her fingers together and stretching out her arms. She had her silver rings on, along with a bracelet made out of paper clips. She'd repainted her fingernails, alternating red and black. “Decide what section you want to hit first,” she advised.

“I was thinking clothes,” I said, the taste of my mom's bitter coffee lingering in my mouth.

“Yeah, but
which
clothes?” Her light eyes widened. “The shirt aisle gets the most traffic, so you might want to hit that first, before all the good stuff is gone. Then, if there's anything worthwhile left, you can move on to jeans, shorts, shoes—whatever.”

“But I need everything!” I blurted, forgetting for a moment that I was too good for used clothes.

“Grab some shirts and then head over to the shorts,” she counseled. “You'll be fine.”

“Morning, Delilah!” A tall, heavy woman stood over us, blocking the morning sun. Bobby pins held back brown hair threaded
with gray. Her dress was green with enormous pink flowers. She looked like a walking couch.

“Hello, Mrs. Voorhees.”

“Your mom here?” Mrs. Voorhees peered around. “I was hoping to make an appointment.” Her voice was high and childish; it didn't match her body at all.

“She didn't come this morning. But she should be in the shop this afternoon if you want to stop by.”

“Rose has been guiding me toward a transformational experience,” Mrs. Voorhees told us. “And I've been meditating on my own every day, but I feel like I've hit a plateau. I need Rose to help me unleash my inner energy.”

“She's good at that,” Delilah said, her face neutral.

To keep from cracking up, I looked away and concentrated on my breathing.

Mrs. Voorhees's voice turned sad. “Also, I wanted to tell your mother that Francine Lunardi died yesterday morning.” She leaned toward me, forcing eye contact. “Francine's the one who introduced me to Rose.”

I nodded.

Mrs. Voorhees gazed into the distance. “Francine never would have held on so long, but last week she finally set things right with her daughter. That gave her the inner peace she needed to let go.”

I nodded as if this made sense, my face hurting from politeness.

When the thrift shop's front door swung open, Delilah grabbed my arm and pulled me after her. The store was bigger than it had appeared from the outside, but not by much. Shirts, dresses, and
pants were crammed on racks, dishes and glassware jammed on shelves. Dust danced in the rays of sun that sliced through the windows.

Delilah hadn't been kidding about the elbows. Two-dollar shirts turned Sandyland women into animals. The girl with the zebra hair reached for a black T-shirt at the same time I did, but, revved up by the competition, I held tight. We locked eyes. She said, “What. Ever,” and released the shirt. She moved on to the next rack, the smell of cigarettes lingering behind her.

Trying on the clothes was out of the question; I just had to hope for the best. I thought I was doing pretty well, having snagged the black shirt, but Delilah scored so much stuff she had to stash it behind the counter so no one would take it.

“Leave some for the rest of us,” the girl with the zebra hair grumbled from behind a rack of jeans.

“Lighten up, Jessamine,” Delilah said.

By the time we finished, I had three T-shirts (one black, one white, one dark purple with a swirly black design) and two pairs of jeans, one black and one blue.

And Delilah? She'd spent almost fifty dollars without knowing what, exactly, she had bought. “Summer's the best time for the thrift shop,” she told me as we trudged toward Main Street. “When the summer people get here, they go through their clothes and decide that everything needs to be replaced.”

Psychic Photo was closed, a sign in the window promising an eleven o'clock opening. Delilah led me to a back alley, pulled a key from the pocket of her overalls and jiggled the knob of yet another purple door until it gave with a creak. The door opened
onto a little hallway. There was a closed door straight ahead and a set of steep stairs to the right.

“I'm home,” Delilah called up the stairs, shrugging when no one answered. She put another key into the door in front of us.

“You live here?” I asked.

“Upstairs,” she said. With a grin she added, “Though the energy up there isn't nearly as powerful as it is downstairs.”

Rose's Reading Room (Delilah's phrase, not mine) was kind of disappointing: no crystal ball or lamps draped with filmy scarves, just a couple of worn green love seats facing each other, a scratched coffee table in between. Along one wall, next to a beat-up brown mini fridge and a small sink, a folding table held a coffeemaker and a messy pile of paper plates and napkins. An old computer sat on a desk along another wall; a bulky photo-developing machine was crammed into the corner. Everywhere I looked there were cardboard boxes, many of them empty. A headless dressmaker's dummy was the only thing out of place, but I figured it had something to do with Delilah's art.

Delilah emptied her black trash bags onto the gray industrial carpet.

“I have a pair of shorts just like that,” I said, spotting a familiar plaid. I felt closer to Delilah all of a sudden, just thinking we owned the same thing. But then I remembered: my plaid Billabong shorts were from eighth grade. I'd dropped them in the charity bin.

I corrected myself: “Well, I used to have shorts like that, anyway. But I gave them away.”

As Delilah sorted through the clothes, a T-shirt caught my eye: red with a moose. “Hey—I had a T-shirt like that, too. It was
my favorite.” And then (a little late, I admit) it hit me. “Those are my clothes!”

“Huh?” Delilah looked up from the floor.

I picked up the Abercrombie shirt and checked the tag. “I dropped a whole bunch of stuff in a charity bin a few days ago. It must have gone to the thrift store. This was my shirt—that's so funny that you bought it! And these shorts were mine, too: Billabong, see? Anything else?” I pawed through the piles until I came up with a white Hollister camisole that had never fit me quite right.

“These were your clothes, and you just threw them away?” Delilah asked, astonished.

“They didn't fit,” I said. I squinted at Delilah, who was at least four inches taller than me. And then I gave her the bad news. “They're going to be way too small for you.”

She laughed at my misunderstanding. “I'm not going to
wear
them!”

Before I had a chance to ask what, besides wearing, the clothes were good for, the back door swung open. Leonardo and Duncan burst into the room, their arms loaded with…What is the word I'm looking for? Oh, yeah: junk.

“We struck gold at the yard sales today,” Leonardo announced to the sound of clinking ceramic. “NFL mugs! From the eighties!”

“Hey, G.G.!” Duncan said when he saw me.

“The eighties? Get out!” Delilah chirped, rushing over to see the mugs. “How many?”

“I am not Goth,” I informed Duncan. “I'm just having a bad hair month.”

“Nothing wrong with Goth,” he said. “Oh, Delilah—your
mom said to tell you she's at my place.”

“Where's your dad?”

“Out on the boat. He left at, like, four this morning. Your mom made me and Leo pancakes.”

“She never makes me pancakes,” Delilah grumbled.

“That's because you're so capable,” Leonardo said.

“They weren't very good,” Duncan assured Delilah. “Kind of rubbery.”

Leo put the mugs on the folding table next to the coffeemaker. “I think there's…” He counted. “Eleven. But wait.” He picked up a plastic grocery bag. “They had some shot glasses, too. New York Giants, Miami Dolphins…and…Raiders.”

“Sweet!” Delilah said.

Leo looked at Duncan. “Where are the Raiders from—San Francisco?”

“Oakland,” Duncan said. And to me: “Leo grew up without a father. That's why he's sports-challenged.” Duncan smiled at me. I smiled back. He kept smiling. I thought,
Not my type,
and made myself look away.

“And why he wears pink pants,” Delilah said.

“They're orange,” Leo said, patting his leg. His T-shirt was tie-dyed rainbow hues.

I crept slowly toward the hideous mugs, trying to keep my face neutral.

“I got Pokémon cards,” Duncan said, reaching into a pocket of his cargo pants.

Definitely
not my type. You'd think that someone old enough to have earrings would be too old for Pokémon.

“Are they rare?” Delilah asked.

Duncan shrugged and said what sounded like, “I-uh-no.”

“There's no point unless they're rare,” Delilah said.

Oh, great. Here I thought I'd found a cool, arty summer friend, and she was a Pokémon expert. Suddenly I missed Lexie so much my stomach hurt. To make things worse, this room smelled funny. Oh, wait: that was me.

“Is there a bathroom I can use?” I asked. “So I can change my clothes?” I still hated the idea of used clothes, but I had to get out of this smelly stuff. And besides, it was just for a few days, until my dad got my suitcase from home.

“It's upstairs,” Delilah said, just as Duncan said, “I'll show you!”

He moves like a cat,
I thought, following him. Not quite an adult cat—more like an almost-grown kitten: bouncy and graceful at the same time. At the top of the stairs, he reached into a front pocket, and his shoulder blades made sharp angles in his black T-shirt. I had a sudden urge to take his picture, but I didn't want to give him the wrong idea.

He twisted his head to smile at me. One of his front teeth had a little chip. I knocked out part of a tooth when I was eight, and my dentist had it repaired before the next day. But I liked his chipped tooth. It went with his wild brown hair with the white tips. It went with the tiny gold hoops in his ears.

He was so not my type.

“You get good stuff at the thrift store?” He pulled a key out of his pocket and stuck it in the lock.

I shrugged. “Nothing great. But I guess I'll have to wear them. My dad packed the wrong clothes for me—nothing fits. And there's, like, no mall here or anything.”

He pushed open the door.

“I'll probably just throw these out once I get my real clothes,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Those aren't real clothes?”

The first thing I saw when we walked into Leo and Delilah's apartment was a mirrored disco ball hanging from a string right inside the front door. As he walked under, Duncan jumped up and tapped it as if it were a basketball. It swung wildly from side to side, the little mirrors casting jewels of light around the walls.

“Holy crap,” I said, looking up.

“Leo bought that,” Duncan said.

“I kind of figured.”

He grinned at the ceiling. “Only three bucks.”

“Bargain.”

“Leo throws dance parties up here.” Duncan put his hands in his front pockets and looked at the ground. “Maybe you can come sometime.”

“Sure.” And maybe I can stick barbecue skewers in my eyes. I had a sudden vision of kids drinking apple juice out of NFL mugs while trading Pokémon cards. “But the thing is, I don't think I'll be in town very long.”

He blinked at me. “Rose said you were moving here.”

“What?” I shook my head. “I never said that! I'll be here for a little while—a few more weeks, maybe. But then I'm going home. I start school at the beginning of September.”

“Oh,” he said. “That's too bad.” He sounded really disappointed. “But tonight? If you're not doing anything? A bunch of kids are going to have a bonfire out on the beach. Me and Leo and Delilah are going.”

“I'll have to check with my parents,” I said, thankful to be able to use them as an excuse. “Um, where's the bathroom?”

“Oh—right. It's over here.” He led me across the little room, past a futon unfolded to create a bed (unmade), an old television on a fake-wood stand, and a cluttered bookshelf. There was a kitchenette only slightly less inadequate than the one at Home Suite Home. A small table and chairs, painted bright blue, sat under a tall window painted—what else?—purple.

Off the main room was one bedroom—or should I say, two almost bedrooms: a curtain ran along the center of the room. Each side had a single bed, the far one covered with a rumpled orange coverlet, the near with a crisp black one. The walls on the far, orange-bed side were yellow; on the black-bed side they were white and covered with colorful art. That side reminded me, in a weird way, of my room back home, which I'd decorated as a kind of mini photograph gallery.