“Nemo,” he said, pointing at the girl.
The mother turned, noticing the girl for the first time. “Thank you—he just wandered off when I was changing the baby’s diaper and—”
“It’s okay,” the girl said, shaking her head. “He’s fine.”
Will watched the mother lead her kids away, then he turned back to the girl, noticing the kind way she smiled as the young boy toddled off. Once they’d moved far enough away, however, the girl suddenly seemed to realize that everyone in the crowd was staring at her. She crossed her arms, self-conscious when the crowd began to part for a rapidly approaching police officer.
Marcus quickly murmured something to Scott before melting back into the crowd. Teddy and Lance did the same. Blaze turned to follow them as well, and surprising Will, the girl with the purple streak reached out to grab her arm.
“Wait! Where are you going?” she called out.
Blaze shook her arm free, walking backward. “Bower’s Point.”
“Where’s that?”
“Just head down the beach. You’ll find it.” Blaze turned and rushed after Marcus.
The girl seemed unsure what to do. By then the tension, so thick only moments before, was dissipating as quickly as it had arisen. Scott righted the table and headed toward Will just as the girl was approached by a man he assumed was her father.
“There you are!” he called out with a mixture of relief and exasperation. “We’ve been looking for you. You ready to go?”
The girl, who’d been watching Blaze, was obviously unhappy to see him.
“No,” she said simply. With that, she strode into the crowd, heading for the beach. A young boy walked up to the father.
“I guess she’s not hungry,” the boy offered.
The man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, watching as she descended the steps to the beach without a backward glance. “I guess not,” he said.
“Can you believe that?” Scott raged, pulling Will away from the scene he’d been observing so closely. Scott was still hyped up, the adrenaline surging. “I was about to pound that freak.”
“Uh… yeah,” he responded. He shook his head. “I’m not sure Teddy and Lance would have let you.”
“They wouldn’t have done anything. Those guys are all show.”
Will wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t say anything.
Scott took a breath. “Hold up. Here comes the cop.”
The officer approached them slowly, obviously trying to gauge the situation.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“Nothing, Officer,” Scott answered, sounding demure.
“I heard there was a fight.”
“No, sir.”
The officer waited for more, his expression skeptical. Neither Scott nor Will said anything. By then, the condiment area was filling with people going about their business. The officer surveyed the scene, making sure he wasn’t missing anything, then suddenly his face lit up with recognition at the sight of someone standing behind Will.
“Is that you, Steve?” he called out.
Will watched him stride off toward the girl’s father.
Ashley and Cassie sidled up to them. Cassie’s face was flushed. “Are you okay?” she fluttered.
“I’m fine,” Scott answered.
“That guy’s crazy. What happened? I didn’t see how it started.”
“He threw something at me, and I wasn’t going to put up with it. I’m sick and tired of the way that guy acts. He thinks everyone’s afraid of him and that he can do whatever he wants, but the next time he tries it, it’s not going to be pretty…”
Will tuned him out. Scott was always a big talker; he did the same thing during their volleyball matches, and Will had learned long ago to ignore it.
He turned away, catching sight of the officer chatting with the girl’s dad, wondering why the girl had been so intent on getting away from her father. And why she was hanging out with Marcus. She wasn’t like them, and he somehow doubted she knew what she was getting into with them. As Scott went on, assuring Cassie that he could easily have handled the three of them, Will found himself straining to overhear the police officer’s conversation with the girl’s father.
“Oh, hey, Pete,” the father said. “What’s going on?”
“Same old stuff,” the officer responded. “Doing my best to keep things under control out here. How’s the window coming?”
“Slowly.”
“That’s what you said the last time I asked.”
“Yeah, but now I’ve got a secret weapon. This is my son, Jonah. He’s going to be my assistant this summer.”
“Yeah? Good for you, little man… Wasn’t your daughter supposed to come down here, too, Steve?”
“She’s here,” the father said.
“Yeah, but she left again,” the boy added. “She’s pretty mad at Dad.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
Will watched the father point toward the beach. “Do you have any idea where they might be going?”
The officer squinted as he scanned the waterline. “Could be anywhere. But a couple of those kids are bad news. Especially Marcus. Trust me, you don’t want her keeping company with him.”
Scott was still boasting to a rapt Cassie and Ashley. Blocking him out, Will suddenly felt the urge to call out to the police officer. He knew it wasn’t his place to say anything. He didn’t know the girl, didn’t know why she’d stormed off in the first place. Maybe she had a good reason. But as he saw the concern crease her dad’s face, he recalled her patience and kindness when she’d rescued the toddler, and the words were out before he could stop them.
“She went to Bower’s Point,” he announced.
Scott stopped talking in midsentence, and Ashley turned to him with a frown. The other three studied him uncertainly.
“Your daughter, right?” When the father nodded slightly, he went on. “She’s going to Bower’s Point.”
The officer continued to stare at him, then turned back to the father. “When I finish up here, I’ll go talk to her and see if I can convince her to go home, okay?”
“You don’t have to do that, Pete.”
The officer continued to study the group in the distance. “I think in this instance, it’s better if I go.”
Inexplicably, Will felt a strange wave of relief. It must have shown, because when he turned back toward his friends, each of them was staring at him.
“What the hell was that all about?” Scott demanded.
Will didn’t answer. He couldn’t, because he didn’t really understand it himself.
6
Ronnie
Under normal circumstances, Ronnie probably would have appreciated an evening like this. In New York, the lights from the city made it impossible to see many stars, but here, it was just the opposite. Even with the layer of marine haze, she could clearly make out the Milky Way, and directly to the south, Venus glowed brightly. The waves crashed and rolled rhythmically along the beach, and on the horizon, she could see the faint lights of half a dozen shrimp boats.
But the circumstances weren’t normal. As she stood on the porch, she glared at the officer, livid beyond belief.
No, change that. She wasn’t just livid. She was seething. What had happened was so… overprotective, so over the top, she could still barely process it. Her first thought was simply to hitchhike to the bus station and buy herself a ticket back to New York. She wouldn’t tell her dad or her mom; she’d call Kayla. Once she was there, she would figure out what to do next. No matter what she decided, it couldn’t be any worse than this.
But that wasn’t possible. Not with Officer Pete here. He stood behind her now, making sure she went inside.
She still couldn’t believe it. How could her dad—her own flesh-and-blood father—do something like this? She was almost an adult, she hadn’t been doing anything wrong, and it wasn’t even midnight. What was the problem? Why did he have to turn this into something far bigger than it was? Oh sure, at first Officer Pete had made it sound like it had been an ordinary, run-of-the-mill order to vacate their spot on Bower’s Point—something that hadn’t surprised the others—but then he’d turned to her. Zeroed in on her specifically.
“I’m taking you home,” he’d said, making it sound as if she were eight years old.
“No thanks,” she’d responded.
“Then I’ll have to arrest you on vagrancy charges, and have your dad bring you home.”
It dawned on her then that her dad had asked the police to bring her home, and there was an instant when she was frozen in mortification.
Sure, she’d had problems with her mom, and yeah, she’d blown off her curfew now and then. But never, ever, not even once, had her mother sent the police after her.
On the porch, the officer intruded on her thoughts. “Go on in,” he prompted, making it fairly clear that if she didn’t open the door, he would.
From inside, she could hear the soft sounds of the piano, and she recognized the sonata by Edvard Grieg in E minor. She took a deep breath before opening the door, then slammed it shut behind her.
Her father stopped playing and looked up as she glared at him.
“You sent the cops after me?”
Her dad said nothing, but his silence was enough.
“Why would you do something like that?” she demanded. “How could you do something like that?”
He said nothing.
“What is it? You didn’t want me to have fun? You didn’t trust me? You didn’t get the fact that I don’t want to be here?”
Her father folded his hands in his lap. “I know you don’t want to be here…”
She took a step forward, still glaring. “So you decide you want to ruin my life, too?”
“Who’s Marcus?”
“Who cares!” she shouted. “That’s not the point! You’re not going to monitor every single person I ever talk to, so don’t even try!”
“I’m not trying—”
“I hate being here! Don’t you get that? And I hate you, too!”
She stared at him, her face daring him to contradict her. Hoping he’d try, so she’d be able to say it again.
But her dad said nothing, as usual. She hated that kind of weakness. In a fury, she crossed the room toward the alcove, grabbed the picture of her playing the piano—the one with her dad beside her on the bench—and hurled it across the room. Though he flinched at the sound of breaking glass, he remained quiet.
“What? Nothing to say?”
He cleared his throat. “Your bedroom’s the first door on the right.”
She didn’t even want to dignify his comment with a response, so she stormed down the hall, determined to have nothing more to do with him.
“Good night, sweetheart,” he called out. “I love you.”
There was a moment, just a moment, when she cringed at what she’d said to him; but her regret vanished as quickly as it had come. It was as if he hadn’t even realized she’d been angry: She heard him begin to play the piano again, picking up exactly where he’d left off.
In the bedroom—not hard to find, considering there were only three doors off the hallway, one to the bathroom and the other to her dad’s room—Ronnie flipped on the light. With a frustrated sigh, she peeled off the ridiculous Nemo T-shirt she’d almost forgotten she was wearing.
It had been the worst day of her life.
Oh, she knew she was being melodramatic about the whole thing. She wasn’t stupid. Still, it hadn’t been a great one. About the only good thing to come out of the whole day was meeting Blaze, which gave her hope that she’d have at least one person to spend time with this summer.
Assuming, of course, that Blaze still wanted to spend time with her. After Dad’s little stunt, even that was in doubt. Blaze and the rest of them were probably still talking about it. Probably laughing about it. It was the kind of thing Kayla would bring up for years.
The whole thing made her sick to her stomach. She tossed the Nemo shirt into the corner—if she never saw it again, it would be too soon—and began slipping off her concert shirt.
“Before I get too grossed out, you should know I’m in here.”
Ronnie jumped at the sound, whirling around to see Jonah staring at her.
“Get out!” she screamed. “What are you doing in here? This is my room!”
“No, it’s our room,” Jonah said. He pointed. “See? Two beds.”
“I’m not going to share a room with you!”
He tilted his head to the side. “You’re going to sleep in Dad’s room?”
She opened her mouth to respond, considered moving to the living room before quickly realizing she wasn’t going out there again, then closed her mouth without a word. She stomped toward her suitcase, unzipped the top, and flung open the lid. Anna Karenina lay on top, and she tossed it aside, searching for her pajamas.
“I rode the Ferris wheel,” Jonah said. “It was pretty cool to be so high. That’s how Dad found you.”
“Great.”
“It was awesome. Did you ride it?”
“No.”
“You should have. I could see all the way to New York.”
“I doubt it.”
“I could. I can see pretty far. With my glasses, I mean. Dad said I have eagle eyes.”
“Yeah, right.”
Jonah said nothing. Instead, he reached for the teddy bear he’d brought with him from home. It was the one he clutched whenever he was nervous, and Ronnie winced, regretting her words. Sometimes the way he talked made it easy to think of him as an adult, but as he pulled the bear to his chest, she knew she shouldn’t have been so harsh. Though he was precocious, though he was verbal to the point of annoyance at times, he was small for his age, more the size of a six- or seven-year-old than a ten-year-old. It had never been easy for him. He’d been born three months prematurely, and he suffered from asthma, poor vision, and a lack of fine-motor coordination. She knew kids his age could be cruel.