voice. Sitting on the edge of the dock, her feet in the water, her arms bracing herself, her eyes like saucers, Lily stared into my face. The porch light went off, Hancock muttering something about Lily needing to get back in the house “A- SAP.”
“What are you doing out there?” Lily hissed. She clicked off a small flashlight and slammed her book shut.
“Would you believe me if I said I was just passing by?”
She groaned. “You are a terrible liar, Calder White.”
My heart did a weird little skip at the sound of my name on her lips, and I worked to keep my tailfin from flashing to the surface. “Sorry if I scared you.”
“You didn’t scare me.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. But you still haven’t told me what you’re doing out there. If you didn’t get the memo, no one swims in Lake Superior, especially in April, at midnight. And it’s dangerous. There are . . . Never mind.”
Avoiding the obvious question, I focused on her eyes, penetrating the darkness. I was confident she couldn’t see any more of me than my face and neck, but it didn’t do anything to calm my nerves. This girl was too aware. And way too much in control of herself. Wouldn’t a normal girl run? The best I could do was throw the accusations back at her.
“I could ask
you
what you’re doing out here in the middle of the night.”
“This is my house. I live here. I can do whatever I want.”
I exhaled my defeat. “Fine. You win.”
“So? Are you going to tell me? Or should I assume the worst?”
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The worst?
For a second I considered telling her the truth— not that she’d believe it. She’d just chalk it up to sarcastic mockery if I told her I was a serial killer, stalking her family in the night. “If you must know, I’m doing a triathlon this summer, and I’ll have to swim a mile in open water. There’s too many boats during the day, so I’m training at night.”
She snorted. “The boats are still in dry dock.”
I scrambled for a response, but she kept talking. “I hope you’re wearing a dive suit.”
“Of course.”
Lily twisted up her mouth like she wasn’t buying any of
the crap I was selling. She stood up. “Whatever.”
“Where are you going?”
“Inside. It’s late.” She looked over her shoulder at the
house. “And I need to make sure you didn’t give my dad a massive coronary or something.” She muttered something else under her breath that sounded like
“Crazy,”
but I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to herself. She switched on her flashlight. The beam of light bobbed in front of her as she stormed up to the house, her old poetry book tucked under her arm.
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15
VICTORIANS ON THE GREEN
T he next morning, I leaned against the brick exterior of the Harbor Bookstore, one knee pulled up, the brim of my baseball cap pulled low over my eyes. My hair was just starting to dry and curl up around the edges. The bookstore was still locked up. I checked my watch. It should have been open a while ago.
A few people passed on the sidewalk, and I nodded at them as they said “Good morning.” One man, newspaper tucked under his arm, walked a basset hound whose belly nearly dragged on the sidewalk. It looked up at me with
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bloodshot eyes, and his thoughts were all about
How much farther?
as he waddled toward the corner. Behind me, the deadbolt clunked open, and I jumped at the noise.
“Come in, come in,” said a woman. Her Apostle Island sweatshirt was new and still unwashed. She folded the cuffs up over her wrists as I walked in.
“Sorry I made you wait,” she said. “I had to catch the cat. She snuck out the back when I came in.” A calico rubbed up against the woman’s denim- sheathed ankles and rumbled a contented purr. I bent down to pet its head, and it lifted its chin, sniffing my fingers. Then it hissed and ran for the back room.
“Sorry about that. She can be so touchy. Anything I can help you find?”
“Poetry,” I said, straightening up.
“Hmm, well, we don’t have a
huge
selection in that regard. Mostly we carry the bestsellers and some books of regional interest. But . . .” She walked past me and slid a ladder out from behind the counter. “I think . . . ,” she said, setting up the ladder and climbing to the third rung.
She looked down at me. “Robert Frost?”
“Actually, I was looking for something on the Victorians.”
She grunted a dull “Huh” and fingered through a few books on the topmost shelf. “Ah. How about this? I think it covers the Regency and Victorian periods.” She handed it down to me, and I turned it over in my hands. The cover read:
A Time of Elegance
Below the gold- leafed title were the names: Brontë, Byron, Keats, Kipling, Rossetti, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Yeats.
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“Perfect,” I said, smiling up at her.
“Oh, good. Glad that’ll work for y’now. So let’s see. . . .” She backed her way down the ladder and headed for the cash register.
I pulled a crumpled twenty from my pocket. The smell of New Orleans still lingered in its folds.
“Poetry buff, huh?”
“Not exactly. Not yet anyway.” I handed her the money just as the cat peered around the corner at me. I stared it down and it bared its teeth.
“Mrs. Murphy, no,” scolded the woman. “Be nice to the customers.”
“No worries,” I said, and let myself out the door. Moments later I found a grassy strip of city park that followed the shoreline between the Bayfield marina and the ferry dock. A line of giant boulders buffered the shore from the waves. A crooked white oak grew out of the center of the park. Just outside the edge of its shade is where I found my seat on the grass.
Opening the book, I scanned the table of contents for the Victorians and started up with Emily Brontë, searching the poems for something useful, something enticing, something seductive that would draw Lily closer and end this ridiculous repulsion she felt for me. Then my eyes landed on the most obvious weapon. I’d read the first line before— and not on the page of a book, but in Lily’s tattoo.
No Coward Soul Is Mine
Dog- earing the page, I whispered each line aloud until it was etched into my memory, then moved on to Tennyson’s
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“Charge of the Light Brigade”
and its
“Half a league onward, / All in the valley of Death.”
Another poem was all about
“blue isles”;
a third about
the Lady of Shalott.
Who were these people? Every one of them asked the same question I did: How to escape a life where everything good was fleeting? But when I got to Yeats, my heart nearly stopped.
“ A mermaid found a swimming lad, / Picked him for her own, / Pressed her body to his body. . . .”
I snapped the book shut and pressed my eyes against my knees. What did Yeats know about anything?
Despite the sunny day, a shadow passed over me, cooling my skin as drops of water hit my bare toes. There hadn’t been any clouds that I noticed before. I reached to protect my new book from the rain and startled to find Tallulah peering down at me.
She was fully clothed (thank God!), but her hair was still dripping wet from her trip over. Her face eclipsed the sun, creating a halo of light around her head.
“What are you doing here, Lu?”
“Looking for you,” she said.
“Well, you found me. Have a seat.”
She sat close, and the wet soaked into my right side, calming me, as I ran through the poems in my head. As if she could read my thoughts on land, Tallulah reached over me and grabbed up the book.
“What’s this?”
“Homework.”
The book opened to the dog- eared page, and Talullah turned pages, stopping with a snort. “Wow, what’s this?”
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I didn’t have to guess which one she was reading. “Victorian poetry. Lily likes this stuff. Can you believe it?”
“Just coincidence, right?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean there’s plenty of other stuff in there that has nothing to do with us, but definitely weird, right?”
“To say the least.”
“Do you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I suppose it’s what you make of it, Calder. Use it to your advantage, without giving us away, of course.”
“As if.”
“Just make this quick, all right?” She cuddled up to my side and laid her head on my shoulder. “Here. How about this one?” she said, flipping the page to something new. “If you were reading this to me, I’d be putty in your hands.”
I slipped the book from her fingers and read aloud:
“First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world- greetings, quick with its “Oh, list,” When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown, With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third, upon my lips, was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, ‘My Love, my own.’ ”
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“Putty,” she repeated, sighing deeply. “But I think a little of that will go a long way. This book should carry a warning label.”
“ ‘Caution: Use Sparingly’?” I suggested.
She nodded. “Or ‘Keep Away from Open Flame.’ ” “Roger that,” I said, giving her a little salute.
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16
LIKE A BOOK
T wo days later, I had just finished wiping down the multicolored tables and chairs in the Blue Moon Café and had started polishing the black marble countertop. I looked up as the bell rang out and Lily walked through the door in a blue velvet jacket and felt fedora. She took two steps, then skittered to a stop when she saw me grinning.
“Oh, c’mon. You again?” Her arms stood out from her body at an odd angle. I knew she’d react that way. I’d anticipated it. It was even funnier than I imagined.
“Me again,” I said, shrugging and giving the counter another swipe.
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She looked around nervously as if she were wondering whether she should leave, but then she squared her shoulders and set her jaw. She walked quickly across the black- and- white checkered floor and put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” I said matter- of- factly, folding up the wet towel. “The more appropriate question is, what are
you
doing here?” I suppressed a smile. I knew the answer, but it was still fun to ask. Maris had given me lots of crappy jobs in the past. At least this one was turning out to be fun. It was embarrassing how much satisfaction I got out of teasing Lily.
“I work here now,” she said. “This is my first day.” “You don’t say. Well, in that case, grab an apron. They’re under the counter.” I bent over to finish replenishing the bakery case with cream cheese Danishes. She leaned over the counter and peered down at me.
“Are you stalking me?” she asked.
“I was here first.”
“You knew I was applying for a job here.”
I stood up and faced her accusation head on. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I already worked here when you told me that?”
She paused for a second, considering the possibility, balancing embarrassment against persisting doubt. “Is that true?”
“No.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. Her aggravated expression made me smile. This whole thing was aggravating. She was supposed to be malleable, persuadable. Easy pickings. That was what was supposed to be happening here.
Don’t fail, Calder. I won’t let you fail.
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She blew all the air out of her lungs and gave me the full force of her glare. “So you
are
following me.”
There was no point in lying. “Yes. I am following you.”
Her carefully controlled exterior faltered.
“Why?”
I leaned across the counter, clasping my hands together and bringing my face closer to hers. We locked eyes once more, but this time I refused to let her look away. “Because I like you. I’m sorry if that makes you nervous.”
All the color drained from her face. “I thought
you
thought I was crazy.”
“I like crazy.”
“You’re unbelievable,” she grumbled.
“So I’ve been told.”
She slid her velvet jacket off her shoulders and hung it on a hook screwed into the wall. Her lace blouse barely met the top of her skirt, exposing a sliver of pale skin. I pulled an apron out and tossed it at her. She came around the counter as she tied the bright blue apron around her waist.
Mrs. Boyd walked out of the back, checking things off a list she had clamped to a clipboard. Her pink- and- blue- flowered skirt waved as she walked. She wasn’t watching where she was going, and she nearly bumped into Lily.
“Oh. Lily Hancock, is it? Good. Punctual. I like that. I’ve got to pick up some more milk at the store. Calder, there’s supposed to be a delivery soon, so if the driver needs you to sign, just go ahead and do that.
“Lily, Calder can show you around. He just started the other day, but he picked things up really fast. You’re in good hands.” She folded up her list and put it in her purse, slipping the clipboard behind the register. “Back soon,” she said. The bell over the door jingled.
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Lily spun to accost me. “
You’re
training me?”
I shrugged. “There’s not much to it. The cash register has each of the menu items on a separate button. Push what they order, hit Total. Make change. I’ll teach you how to run the espresso machine as the orders come in.”
“Is it going to get busy?”
“Highly doubtful. It’ll be busier this summer, when the tourists start coming, but it’ll be dead slow until Memorial Day. You won’t have much to do except talk to me.”
“Great.” She dragged the word out to let me know just how little she was looking forward to it.
Her eyes met mine for a second. I stared into their clear gray, the sky before a storm, almost the same color as the aura fuzzing around the curves of her body. It reminded me of the color kids put off when they’re feeling unfairly put upon, but for Lily the vibration was different, more silvery, like resigned martyrdom or a willingness to sacrifice.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Looking at you. Do you find that odious?”
“Odious? Who says that?”
“Hmm. I guess I do.” I reached toward her, and she slapped at my hand.
“Well, don’t stare at me like that. I don’t like it,” she said.
“What would you say if I said I couldn’t help it?”
“I’d say you were being odious.”
“Why don’t you like me, Lily Hancock?” I didn’t know why I asked it so directly. Probably because it was driving me crazy not knowing. If I was doing something wrong, I