The Summer of Lost Wishes (6 page)

It amazes me how a tragedy can make a person
legendary, almost immortal in a way. The kids from the Shark Island
accident may have perished in those waters fifty years ago, but
they’ve never had a chance to really die. They’ve never rested in
peace. They have been the center of gossip, speculation,
candlelight vigils, and annual memorials since the moment the town
knew they were gone.

“I guess the best way to live forever is to
die young,” I say, peering out the window.

“Bonus points if you die young in a small
town,” Rooks adds.

This guy so gets me. He gets how my mind
works. My friends back home would think it’s creepy that I’m living
in the mythical beach cottage, but this guy – oh, this guy – sees
the eerie excitement of it. And it’s a good thing he does because
no one in Tennessee has bothered to reply to any of my recent
texts. That whole “out of sight, out of mind” thing has proven
itself to be true.

“If I’m going to actually show you around
this small town, we’re going to have to get creative,” Rooks says,
breaking my thoughts of our morbid connection. “Because there’s not
a lot to see here.”

And he’s right. Downtown Coral Sands is just
a few blocks over from Waterfront Café. A cupcake bakery – Seaside
Sweets – sits angled on the corner, hiding any other shop from view
until you circle around onto the main street. Rooks turns to the
right when we reach the stop sign.

The buildings are a disarray of businesses. I
expected quaint little shops with seahorses and sand dollars for
the window décor or cute French-style coffee shops with the
business name written on the door in curly silver letters. But
downtown is a random mess.

A pastel yellow bed and breakfast sits off in
the distance, far enough away from the shops that you can enjoy the
privacy but close enough for a stroll or bike ride to grab lunch.
It looks peaceful and soothing, which is probably what people need
when they hear about the local legends.

“It’s pretty typical of an old downtown
area,” Rooks says, easing up to the next stop sign. “Maybe your mom
can modernize it when she’s done with your house. She’ll need a new
project, right?”

I’m pretty sure Mom will be down here
handing out her business card like a door-to-door salesman,
offering to spruce the place up with Ocean Blue doors and wreaths
decorated with starfish. This entire town will be her interior
design playground.

“Don’t give her any ideas,” I warn him.
“Coral Sands would be unrecognizable by the time she was done with
it. I kind of like that it’s not a commercial gimmick like some
beach towns.”

Rooks laughs and shakes his
head before pulling into a parking spot in front of
Mermaid’s Paradise, a candy and souvenir shop
.
Jars of blue rock candy sit on the window shelving with labels that
read ‘mermaid tears.’

“We have a few gimmicks, as you see in front
of you. I’ll make sure you experience every last one of them this
summer,” he says.

This summer. Because after this summer,
he’ll be back at his mom’s house, and I’ll still be here without my
Tennessee friends or my one Florida friend, if I can call Rooks my
friend. He’s my neighbor – my incredibly hot neighbor – who has
been tasked with showing me around. But he doesn’t seem to mind, so
I’m going to pretend he wants to do this, even if he may not.

I exhale and let the words ‘this summer’
drift away with my breath. I refuse to think of what happens when
summer ends and real life begins again.

“So where are we going first?” I ask.

“We’re going to walk down the block, if
that’s cool with you,” he says. “I want to see if a friend of mine
is working this afternoon, and if he is, you’re in for the best
gimmick Coral Sands has to offer.”

Rooks wasn’t kidding about the seafood
restaurants. They’re the pride and joy of this town, from small
family-owned businesses tucked between boutiques to the local
chains to the five-star ‘must have reservations to get in any time
in the next month’ restaurants. You can’t turn the corner without
seeing a sign for lobster, sushi, or shrimp.

“I guess fresh shrimp is a
perk of living here,” I say, gazing into the window of
Walk
The Plank
. The lunch crew dashes around the front
counter, setting out napkins, menus, and utensils before they open
soon. I can’t tell much through the tinted window, but it looks
more rustic than serene, as far as style is concerned.

He shrugs. “Maybe, I guess, if you like
seafood,” he says. “I’m sort of over it. I worked at a seafood
restaurant back home, and if I never ate it again, I’d be okay with
that.”

“Were you waiting tables or standing at the
roadside in a fish costume handing out coupons?” I ask, trying not
to crack a smile – and failing.

We avoid the plank and continue along the
sidewalk, past a shop with Coral Sands t-shirts and lighthouse
figurines for sale.

“You’re not funny,” he says. “I was a
waiter, and it wasn’t the kind of restaurant that would even own a
fish costume. They were more like that place over there, a little
more high-end.”

He points ahead at Sharktooth Seafront. The
exterior walls are wooden like a surf shack on the beach, but the
logo is sparkly and gold with elegant cursive writing. I bet they
have oak floors and an illuminated bar that glows orange to match
the golden vibe. Mom will probably celebrate her new business
venture at a restaurant like that, somewhere expensive and
showy.

“The tips were good,” Rooks says. “But when
you work with a higher clientele, you have a much tougher standard
to live up to. I never quite fit in with the country club kind of
people, you know?”

“So did you quit?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, I was fired,” he
says. “I don’t know what she’s heard, but I see the way your mom
looks at me – like I’m the worst possible person for her daughter
to be hanging out with.”

Maybe Mr. Carter told Mom about Rooks and the
job termination. That could be why she thinks he’s a bad influence,
that maybe he’ll cost me a corporate position someday if I don’t
stop hanging out with him right now.

But I doubt Mr. Carter would’ve thrown his
own son under the bus like that. Maybe it’s just rumors and gossip.
This town seems to have mastered that over the last
half-century.

“I wouldn’t read much into her,” I tell him.
“She’ll come back to reality eventually. Right now, she has this
idea in her head of what our lives will be like here, and she’s
determined to create this picture-perfect image.”

“And I don’t fit into that picture, right?”
he asks. “Because I’m a troublemaker who is going to be a bad
influence on you and cause all the cool kids to shun you?”

I don’t even know what to say to that. Mom
doesn’t really hide her lack of approval, but she doesn’t actually
do or say anything rude to him. She says that Mr. Carter is a nice
man who has been ever-so-kind to help us out but that he has a
typical teenage son who needs to get his act together and grow
up.

“It’s not that,” I say, even though it’s
exactly that.

“Piper, c’mon. I’m not dumb. I know she
thinks I’m not good enough to hang out with you. I’m not part of
the right social circle. You can say it,” he says.

It’s almost as if he’s mad that I’m trying to
be nice about it.

“What kind of trouble did you get into?” I
ask instead. “She said you were sent to your dad for the summer
because of something you did. So what did you do?”

He tosses his head back, almost humored.
“It’s the dumbest story ever,” he says. “It was stupid. The entire
thing was stupid.”

He motions for us to turn at the corner of
the sidewalk, so I let him lead the way. This block stretches down
to the beach and a long string of fishing docks. Boats of different
sizes linger in the water as crews of workers rush around, hauling
in today’s catches. A thick white chain with an “authorized
personnel only” sign blocks the fishing docks from the tourist
fishing piers. I glance away. Fresh seafood is great, but I don’t
exactly want to watch the freshness be brought in from the
water.

The sidewalk merges onto the small fishing
pier down behind the restaurants. A mild breeze sweeps off of the
water. Rooks glances at the fishermen but nods in the other
direction, toward the beach and away from the businesses.

“I worked at this seafood restaurant, The
Captain’s Table, that’s crazy popular back home,” Rooks tells me as
we stroll toward the sand. “They have a contract with a lobster
fishing company that imports fresh lobster weekly, so it’s always
packed.”

He describes the restaurant as one of those
mom-and-pop kind of places that became locally famous because of
their menu. Anyone who vacations nearby makes reservations at The
Captain’s Table because nowhere else in the state of Florida has
this good of lobster.

“It wasn’t so bad when I was a kid, but as
they grew and more business came in, it turned into one of those
gimmicky lobster-themed places. So lame,” Rooks says. “They had
this huge wooden lobster cut-out made for them. It’s like five feet
tall, painted red, with this big stupid smile, and it stands out on
the grass. It looks like a drawing off of the kids’ menu.”

I shield my eyes from the sun as I look
toward him. “Did you hurt the lobster?” I ask.

He cracks a smile. “Not exactly. I was
supposed to work one weekend, but my mom called me before I went in
and said she was at the hospital. I called into work, like anyone
would do, and then I went to the hospital to check on my mom
because at that point, I didn’t know what had happened,” he
says.

I slip my flip-flops off before we continue
on through the sand. Large sand dunes separate the back patios of
the restaurants up the hill from the beach. In the distance,
there’s another pier and a snowcone shop on the actual beach.

“When I got to the hospital, it was actually
her boyfriend, not her, who had been admitted,” Rooks continues.
“He burned himself on his motorcycle trying to repair something
before it had cooled off.”

“So they fired you for not being at work?” I
assume. “Can they even do that if you called in with a family
emergency?”

Rooks shrugs. “It’s not always that simple,”
he explains. “My boss called the hospital to see if my mom was
there, and she wasn’t a patient, so he accused me of lying and that
was it. I was pissed, but I didn’t do anything about it...yet.” He
pauses for dramatic effect before the word ‘yet.’

The ocean waits before us, pulling the waves
back out to sea and stretching the shoreline out like the beach
needs to yawn. It’s still fairly early in the day, but families are
already scattered across the sand with large umbrellas, picnic
baskets and coolers, and plastic pails for building
sandcastles.

“Everyone knew I got fired, and my boss
didn’t like me or my friends. It’s a small town, and we’re not the
small town heroes,” he says, raising his hand up to his forehead to
shield the sun as he looks out over the water. “We were the ones
who worked at the restaurant, not the ones who can afford to eat
there.”

A large boat drifts in the distance. If it
weren’t for the billowing sails, I’d have thought it was one of the
restaurants’ boats. It looks like a pirate’s ship. I almost ask
Rooks what it is, but I don’t want to interrupt his story.

“I did what I was supposed to do. Black
pants, white button-up shirt. Yes ma’am, no ma’am. I can play the
part when I have to, but I am who I am, you know?” he asks.

He wouldn’t believe me if I agreed. He
doesn’t know me. Not really. He doesn’t know who I was in Tennessee
or who my friends were or what my social status was. He doesn’t
know what kind of house we lived in or where my mom worked. All he
knows is that we’re the new people in town who bought the legendary
cottage next door to his dad’s house. My mom’s new career will be
launching soon, and my life will be reinvented as a Florida girl in
flip-flops rather than the Tennessee girl in boots.

But I do get it. I know what it’s like to
play a part. I sort of feel like I’m playing one right now. The
gossip surrounding my new home automatically makes me interesting
by association, and I’m so far from interesting.

He stops in the sand, away from the crowds of
beach goers and tourists.

“I’m still waiting to know how the lobster
fits into all of this,” I say.

He smirks. “Right. The lobster. My mom
dragged me to church with her that weekend, because that’s what you
do when you have a troublesome kid who really isn’t trouble,” he
says. “The preacher’s sermon was about ‘teaching today’s youth
about manners and respect.’ His words, not mine. But he went too
far with it. He made eye contact with me a lot – enough to make
people look back at me – and he said that lying to your employer
begins with lying in your home. I was pissed.”

The pirate ship glides across the water,
slowly moving back toward the other side of the fishermen’s docks.
I wonder if it’s one of those glass-bottom boat tours. Maybe they
ride out and look for sharks the way most boat tours look for
dolphins.

“He basically called you out in front of the
entire church then,” I say, bringing my attention back to
Rooks.

He nods. “It was stupid. But that’s when
Clay, my friend back home, decided we should just get even. The
hell with manners and respect. It was one of those moments where I
was like, if you want to make an example out of me for something
that was beyond my control, then I’m going to go all out so you’ll
have something real to tell people,” he says. “So we stole the
lobster. Clay dressed it in lingerie, and we staked him into the
ground in front of the church.”

He explains that he and Clay both knew where
all the cameras were from working at the restaurant, so they knew
how to avoid them. With no way to identify the people in charge,
The Captain’s Table and the church couldn’t press charges.