3

Now that we’ve put off cleaning Ms. Stillford’s carriage house until tomorrow and Dad won’t give us anything to do around the café, Ella, Ben, Dominic, and I have around five hours until Zoe arrives, so I guess we’re forced to go to the beach. Dad’s right. We should relax and have some fun.

I’ve walked and run and played on this beach my whole life. I know every rock and crevice and crab on it. The big outcropping to the north shelters a channel that flows into the Maiden Rock Tidal Pool, where I learned to sail. The cliff above the towering white ex-convent building—now a spiritual center—is where “sailors were lured by sirens’ calls, and scorned maidens threw themselves to their death,” or so the Maiden Rock historical marker says.

Dominic and Ben run full-out down the beach, kicking up sand, a blur against a fuzzy blue and white background.

Ella’s in sharp focus next to me. The sun bounces off the plastic jewels of her flip-flops, turning the sea foam pink and yellow for a second. We walk in the surf until bites from the fifty-five degree water turn our skin red.

I raise my voice over the soundtrack of crashing surf and cawing gulls. “Are you excited?”

She smiles. “Sure. But I’m not exactly in the zone you’re in.”

“Fine. It’s true. I’m in outer space.”

“All I know about her is what you’ve told me.” She rolls her hands in an on and on motion. “You know, what you guys did when you were three and four and five and six and seven and eight—”

“Okay, shut up. I get it.”

“And let’s not forget all the photo albums with Halloween costumes, and when you each lost your first teeth, sailing lessons, beach bonfires, sleepovers—”

“Stop!” I put my hands over my ears and run laughing toward the guys. “I know. I’m sorry!”

Ella races after me and grabs me around the waist. “Just kidding. You know I’m going to love her.” She pulls back. “Wait. She has her front teeth now, right?”

I try to push her into the ocean. She tries to pull me down. We wind up sitting on a big rock.

“I haven’t been that obnoxious, have I?”

She scoops some water and splashes it at me. “No. I’m messing with you. Mostly, you just go on about her after you’ve talked to her on the phone. And that’s only like every other month.”

“That’s funny. Mostly, I’m telling her about you on those calls.”

Dominic runs up to me and drapes a wet stinky seaweed necklace around my shoulders.

“Eew!” I duck and push it on to Ella, who tosses it over to Ben. He takes it and flings it out to sea.

“It’ll be back,” Dominic says as he climbs onto a rock next to me.

Ben plops down on the beach below us. “I wonder what it was like in Scotland.”

Dominic replies, “Scottish.”

“She was on a farm, right?” Ella asks, as if I haven’t told her about it a hundred times before.

“A four-hundred-year-old sheep farm,” Ben answers.

I explain again: “Her dad is a researcher. He studies sheep parasites.”

“I suppose somebody has to,” Ella says.

I search her tone for a hint of meanness but don’t hear it. She’s just being her New York quipster self.

“The farm didn’t even have Internet or decent reception,” Ben says. “My uncle couldn’t call them, except on a landline.”

“Zoe said that was superexpensive, too,” I say. “That’s why I could only talk to her every other month.”

“For like two hours!” Dominic says.

“Not that long!” I punch him.

“Dumbo’s a talker,” Ben says.

“Ben!” Ella looks shocked.

“What?” Ben says. “Back in the day, that’s what we always called Zoe. She has big ears.”

I look at Ella, and she’s got this horrified expression on her face. “I am not going to call her that.”

I try to roll Ben over into the sand. “You are so stupid, Ben Denby,” I tell him, even if I’m cracking up a little.

We’ve completely slipped into our old ways, like when he and Zoe and I used to goof around, call each other names, build forts in the sand, and play pranks on the summer kids. It’s total eight-year-old behavior, but we can’t stop ourselves. As predicted, the seaweed rope washes back ashore, so I grab it and try to tie Ben’s feet.

“Big Foot.” I point at him.

“Swampy.” He points at me.

“I get the Big Foot,” Ella says, looking at Ben’s giant running shoes. “But Swampy?”

“Aw, Swampy, that’s cute.” Dominic crinkle-smiles, and his dimples show.

“The first year we took sailing lessons, Quinnie swamped the boat three times,” Ben says.

Of course, this causes me to grab Ben around the neck and start in on a noogie while he tackles me around the back of my knees.

I fall to the sand, panting and laughing. Ben tries to tame his hair, which is now sticking up in every direction. Something about it reminds me of that old ache of a crush I used to have on Ben—that is, until two years ago, when Ella moved here and he went bonkers for her, and a year later, when Dominic moved here and I fell in heartthrob with him.

Life used to be so simple when it was just Ben and Zoe and me. In my twelve-year-old mind, I was going to grow up and marry him. But now I’m not thinking about marrying anybody. I’m just thinking about how important Dominic and his geeky, hat-wearing, sci-fi loving playfulness have become to me. And he has soft cheeks too, even though whiskers are starting to grow there every which way. And I love the shape of his shoulders. And he’s smart. And kind. And funny . . . but I’m not going to think about that right now.

My phone buzzes with a text, and I jump.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” asks Dominic.

“Mom says the Buttermans are hung up in customs. They won’t be here until late.”

“How late?” Ben asks.

“Late late.”

Dominic stands up and stretches. “Well, Swampy, want me to walk you home?”

I stare at him like, I can’t believe you said that, and his face turns pink. I’m about to say, “Shut up, Hat Boy,” but it doesn’t sound clever enough.

Ben says to Dominic, “Want to help me clean the sailboat?”

Dominic turns to me and says, “The offer still stands.”

“Go, go,” I say. “You guys better have the cleanest sailboat in Maine by tomorrow morning.”

“Come on, Swampy, I’ll walk you home,” says Ella.

“Not you too!” I say. “Keep this up, and we’ll find nicknames for you both.”

“Hey, look!” Ella points out to sea.

I stop and focus on the horizon. It’s Owen Loney’s fishing trawler.

“Isn’t that the Blythe Spirit?” Ella asks. “I thought he sold it.”

“I think it’s still for sale at a marina in Rook River,” I tell her.

We stand there and watch the boat motor along the coast. It comes closer to the breakwater and slows. Owen Loney, wearing his signature cap, gives us a single wave.

“What’s he doing?” Ella asks.

“I think he’s having a hard time parting with it,” I say.

Ella frowns. I look at her standing in the sand with her Garnet Shimmer Red nail polish and bejeweled flip-flops. “I think we should call you Glamazon.”

“I can work with that, but I’m not going to let you get stuck with Swampy. We’ll have to find you a new nickname.”

“And one for Dominic.”

“And I have no idea what Zoe will be like, but there is no way I’m calling her Dumbo.”

“But Ben can stay Big Foot,” I say.

“With those bear paws? For sure.”