Swept Away (6 page)

He looks baffled, so I quickly explain. “It's someone who has to own, say, every issue of a particular comic. Or is compelled to absolute thoroughness in a museum. It's what my brother Justin calls our cousin Randy. A completist.”

One eyebrow rises. “Oh yeah?”

I grin. “Don't worry. I think there's a twelve-step program for it.”

He smirks. “Oh, I don't know. If being a ‘completist' is wrong . . .”

“You don't want to be right.” I finish the song lyric. Our parents must play the same dorky music.

We smile at each other, and I desperately try to think of something clever to say, something to keep the conversation going,
some way to get him to ask me out, to stick around, ­anything—but my mind is a total blank.

“So, uh . . . ,” he begins, but before he can get the sentence out, I see someone in the entrance and abruptly stand. Startled by my sudden movement, Oliver takes a step back.

She's backlit by the bright noonday light, but even without actually being able to see her face, I know exactly who it is. “Mom!”

She steps out of the shadowy entryway. Her eyes flick to Oliver and hold for a moment, and then back to me. “How is everything going?”

“Fine. Great. Splendid.”
Splendid?

She looks at me for a moment then turns to Oliver. “Is this your first visit to the Rocky Point Lighthouse?” she asks.

I can tell her wheels are turning. She's trying to decipher exactly what's going on. Is this boy a distraction? A paying customer? My secret lover?

Ha!
I actually snort out loud at that one. Her head swivels back to face me. I look down at the desk and rearrange the souvenir pens and pencils in their holder.

“It's my first visit to Rocky Point, period,” Oliver says. “It's very cool.” He looks around the lobby. “And this place . . .”

His whole face lights up, as if the photos on the walls, the objects in the display cases, the cheesy gift shop items, fill him with a kind of joy. I watch, fascinated. What does the world look like from inside his bright blue eyes? “Well, it's just great.”

My mom smiles, and the lines on her face seem to vanish.
Make Mom's day,
I think. She's looking at him as if she just discovered a long-lost best friend.

“You think so?” She gazes around the lobby fondly. “It certainly holds a special spot in my heart. I'm always glad when someone else sees how special this place is.”

I roll my eyes and sit back down. I really hope she isn't going to launch into how much she loves Candy Cane.

“See, Mandy?” she says to me. “This young man doesn't think Rocky Point is boring.”

Oliver looks at me, surprised.

“I don't think the lighthouse is boring,” I say defensively.

Now Mom looks at me with the same surprised expression as Oliver. “This very morning you said—”

“Isn't the library open?” I ask, cutting her off.

“I thought I'd take my daughter to lunch on her first day on the job.”

Oliver takes this as his cue. “Well, I'll see you,” he says.

“Wait,” I blurt. He and Mom both look at me.
Now what?

I grab one of the flyers and hold it out to him. “Um . . . you should check this out.”

He takes the flyer, smiles, then lopes out of the lobby, tripping a bit on the way out the door. He glances back at us, his cheeks tinged slightly pink. I smile, he shrugs, then he's gone.

“I love it when younger people take an interest in the history here,” Mom says.

I rummage in my bag to make sure I have the lighthouse key, then knock the wedge out from under the door and hold it open for Mom. “Yes, I know.”

I grab the
GONE FISHIN'
sign that hangs on the inside doorknob and slip it onto the outside knob.

“Is he a day-tripper?” she asks as I make sure the door is locked.

“No, he's here for the summer.”

“Really? Where's he staying?”

I shrug. For some reason I don't want to let on that he's Freaky Framingham's grandson. She'll probably assume he's just as weird as his grandfather, despite their shared love of Candy Cane. “We didn't really get much of a chance to talk.” That's certainly true.

Mom leads the way up the path. We've never gone out to lunch together before, not on our own. It suddenly seems weird.

I don't think something bad has happened. When Mom has to break bad news, her eyes and mouth don't match. She smiles a toothy, tense grimace as if she's trying to project “everything will be okay” no matter what she's about to say. But her eyes won't match her lips—they're shadowed, holding a sadness or worry in them. When she told us about Dad's heart attack, even back then, I had already learned to recognize this contradiction on her face. That day, the disparity was sharp, her smile bright but brittle, and her eyes sunk into her face as if they were in retreat. Justin and I perched on the battered vinyl sofa swing on the screened-in porch, and I knew I didn't want to hear whatever she was about to say. Knew with such certainty that I covered my ears before she spoke.

I sneak a peek at her as we walk the three blocks to where she parked the car. Mom isn't exactly a chatterer so we walk along in silence, accompanied by the familiar sounds of our crunching, shuffling footsteps, the
whump, fwump
of seagull wings, and the
soft slap of water against the moss-covered boulders. As far as I can tell, Mom's face forms a coherent whole. Her eyes seem kind of tired, and her mouth has a downward slant, but that's been her usual expression for a while now.

We slide into the car, the seats warm from the sun, and buckle up. Her hands on the wheel, she says, “Tiny's?”

I shrug. “Sure.”

Tiny's actually
is
tiny. The owner took the space in the alley between the Laundromat and the hardware store on Main Street and created a thriving take-out place. In deference to the local economy there's always one seafood item on the menu, but other­wise it's vegetarian and vegan. More Summer Regulars seem to frequent it than us locals, though it's often quite busy right after New Year's when people making vows to eat more healthily suddenly remember it's there.

By the time we've gotten our salads (lobster for Mom, of course, greens with feta cheese and watermelon for me) and snagged one of the benches lining the town square, the fog has burned away. It's not hot, the watermelon is weirdly delicious in the salad, and Oliver is going to be here all summer. Things are looking up—I even forgive Mom for interrupting my first conversation with him.

Until . . .

“I know you're disappointed that both Justin and Cynthia are gone most of the summer. But perhaps without the usual distractions, we can spend some time thinking about your junior year.”

“Seriously, Mom?” I put the plastic fork back into the take-out container. “Summer vacation just started. You really want to talk about school?”

“Next year is crucial for your college applications,” Mom says. “Your grades improved this past year, but . . .”

I sigh, long and loud. “I know. I'm not perfect like Justin.”

“Now, Mandy,” Mom says, “I'm not comparing you two.”

“Of course you are. Just like all my teachers who say ‘
You're
Justin Sullivan's sister?' as if they can't believe Mr. Straight As could be related to the B Queen.”

“I'm sure you're exaggerating. And you got several B-pluses this year.”

Here's my thing with school. If it's about concepts, I've got it nailed. So I'm good in English, and even things like social studies. But when it's about stuff that has to be memorized and super detailed, not so much.

Before he died, Dad was the one who used to help me with my homework. The strongest impression that stays with me is how patient he was. Both Mom and Justin would try to help me later, but Justin would get bored (who can blame him?), and Mom just got frustrated.

“Okay, Frowny-face,” she says in her teasing tone. It's what she's called me since I was a little girl and would pout. “I get it. It's a bit early to start in on school.” She pats my hand. “And you're showing real maturity and responsibility taking on the greeter job at Candy Cane.”

Wow. A compliment. I give her a small smile as we pack up our trash and toss it into a nearby receptacle.

After parking in the lot, Mom walks me back to Candy Cane, and as I struggle to get the heavy door to unstick, I hear her sigh behind me. “Another thing to fix,” she mutters. The door
­suddenly gives and I stumble inside. I slip the wedge into place to hold it open, then turn to say bye. She smiles that oh-so-bright smile and says cheerfully, “Just add it to the list.”

What's this about?
I wonder. Her worried eyes don't match the chirpy tone.
Something
is
wrong
. “Um . . . ,” I begin.

She turns slightly so that the breeze off the water stops blowing her hair into her face. She smooths it down with one hand and jiggles the car keys with the other. “I'd better run,” she says. “Caroline is alone with the new volunteers, and sometimes having the help isn't any help at all.”

“Thanks for lunch,” I call after her. She waves without turning around, and I watch her slim back as she heads toward the car. As I take my seat behind the desk, I wonder what she's worried about, then remember that she basically worries about everything. It probably isn't anything specific, just her general “I'm a mom and so I worry” thing.

Other than a completely imaginary return visit from Oliver, no one comes to the lighthouse for the rest of the day. Cynthia must have been somewhere with her family in a cell-phone-free location, because I texted her a few times and never heard back. I played a few games on my phone, one eye to the door at all (okay, most) times in case Mom came back or someone did wander in. I stuck my head out the door to remind myself that the town actually still exists, restraightened every single flyer and brochure, and finally, finally, finally it's four o'clock and I can go home. And look forward to another dull and endless day tomorrow.

The lobster boats are back where they belong in the harbor, the catch unloaded long ago and already being delivered to
restaurants or sold to walk-ups right at the dock. People really go gaga for that—fresh off the boat, right out of the trap. Me, I have to look in the other direction. The squirmy, crawling creatures give me the jeebies.

I dismount at the steepest part of Weatherby Hill and push my bike to the top. This isn't going to be big fun come late July and August when the sun beats down and the humidity skyrockets. Hopefully, though, the daily bike ride will get me into better shape. I'm not exactly the most athletically inclined person. I'm more of a couch-inclined person, something Justin and Cynthia rag on me about, sometimes simultaneously.

I'll show them,
I think with a grin. I hop back on the bike and pedal hard for about two blocks, and then decide it's just too much work. This is vacation, right?

A
fter dinner I call Cynthia. With all we have to discuss, texting just won't do.

“Don't leave out a single anything,” Cynthia says. “How did you find out about the freaky Freaky connection?”

I tell her everything—about Oliver's arrival, how cute he looked, how we were bonding, and how Mom might have ruined it all by almost revealing my lack of interest in Candy Cane, which he seems to love as much as she does.

I flip over onto my back with an awful thought. “He might not come back to the lighthouse. I mean, he already spent all morning looking at what takes most people fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops.”

“Because he likes you and wanted to hang around,” Cynthia insists.

Sadly, I have to tell the truth. “Not exactly. He spent all the time upstairs looking at those exhibits. I didn't even know he was up there.”

“Huh.” Now I can picture Cynthia's “working on it” expression. The face she makes when her brain is trying to come up with a solution, a plan, or an explanation for something. “Well, maybe now that he knows you work there, he'll come back!”

“Maybe . . .”

“Come on, Mandy! The way he looked at you at the festival! That was the face of a boy who seriously liked what he saw. It was as if I wasn't even there at all.”

I sit straight up at that. She's right! Cynthia was standing right next to me, and
I
was the one he smiled at, who he remembered. A giant grin spreads over my face.

“What is with me?” I moan. “All day I've been mood swinging. Elated. Miserable. Happy. Sad. Panicked. Calm. What is up with that?”

“Hormones,” Cynthia says, perfectly imitating her mom. That's what her mother says to explain the inexplicable things Cynthia or her sisters do. Part resignation, part exasperation. Turns out it's a pretty convenient excuse. Cynthia started using it herself to get out of trouble, particularly with her dad, who turns seven shades of pink at the mere mention of hormones. It's become our favorite catchphrase to explain the unexplainable—everything from a teacher suddenly getting strict to extreme shifts in the weather.

“Hormones,” I agree, giving the word the same treatment. This sets us both laughing hysterically.

Over my cackling I can hear Mom calling up the stairs. “Hang on,” I tell Cynthia. I open my door and pop out my head. “Yeah?”

“Shouldn't you be getting ready for bed?” Mom says from the foot of the staircase. “It's another workday tomorrow.”

“Gotta go,” I say into the phone.

“Keep me posted,” Cynthia says.

I nod at Mom and return to the privacy of my bedroom. “As if I wasn't going to send you hourly bulletins if I ever see him again.”

“You will.”

That's the thing about Cynthia. Her confidence is contagious. At least for a little while. Long enough for me to go to sleep excited about tomorrow.