Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1) by Amelia C. Gormley
You race toward something
You don’t know what you’ll find
But you’ll notice it when you see it
You say, “there must be more
Out there waiting silently”
You know your place
But you hate it just the same
—Casey Stratton, “Harvest.”
Why must you wallow in all your delusions?
Nail yourself to the cross at least once a week
Well you’ve got some nerve to lay all your demons at my feet
Far too used to expecting so much from me
—Casey Stratton, “Sacrifice”
God, the lake looked good.
No. Good didn’t cover it. Awesome, amazing, some other superlative the English language hadn’t invented yet. All of that. I wanted to be in it. I wanted to cleave through the water with distance-eating strokes. But it wasn’t warm enough yet, not without a wet suit, and I didn’t have one of those. I’d have to spend the next month driving to the aquatic center up in Holland to do laps. I absolutely needed to be in top shape when school started again in the fall; my swimming scholarship was hanging on the line. It might only cover half my tuition, and none of my books or living expenses, but losing it would catapult returning to school in the fall out of the realm of “difficult” and into “no f*cking chance.”
But if I could train here, where my eyes didn’t burn from chlorine fumes and I could smell honest-to-God seaweed . . .
Jesus, I was gonna love staying with Mo and her family, especially once I could get into the water.
Speaking of Mo . . . I turned back to trudge up the beach toward the blanket she’d spread on the sand. It was sunny, but also windy and cool, especially this close to the water. We were both in long sleeves and jeans. Michigan had a way of flipping spring into summer like a light switch, so within a few weeks it could quite possibly be sweltering.
“Quit pouting,” Mo said as I sighed in yearning. I dropped onto the blanket beside her and looked back at the water. “It’s only a few weeks, then you can freeze your balls off to your heart’s content.” I gave her a dirty look. She was stretched out with a book, her freckled face covered in a sheen of SPF three gazillion. She shrugged off my glower and closed her book, grinning at me. “So, what do you think?”
“I think you lied, Mo.”
“What?”
It was my turn to grin. “You said your family wasn’t rich.”
She narrowed her eyes and tossed her head, the lavender and teal chalk tones in her strawberry-blonde hair flipping like a rainbow in motion. “We’re not rich. Just, you know, comfortable. We inherited the beach house from my dad’s parents. I won’t say we’re living hand-to-mouth, but it doesn’t make us wealthy.”
Just wealthy enough to have two households, a vacation home, and the luxury of never wondering how they were going to pay for tuition. Her dad was a tenured professor at MSU and kept a house in Lansing. He drove to the other house in Ann Arbor to be with his wife—a pediatric surgeon at the U of M hospital—and only daughter on the weekends and during school vacations.
I didn’t point that out to Mo, though. She rocked her white liberal guilt pretty hard sometimes, and got very uncomfortable thinking about the advantages she had in comparison to my clusterf*ck of a family and financial situation. And hey, I certainly wasn’t going to complain that my BFF’s family was loaded, not when they were putting me up in their beach house for the summer so I wouldn’t have to worry about rent or food. I could just concentrate on finding a job, saving for tuition, and figuring my shit out.
“I got no problem with comfortable,” I said with a careless shrug.
We fell quiet then, the only sounds the wind and the waves and the screeching of seagulls. I was definitely grateful to Mo and her family for making this offer. She wouldn’t be spending the whole summer here with me; she had a job counseling at a summer camp up in Traverse City, and would only be home every other weekend, but that was actually a good thing. We’d tried being roommates briefly, and had discovered that we were much better friends when we weren’t in each other’s back pockets all the time. In the beach house up on top of the dune behind us, I’d opted for the cozy attic bedroom, with its own little three-quarters bath and huge half-moon window overlooking the lake, rather than the one on the second floor that shared a bath with Mo’s room. It was perfect. We would be together, and yet not so closely or constantly that we got sick of each other.
I was looking forward to getting settled in. Maybe this evening I’d set up my keyboard and practice for a while. I knew Mo wouldn’t mind if I played and sang a bit, and her dad wasn’t supposed to arrive for another day or two. Of course I might have to stop playing once he got here, even if I kept it quiet in my room. My family had always complained because they could hear me through the heating vents, despite the fact that I was down in the basement.
Mo shook herself, breaking our silent camaraderie. “Oh, I almost forgot. Your phone rang when you were down by the water contemplating insanity.” She pointed to the cheap Android I’d left on the blanket. I frowned at it, reluctant to pick it up. Aside from Mo, the only people to ever call me were my family, and that was rarely a good thing.