Her smile disappears in the steam of the coffee. “For all the good it did her.” She sighs and clinks a spoon around in her cup. “Would have been better off to send her to beauty school. At least she’d have a degree by now. You can make a lot of money doing hair.”
“But Melyssa wouldn’t be happy.”
“She’s not too happy now. I hope you’ll be smarter.”
“I’m working on it.”
“You’re working on something.” She leans her head into Melyssa’s laptop.
I sit still and let her look. I know it won’t mean anything to her. Nothing about what I’m doing with my life makes sense to her. “Just a science paper.”
She leans back and looks me over. I do the same to her. Having Melyssa home is wearing us both out. She says, “I want you to be happy, Myra. But being smart isn’t going to bring that boy back to you. He’s a spoiled rich kid, and you aren’t. You’re just too different.”
We sit in silence.
She says, “False hope can kill a person. Part of being happy is knowing where you belong.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Not yet,” she says. “But you will.” She takes her coffee and goes back to her room. Her steps sound like sandpaper on the cold linoleum floor.
27
Stoop:
To dive hard and fast.
The first day of school after the hunters got pulled out, a few teachers ask me about the rescue. Mostly kids don’t watch the news, so it’s no big deal. But by the second day, everyone and their cousin has heard about it.
Jonathon sits by me in bio. “So how does it feel to be a spunky little celebrity?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say quietly.
“What do you mean? You’re a star. I’ve watched the clip ten times myself. Crappy footage. Should have given you a full-on interview. Missed the real angle. So typical of podunk local coverage.”
“Do you want to share with the class, Jon?” says Ms. Miller.
“Myra’s a rescue ranger.”
Ms. Miller raises her eyebrows at me again like she did the day I told her I was going to apply. “Really?” Apparently Ms. Miller is the only one in the city of Landon who hasn’t heard.
“She was on the news. She’s like a rescue worker at the marina now and she talked these stupid hunters off the lake when they were going to give up and freeze to death.”
“They weren’t stupid,” I say. Why does everyone think you have to be drunk or stupid to get stuck on the lake?
“You’re the girl who did that?” says Ms. Miller.
I hate how surprised she looks. Again.
“Do you want to tell us about it?” says Ms. Miller.
Erik turns to look at me and smiles. Tight T-shirt girl stares. The weird thing is I always kind of thought it would be fun to be like Melyssa and Erik and be the center of attention. Turns out it’s embarrassing.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” I say.
“Yes, it was,” says Jonathon.
Ms. Miller says, “Jonathon, stop talking and give that girl some peace.”
When I get in the car to go to work, I turn my phone on and see I have a text from Erik.
Come over after track? Parents in Phoenix.
We can use both computers.
I click off the message and feel the heat in my face. I remember what happened last time I went to Erik’s house when his parents were out of town. It didn’t involve the computers.
None of this matters, of course, because after work I have to go home and get dinner on, clean up, and help the boys with their homework and do my own, which has been all the way off my radar since I started spending every spare minute reading about birds and islands in the middle of jack nowhere. Plus I’d have to lie to go, because Dad would freak if I casually mentioned I was going to visit the kid he now refers to as “the little puke.”
I turn on Melyssa’s stereo. Of course
the
song is playing. Is it me, or do they just play that song every ten minutes? It doesn’t matter. The stupid lyrics crawl inside me and before I know it I’m thinking about how it was to have Erik talk to me in the low, happy way he saved for when we were all alone. Then I’m thinking about how it felt to have his arms around me. How he sometimes smelled like citrus. What he sounded like when he started breathing too hard, which is kind of like wind on a loose screen door, and my stomach started doing a quadruple twisting layout, and I’m just really grateful I’m nearly to the marina because I shouldn’t be driving when I’m out of my mind.
Ranger Bobbie is in her office for a change. When I walk in the door I can smell her ice cream. It must have something in it besides mocha and almonds.
“That was a great thing you did with those hunters.” She digs into her quart with a spoon.
“Thanks. I feel weird about it.”
“Why?”
“Because what if I had screwed up?”
“You didn’t. Shake it off.” Bobbie looks annoyed. I’m ruining her ice-cream break.
“The kids at school keep talking about it.”
“Let ’em talk. They didn’t save anybody’s life this week. You’re way too hard on yourself. That’s supposed to be my job. Anyway, how about rescuing a few dirty windows this afternoon?”
“Love to,” I say.
“Good girl,” says Bobbie. “You bring your worries to me anytime. I’ll find you something to clean.”
Bobbie and I have what Ms. Miller calls a mutualistic relationship.
The sun feels good on my back. I can’t stop thinking about whether I should go over to Erik’s. Before I know it, I’m scrubbing the glass off the windows. I decide to block out Erik by thinking about how much money I need to earn before I can apply for the Galápagos. The next thing I notice is that my ladder’s moving. “Hey!” I yell.
I look down and see Pete rattling the back legs. “Don’t you fly? I heard you were Super Office Girl.”
“Hey, I’m going to fall if you do that.”
Pete rattles the ladder harder. He’s laughing but I’m not. The last time I saw him, he was fuming at me about the whole Mr. Whitehead thing. But even if he’s ticked, this is taking it too far. I drop my towel and grab on to the ladder with the hand that isn’t holding the window cleaner. The momentum sways the back of the cheap aluminum legs and I careen off into the air.
I fall smack into Pete’s arms. He’s surprisingly strong for a skinny guy, but I’m bony too. My knee hits him right in the mouth, which is fine with me, except it hurts my knee. “What are you doing?”
“Hey, do you want to go sailing? The wind’s perfect today.” He doesn’t even put me down first. I mean, I nailed him and he just holds me there, grinning.
Just then Bobbie comes whipping around the corner and sees me in distressed-damsel pose. I slide out of Pete’s arms. Pete rubs his mouth. “You made me bleed, Myra.”
“Myra has work to do,” says Bobbie. “And so do you. In my office.”
I see Pete leave the office a few minutes later and he’s not exactly smiling. I stay outside, doing windows where it’s safe. By the time I finish, the afternoon is gone and I have a sunburn on my arms.
I slip inside quietly to finish up. Bobbie nabs me as I wipe down the counters. “Pete’s just a big kid. That’s why we like him around here. But you’re a real kid. You get my meaning?”
“Yeah,” I say. My face suddenly matches my arms.
“I like you,” she says. “I’d like to keep you around, okay?”
“Okay.”
She grabs a set of keys off the wall. I notice she’s put her firearm on. “Got a couple of drunks trespassing over at the Saltair Pavilion. Hate that place. See you tomorrow.”
The Saltair Pavilion is a rebuilt version of a dance hall that should never have been built in the first place. It’s burned to the ground three times, but nobody seems to get any smarter.
I walk out to the garbage containers with the trash and watch Ranger Bobbie drive away. I wonder what it would be like to be so fearless. A woman who chases off vagrants without flinching. Not to mention that she pays her own bills and buys liquored-up ice cream she has no intention of sharing. Now that’s spunky. I bet she’d never call Erik or go over to his house just to see what would happen. I bet she never does anything that people want her to, unless she wants to.
I run into Pete at the storage sheds. He’s cleaning off a gang tag that’s been there awhile.
“Did you get in trouble with Bobbie?” I say.
“What did she say to you?” he says.
“She told me I’m a kid.”
He keeps scrubbing. He’s a good scrubber for being such a slob.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say.
“Hey, no. There was a reason I knocked you off the ladder.”
“There was?”
“Yeah. You have a minute?”
Pete stows his cleaning gear in the marina golf cart and we drive down the road that drops into Sunset Beach. The sun isn’t setting yet, but the water is lit up and sparkling. We take off our shoes and walk on the coarse white sand. The water has left deep furrows in the ground, lined with brine shells and tiny white feathers, almost like a planted crop of birds. The sky is lit up and endlessly blue.
“I got mad the other day,” he says. “And I’m still kind of mad.”
Pete’s face looks as sunny as the sky. “Really?” I say.
“My dad’s kind of a sore spot with me.”
“Your dad?”
“Actually my whole family ... We aren’t close. Not like you and your family.”
“You’ve lost me,” I say.
Pete digs his long foot in the sand. “Daniel Whitehead’s my father. Mr. God Power himself.”
“Seriously?” I guess I should have figured this out, but they don’t exactly look alike.
“I left home when I was sixteen. When I found my way back here to get my PhD, he set up the foundation to kind of bribe me or smoke the peace pipe or something. And I told him it was fine as long as he kept his religious views out of it and the foundation funded kids going into research who didn’t have a lot of family backing. The only hitch was his raise-a-thousand-dollars thing, because he’s very into self-sufficiency, unless of course you’re talking about his own kids, whom he buys sports cars and Ivy League college degrees and chubby Latin maids who make great guacamole. Not that I’m bitter.”
“Not at all,” I say. We walk a ways more in the sand while I try to refigure everything I know about Pete. “So you’re rich? And that’s why you’re mad at me? Or at him?”
“Right.”
We are nearly into the water. There’s a fringe of brine shrimp exoskeletons that gives the lake’s edge a cool, seedy vibe. A fishy smell fills the air, even though there are no fish in this water. Gulls wail overhead. Pete picks up a rock and skips it a long way out.
“Where did you go when you were sixteen?” I ask.
“I was a basic runaway. I hung out around the local viaducts with all the other homeless kids at first. Then I hitched to South America.”
“Shut up. How did you get the nerve to do it?” I say. “How did you get across the border?”
“Fake passport. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.” My head spins with questions. “How did you get a different last name?”
“I changed it.”
“You changed your name to Pete Tree?”
“I like it better than Peter Whitehead. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it. Mostly I was a mess for a long time. What I want to tell you is that you can write what you want to for your essay. The judges don’t care who you are, or what religion you aren’t. They want a person who will chase an idea. Someone who can take risks and believe in themselves.”
My eyes drop to my watch. “I’m so late.”
“I’ll take you back.”
“Thanks for telling me about your dad. I won’t say anything to anyone.”
“I know you won’t. You’re kind of an old soul, Myra. You get it.”
“I’m not sure I do, Pete. Why is your dad in the picture in class? Did he come visit you down in the Galápagos?”
“Yeah. He’s writing another book. It’s about how nature proves that there’s a God or some other really unique idea. He came down and took a lot of people to lunch for a month. Including the girl in the picture.”
“Your girlfriend?”
Pete makes a whistling sound through his teeth. “Not anymore.”
We bump along in the golf cart toward the marina office. “He chased your girlfriend off?”
“It was kind of a father-son project.”
“So you can work together, I guess.”
“Listen. We don’t get along. But at least this project will help somebody.”
Pete walks me to my car and opens the door. I say, “Why do you think I have an old soul?”