dining room and past the bathroom to the wide double doors that lead onto the front lawn, which is empty. I wait for a minute. Two minutes. And then I slink back to the table and sit down.
Mom glances at me but doesn’t say anything.
Jared brings in dessert and tells me he’s going off-island tomorrow for a few days to visit friends. He says, “You have to let me know when you’re back.”
And I say, “I’m not sure I’ll be back anytime soon. But if you’re here, then maybe I’ll come see you.”
“Well, you’re always welcome here on the Island of Misfit Toys. You’re one of us now.” Wednesday walks past and I wave. She waves back.
I say, “I’m honored to be one of you.”
And then Jared throws his arms around me and hugs me so hard I can’t breathe. “I’m glad I met you,” he whispers in my ear.
“I’m glad I met you, too.”
He walks away and I sit a little straighter, blinking away the tears that have sprung up for some reason. I push the dessert around on my plate and set down my fork.
My mom is talking and the other guests are talking, but they are like background music. It’s 9:21 and his charter leaves at 9:45.
Nine-twenty-two.
Nine-twenty-three.
Nine-twenty-four.
At 9:25, I don’t say anything to my mom or the people at our table. I just get up and walk out. This time I go upstairs to the main floor and out the front door.
Outside it’s dark and the rain is falling, just a sprinkling now, and the stars are emerging like flowers, hesitant but hopeful, and the cicadas are humming and it is summer everywhere.
I stand on the porch and watch for his truck. Tonight there will be headlights because the lightning bugs, like the stars, have gone momentarily dim from the rain. I will see the truck before I hear it, if he’s coming from the south.
Nine-twenty-eight.
I splash down the front steps, the little dips and hollows in the old wood collecting puddles. I stand at the bottom, in the drive, the rain wetting my skin and my hair and my dress. I look south and north because he could be coming from anywhere.
Nine-thirty-one.
I tell myself he’s running late as always. He’s probably packing feverishly and trying to close up the little blue house and Bram and Shirley’s house. He’s probably putting out a fire or helping the Outward Bound campers who aren’t lost anymore but found because of him. He’s probably loading the boat before he comes to tell me goodbye.
Nine-thirty-five.
I will meet him at the boat. I take off my shoes and run down the drive, underneath the live oaks that are out of some ancient fairyland, toward the water. I run down the path littered with shells, barely feeling the way their sharp little edges jab into the soles of my feet, and I am looking for headlights as I go. I don’t stop running until I’m at the dock.
Which is empty.
I stand for a long time, staring out over the water, black and endless except for the glow of lights in the far distance. And this, I know, is the mainland. It might as well be light-years away.
I wait for a boat to appear.
I wait for Miah to come.
I wait.
I wait.
Suddenly, I don’t feel the rain on my skin or my hair or my clothes because the only thing I feel is the ache in my heart. An ache like I’ve never felt before. It’s both terrible and beautiful. And it fills me. It fills me.
We were supposed to have more time.
We’re always supposed to have more time.
I sink onto the bench, which is damp and which leaves me damper. At some point the rain stops completely. I look up and the stars overhead are a carpet of light. There’s this feeling I have here. Miah’s a part of it. But he’s not all of it. It’s the summers of childhood when I was eight, ten, twelve. And those kinds of beautiful moments where everything is full of love and light and possibility.
I rest one hand on the wood of the seat and my fingers bump into something cool and smooth. I look down. A shark tooth. The largest one I’ve ever seen. And there, drawn around it, a circle.
* * *
—
I turn back up the path and walk toward the inn, shark tooth in my pocket. Through the trees, the porch lights shine like beacons, like lanterns illuminating the way