terrified that he won’t show up. All the terrors, I have them. But I try my best to bottle them up, and with the sun warming my shoulders, I tell Mom and Evie where I’m going, cross the street toward the harbor, and head out to the southernmost point of Beauty.
The first few minutes of my walk, I toss looks behind me at the boatyard as the Karrases’ big boat crane gets smaller and smaller, hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of Lucky following me. But I don’t. Seagulls soar over dark blue water as the sky becomes purple around the horizon, and to my right, the warehouse buildings get farther and farther apart with more parking lots between them.
Then I see it, right where the rocky shore curves inward.
The end of the Harborwalk. The concrete just stops, and there’s a sign here that’s been vandalized. It’s so far away from the tourist area of town that no one’s bothered to clean it up. I step through a flimsy gate, shoes crunching over gravel, and I search the wooded area that fans out from the rocks on the shore.
I see the old pier first, almost lost under the waves that lazily crash over it. And there’s what I’m seeking. The old meeting place.
The North Star.
The abandoned cedar-plank building is easy to miss. Back in the 1940s or 1950s, it probably was a serviceable little boatshed, built to winter a fishing boat. Someone owned these woods—maybe they fished and hunted here, who knows. But the pier and the shed were lost to time long before Lucky and I found it.
And it looks like only two walls stand now, the two sides. The tree that was growing through the roof has fallen. Maybe taken by a storm. But the marker that provided the shed’s name is still hanging on one of the standing walls, an old tin sign with a faded blue star and two hand-painted words: NORTH STAR.
The first sign I ever photographed.
Seeing it now brings back a rush of bright, sharp emotions and a flurry of memories. Lucky and I finding this place. Playing our poorly planned Harry Potter D&D campaigns and listening to music out here after school. Walking home together after dark. I let these memories wash over me, breathing in the salt-tinged harbor air, until it all ebbs, and I’m settled again.
A tiny shape races toward me from the woods. I scoot back, unsure if I’m being attacked by a feral squirrel, but then there’s a wagging pink tongue, and it’s definitely of the canine variety.
“Bean the Magic Pup,” I say, heart beating wildly as I crouch to scratch his ears and pick up his dragging leash. “Why are you loose and unsupervised?”
“He was chasing a rabbit,” a gravelly voice says. “Until the rabbit started chasing him.”
I stand up slowly.
Lucky appears out of the shadow of a tree.
Like a phantom.
He came. Thank goodness, he came.
Dressed in long shorts and a black T-shirt, he hovers for a moment, as if he’s unsure whether he wants to come any closer. As if he might just keep walking right past me.
As if looking at me hurts too much.
It feels like a fist punching into my ribcage and squeezing painfully, wringing out anything left.
“You got my postcard.…” I gesture toward the boatshed. “Wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
“I did have to consider whether or not I should.” In dappled sun reflecting off the water, I can see the white scars on the side of his forehead and the missing part of his eyebrow when he reaches out to take Bean’s leash from me, careful not to touch my hand.
God. This is so hard.
He’s so intimidating.
And I miss him so much.
I open my mouth and feel tears prick my eyes. I try to swallow them down, but it’s no use. “Going to need you to press the button on the invisible wall now,” I tell him in a small, cracking voice. “Because I was wrong, and I need to tell you I’m sorry.”
He huffs out a breath through his nostrils and looks at the water as his small black dog sniffs around the gray rocks lining the edge of the shore. “No.”
“No?”
“You do it. I don’t own the wall.”
“We both own the wall,” I say, crying around my words. “Both of us. If we want to talk to each other, we can. But it’s not just talking and being teeth-gratingly honest. It’s listening, too—and that’s partly where I screwed up.”