NINE

“IF YOU HAVE A TOUCH-TONE phone, please press one now.”

Aisha pushed the one.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you’d like the accounting department, please press two. If you’d like the lingerie department, press three. If you’d like to be connected to the space shuttle, press four.”

Aisha pressed four.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you’d like to join a suicidal cult, press pound and five. If you’d like to speak to one of our sales representatives, press star-nine.”

Aisha pressed seven, two, and four.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you’d like to order pizza, press ninety-nine. If you’d like to eat fish, press E: none of the above.”

Aisha wrapped the cord around her finger and yanked it from the wall.

“Hi, this is Christopher. If you’d like to know what Zeitgeist means, press the Zeitgeist button. If you can spell waba waba waba waba, please press press.”

Aisha threw the phone at the door.

The door opened. Christopher stood there, grinning his cocky grin. “Hi, this is Christopher,” he said.

Aisha woke up in a cold sweat, eyes wide, breathing heavy, and heart pounding. Sunlight blazed around the edges of her curtains. Outside she could hear a familiar peet-weet, peet-weet from the sandpiper who had been coming by in the mornings before heading down to the water.

Aisha liked birds. Although she would be relieved when this particular sandpiper decided it was time to head south for the winter. He’d been waking her up lately.

At least he’d put an end to that dream. That nightmare.

She put her feet down on the braided rug and rubbed her eyes. The clock said six ten. Thanks to her sandpiper friend, she was already back on a school-year schedule.

Aisha got up, put on her blue terry-cloth robe, and forced a comb through her hair. Because her room was downstairs, just off the common area used by guests at the inn, it was important for her to look somewhat civilized when she came out of her room in the morning. She had to walk through the foyer to reach the little downstairs powder room, where she quickly splashed cold water on her face, taking care to wipe the sink down afterward with paper towels. Everything the guests saw had to be perfect at all times.

The shower in the family bathroom was upstairs in the semidetached wing that included her parents’ bedroom, the family room, the small family kitchen, and her mother’s office. Her brother Kalif’s room was just around the corner in the main house, right beside one of the guest rooms—which meant he was doomed to have a stereo- and TV-free room, lest he annoy a guest.

Aisha could hear her mother in the formal downstairs kitchen, preparing coffee and the usual amazing spread of fresh-baked muffins, poached eggs, bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice for the guests, at least one of whom already seemed to be waiting in the breakfast room at the rear of the house.

“Aisha,” her mother called out from the kitchen in her cheery, fake, for-the-guests voice, “would you be a dear and get the paper for Mr. and Ms. O’Shay?”

Aisha rolled her eyes. Days like this she really wondered about the whole idea of running an inn. Sure, her father’s job as a librarian in Weymouth wouldn’t let them live like millionaires, but at least wherever they lived it would be all theirs.

Fortunately, winter wasn’t far away, and then it would be many weeks between guests. They would slowly take back the huge house, and she’d be able to do wild and crazy things like step out of her room without having her hair combed and a cheerful smile plastered on her face.

Tough, looking quaint and cheerful when you’d just woken up from a nightmare.

Aisha opened the heavy front door and walked out onto the steps. The papers were halfway across the lawn, and she grimaced in annoyance. She was bending over to pick up the Portland Press Herald and the Weymouth Times when she heard him. The voice straight out of her dreams.

“Hi,” Christopher said.

Aisha spun around like a cat, feeling the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. He was wearing overalls with no shirt on underneath. There was a dirty trowel in his hand.

“What the hell are you doing here at six in the morning?” Aisha demanded, pressing her hand over her beating heart.

“I’m starting on the garden,” he said.

“The sun is barely up,” Aisha said, outraged.

He shrugged. “I have to start early. Mr. Passmore wants me to come in and cook the lunch shift today. Besides,” he said with his all-too-familiar grin, “I’ve been up a long time. They bring the newspapers over on the water taxi at one a.m. the night before and drop them at the dock. I have to pick them up and have them bundled and ready to go before five so the fishermen can have theirs to take out with them for the day.”

“Wait a minute, you also deliver the papers? Since when?”

“I just started two weeks ago.”

“Exactly how many jobs do you have?”

“Just what I told you: I cook part time at Passmores’, I deliver the morning papers, I do a little work around my apartment building, and now I’m starting to do yard work. Also, sometimes I do shopping on the mainland for some of the older folks.”

“Are you involved in working with telephones at all?” Aisha asked sourly.

“No. Why?”

Aisha waved off his question. “Never mind. Are you going to school?”

“That’s what I’m working for,” Christopher said. “I’m accepted for U Mass next year. I have some scholarship money, but I need to save some up, too.”

Aisha nodded and started to walk back to the house. On the steps she looked back over her shoulder. “Business major, right?”

“How’d you guess?”

Zoey woke up late and hungry. The day before she had worked straight through what should have been dinnertime. After that she’d had the chance encounter with Lucas at the breakwater and since then, she hadn’t really thought about food at all.

She trudged toward the shower, scratching her head and trying to pry open her left eye. She brushed her teeth and started running the water in the shower. It always took a good minute for the hot water to come.

This time, however, it didn’t come at all.

“Oh, man,” she groaned through a foam of Crest. The hot-water heater must have gone out again, a regular occurrence. Either that, or Benjamin had taken one of his half-hour showers.

She rinsed and stomped barefoot down the stairs, feeling grumpy and sleepy and a little dopey. “Four more and I’d have the seven dwarfs,” she muttered.

“The damned hot water is out again!” she yelled as she reached the kitchen.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” a voice said calmly.

Zoey jumped, and spun around. She clapped her hand over her heart.

It was Lucas.

Her brother was nowhere to be seen. Neither was her mother. Only Lucas, who was sitting in the breakfast nook and sipping a cup of coffee. A plate of sweet rolls was on the table, two left.

“Your mom invited me to wait for you,” Lucas said. “She had to go to the restaurant, then catch the eleven-ten ferry. Ben went with her. Something about school clothes.”

“Oh, Lord,” Zoey muttered under her breath. She reached for her tangled mess of hair and tried to shove and pat it into something human-looking. But then she realized that with her hands over her head, her Bruins T-shirt rode perilously up toward her cotton panties. She slapped her arms down to her sides and tugged the shirt hem downward, which had the effect of drawing the fabric taut over her breasts. She released the hem and started on her hair again, then crossed her arms over her chest and tried her best to look nonchalant.

“You did invite me for breakfast,” Lucas pointed out.

Zoey nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course, because I hoped you’d bring some of those delicious sweet rolls and I see you did so I guess I was right in inviting you . . . not that that was the only reason, I mean it’s not like you’re the baker or something I mean I . . . we, I mean my mom and Benjamin . . . I also, you know . . . you know, we’re like friends and all from before.”

Nicely expressed, Zoey, she thought.

Lucas smiled his serious smile. “I guess I kind of surprised you.”

“Why? Do I look terrible?” She cringed and took another stab at untangling the bird’s nest on her head.

“No, you look wonderful.”

“I don’t think so,” Zoey said, laughing wryly. “I mean, usually I try to wear something more than a T-shirt.”

“Trust me, you look wonderful.”

“Not that I’m wearing just a T-shirt,” Zoey added quickly. “I mean, I’m wearing underwear.” Instantly she felt the blush rising in her cheeks. She gulped and looked down at the table.

“Me too,” Lucas said, grinning at her discomfort.

Zoey sighed. “I’m not exactly awake. When I’m awake, I babble a little less. I still babble, but less.”

“Want some coffee? There’s still some in the pot your mom made.”

“Normally, no, but since the hot water’s out and I’m making a fool of myself, maybe I could use a cup. Or six.”

Lucas got up, went to the kitchen counter, and poured. She sat down at the table and reached for a sweet roll. With the first few sips of coffee, her confidence began to return. So she’d babbled, big deal. After all, it wasn’t like Lucas had a lot of other alternative conversational partners on the island.

This thought brought guilt with it. Her stomach churned. A mental picture of Jake formed in the air just over Lucas’s head.

“Your mom can still cook,” Zoey said.

“Yeah,” Lucas agreed affectionately.

“Is she . . . are you two talking?”

Lucas shrugged. “My mom is trying to play it safe. She wants to make peace, but if she defies my father outright, well . . . You know my father. He’s very ‘old country.’ He thinks he’s the absolute ruler of the house, period, just like he is on the boat.”

“Still, he’s letting you live there,” Zoey remarked, taking a bite of the roll.

“It’s all a part of the same thing,” Lucas said. “He’s Portuguese, Acoreano. He’s an islander going back in his family to long before Chatham Island had even been discovered by whites. Family is very important, and you have to take care of family no matter what, so no, he won’t just kick me out. Not until he can figure out something to do with me, anyway.” He rolled his eyes. “Like I said. Very old world.”

“But isn’t your mom from the Azores, too?”

“No. She emigrated from the Netherlands. The Dutch are a bit looser, I guess.” He used his fingers to rake a strand of hair that had fallen over his eye. “That’s where I got my blond hair,” he said. “Just think Little Dutch Boy.”

Zoey patted her own hair with her free hand. “Just think sparrow’s nest.”

Lucas was about to say something else, but he bit his lip and fell silent. The silence stretched awkwardly for a moment.

“Are you going to be going to school?” Zoey asked.

“Yeah. I still need a year, what with the Youth Authority being so much better at locking people up than it is at education. So, yeah, I’ll be going to Weymouth High. I know everyone on the island will be thrilled to find that out.”

Zoey nodded glumly and chewed the last bite of her roll thoughtfully. “I guess it will be kind of rough for you.”

“And for anyone who befriends me,” Lucas said, his voice dropping. “Which is why I want to say something. You’ve been very sweet, Zoey, but I don’t expect you to talk to me in public. I understand how it is. I promise it won’t hurt my feelings if you blow me off.”

Zoey hesitated. What was she going to do about this? It seemed awfully hypocritical to talk to Lucas here, even to enjoy talking to him, and then pretend that she couldn’t stand him later.

Lucas grinned crookedly. It was meant to look tough and indifferent, but the corner of his mouth collapsed a little. “I’m a big boy,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“No one can handle it,” Zoey said. “You can’t live life totally cut off.”

Suddenly she stopped. She had reached for him without thinking. Her hand, dripping with sugar glaze from the roll, was covering his. Slowly, Lucas’s fingers entwined around hers. Neither of them was breathing. Zoey’s heart was beating so loudly she was sure he could hear it.

“I . . . I got you all sticky,” Zoey said, her voice a squeaky gasp.

Lucas raised their locked hands to his lips. He brought her sugary index finger to his mouth. His eyes were nearly closed, his every movement in slow motion.

The doorbell rang. Zoey snatched her hand away. He withdrew his as well.

“The door,” Zoey said breathlessly. “Probably Nina.”

“I’ll leave through the back,” Lucas said.

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes,” he said regretfully, “I do.” He turned away as the doorbell rang a second time. At the back door he paused, looking down at the knob. “Thanks,” he said. And then he was gone.