Mallory Square was like a daily Mardi Gras. The whole island, it seemed, gathered there to watch the sunset, and street performers took advantage of the crowd, miming, dancing, swallowing fire—anything and everything to get attention and tips. Peyton held Lisa’s hand and escorted her to the edge of the square, finding an empty spot on the waterfront. He put his arm around her as they took a seat and dangled their feet over the ocean.
The sun looked like a giant coral balloon they could reach out and touch as it slowly drifted down from the sky. Its orange glow was casting light on the turquoise water, making colors Peyton had never seen before. Lisa, as she so often did, seemed to read his mind when she said, “Those colors aren’t in my crayon box.”
As the sun dropped lower, the water changed colors from luminescent turquoise to deep blue, and the whole sky dissolved into shades of pink and coral. Now the big orange globe looked as if it were only a foot or so from the water.
“I half expect it to splash when it hits the ocean,” Lisa said.
“It just looks so close,” Peyton agreed. “Somebody told me there’s a green flash on the water right when the sun disappears.”
They kept their eyes on the sun, now slipping faster and faster into the ocean. Just as it fell below the horizon, a split-second flash of green kissed the water and the whole crowd gasped and applauded.
“Did you see that?” Lisa exclaimed.
“I did,” Peyton said. He was about to kiss her when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
An older woman who reminded him of Aunt Gert smiled and handed him a sketch. “You two made my sunset,” she said. “This one’s on the house.” Then she disappeared into the crowd.
The woman had drawn Peyton and Lisa from behind, not in any detail but with well-placed lines and curves that let the viewer’s imagination fill in what was missing: A boy and a girl sat very close, dangling their feet off the edge of Mallory Square, his arm wrapped around her. An island wind was blowing her long red hair. Both were silhouetted against a giant orange sun, the turquoise sea before them.
“We look happy,” Lisa said.
“How can you tell from the back of our heads?” Peyton teased her.
“I just can.”
Behind them, the crowd was celebrating the sunset with laughter and music and every kind of revelry. But Peyton could barely hear them as he laid his hand against Lisa’s face, leaned over, and softly kissed her. “I owe you a dance, don’t I?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, so quietly that he could barely hear her. He helped her up, then took the drawing and put it in the bag with her clothes, which he had strapped to the scooter.
They heard music coming from somewhere nearby and followed it to a bandstand at the end of a wide pier just off the square. Peyton heard the familiar drumbeat of “Sing, Sing, Sing” and turned to Lisa. “Miss Wallace, may I have this jitterbug?”
“I don’t know how!”
“You’re the best dancer in the whole school! If Aunt Gert can teach me, I can teach you.”
Lisa was light on her feet, quickly mastering every step, twirl, and kick.
When the music stopped, Peyton found two barstools beside the pier railing and bought them limeades from the concession stand. “You could’ve at least made it look hard,” he said.
“Hard to breathe, with you making me laugh the whole time. Oh, Peyton, look!” Lisa pointed to the sky, where a gorgeous moon was raining light on the water. “It’s just a little sliver of moon in the sky, but it’s so bright. Isn’t it beautiful?”
“I got to see the Strawberry Moon right after I left Gina and Mama Eva. Finn said it would bring me good luck. And it has.”
“Was it any prettier than this one?”
Peyton turned his attention to the night sky. “No. Because this one’s shining on you. Hey, wait a minute. I saw the Strawberry Moon—so this is June.”
Lisa frowned at him. “Yes. This is June.”
“What day?”
“The seventeenth, why?”
Peyton slapped his knee. “Now this has got to mean something. June the seventeenth is my birthday. I got you and a perfect slice o’ moon for my birthday. Not bad, Miss Wallace. Not bad at all. You should probably dance with me or something. Listen—they’re playing our song.”
“I didn’t know we had one.”
“Sure we do. It’s . . . that song playing on the jukebox.”
Lisa listened intently till she could make out the tune. “‘Dream a Little Dream of Me.’ That’s a good one. Let’s claim it before somebody else does.”
They walked onto the dance floor, which had thinned out with the band on break and a jukebox filling in. “You mind dancing to an ol’ jukebox?” he asked as he took her in his arms.
“I’m not dancing to a jukebox,” Lisa said, looking up at him and smiling. “I’m dancing to Ella and Louis, with you, over the ocean.”
Satch and Ella Fitzgerald crooned about the stars and the night breezes and little kisses as Peyton felt the graceful curve of Lisa’s back beneath one hand, her soft palm in the other. He bent down and gave her a lingering kiss he hoped would never end. She looked up at him and said, almost in a whisper, “Happy birthday . . . And Peyton . . . I love you too.”