I’M ON FIRE. By the end of the day on Friday, I’ve moved up to the ninth slot on the board, and Mrs. Wardwell’s laughing out of the other side of her mouth. I’m feeling pretty good—hell, I’m flying—even though I pulled something in my back today and can’t really bend over. That’s okay; after tomorrow I’ll have Sunday to rest before destroying whoever’s in the eighth slot on Monday. Time’s running out: only the west field still needs to be raked, and another harvest will be over. Then back to bad ol’ SAHS for Nell and me. School’s such a crock. Teachers are all burnout cases or worse. I’d drop out if Mags wouldn’t skin me alive. I don’t think Mom would really care as long as I got a full-time job right quick.
When we get home, there’s a ladder leaning against the house. The old yellow paint has been scraped off the clapboards as high as the second-story windows. As Mags parks, Hunt comes around the side of the house, dressed in an old T-shirt and his Husqvarna cap. He raises his hand to us and picks up the ladder, carrying it with him out of sight.
“Your mom must’ve really got under his skin the other night,” Mags says back to Nell, grinning. “He started early.”
I walk over to where Hunt set the ladder down, massaging the pain in my back. “Did you actually take a vacation day?”
He scrapes a gnarly old strip of paint that’s been on our house as long as I can remember. “Half a day.”
“What color’s she going to be now?”
“Well. I been thinking on yellow.”
I grin and watch him work for a bit, poking at bits of old paint in the grass with my toe. “Listen, we’re going to Gaudreau’s to pick up supper. You want anything?”
“I’ll be gone by the time you get back. Thanks.”
“You’ll be sorry. Best fried clams in town.”
“I thought you didn’t eat anything but cereal and Moxie.”
“No. I eat fried stuff, too.”
Mags and I shower, leave a note for Mom telling her we’ll buy her a shrimp basket, and walk to the trailer to get Nell.
We don’t come here much anymore, which is kind of sad, considering it’s a stone’s throw from our back door. We girls used to hang out in the trailer a lot growing up, back when Libby wore her hair cut short and wasn’t so mean. At least I don’t remember her being that way. I remember this one time, she let us use this old Snoopy snow cone maker that belonged to her and Mom when they were kids. It leaked sticky red sugar-water all over the place, but Libby just laughed and let us make a mess.
Mags knocks once and lets us in. Everything looks the same: vinyl dinette set in the kitchen, framed JCPenney portrait of baby Nell on the wall, couch covered with a bedsheet to hide the rips that their old cat Tiger left behind. Libby looks up from her knitting, calls, “Nellie,” without so much as a hello. She has this mitten obsession; she knits them year-round. I guess it soothes her. We’ve all got more pairs than we can use, so she ends up donating a bagful to the Coats for Kids drive each December.
Nell’s bedroom is at the end of the hall, and she waves us down. It’s a crazy mess, as always, makeup and brushes scattered in front of the mirror, dog-eared cosmetology how-to’s crammed onto her bookshelf next to her old Baby-Sitters Club and Boxcar Children books. She’s still got those pink-and-white tissue-paper flowers she made in sixth grade stapled over her bed. Around them, she’s printed out a bunch of James Dean pics and stuck them to her wall in a collage. Some black and white, some color, all different sizes: Jimmy hanging over motorcycle handlebars, walking down a city street in a black overcoat, smirking around a cigarette. I guess Libby decided it was safe for Nell to have a crush on a dead guy. Not much chance of him crawling through her daughter’s window at night.
Nell finishes buttoning a sleeveless pointelle shirt and arches her back, tugging at the fabric. “I got it over to Twice Is Nice. You think it’s too tight in the chest?”
“No, it’s cute.” I reach into the ceramic dish on her dresser and hand her some pearl studs, careful not to touch the comedy-tragedy necklace coiled beside them like an eel. “These. Definitely.”
Libby watches us over her glasses as we walk by. “Nell. Bring your phone. And put on a sweater.”
“It’s hot.”
A beat passes. “Go get a sweater.” She sets her needles down. “You can borrow my cardigan with the little pearl buttons.”
Nell brightens. “Okay.” She goes back down the hall while Mags and I stand there, fidgeting. Back when I was eight years old, making jacked-up Snoopy snow cones in the kitchen, I never would’ve guessed I’d feel this uncomfortable here someday.
Libby’s gaze goes to the sitcom on TV. “I want her home by eight thirty.”
Eight thirty? Seriously? For a girl who’s turning nineteen in November? I picture Libby sleeping down the hall from Nell every night, dreaming sweet, smug dreams without even the slightest clue that her baby’s had everything stripped away from her, just everything. It makes me sick, and I snap, “We’re getting supper and coming right back.”
“I heard that one before. Then the three of you disappear until midnight.”
Okay, so that’s never happened. At least, not all three of us. Mags sighs, giving Libby her you bore the crap out of me attitude.
It feels good to be in Mags’s car again with the windows down, free. We pass Mom and honk; her Subaru is back on the road, burning oil and flaking rust. I look in the mirror to watch her pull into the driveway and walk over to see what Hunt’s done so far.
Gaudreau’s is nuts. People know they’re running out of summer. By Labor Day, the shutters will be up on the take-out windows, and the sandwich board will read, Thanks for Another Great Season!
The side door opens, and I recognize a migrant guy from the barrens, wearing an apron and lugging a couple bags of trash to the Dumpster. Mr. Gaudreau must pay under the table for kitchen help. Huh. Some family business. “Order for me, okay?” I hand Mags a ten so she won’t give me crap about not chipping in.
I sit at the only empty picnic table, watching the migrant sling trash, thinking how much it would suck to rake all day and then slave here until closing, when somebody sits down next to me.
Shea. It’s a shock, partly because I’d forgotten what he looks like cleaned up, his hair a little damp from showering, wearing a white polo shirt that’s maybe a little nicer than most guys might wear on the average day. That’s Shea, though. He’s the kind of guy who buys only the right brand of sneakers and spends all his time tricking out his motorcycle, a Kawasaki Ninja 300. He’s got me pinned with those lion eyes. “Congrats.”
I set my face. “What.”
He puts a booklet on the table between us. It’s the Bay Festival events brochure, and the high I’ve been riding since work drops me flat. Mrs. Hartwell must’ve put in a rush order.
The cover has a swirly font and photos from last year’s festival: a Guernsey cow winning a blue ribbon at the livestock judging, a lobster dinner, kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl. You can tell Shea’s been rolling the paper, working it in his fist.
“I heard about this. I just didn’t believe it.” He flips through, holds it open at page twelve.
My face doesn’t move, but the shame tastes bitter as I stare at the picture of the unsmiling blond girl with her stupid untrue bio—Darcy plans to travel—printed beside her and wish to God I’d quit the pageant when I’d first wanted to. Now everybody knows. Shea knows, and that’s the worst.
He moves closer to me. His smell is spicy cool aftershave and peppermint gum, which he must’ve spit out right before he came over. He acts like he’s teasing, like this is some in-joke between us. “I mean, do they know who they’re dealing with? You must have a rep clear across Hancock County by now. You oughta hang a sign out in front of that fallen-down old dump you live in.”
Shea and his dad and his dad’s girlfriend live in a tiny prefab house over on Merrill Avenue with one of those corny gazing balls in the front yard, so I don’t know what he thinks he’s talking about. I fold my arms and look straight ahead.
He’s quiet a second. “How come I never heard from you?” I study the flecks in the pavement, the corner of a ketchup packet by the table leg. “Huh? I thought you were going to call.”
Normally I’d say, Phones go both ways, but it’s like the real me has tunneled down somewhere deep and can only send up flares. He reaches out—as if he’s actually trying to be tender—and smooths a piece of my hair. I jerk away. He doesn’t move, giving me this intense look, trying to see right through me. A muscle jumps in his jaw, then he makes a disgusted sound and leans in close to my ear:
“You can get up on that stage and dress all pretty and say your little funny things to try to make people like you. But I’m gonna be out there, knowing I tapped that, and I didn’t even have to work for it. Same as a lot of other guys. Nobody’s gonna be handing out any crown to some trashy-ass slut who gets so wasted every weekend she doesn’t know whose backseat she’s been in.”
The words sink in. One of the flares finally rises higher than the rest, the light and the hissing growing until it fills me, until I remember who I am and turn and say in his face, “I’m gonna beat your ass in the field on Monday.”
Shea sits back, snorts. “What?”
“You heard me. I can rake harder than you, and I’ll prove it.”
He laughs, but it’s okay, because I’ve got my feet under me again. “You really think you can win top harvester.”
“No. Just so long as I beat you.”
Nell comes through the crowd toward us, frowning so deeply I hardly recognize her. She takes my arm. “Time to go.”
Still kind of laughing, Shea says, “Wait a minute—”
“Don’t talk to her.” Nell stares at him for a second, her face set hard, like she’s daring him to speak. He doesn’t. He’s still smirking, but I guess having the hot special ed chick yell at him is interesting enough to actually shut his mouth.
She pulls me away, hugging my arm against her ribs. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You didn’t look okay. At all. You looked scared.”
That spins me out a little, and I shake free. “Where’s Mags?”
She’s over by the car talking to a couple kids from school, our greasy take-out bags sitting on the hood. They’re all using hushed, excited voices. “You’re not gonna believe this,” Mags says once we’re in the car.
I shrug, not in the mood for gossip.
“The cops got somebody. For Rhiannon.” Nell and I stare. “Two different people who live on Church Street saw them take him in, and nobody’s seen him come home yet. Been almost two days.”
Lots of people live on Church, but there’s only one house that I’ve been to about a hundred times.
“Kenyon Levesque.” Mags glances at me. “They put him in the back of a cruiser Thursday night.”
I sit back slowly, my breath trickling out of me. As we leave Gaudreau’s and pull onto Main Street, I see Shea sitting at a table filled with people I know, including Mason and Jesse. Jesse turns his head to watch us go.