Beth leaned in to give Jimmy one last kiss and then smiled at him. They’d finished an early dinner and were drawing out their good-byes on the corner of Main Street.
Beth couldn’t believe it, but summer was officially over. Baseball camp was finished for the season, and Jimmy was leaving Pebble Beach to head home for a week or so. He said that his parents had a place on the Jersey Shore where he’d stay before heading back to Bucknell for the fall semester.
What a strange summer,
Beth thought, pulling away from Jimmy to look into his eyes.
“I’ll call you as soon as I get home,” Jimmy said. “And we’ll e-mail.”
“I know,” Beth said, grinning. Beth thought that sounded
like fun, and imagined herself writing e-mails to Jimmy from her dorm room in Washington, DC.
“You’re going to have an awesome time at Georgetown,” Jimmy told her, as if reading her mind. “College sports are on a whole different plane than high school. Your level of competition is going to skyrocket.”
“I’m really excited,” Beth said. Then she couldn’t contain herself any longer, and let her smile break loose. “Oh, and I got you something to remember the summer by!”
“You did?” Jimmy cocked his head a little bit to the side.
Beth laughed in delighted anticipation. “I saw it in a gift shop on Main Street the other day and I knew you had to have it,” she told him. “It was obviously fate.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a plush stuffed pig. It looked like an exact replica of the one they’d seen at the baseball game, right down to the spots on its side.
With great flourish, Beth presented the pig to Jimmy. And then totally cracked up laughing, as the image of the real pig at the Portland Sea Dogs game raced through her mind.
“I was going to try to put a rake on its back,” she told him through her giggles, “but it’s really hard to find miniature rakes in Pebble Beach. Who knew?”
She laughed even harder and then wiped her eyes, and that’s when she noticed that Jimmy wasn’t laughing.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Jimmy held the pig in his hands and looked at it like it was some kind of alien life-form. Like he’d never seen a stuffed animal before.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, staring down at it. He looked up at Beth. He was frowning slightly. “I just don’t get it.”
Beth blinked.
“It’s supposed to be, like, the pig from the Sea Dogs game,” she said. Jimmy looked at her, wearing a quizzical smile. “You know, the one that raked the infield during the seventh inning stretch?”
Did he really not remember?
“Okay,” he said, sounding confused. “But what am I supposed to do with it?”
By this point, Beth just felt kind of embarrassed about the whole thing.
“You’re not supposed to
do
anything with it, Jimmy,” she said. She gestured at the pig sort of helplessly. “I mean…it’s a
pig.
”
Jimmy looked at the pig, and then he looked at Beth.
“Thanks,” he said, but Beth could tell that he was just saying it out of politeness. He really didn’t understand why she’d given it to him.
“It’s just funny,” Beth tried again.
And as Jimmy looked at the pig again, as if he was waiting for it to explain Beth’s behavior to him, Beth had the most unsettling thought.
Didn’t Jimmy have a sense of humor?
Because as they stood there both staring at the stupid stuffed pig, Beth couldn’t remember a single time when Jimmy had actually laughed about anything. Smiled, sure, but laughed?
And had he ever made
her
laugh?
She racked her brain. When they’d been at the baseball game, Beth had laughed so hard when the pig came out but Jimmy hadn’t, now that she thought of it. At the time, she’d figured that he had just been really into the game, so he’d ignored the hysterical thing happening. And then later, it hadn’t been an issue because he’d wanted to kiss her so badly.
But what if that wasn’t it at all? What if he just didn’t get why a pig with rake on its back was funny? Because Beth thought that something so over-the-top was something you either found hysterical or you didn’t, and no amount of explaining would make any difference.
She and Jimmy said their good-byes, promised to keep in touch, and kissed again.
It was a long, sweet kiss, and Beth definitely enjoyed the touch of his mouth on hers, but something had changed. Her heart didn’t pound the way it had before.
“I’m going to miss you,” Jimmy told her.
“Same,” Beth whispered, but she felt like she was lying somehow.
She watched him walk away from her, down Main Street and past the pier toward the car he’d loaded up with all his stuff from the summer. Then she tucked her hands into the pockets of her new American Eagle jeans and started her walk toward home.
She couldn’t believe what had just happened. More than that, she couldn’t believe she’d hung out with this guy all summer and hadn’t noticed his humor deficit. How was that possible?
The thing was, Jimmy was so athletic, and that made him so different from the other guys she’d known. Now that she thought about it, that was pretty much all that they’d talked about: sports. It had been a lot of fun for Beth to talk so much about that part of her life, but there was more to her than just athletics.
As she headed inland toward the road that led back toward her family’s cottages, Beth wondered if maybe she’d been paying too much attention to the
idea
of moving on. Because Jimmy was the first guy she’d noticed at all since she and George had broken up.
Maybe noticing him had just been a way for her to figure out that she
could
notice a guy. It didn’t necessarily mean that she was destined to fall in love with him or anything.
And maybe she didn’t want to be with a guy who didn’t get why that pig was funny, after all. Maybe Jimmy was that
other kind of summer boy—the kind you stopped thinking about as soon as the weather turned colder.
Beth was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice the first fire truck that zoomed past.
It was the second one, or maybe the third, that caught her attention.
She looked up, and that was when she saw the smoke. It billowed up from the trees in front of her—the trees that, she knew, surrounded her family’s little compound. The smoke was so dark that it was almost black against the sky, and it made absolutely no sense.
Beth knew what smoke meant. Everyone knew what smoke meant.
It was like her brain completely froze, and then reset.
Beth didn’t even think. She just broke into a run.
Beth had run that same stretch a thousand times.
During the school year, she sometimes even imagined running it while she was inside on the treadmill, because it was so beautiful, the way the dirt road curved into the dark woods, like it was curving into someplace magical. The mossy smells and deep pine usually embraced her, soothed her.
Not tonight.
Beth pumped her legs and her arms, her throat burning. Burning. She wasn’t aware of breathing and when she made it around that last, final bend, she skidded to a stop.
The fire trucks were pulled up into the clearing, and firefighters in their yellow coveralls marched here and there with their hats pulled tight on their foreheads. Smoke still
rose behind them. A hose poured water, and men shouted to each other in thick Maine accents. Beth could see all that.
But it was what was behind them that Beth couldn’t make sense of.
Her house was gone.
The walls still stood, but they were blackened, and bits of roof were clinging to the charred remains. Everything else was just…rubble.
She bent over to put her hands on her knees, gasping for air, as frantic, panicked thoughts of her family filled her mind.
“Beth!”
She heard her name, but couldn’t move. Suddenly, her mother was crying at her side, and she folded Beth into her arms.
“Oh, thank God!” she cried.
Next to her, Beth’s father looked ghostly pale. “We didn’t know where you were, kiddo,” he said gruffly, and pulled her into a hug of his own.
Beth was just thankful they were okay. Her mind reeled away from thinking that through. From picturing what them
not
being okay might have been like. It was paralyzing.
“Is everyone…?” She was afraid to ask.
And then she didn’t have to.
She found herself swept up by all of her cousins at once. Ella grabbed her around the neck and Jamie bear-hugged the both of them. The rest of the Tuttles came to stand around them in a small, quiet circle, as if they were trying to figure out together what was happening.
For a long time, Beth just stood and watched, dazed on such a deep level that she didn’t notice the tears pouring down her face until they tickled her neck.
Behind them, a car pulled into the driveway, sweeping everything with its headlights. In the twin beams, Beth saw that there was nothing identifiable in the mess of blackened rubble. Everything was just…gone.
Kelsi came racing over, her eyes wide with panic, and when she saw Beth and her parents standing there, whole and sound, she burst into tears.
“What happened?” Kelsi demanded through her sobs.
But all Beth could think was:
Everything is gone.
Her whole childhood. All those summers. She had known every single floorboard in that back bedroom she’d slept in. She knew every settling sound the little cottage made during the night. She could walk through the entire place blindfolded and barefoot. Sometimes during the cold, bleak Massachusetts winters, she would dream that she was back in her Maine bedroom, and would dream of waking up and fixing breakfast, then settling in the front room that
caught the morning light. She couldn’t believe that she would never sit on that couch again, or look out the tiny porthole window in the bathroom.
She had so many memories of the cottage that she couldn’t accept that it had just disappeared while she was off having dinner. How could that be?
“It was the lint trap,” Beth’s mother was telling Kelsi. “In the dryer. The fireman told me it’s fairly common. We’re just lucky no one was hurt, and that the fire was contained in the one cottage. When you think what might have happened…” But she didn’t finish.
Beth watched her father wrap his arm around her mother’s shoulders.
Beth had never really thought about the fact that fire trucks were always racing to specific fires. Or the fact that fires could do this—reduce a whole lifetime of memories to ash.
She’d lost her virginity in that cottage just last summer. It had seemed so perfect because the summer before, also right here, she’d realized how in love she was with George.
She’d become who she was here, and now she didn’t know what that meant. If her childhood was gone in a flash like this…if everything could change so horribly, so suddenly…
“Beth.”
She knew that voice, and turned, not at all surprised that he was there.
What
was
surprising was that George was covered in soot. His hair was even wilder than usual.
“What happened?” she demanded, not realizing it was the first she’d spoken until she heard her own cracked voice. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” George said, his own voice scratchy. “I saw the smoke. No one knew where you were.” His dark eyes locked on to hers.
“I was in town,” Beth whispered. “I was having dinner with Jimmy.”
“Thank God for Jimmy Neutron,” George said brokenly, and he even smiled. Then he reached into his pocket. “Here.”
“What is it?” she asked, because his hand was still a fist.
“I found it in the—” George stopped, and his throat worked, as if it hurt to swallow. “I don’t know why it wasn’t burned.”
He opened his hand.
It was the cork fisherman figurine that had once sat on the shelf above the light switch in Beth’s bedroom. It was slightly blackened at the edges, but still, unmistakably, it was the same silly knickknack that George had named Chauncey.
Beth had never been so glad to see Chauncey’s silly little
shape in her life. She grabbed it and smiled before putting it in her pocket. She felt more tears fill her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” George said quietly, and he smiled.
Beth watched him start to walk away, but it was like she saw it from a distance. She saw the remains of her cottage, and wondered, suddenly, what she was supposed to take from this.
She’d been so afraid of the way that her life was changing that she’d clung to a friendship with George, as if that could stall it. But the moment she’d suspected that maybe they could work their way back to what they’d been, she’d recoiled. Because she didn’t want to go backward, she’d told herself. She wanted to go forward into her new life. And whatever else George was, he wasn’t new.
But he was so much else.
She didn’t want to be in love with him because it was complicated. They’d broken up for a lot of valid reasons. Loving him hurt. Beth had wanted a fresh start because it was easier.
But she thought that maybe, while the firefighters were trudging through the remains of her house,
easy
wasn’t exactly in the cards anymore.
Not after tonight.
She pulled the little cork figurine back out of her pocket.
And as she held the remains of Chauncey in her palms, she knew two things. That she could make all the plans she wanted, but those didn’t much matter when fate stepped in.
And that memories were more precious than she ever could have imagined—and sometimes, it turned out they were all that anyone had left.
Ella scurried into the room with a huge mountain of clothes obscuring her face.
“Are we doing laundry?” Jamie asked from where she was lounging across the farthest of the twin beds. Next to her, Beth snickered. The fact that she could laugh made everyone else relax a little bit.
The whole family was still in a state of shock. Beth’s parents were bunking down on Ella’s pullout couch, while the cousins and Taryn were having an impromptu sleepover in Kelsi’s room. It felt bizarre, Kelsi thought, to be having an all-cousin sleepover party under such terrible circumstances.
Without discussing it, Kelsi had pulled the shades down on the windows that looked out over the remains of Beth’s cottage. They’d all stared at it enough tonight.
“I don’t do laundry,” Ella said then, tipping her pile forward so that all her clothes fell onto the edge of the other bed, where Kelsi and Taryn were sitting cross-legged. “These are for Beth.”
Everyone stared at the clothes, a riot of color that spilled across the coverlet. They’d all contributed from their own wardrobes. Beth was wearing a pair of Kelsi’s sweats with one of Jamie’s huge, blanket-like sweaters. She’d taken a very long, very hot shower and Kelsi had heard her crying softly under the spray. Now her eyes were red, but her skin was scrubbed clean and her flaxen hair was in a damp ponytail high on her head.
Kelsi thought Beth looked older somehow. She felt that way herself. Like everything had changed, in ways she couldn’t even imagine just yet. She shook the feeling off.
“At least it was just the summer cottage,” Jamie said softly, patting Beth’s leg. “If it had been your house in Martin…”
Beth scooted off the edge of the bed and picked up one of the items of clothing Ella had brought. It was a tiny little tank top with the words TEAM JOLIE emblazoned across the front. It looked like it would barely fit Ella, much less Beth.
“If I didn’t know better,” Beth said drily, “I would think you set the fire yourself, El, so that I’d be forced to wear your clothes. After so many years of trying to get me into them.”
Ella stuck her tongue out at Beth and flopped down on the chair in the corner of the room.
“Not to mention,” Beth continued with that same dry, sort of dark tone. “I am totally Team Aniston.”
“Of course you are,” Ella said with a dramatic eye roll. “Big surprise there.”
There was no real laughter, not yet. But it felt good to be all together, safe and sound despite the fire.
“What a night,” Kelsi sighed, leaning back against the headboard. Next to her, Taryn smiled at her for the first time in what felt like ages. Kelsi guessed the fire had scared everybody into being nicer.
“I have a confession to make,” Jamie announced into the quiet.
“About time,” Ella murmured. Jamie glanced at her.
“Ella told me earlier tonight that she thought I was acting weird this summer, and it’s true.” Jamie took a deep breath. “I know I’ve been strange.”
“Yeah,” Beth said, turning to look at Jamie. “Like when you abandoned me before we were supposed to go dorm room shopping.”
“Or when you refused to talk about hanging out in Northampton with us,” Kelsi agreed, exchanging a look with Taryn.
Jamie looked up at the painted white ceiling with the cracks running through it, and then back at her cousins.
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell anyone,” she said in a small voice. “I kind of didn’t want people to freak out or anything.”
“You can tell us anything,” Kelsi assured her. “Nobody’s going to freak out.” After the fire, any other kind of freak-out seemed minor.
“Seriously,” Beth agreed. “We’re family.”
Jamie raised her shoulders up and then spit it out, like she was afraid of losing her nerve. “There was this guy last summer, at the writing program,” she said. “We were buddies. It was great. And then we e-mailed all year.”
“Is this a friends to more-than-friends thing?” Ella asked. “Because I think Beth could give you some pointers on that one.” She considered. “Or, you know, maybe not.”
“Shut up, Ella,” Beth said mildly.
“Go on,” Kelsi urged Jamie.
“There was this reunion thing we had over spring break,” Jamie continued, a bit dreamily. “Dex and I had broken up, and there was just something about Mark. It was like I’d never seen him before. We totally got together.”
“Define
together,
” Ella suggested, with a wicked grin.
“None of your business, gutter brain,” Jamie replied tartly.
“Everyone knows what it means when people say ‘none of your business,’” Ella murmured, arching her brows at everyone except Jamie.
“Can she tell her story?” Kelsi asked Ella. The sisters looked at each other for a moment. Ella had grabbed on and hugged Kelsi tight when her sister had arrived at the scene of the fire, but Kelsi was all too aware that they still hadn’t talked since their big fight. Things were still unresolved between them. She wasn’t surprised when Ella looked away.
“Anyway, we ended up seeing a lot of each other since then,” Jamie was saying, blushing.
“I don’t get the need for secrecy,” Beth said. “Since when have we
not
been excited about you getting together with a boy?”
“We already know you met him at voluntary summer school, so I think the dork factor is already out of the bag,” Ella said as if she was agreeing with Beth. She gave Jamie a lazy smile. “No need to hide it.”
“You’re hilarious,” Jamie told her. She wrinkled her nose. “The thing is, Mark is deferring Amherst for a year. He was supposed to start with me this fall, but he wants to backpack around Europe instead. See the world. Get a little perspective.” Jamie looked down, focusing on the silver rings on her fingers. “Do you know that I’ve been so focused on getting into Amherst that it, like, took over my whole life?”
The others all looked at one another, amused. Ella tried to muffle her snorty laugh. Beth laughed without hiding it.
“Um, yes,” Kelsi said when no one else spoke. “We know.”
Jamie looked up, and her green eyes were filled with something Kelsi had never seen in them before. Jamie had always been driven. But this was a different kind of ambition altogether.
“I’m going with him,” she whispered. “I’m postponing school for a year. I’m just going to see what happens. It’s so unlike me that it’s been keeping me up at night, but it’s the exact right thing to do. I know it.” Jamie let out a breath, and gave a small smile. “Surprise,” she added softly.
There was a beat of silence.
“Wow!” Kelsi breathed. It was more than a surprise. For studious Jamie, it was like a revolution.
“That sounds amazing,” Taryn said firmly.
Beth shook her head. “Did your parents freak?”
“They were surprisingly okay with it,” Jamie said, looking still taken aback by that unexpected turn. “But I was much more worried about telling you guys.” She looked at Kelsi specifically. “I thought you’d give me a hard time, for sure.”
“Me? Why?” Kelsi asked. “Are you kidding? I’d love to go to Europe!”
“Kelsi’s not
all
about academics the way she used to be,” Ella said, and giggled. “That’s what happens when you get a life.” She still didn’t look at Kelsi, but Kelsi thought that it sounded a lot more affectionate than it could have. She chose to take it as a good sign.
“I thought everyone would think I’m crazy,” Jamie said softly. “I’ve been obsessed with Amherst since I was a kid. All I’ve ever wanted was to go there. And now I’m putting it off a year?”
“Well,” Beth said philosophically, “you were there all last summer. Maybe that eased your obsession a little bit.”
“You don’t think I’m crazy?” Jamie asked.
“No!” everybody cried—everybody except Ella.
“I think you’re completely crazy,” Ella said when everyone else fell quiet, “for not telling me so we could plan the perfect European wardrobe. But other than that, no way. I think you’re going to have the most incredible time!”
“Me, too!” Jamie whispered, her green eyes glowing. “I’m so excited!”
Kelsi’s phone buzzed then, and she picked it up to see that it was Bennett.
“I have to take this,” she told the girls, and jumped to her feet.
Out on the back steps, Kelsi sat with her knees pulled up, hunched over against the chill of the night air. It still smelled like fire, even though there was a fairly decent breeze. Fire and yet mixed with the normal smells of Maine: sea, pine, and the hint of moss and deep greens from the woods. Far above, the moon shone down as if nothing had happened.
Kelsi filled Bennett in on the whole story, wishing all the time that he was there to give her the hug she so desperately needed. Even with the tense way they’d left things, she still believed that everything was better when he was near. It felt good to know that.
“I’m so glad everyone’s okay,” Bennett said quietly. “I mean, it could have happened in the middle of the night. I can’t even think about it.”
“We’re really lucky, I guess,” Kelsi said. It sounded strange to say that out loud. Beth and her parents had lost so much. So much of what made summer summer. The entire Tuttle family was changed by what had happened that night. And yet, they were so very, very lucky.
“What about us, Kelsi?” Bennett asked softly. “Are we okay?”
“I don’t know.” Kelsi thought her voice sounded loud in the night. “I hope so.” She closed her eyes. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”
Bennett sighed.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I mean, I know you’re right. I know I should take it. I just can’t get my head around not being with you.”
“Then it sounds to me like you’ve decided,” Kelsi said. She sort of wished someone was witnessing this. She was being so brave. Everyone talked about loving someone and setting them free, but who really did it?
“I know that this could be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Bennett said, his voice thickening. “I know I’d have to be crazy not to do it.”
“I think,” Kelsi said, “that you would regret it for the rest of your life.”
“We’ll just make it work,” Bennett said then. “I mean, we have to. I can’t do this without you, Kels. It’s like I can feel myself turning into an asshole and you’re the only thing that keeps me grounded. You keep me
me.
”
“I want us to work, too,” Kelsi told him then. “I think we can do it. I really do.”
“I bet every couple says that,” Bennett pointed out. “And yet no one seems to know of a long-distance relationship that lasts.”
“I know of a long-distance relationship that worked,” Kelsi said after a minute. “That’s working right now, in fact. My sister’s. They had some rocky times, but they’re fine now. Great, even.” She smiled, thinking of Ella and how much she’d changed in the past two years. “And believe me, she would have once told you long distance was impossible—and that’s when she thought the term meant a guy who didn’t happen to be right in front of her that very second.”
“Well, if Ella can do it,” Bennett said, with a laugh in his voice, “then I think we should be able to.”
Kelsi didn’t know what would happen in the coming
year. But she did know one thing: She wouldn’t have changed a single thing that brought her to this point.
“I have a good feeling,” she told him then.
“Oh, yeah?” She could hear him smiling.
“Yeah,” she said. She was smiling, too, as if he were in front of her. As if she could reach out and take his hand. “I waited my whole life for you. Now that I’ve found you, what’s a little commute?”