forever. I always thought we would be, but we’re moving away from each other. I can feel it. It’s not just me coming here. She’s moving on too.”
“You’re having a season,” Mom says. “Moving on can suck, but it’s normal. Growing pains. When you get through this, you’ll find each other again, stronger than ever. And if you’re worried about it, let her know you miss her.”
I can feel what she’s not saying: Like I miss you.
* * *
—
At some point I feel a bump on my arm and Jared is standing over me. He hands me a note. My first thought is, Why is Jared writing me a note? But then he gives me the biggest grin and a wink so obvious you can see it from Mars.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“Oh, you’re welcome.” He goes grinning away. I turn the note over in my hand.
“Who’s that from?” Mom says, her voice sleepy from the food and the day.
“I don’t know.” But I do know. I hope I know.
Meet me outside your house at 10:30 p.m.
“Is there a boy?”
Yes, I think.
“Maybe,” I say.
DAY 5
(PART TWO)
The truck bumps down the lane and around past the inn, and once we’re under the sprawling oaks, he switches off the headlights and keeps driving.
I reach for my seat belt.
“When you get in the truck and don’t go for your seat belt, Captain, that’s when you know you’re an islander.”
“Maybe I don’t want to be an islander.” But I let the seat belt go. “You could turn the lights back on so we don’t go crashing to our deaths.”
“The first summer I was here, Shirley wouldn’t let me have a flashlight. She told me I could see in the dark. I just had to have patience and let my eyes adjust. Think you can do that, Captain? Have patience?” He glances at me, giving me this half smile that tells me he’s not just talking about seeing in the dark.
My stomach flips. The butterflies stir. I half smile back at him. “Maybe.”
The air sparks around us. Like that, we vanish into the island. Anyone watching us would think we were ghosts. Now we’re here; now we’re gone. At first I can barely make out the white of the road. It appears in front of us a foot at a time. The trees are walls of black on either side, and I want to tell him to turn on the lights before we run over something or someone. I think, I don’t care what Shirley says. My eyes will never adjust.
But gradually the road grows a little whiter, the trees a little more three-dimensional. Pinpricks of light flash across the path and in the forest.
“Lightning bugs,” he says.
And suddenly our way is lit by them. They are in the trees and on the path and in the canopy. Little blinking stars brightening the way for us. I catch my breath. I know in my bones that this is one of those deathbed moments, one I will always remember. I look down at his hand, broad and tanned, over the steering wheel, at his bare foot on the gas pedal.
It’s a wild ride through the darkness, the fireflies twinkling like fairy lanterns. I try to hold on to the moment because I don’t want it to end. I want to spend forever driving through the night with Jeremiah Crew.
I don’t have any idea if we’re heading north or south, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know. I close my eyes and feel the warm breeze on my face and arms. I want to throw my arms up into the air like I’m on a roller coaster because this is how free I feel. Instead I hang an arm out the window, as if I can catch the night, which is humming and twinkling and whooshing by, and we are part of it.
And then we are slowing a little and I open my eyes. Miah pulls to a stop and we get out, doors banging shut one after the other, a sound that seems to carry for miles. As he rummages for something in the truck bed, I wait, completely here on this road, the trees behind me, the beach in front of me. Whatever happens, I’m here right now. There is a glow in the sky behind the dunes that must be the moon.
Miah comes around to where I’m standing, with a backpack and a blanket, as if he’s planning to be gone