Swept Away (13 page)

I replace the book so that the minute Mom lands on the ground floor we can leave. Oliver's waiting.

“There's my daughter,” Mom says, noticing me. “We'll discuss this more.”

“I'm sure we will,” Mr. Garrity says sadly, then disappears through the
STAFF ONLY
door.

“Anyone come in today?” she asks as we leave the library.

“Not a single one,” I complain.

“No one at the café, either?” We climb into the car.

“Actually, there were some customers,” I say as Mom maneuvers around jaywalking tourists. “Guys.” I give her a sidelong glance. “Is that why you hired Celeste?”

“What do you mean?” She gets off Main Street and begins the twisty route toward Evergreen.

“So local boys will go to the café.”

She gives a little laugh. “No, but if that's a side benefit, I'll take it. We hired her because she's the only one who applied.”

I can see why. Everyone knows you don't make much money there. I wonder why Celeste wanted to. “Is she a lighthouse lover
too?” This would give her something in common with Oliver. Dang.

It's darker now that we're in the woods, and Mom keeps her eyes straight ahead. I do too, so that I can tell her when to turn onto the right path.

“Actually, I think she needs to make some money but still be able to study. I'm guessing she has plenty of downtime during her shifts. She's doing some kind of online course.”

Come to think of it, I did notice thick textbooky books near the cash register at the café.

“This is it,” I say when I spot the turnoff.

Mom's eyebrows rise as she navigates the narrow and bumpy path to Freaky Framingham's. “Doesn't exactly scream ‘welcome.'” Her eyes flick to me. “Did you feel . . . comfortable when you were here?”

“Yes,” I say forcefully. Then, so she has no doubt that I'm telling the truth I add, “Not at first. But definitely by lunchtime.”

She pulls up to the house, and I see her look of dismay.

“It's totally different on the inside,” I assure her, unbuckling my seat belt and opening the car door before she can frantically drive us away. “Wait till you see.”

We trudge up the sagging steps, and I open the screen door, then knock.

Alice appears, tossing a dish towel over her shoulder. “Hi, Mandy. Hello, Marjorie. Nice to see you.”

That's right, they've met. Good. Even though Oliver's mom told me to call her by her first name, it still would have felt weird to say “Alice, this is my mother, Mrs. Sullivan.”

“I drove Mandy over,” Mom explains. “I don't want her to bike back in the dark.”

At least the excuse sounds reasonable. It would be terrible if Alice knew the real reason was so Mom can make sure they're not a family of cannibals or something.

“Come in, come in,” Alice says, stepping aside and holding open the door.

“What time should I pick her up?” Mom asks as we walk inside. Her eyes dart all around, and I hope Alice doesn't notice how surprised she is by what she's seeing.

“You're welcome to stay,” Alice offers.

Please say no please say no please say no.

“Another time,” Mom says. “I have a lot of paperwork to get done with the Fourth of July events coming up.”

“Have enough time for a cup of coffee? Or tea?” Alice asks.

Mom smiles. “That I can do.”

“Oliver's out back,” Alice says as she leads us to the kitchen. “Hard at work. I was washing up so that everything will be ready for when my dad gets back.”

Mom's eyes nearly bug when we arrive in the kitchen. “Mandy wasn't kidding when she said this was state of the art.”

Alice gazes around fondly, then pats the giant stove. “I wouldn't exactly call this up to date, but Pop won't hear of replacing it. He's the cook in the family, not me.”

“We have that in common,” Mom says, leaning against the marble counter. “Mandy's father did most of the cooking in our house.”

“He did?” I say.

She slings an arm across my shoulder. “But I'm proud to say you preferred
my
overcooked carrots.”

She's not wrong. I liked the burned bits. Still do.

“Where
is
your father?” Mom asks. I can't tell if she's hoping he's home or hoping he's not.

“Grocery shopping. He doesn't trust me to do that, either. Which is fine by me.”

The back door opens and Oliver steps in. His T-shirt is soaked with sweat, pebbles and dirt cling to his knees, and his work gloves look too big for him. He's wearing a bandanna Freaky-style across his forehead. Not exactly glamorous, but insanely appealing.

So is the big smile that appears when he realizes I'm here. “Hallelujah! Reinforcements!” he exclaims.

“Oliver, this is my mom,” I say. Then I smack my forehead. “D'oh! You already met.”

“At the lighthouse,” Oliver says. He holds out his hand for a handshake, which seems kind of over the top, then pulls it back sheepishly when he notices the work glove. “So, hi.”

Mom has that annoying “aren't children adorable” look on her face. “Hi again. Any friend of the lighthouse is a friend of mine,” she says.

“I'm glad to see you decided to listen to me and your grandfather and wear the gloves,” Alice comments.

He scowls at his hands. “They make everything even harder.”

“Maybe so, but I'm guessing you've cut down dramatically on the cuts and scratches.”

“Whatever,” he grumbles, and crosses to the fridge. He pulls out a bottle of Gatorade and takes a long swig. I watch his Adam's apple bob with each chug.

“We should get to work,” I say. I want to get out of the indulgent-­mom-smiles zone. It feels as if we're specimens to be studied. Since I'm still trying to figure out what's going on between Oliver and me, it's extra uncomfortable to have the scrutiny.

Oliver grabs a second bottle of Gatorade and holds it up to me. “You okay with blue?”

I nod, then we traipse out the back door.

“I hope my mom doesn't tell your mom embarrassing stories about me,” I say.

“Back atcha,” Oliver replies.

I stop and stare at the structure. “You did the windows!”

There are now evenly spaced holes cut into the chicken-wire tower, three on each side, just like Candy Cane. On the work­table I spot a small balsa-wood structure next to the keeper's house replica. “And the lantern room!”

“That was a lot easier than the windows,” Oliver says. “Chicken wire fights back.”

“So what should I do?”

“How about you tear the newspaper into strips. The papier-­mâché is the next step.”

“I can handle that.” I sit beside a stack of newspapers and begin tearing. Oliver is very organized. He has a box set up for me to drop the strips into so they don't blow away or get dirty. As I rip, I watch him using wire cutters to bend back the edges of the windows.

“I cut them bigger than they actually are,” he explains as he works. “That way we can use the papier-mâché to keep the edges of the chicken wire from biting us.”

“Biting
you
, you mean,” I say. “Remember, you're the one who's going to be doing the rowing.” I stop tearing. “What about a door?” I ask.

He keeps working, his back to me. “What door?”

“How are you going to get inside?”

He stops, his wire cutters midair. Without turning around, he finally says, “We'll bring it to the river, you'll lower it down on top of me, attach it, and presto, I'm inside and ready to row.”

I'm really glad his back is to me. I don't think he'd appreciate the way I'm looking at him. But my mouth just reacts. “That's crazy!”

He stops what he's doing to face me. “I've worked it all out,” he says a bit testily.

“Oh yeah?” I smirk. “You worked it out? Just this minute when I pointed out the fact that there's no door.”

He's about to argue, then laughs. “You caught me.”

I laugh too. “I thought you were Mr. Precision.”

“I am,” he insists. “But there's no door in the lighthouse, so there can't be a door in this.”

“There used to be,” I point out. “Before they built the attachment.”

This stops him a moment, then he shakes his head. “No. A door big enough for me to get through won't be to scale. It's supposed to be an accurate replica.”

I'm about to argue but zip my lip. After all, this is
his
baby.

Still, my mind works hard as I rip newspaper after newspaper. I have serious misgivings about his plan.

He tosses aside the wire cutters, yanks off the gloves, and wipes his hands on his shorts. “Okay,” he declares, turning around. “Time to get messy. I'll get the stuff to make the glue.”

When he goes into the house, I stand and stretch. My hands are covered in newsprint. I spot a spigot on the side of the house and rinse my hands.

The spigot is under the window of the addition. When I stand, I see a big painting leaning against the wall inside. It's breathtaking—a boy playing in a river, so focused on his toy boat that he's oblivious to the deer watching him from shore. It's painted in such a way that I can practically feel the cold water on my own toes, sense that it's about to rain and that the boy's playtime is nearly over, and understand both the boy and the deer are equally transfixed. It makes me want to be quiet so I don't disturb them, while also wanting to warn them to take cover. Freaky Framingham is a freaking incredible artist.

Oliver comes back out carrying a gigantic bowl, a sack of flour, and a pitcher of water. He puts everything on the ground beside the chicken-wire structure, then tosses me the apron he had slung over his shoulder. Not a frilly apron, but a serious workman's apron.

“That should take care of most of you,” he says. “You're a lot smaller than Pops.”

I slip it over my head, then tie the ties. “He's okay if I borrow it?”

“Yeah.” Oliver laughs. “Anything to keep us out of the kitchen while he cooks, I think.”

My stomach clenches. I haven't mentioned my fish aversion. What if Freaky is whipping up some kind of gourmet seafood dish? Will I be able to get down at least a few bites?

“Hope you like Indian food,” he says as he sets up. “Pops said you're probably sick of seafood since you live here.”

“I love Indian food!” I exclaim. I'm not even sure if I do, but as long as there's nothing that swam in the water on my plate I'm willing to try. Saved by Freaky!

Oliver mixes the flour and water. “We need to be sure there aren't any lumps,” he says. “Have you done this before?”

“Not since grade school, but it's probably like riding a bike, right? Once you learn . . .”

We get to work, dipping each strip into the glue mixture until it's supersaturated. Getting the strip onto the chicken wire is harder to do than you might think. Those suckers like to wrap around things: my fingers, the wrong part of the wire, themselves. Oliver wants us to lay them all in the same direction, but overlapping. This way, he says, we'll know if we've covered each section the same number of times.

It's a gooey and goopy task, and my legs are getting sore. I'm getting in a squats workout from all the bending and stretching.

And the time just zips by.

“‘My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light,'” I sing when it's my turn. We're making the time pass by telling pirate stories (complete with pirate lingo, arrrrgh!) or singing sea chanteys. This is an old folk song that pretty much any kid in Rocky Point knows. Duh, there's a lighthouse in it. “‘He married a mermaid one fine night!'”

“‘From this union there came three,'” Oliver joins in. “‘A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!'”

I gape down at him. “You know it!”

“Sure! Even us lighthouse-deprived types know songs about the sea.”

Oliver is carefully wrapping a strip around the bottom window to help defang the chicken wire. After all three layers are applied, the sharp edges should no longer be lethal.

I crouch by our bowl of flour paste and dip in another strip. Oliver drops down to his knees and sticks in a strip too. I watch our hands swirling the paper, never quite touching, moving as if choreographed. It's how we've been working together too. Like we've been doing it forever, with a matched rhythm. I'll duck under him just as he reaches above me; he'll go one way as I go the other, like we're reading each other's minds.

We pull out our strips and run our fingers along the length of them, squeezing out the excess. Then we both stand and, for the first time all afternoon, bang into each other as we reach for the same spot.

“Oopsie,” I say as I carefully peel my strip off his arm. Little white flecks of glue stand out against his tan.

I feel something sticky on my shoulder. That's where Oliver's strip landed. His hand hovers just above it.

“I guess I'm stuck on you.”

My head pops up at the husky tone in his voice. He's looking at me so sweetly, the way you might look at a kitten or puppy. I start to say something, but my brain goes blank when his lips are suddenly on mine.

It's a soft, tender kiss, but it shoots through me like a summer thunderbolt.

It's only a moment and then it's over. He pulls back so quickly my eyes have only just closed. I open them slowly, and he's searching my face, wondering, I suppose, if the kiss was welcome.

Before either of us can speak, before either of us can back away, retreat, freak out, or stammer, I place the back of my hand on his cheek, not wanting to get glue on that gorgeous face. I stand on my tiptoes, taking care to not knock over the bowl of glue, and I kiss him.

Me. Mandy Sullivan.

I.

Kiss.

HIM.

And it's wonderful.