Surfside Sisters(9)

    “Don’t be mad at her,” Keely replied. “It’s her parents who make her go away for the summer. They always have a big family trip. Izzy never comes home bragging about it or being all la-de-da. Plus there are worse places to be in the summer than Nantucket!”

“Maybe we all want what we can’t have,” Ceci said.

“Well, listen to you, Ms. Philosopher!” Theresa laughed.

“What do you want that you can’t have?” Keely asked.

Ceci grinned. “Tommy Fitzgerald.”

“Damn, girl, you dream big,” Theresa said.

“It doesn’t hurt to dream.”

Tommy Fitzgerald came from a gigantic family, one that had been on the island for decades, even centuries. Part Cape Verdean, part Wampanoag, part Irish, his black hair and black eyes in his craggy face were compelling. He was tall and lean and quiet. In school, Tommy seldom smiled, always walked hunched with his hands in his jeans, staring at the ground as if expecting it to fall away from him at any moment. But he was a great athlete, and quarterback for the junior varsity football team. All bets were on Tommy making varsity his sophomore year.

“Could we talk about something other than boys?” Keely asked.

“Do you mean there is something other than boys?” Theresa laughed.

For Keely, there was definitely something other than boys. Books. She had always cherished the dream of being a writer, and all the books she’d read about writing advised her to read, read, read. That was exactly what she did whenever she had any free time that summer. She kept a record of what she’d read and what she thought of each book in a plain three-ring binder. As the summer passed, the pages filled with titles. Wuthering Heights. To Kill a Mockingbird. Peyton Place. The Good Mother. The Giver. Bleak House. Lives of Girls and Women.

    Sunday was her favorite summer day. She didn’t have to work, so she got to lie in bed reading, only venturing out occasionally to fetch a bag of potato chips or an apple. Many summer days her father took her out to Great Point to surf cast, but on this Sunday in late August, her father was out deep-water fishing with a friend. Her mother was at work. Keely was lazing around in boxer shorts and a tank top with a novel in her hand. She heard someone knock on the front door, and her first thought when she opened the door was that she hadn’t brushed her hair yet.

“Sebastian!”

“Hey.”

For a moment, she could only stare. He was tall, big-boned, his hair white-blond, his skin tanned, his nose sunburned. He wore board shorts and an old rugby shirt, so many times washed it had faded from red to pink.

She gathered herself enough to speak. “Are you back from Scotland?”

He held his hands out to his sides in a duh gesture. “Probably.”

“Oh, well—is Isabelle home?”

“She is. I’m sure she’ll be phoning you any minute now. But I wanted to give you something before she hogs all your time.”

“You want to give me something?” Keely echoed.

Sebastian held out a book.

The Mysterious Benedict Society.

“Oh!” Keely’s heart sparked when their fingers touched as she took the book.

“Have you read it?”

“No. No, I don’t know about it. Why—” Keely was so moved she was about to cry.

“Because you and Izzy like to read and write.” He leaned on the door jamb, his face close to hers.

“Um…do you want to come in? Have…a Coke?”

    “No thanks. I’ve got to get back.”

“Oh. Well…thank you for the book.” She ran her hand over the cover. “It’s really…nice.”

Sebastian leaned forward and kissed her forehead quickly, lightly, and moved away, smiling. “See you.”

She watched him walk away. After a moment, he broke into a jog and disappeared down the street.

She shut the door and sank right down onto the floor, cradling the book to her rapidly beating heart. What did it mean? It was only a book, but it was a present.

Had Sebastian really thought about her when he was in Scotland?

Did Isabelle know he’d brought Keely the book? Oh, she wished she’d asked him, because either Isabelle would tease Keely unmercifully or she’d be furious that her brother had given her a gift.

She wouldn’t tell Isabelle. She’d let Isabelle bring it up, and if she didn’t, she wouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t put the book, in its distinctive British paperback version, on her desk or shelves. She’d hide it under her mattress and bring it out to sleep with her at night. And what dreams she’d have.



* * *



—

Isabelle never mentioned Sebastian and the book. She gave Keely a green tartan headband that looked great with Keely’s brown hair. This year they were sophomores, higher up the coolness ladder. They went with a group of friends to shop for clothes on the Cape, and school started, and everything was easier than the year before. They knew their way around the school, which teachers were super strict or boring. School was easier, yes, but Keely’s nerves were tuned up to super sensitive. She knew from her mother, the nurse, that adolescents were crazy from hormones, but knowing that didn’t soothe her.

It helped to keep a diary. Almost every night, Keely wrote in her journal, pouring out on the lined paper of the red leather Daily Diary with its brass lock and key—she had bought it herself, needing the privacy, not that she thought her parents would ever pry. The actual facts of the day, the grade she’d gotten on a test, the after class pep rally for the high school football team, the Whalers, all that she mentioned only briefly. It was her emotions that came spilling out of her onto the page. The embarrassment she’d felt when the math teacher called on her and she didn’t know the answer. The odd force field of physical sensations that shivered around her when a senior on the basketball team said, “Hi, Keely,” as he passed her in the hallway. The jealousy she felt when she saw Isabelle and Paige, who was kind of slutty, whispering to each other at lunch. The pages of her diary were not long enough to contain all she needed to write. She also used a three-ring binder, where, for privacy’s sake, she wrote about her life in the third person, as if she were writing a novel about a tenth grade girl. The tenth grade girl, who Keely named Trudy, endured all manner of humiliations. Huge red zits on the end of her nose. A senior she had worked with on a community Clean Beach project striding past her in the hallway, giving “Trudy” a blank-eyed stare, as if she’d never seen her before. Her growing awareness that her clothes, even her shoes, were not what the best of the cool seniors wore.