Four

I cleared the plates from the dinner table. Annie had barely eaten anything. The previous night’s unpleasant dinner atmosphere still hung heavy in the air. Gracie had been good, had not even mentioned Cameron’s name, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done. I’m sure Annie hadn’t been able to put Cameron’s return out of her mind. When Gracie went upstairs to watch some TV show in her bedroom, I loaded the dishwasher while Annie remained at the table staring into space. She looked awful. Her skin was too pale. Her face was drawn.

“Do you feel okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Maybe you should go to a real doctor, at the hospital,” I said. “Jenelle’s probably going to be volunteering there. I could ask her to find out which doctor is good.”

“I’m fine,” Annie said again. This time her tone was a bit more clipped and angry. I let the matter drop.

“What about you? Have you figured out what you’re doing for your volunteer project?” she asked.

I thought about the women’s support line I’d signed up for on a whim. Did I even want to do that? I imagined the hopeless sort of women who called a support line for help. These were women who didn’t have the wits or the strength to get by, women who were intimidated by the big scary world. They were, I realized as I pictured these helpless waifs, women very much like Annie. I felt sorry for these women, but what sort of help could I give them?

The advice I would give would be to quit whining about their problems and do something about them instead. To quit being so scared of life and just start living it already. They probably wouldn’t let me anywhere near a telephone, though. In fact, they would probably tell me I wasn’t the right sort of person for helping out with the support line. I would have to find a different volunteer job. It seemed pretty obvious—I was going to end up at the animal shelter cleaning up shit, and probably, with my luck, I would be working right alongside Zach.

I was about to tell Annie I hadn’t yet made up my mind about a volunteer job when our doorbell rang. The sound made me jump. Our doorbell almost never rang.

“Who is that?” I said, before realizing who it probably was. Annie pushed back her chair and started to stand up, but she looked shaky and fragile. She seemed like she could collapse at any moment. “I can get it,” I said, and I ran to the front door.

I opened the front door expecting to see the Cameron I remembered, the lanky eighteen-year-old with the shaggy hair, but, of course, the guy standing on our stoop bore only a passing resemblance to that Cameron. He had filled out some. His hair was cropped close and was even starting to thin out a bit. His face had stubble on it, like either he had forgotten to bring his razor back home with him or he was trying to go for that casual sort of look that only a handful of movie stars are actually capable of pulling off. The liberal cologne application made me think that his aim was to impress, and that the stubble was part of some sort of look from a magazine he was going for. This is what would happen if any of my Shallow Pond classmates tried to emulate the effortless cool of Zach Faraday. After all, Cameron was nothing but a Shallow Pond boy all grown up.

He looked surprised to see me. Well, he wasn’t the only one who’d changed since we last met. Last time Cameron had laid eyes on me I was still a kid, ten years old.

“Babie,” he finally said when the shock had worn off. “Wow, look at you.”

“It’s Barbara now,” I said.

My mom’s name was Susie, and Annie and Gracie had just seemed like cute nicknames for Anne and Grace that echoed my mother’s cute nickname. Then I was named Barbara, and no one wanted to give me a nickname that would forever be associated with a voluptuous doll, and besides, my last name was Bunting. So, naturally, I became Babie. When I was thirteen, I decided I really didn’t want to be Babie anymore. I grudgingly let my sisters get away with it, since I didn’t see any way to break them of the habit, but for everyone else I decided I would be Barbara.

“Barbara,” Cameron repeated. He’d been gone a long time. I could forgive him for not knowing about my nickname change, but I couldn’t forgive him for everything.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I stared hard at him, hoping he would come to his senses and crawl away back home, but, though he shrank away from me a bit, he did not attempt to run.

“Cameron!” Gracie’s happy squeal was followed by her dashing down the stairs. She nearly pushed me to the ground in her run to the door. “Babie, what’s wrong with you? Cameron’s freezing his butt off out in this cold.” Cameron gave me the slightest of smirks as he stepped into the house. Was it because Gracie had called me Babie? Was it because he’d won this little showdown? “Annie, come out here!” Gracie yelled.

“Hi, Cameron,” Annie said, surprising Gracie and me. We hadn’t realized she’d come in from the kitchen.

“Hey,” Cameron said.

No one knew what to do. The four of us stood there; I assumed everyone felt as awkward as I did. I kept looking from Annie to Cameron, trying to figure out what they were thinking, what it must be like to see each other after all this time, but I couldn’t tell what was going through their heads.

Several seconds passed and no one said anything, no one moved. Then Annie and Cameron both started to say something at the same time, so both stopped talking, and then again at the same time they tried to tell each other to go ahead. I thought it was uncomfortable, but Annie actually started laughing—not a polite chuckle, but a real laugh. When was the last time I’d heard Annie laugh like that?

“Sorry,” Cameron said. His face had gone somewhat pink with embarrassment, and that made him look a lot more like the boy I remembered. “Did I catch you at a bad time? I should have called first. I was just driving around, and then
I thought I would stop by.”

“It’s fine,” Annie said. “We just finished eating a little while ago.”

“Let me take your jacket,” Gracie said. “Sit down.”

With a significant amount of awkwardness we found places to sit in our living room. It made me realize how small and cramped the room was. Gracie and Cameron sat on the couch, and me on the little bench no one ever sat on by
the window. Annie lowered herself gently into the armchair.

“So, the prodigal son returns,” Annie said. She seemed so relaxed about this whole thing. I wondered if she was in shock.

“Something like that,” Cameron said. He played absently with the fringe on the pillow.

“You’re living with your mother?” Annie asked.

“For a while, yes,” Cameron said. “Until I can get back on my feet.”

How bad did things have to be for a grown man who had escaped from Shallow Pond to come back and move into his mother’s house? I figured Cameron Schaeffer had hit rock bottom.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Annie said. I had a vague memory of Mr. Schaeffer dying a few years back. I wondered if that was the last time Cameron had been in town.

“Thanks,” Cameron said. “I mean, I’m sorry about your father as well.”

Once again, an awkward silence filled the room. I knew my father never really liked Cameron, but the details were hazy in my mind. Was it just the stereotypical dad-not-liking-the-guy-who-is-dating-his-daughter sort of thing, or was it something more than that? Did my father have a good reason for hating Cameron? Maybe it was the fact that it was Cameron’s fault Annie had stuck around this town instead of getting out while she had the chance. I wondered about my father letting her do that. Could he really have been that apathetic about her future? Unless he let her stay for selfish reasons, not wanting to have to handle taking care of me and Gracie on his own.

“It must be so weird to be back home in little Shallow Pond again,” Gracie said. “You were living in New York, weren’t you?”

“New Jersey, actually,” Cameron said. “The wilds of suburbia.”

Annie laughed at this, and this time it was a fake laugh. I cringed at the sound of it.

“It probably beat this place,” I said.

“I kind of like being back,” Cameron said. “It’s nice the way nothing changes here.” I thought he was right about nothing ever changing, but I didn’t see what was so nice about that.

“Well, some things change,” Annie said in a quiet voice.

“Yeah,” Cameron agreed with a fake laugh of his own. “Look at Babie. You’re practically all grown up.” He shook his head. “I remember when you were just a little kid.”

And I remember when you were just some stupid guy my sister was madly in love with, I thought but didn’t say. Some stupid guy who didn’t think twice about breaking her heart.

“Babie’s got an admirer,” Gracie announced.

“I don’t,” I said.

“The new boy in town is sweet on her,” Gracie said.

“Gracie, that’s enough,” Annie said.

“What?” Gracie protested. “It’s true. I thought you were going to the winter carnival with him.”

I shook my head. What didn’t Jenelle say on the phone last night?

“The winter carnival,” Cameron said. “I forgot all about that. It must be coming up soon.”

“It’s Saturday night,” Gracie said. “You are going, aren’t you?”

“I don’t think—it’s been so long since I’ve been back here. It would probably just feel strange.”

Cameron was trying to politely say he would be bored out of his mind spending his Saturday at the ridiculously lame Shallow Pond winter carnival, but Gracie was oblivious.

“You have to go to the winter carnival!” she shrieked. “Annie, tell him he has to go to the carnival. Nobody misses the carnival.”

“Well, I think I’m probably going to sit this one out,” Annie said. Walking across a room seemed to tire her out, so of course she couldn’t be outside traipsing around the park in the cold.

“I’m sure if I go, every person I meet is going to want to know what I’ve been up to and what I’m doing back here,” Cameron said. “I pretty much got sick of answering those questions about a half hour after I got back.”

“You could go with Gracie,” Annie suggested. “She could run interference.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t make her do that,” Cameron said. “She’s young. She doesn’t want to hang around with an old has-been like me. I’m sure she wants to go with her friends and have fun.”

“What friends,” Gracie said with a snort. “All my loser friends ran off to college and they hardly ever come home anymore, not even for the carnival.”

I thought to myself that Gracie had it backward. She was the loser who didn’t go to college and instead stayed in this backwater town operating under the delusion that the carnival was some sort of important social event. I glanced over at Annie. She looked uncomfortable. Her face was pinched. I thought it might be some sort of physical discomfort, but it could also have been what Gracie just said. That bit about her loser friends running away and never coming back—just like a certain young man who’d left town with Annie’s heart all those years ago.

“We should go together,” Gracie said to Cameron. Didn’t she realize he didn’t want to go? How dense could she be? “We could have so much fun. We could even make up some wild story to tell people when they ask what you’ve been doing all this time.”

Cameron smiled at this. “It would be interesting to go to the carnival again,” he said. Wait, what? Was he serious? “Annie, you sure you couldn’t be persuaded? Does Ben still make those ice sculptures with his chain saw?”

“If you mean the unidentifiable misshapen lumps of ice, then yes, every year,” Annie replied. “I think he considers it his civic duty. So you’ll excuse me if I pass. I’m just getting over a bad cold, and don’t feel one hundred percent yet.” I figured she was maybe twenty percent at most. “You and Gracie should go, though.” She smiled at Cameron, but it was a forced smile that almost looked like a grimace.

“This will be so much fun,” Gracie gushed. “Babie, you could come along with us, you and—what’s the new guy’s name?”

“I’m not even sure if I’m going,” I said.

“Of course you are,” Gracie said. “Only a complete loser would miss the carnival.”

I wished Gracie would learn to use her brain before she opened up her mouth. I tried to send a look of sympathy in Annie’s direction, but Annie was in some sort of daze, staring off into space.

“That’s different,” Gracie said, seeing my expression. “Annie’s not going because she’s still sick. Right, Annie?”

“What?” Annie asked, snapping out of her daze.

“You’re not going to the carnival because you don’t feel well,” Gracie said.

“Yes,” Annie said, but she sounded distracted.

Sitting there in the armchair, Annie looked old. She looked a lot older than twenty-six. She did look a bit like the spinster Shawna had accused her of being. The weird thing was that Annie was the same age as Cameron, and even though he’d clearly matured some, he still looked pretty young—a lot younger than Annie looked, anyway. Maybe it was just the light in the room, and maybe it was because she’d been sick—was still sick—but it scared me a little seeing her looking old like that. I’d already lost two parents. I didn’t even want to think about losing a sister as well. Still, it was hard not to think about that when I saw how awful she looked.