I feel this rankle of frustration over the fact that he’s still deflecting. I want to ask where he’s really going and what he’s really doing, but instead I stay here, on this ground, staring up at this sky, in this moment.
At some point he says, “I know you technically met Shirley, but I want you to meet Bram, too. We should go have dinner with them, like she said. Let them tell you all about what a shit-heel I was when they first met me.”
He’s letting me in. This is a big deal, but something tells me not to make it a big deal, as if he might change his mind and take back the invitation.
“I’d love that,” I say, light and breezy. “Jeremiah Crew, thank you for teaching me to ride a bike.” Even though there is so much more I want to say.
“Claudine Henry. Thank you.”
“For what?”
I sit up and look down at him, lying there.
His eyes meet mine.
“For you.”
DAY 17
I ride the old black bike to the general store, where there’s a sign tacked to the front door written in a lopsided scribble: Gone to mainland. Back soon. I jiggle the doorknob, but it’s locked. I peer in the window, and the chairs are upside down on the tables and there’s no Terri behind the counter.
I sit for a while on the step, trying to get service. I hold the phone up this way and that. I try calling Saz anyway, and when it doesn’t go through, I write her a text:
I know you asked me to call you and I’m trying. I hope you’re okay and that everyone is alive and well, most of all you, Sazzy.
I read it over and then add:
What are you and Yvonne planning to do about college? Isn’t she going to Prescott in Arizona? Do you talk about it or not talk about it? Do the two of you ever just want to stay in Mary Grove so you don’t have to leave each other?
There’s nowhere for the text to go, and I try everything. I see an old nail in the wood of the door and pry it out. I’ve never picked a lock before, but I jiggle the nail around in the keyhole and hope it will work. It doesn’t budge, and so I stand on one leg, on the other leg, phone outstretched to the sky. I set the phone on the ground and do a handstand and my skirt balloons over my head so that the world is a black-and-yellow swirl of leaves and flowers. I think, What would the world be like if these were the only colors?
Suddenly there’s a loud, long whistle and I go toppling over onto the ground. Grady strides past, giving me the eye. “Nice undies.” He laughs.
I dust off my skirt, fit the fisherman’s cap back onto my head, pick up my things.
“What’re you up to, Claudette?”
And for a second I’m like, Why is he calling me that? But then I remember that it’s the name I gave him.
I almost make up something now, wild and outlandish, but instead I tell him, “Trying to get a phone signal.”
“You know if you need service, you can come by the Dip.”
“I thought this was the only place you could get service.”
“Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can reach the outside world over there.”
There’s something in the way he looks at me, kind of sideways and heavy-lidded, and the way he says it—come by the Dip—all guttery but smooth.
“No thanks,” I say.
“Your loss.”
I hop on the bike and wobble away from him.
I hear him call after me, “Or maybe it’s mine.”
* * *
—
On my way home, I pass a group of campers scattered off the trail in the thick of the trees. I almost stop to ask if they’re lost, but then I see that they’re collecting debris and dead limbs, victims of some recent hurricane, and piling them on the side of the road. One of them glances up at me and then bends back over and keeps working.
I start to move on when I hear a shout. I look upward and it’s Miah, shirtless and perched high up in one of the live oaks, at home there as Tarzan, holding on with one hand as he points something out to the campers, who must not be campers after all but Outward Bound kids. He yanks at a dead limb, lodged in the branches of the tree, and I watch the