he lets go and swims around me. I float while he smiles and slyly peels up my wet shirt from where it sticks to my skin and kisses my belly button where water pools. I float while he swims beneath me like a shark, pretending to bite my thigh and upsetting my balance—then swimming back around and catching me when my legs sink.
“Hey!” I shout, laughing and splashing as I grasp his neck.
“Scared of a little ol’ fish nibble?”
“Scared of drowning, you jerk!”
But it strikes me that’s not true.
I’m not half as wary of the water as I was before we came out here. And when he wraps his arms around me, legs treading water around mine, and kisses me, mouth wet, chest pumping up and down with the exertion of swimming and holding me up, I’m not thinking about the horizon or the possibility of drowning. I’m not thinking about town gossip or whether my mom is happy. I’m not thinking about Adrian Summers or the broken windows, or the ticking time bombs in my life.
I’m not thinking about anything but the two of us.
About this.
This joy.
Right now.
Maybe, just maybe, I could be a water rat, after all.
Kablam.
KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING: Doorknob hotel sign placed inside a plastic picture frame and mounted with wall-hanging putty on the outside of the bedroom door of Evie Saint-Martin. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 16
Lucky and I take the Narwhal out almost every evening for a couple of weeks to the same spot. Turns out there’re these wristbands that Lucky found. You wear them on your pressure points, and they help stop nausea caused by seasickness. Well, that and the antihistamine that I’m now taking before we set sail.
I’m unscrambled, and I can be on the water without wanting to die.
Strangely, I actually like being on the boat now. It feels like we’re escaping the world for a couple of hours. A safe place. Just ours. And yes, we go out in the Narwhal to practice my swimming in the new bathing suit I’ve bought. But often we do a lot of other things, like:
Talk about the difference between art and craft.
Take photos.
Put our hands all over each other.
Play with Bean the Magic Pup, who sometimes rides along and barks at passing boats.
Trash talk Adrian Summers.
Plot revenge that we’ll never enact.
Put our hands all over each other.
Talk about our failed D&D campaigns from childhood.
Consider a trip out to our old secret North Star boatshed to test out a new campaign.
Decide the boatshed might be inhabited by ghosts or spiders and change our minds.
Watch the Fourth of July fireworks.
Eat iced lemonade.
Put our hands all over each other.
Here’s what we don’t do on the boat:
Talk about me going to California to live with my dad next year.
That subject is off-limits. Maybe if we pretend like it doesn’t exist, it will never happen.
Here’s what we also don’t do:
We don’t tell anyone that we’re more than friends.
I mean, sure. Half the town is probably talking about us. My mom has made the Bonnie and Clyde comments, and Lucky’s parents have been nosy too. And then there’s Evie, who definitely knows something happened in the darkroom … but I don’t even tell her.
It’s not because I don’t want people to know or because I’m ashamed of what I’m doing with my childhood best friend. I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s just no one’s business, that’s all. And this town has proven that they can’t be trusted to handle delicate information with grace. My name’s already being whispered; I don’t need to give the rumor mill any more fuel.
One evening, when Lucky and I were supposed to be heading out on the Narwhal to practice my backstroke, or some kind of more salacious stroke, I find him in the boatyard with his father, working late on a last-minute engine problem for a customer.
“Sorry,” he tells me. “They’re paying us overtime rates, and it’s the kind of favor that my dad can’t turn down. Shouldn’t take more than an hour but might be too close to dark for us to take the boat out. Maybe we could stay in? Order pizza? Watch a movie on TV? My house is overrun with toddler cousins at the moment. What about yours?”
“Evie’s home. My mom’s, uh … out. But she might come back by the time you’re done.” I squint at him. “Would that be okay? Or too weird?”
“I’m fine with it, if she is.”
Mom’s definitely warming up to him, and he’s been in and out