Luke was grinding his skateboard on the library’s bottom step that afternoon—his mother hated when he did this because it wore down the concrete—when a now-familiar voice said, “Hey, Luke.” He looked up. Yep. It was Cal. Cal Cooper. His name, to Luke, sounded like the name of a cowboy in one of the old Westerns Pop-Pop used to watch. But he was okay, Luke supposed. Or at least, he had been when Luke and his mom had dinner with him at the Corner Bar. He hadn’t asked Luke a lot of questions, which was cool, and he hadn’t been all romantic with his mom, which would have been weird. The thing was, he hadn’t known then that Cal was going to be staying around. His mom had told him the next day he was moving to Minneapolis and they’d be seeing more of him. That worried him a little. How was Cal going to fit into their life? He wasn’t sure.
“Hey,” Luke said, looking back down at his skateboard. He expected Cal to go into the library, but instead he stopped on the steps.
“What’s up?” he asked Luke.
Luke shrugged. He glanced down the block at the drugstore, Butternut Drug, which he’d seen Annabelle go into a little while ago. She’d waved at Luke, a little wave that was barely a wave at all. Since then he’d been wondering if he should go in there, too, or just wait for her to come out again and say something to her.
Cal looked down the street, too. “Anything happening in Butternut?” he asked.
“Not much,” Luke said, picking up his skateboard and reaching for the can of Coke he’d placed on the ledge. Not much was happening in his life, either. The earlier rules from this summer were in effect until school started. He could go to Nature Camp, and afterward he could go to the library. The only places he could stop in between were Pearl’s and one of the other businesses on Main Street. That was it. Still no cell phone. Still no Van. He wondered, though, what he and J.P. were up to. Wondered whether if he saw them they would even talk to him. Probably not. But he’d been talking, on their home phone, to his new friend Travis from his hiking trip. He was pretty cool, and he liked a lot of the same pro skateboarders Luke did.
The front door to the library opened, and Mr. Niles, the school counselor, came out. Luke instinctively looked back down again.
“Hi, Luke,” Mr. Niles said. He sounded friendly, though the last time Mr. Niles had spoken to him, before he’d gotten suspended, he’d said he was “very disappointed” in Luke.
“Hi, Mr. Niles,” Luke said. He took a big sip of his Coke, and Mr. Niles, thank God, kept walking.
“Who’s that?” Cal asked, looking amused.
“That’s the school counselor.”
“Huh,” Cal said. And then he chuckled. “I still have a very distinct memory of the counselor at my high school. Mr. Wiggins. He kept a pet gecko in his office. It was the only good thing about going there.”
“Why’d you go there?” Luke asked.
“I got sent there. My first couple of years in high school, I wasn’t doing that well.”
“Why not?”
“Mr. Wiggins said I wasn’t applying myself. And I wasn’t. But that changed. Or it started to change. The summer I turned sixteen—the summer between sophomore and junior years.”
“Why did it change?”
“Um . . . long story,” Cal said. “But I liked this girl, Victoria. And it . . . inspired me to get a job. That’s how I figured out I liked building things. And designing things. I knew after that, if I was serious about doing it for a living, I’d have to do better in school.”
Luke swung himself up to sit on the ledge to the steps and considered Cal with interest. He almost wanted to ask him more about this girl Victoria, but then he changed his mind. What he really wanted to ask Cal about, he decided, was his mom. Because there was something Luke didn’t totally understand. According to his mom, Cal had been, like, this big architect in Seattle. His mom was a librarian in Butternut. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but . . . And then, Cal was rich, too. Anyone who drove that car had to be rich. Whereas his mom was doing okay—they weren’t poor or anything, but, even so. Cal just seemed different, very different, from that guy Ted.
“Why are you dating my mom?” he asked, wishing maybe he could have put it a different way. But Cal seemed surprised for only a second.
“Well,” he said, “I like her. She’s funny. She’s smart. And she’s beautiful.”
Luke frowned. “That’s probably just the moisturizing lotion she uses,” he said, thinking about all the little pots on her shelf in the bathroom. “It’s pretty expensive.”
Cal laughed. “I think it’s working, though, don’t you?”
“I guess,” Luke allowed. He finished off his Coke and then crushed the empty can against the ledge. “You know, I’m going to meet my dad in another week. On August fourteenth,” he said, watching Cal. “It’s all planned out.”
“I know. That’s really cool.”
“Yeah, it will be,” Luke said. But he wondered sometimes if it really would be cool. What if his dad didn’t like him? Then what would he do?
“If you’re nervous about it, though,” Cal said to him, “I get it. I mean, who wouldn’t be?”
“I’m not nervous,” Luke said, a little irritated. “Why would I be nervous?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because . . . you don’t really know what he’s like yet, and he doesn’t really know what you’re like.”
“I guess,” Luke said. He crushed the can a little more.
“So you’ll take some time to get to know each other,” Cal said.
Luke nodded, and jumped off the ledge. He looked down the block toward the drugstore. While they’d been talking about his dad, had he missed Annabelle leaving it? He didn’t think so. She’d have to walk past the library on her way home. He grabbed his skateboard. Maybe he’d skate by there now. But then what? He didn’t really have a plan. He didn’t even know if she was still mad at him. And what would he say to her if she was?
“Can I . . . can I ask you something,” he said to Cal, who was still standing there.
“Sure.”
This was stupid, Luke thought. He didn’t even know why he was asking Cal about it. Finally he shrugged and said, “There’s this girl . . .”
Cal smiled. “Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s always a girl.”