Nicholas Sparks - The Last Song

Steve laughed, ruffling Jonah’s hair. “How about we go find your sister? I think I saw her heading toward the festival.”

“Can we ride the Ferris wheel?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Awesome.”

The fair was crowded. Or rather, Ronnie corrected herself, the Wrightsville Beach Seafood Festival was crowded. As she paid for a soda from one of the concession stands, she could see cars parked bumper to bumper along both roads leading to the pier and even noted a few enterprising teenagers renting out their driveways near the action.

So far, though, the action was boring. She supposed she’d been hoping that the Ferris wheel was a permanent fixture and that the pier offered shops and stores like the boardwalk in Atlantic City. In other words, she hoped it would be the kind of place she could see herself hanging out in the summer. No such luck. The festival was temporarily located in the parking lot at the head of the pier, and it mostly resembled a small county fair. The rickety rides were part of a traveling carnival, and the parking lot was lined with overpriced game booths and greasy food concessions. The whole place was kind of… gross.

Not that anyone else seemed to share her opinion. The place was packed. Old and young, families, groups of middle-schoolers ogling one another. No matter which way she went, she always seemed to be fighting against the tide of bodies. Sweaty bodies. Big, sweaty bodies, two of whom were squashing her between them as the crowd came to an inexplicable stop. No doubt they’d had both the fried hot dog and fried Snickers bar she’d seen at the concession stand. She wrinkled her nose. So gross.

Spying an opening, she slipped away from the rides and carnival game booths and headed toward the pier. Fortunately, the crowd continued to thin as she moved down the pier, past booths offering homemade crafts for sale. Nothing she could ever imagine herself buying-who on earth would want a gnome constructed entirely from seashells? But obviously someone was buying the stuff or the booths wouldn’t exist.

Distracted, she bumped into a table manned by an elderly woman seated on a folding chair. Wearing a shirt emblazoned with the logo SPCA , she had white hair and an open, cheerful face-the type of grandmother who probably spent all day baking cookies before Christmas Eve, Ronnie guessed. On the table in front of her were pamphlets and a donation jar, along with a large cardboard box. Inside the box were four gray puppies, one of which hopped up on its hind legs to peer over the side at her.

“Hi, little guy,” she said.

The elderly woman smiled. “Do you want to hold him? He’s the fun one. I call him Seinfeld.”

The puppy gave a high-pitched whine.

“No, that’s okay.” He was cute, though. Really cute, even if she didn’t think the name suited him. And she did sort of want to hold him, but she knew she wouldn’t want to put him down if she did. She was a sucker for animals in general, especially abandoned ones. Like these little guys. “They’re going to be okay, right? You’re not going to have them put to sleep, are you?”

“They’ll be fine,” the woman answered. “That’s why we set up the table. So people would adopt them. Last year, we found homes for over thirty animals, and these four have already been claimed. I’m just waiting for the new owners to pick them up on their way out. But there are more at the shelter if you’re interested.”

“I’m only visiting,” Ronnie answered, just as a roar erupted from the beach. She craned her neck, trying to see. “What’s going on? A concert?”

The woman shook her head. “Beach volleyball. They’ve been playing for hours-some kind of tournament. You should go watch. I’ve heard the cheering all day, so the games must be pretty exciting.”

Ronnie thought about it, figuring, Why not? It couldn’t be any worse than what was happening up here. She threw a couple of dollars into the donation jar before heading toward the steps.

The sun was descending, giving the ocean a sheen like liquid gold. On the beach, a few remaining families were congregated on towels near the water, along with a couple of sand castles about to be swept away in the rising tide. Terns darted in and out, hunting for crabs.

It didn’t take long to reach the source of the action. As she inched her way to the edge of the court, she noticed that the other girls in the audience seemed fixated on the two players on the right. No surprise there. The two guys-her age? older?-were the kind that her friend Kayla routinely described as “eye candy.” Though neither of them was exactly Ronnie’s type, it was impossible not to admire their lanky, muscular physiques and the fluid way they moved through the sand.

Especially the taller one, with dark brown hair and the macramé bracelet on his wrist. Kayla would have definitely zeroed in on him-she always went for the tall ones-in the same way the bikini-clad blonde across the court was obviously zeroing in on him. Ronnie had noticed the blonde and her friend right away. They were both thin and pretty, with blindingly white teeth, and obviously used to being the center of attention and having boys drool all over them. They held themselves apart from the crowd and cheered daintily, probably so they wouldn’t mess up their hair. They might as well have been billboards proclaiming it was okay to admire them from a distance, but don’t get too close. Ronnie didn’t know them, but she already didn’t like them.

She turned her attention back to the game just as the cute guys scored another point. And then another. And still another. She didn’t know what the score was, but they were obviously the better team. And yet, as she watched, she silently began to root for the other guys. It had less to do with the fact that she always rooted for the underdog-which she did-and more to do with the fact that the winning pair reminded her of the spoiled private school types she sometimes ran into at clubs, the Upper East Side boys from Dalton and Buckley who thought they were better than everyone else simply because their dads were investment bankers. She’d seen enough of the so-called privileged crowd to recognize a member when she saw one, and she’d bet her life that those two were definitely part of the popular crowd around here. Her suspicions were confirmed after the next point when the brown-haired guy’s partner winked at the blonde’s tanned, Barbie-doll friend as he got ready to serve. In this town, the pretty people clearly all knew one another.

Why wasn’t she surprised by that?

The game suddenly seemed less interesting, and she turned to leave just as another serve sailed over the net. She vaguely heard someone shouting as the opposing team returned the serve, but before she had taken more than a couple of steps, she felt the spectators around her beginning to jostle one another, knocking her off balance for just an instant.

An instant too long.

She turned just in time to see one of the players rushing toward her at full speed, his head craning to catch sight of the wayward ball. She didn’t have time to react before he slammed into her. She felt him grab her shoulders in a simultaneous attempt to stop his momentum and prevent her from falling. She felt her arm jerk on impact and watched almost in fascination as the lid flew off the Styrofoam cup, soda arcing through the air before drenching her face and shirt.

And then, just like that, it was over. Up close, she saw the brown-haired player staring at her, his eyes wide with shock.

“Are you okay?” he panted.

She could feel the soda dripping down her face and soaking through her shirt. Vaguely, she heard someone in the crowd begin to laugh. And why shouldn’t someone laugh? It had been such a fantastic day already.