Huntley Fitzpatrick - What I Thought Was True

For you, John, for more than twenty years of your love, faith, and friendship. For all the moments when I despaired of Cass or Gwen or Nic, and you said softly, “I like them.” For all those distracted hours of mine when you picked up the slack. Picking up groceries, taking kids to ballet . . . those things never show up in romantic novels. But they should.

For you, K, A, R, J, D, and C, the Fitzpatrick six . . . who love books and beaches and summer. What I know is true? You are the best things that have ever happened to me.

Nothing like a carful of boys to completely change my mood.

There’s a muffled expletive from inside Castle’s Ice Cream, so I know Dad’s spotted them too. A gang of high school boys tops his list of Least Favorite Customers—they eat a ton, they want it now, and they never tip. Or so he claims.

At first, I barely pay attention. I’m carrying a tray of wobbly root beer floats, foil-wrapped burgers, and a greasy Everest’s worth of fried scallops toward table four out front. In a few weeks, I’ll be in the rhythm of work. Balancing all this and more will be no big deal. But school got out three days ago, Castle’s reopened full-time last week, the sun is dazzling, the early summer air is sticky with salt, and I have only a few more minutes left in my shift. My mind is already at the beach. So I don’t look up to see who just drove in until I hear a couple of whistles. And my name.

I glance back. A convertible is parked, slanted, taking up two spaces. Sure enough, Spence Channing, who was driving, shakes his hair from his eyes and grins at me. Trevor Sharpe and Jimmy Pieretti are piling out, laughing. I whip off my Castle’s hat, with its spiky gold crown, and push it into the pocket of my apron.

“Got a special for us, Gwen?” Spence calls.

“Take a number,” I call back. There’s a predictable chorus of ooo ’s from some of the boys. I set the tray down at table four, add soda cans and napkins from my front pockets, give them a speedy, practiced smile, then pause by the table where my brother is waiting for me, dreamily dragging French fries through ketchup.

But then I hear, “Hey, Cass, look who’s here! Ready to serve.” And the last boy in the car, who had been concealed behind Jimmy’s wide torso, climbs out.

His eyes snag on mine.

The seconds unwind, thin, taut, transparent as a fishing line cast far, far, far out.

I jolt up, grab my brother’s hand. “Let’s get home, Em.”

Emory pulls away. “Not done,” he says firmly. “Not done.” I can see his leg muscles tighten into his “I am a rock, I am an island” stance. His hands flick back and forth, wiping my urgency away.

This is my cue to take a breath, step back. Hurrying Em, pushing him, tends to end in disaster. Instead, I’m grabbing his ketchup-wilted paper plate, untying my apron, calling to Dad, “Gotta get home, can we do this take-out?”

“Not done,” Emory repeats, yanking his hand from mine. “Gwennie, no.”

“Gettin’ slammed,” Dad calls out the service window, over the sizzle of the grill. “Wrap it yourself, pal.” He tosses a few pieces of foil through the window, adding several packets of ketchup, Emory’s favorite.

“Still eating.” Emory sits firmly back down at the picnic table.

“We’ll watch a movie,” I tell him, wrapping his food. “Ice cream.”

Dad glances sharply out the take-out window. He may be brusque with Em from time to time, but he doesn’t like it when I am.

“Ice cream here .” My brother points at the large painting of a double-decker cone adorning one of the fake turrets. Yes, Castle’s is built to look like a castle.

I pull him to the truck anyway and don’t look back, not even when I hear a voice call, “Hey, Gwen. Have a sec?”

I turn the key in Mom’s battered Bronco, pressing hard on the gas. The engine revs deafeningly. But not loud enough to drown out another voice, laughing, “She has lots of secs! As we know.”

Dad, thank God, has ducked away from the service window and is bent over the grill. Maybe he didn’t hear any of that.

I gun the car again; jerk forward, only to find the wheels spinning, caught in the deeper sand of the parking lot. At last the truck lurches, kicks into a fast reverse. I squeal out onto the blazing blacktop of Ocean Lane, grateful the road is empty.

Two miles down, I pull over to the side, fold my arms to the top of the steering wheel, rest my forehead on them, take deep breaths. Emory ducks his head to peep at me, brown eyes searching, then resignedly opens the foil and continues eating his limp, ketchup-soggy fries.

In another year, I’ll graduate. I can go someplace else. I can leave those boys—this whole past year—far behind in the rearview mirror.

I pull in another deep breath.

We’re close to the water now, and the breeze spills over me soft and briny, secure and familiar. This is why everyone comes here. For the air, for the beaches, for the peace.

Somehow I’ve wedged the car right in front of the big white-and-green painted sign that marks the official separation between town and island, where the bridge from Stony Bay stops and Seashell Island begins. The sign’s been here as long as I can remember and the paint has flaked off its loopy cursive writing in most places, but the promises are grooved deep.

Heaven by the water.

Best-kept little secret in New England.

Tiny hidden jewel cradled by the rocky Connecticut coast.

Seashell Island, where I’ve lived all my life, is called all those things and more.

And all I want to do is leave it behind.

“Kryptite the only thing,” Emory tells me, very seriously, the next afternoon. He shakes his dark hair—arrow straight like Dad’s—out of his eyes. “The only, only thing can stop him.”

“Kryptonite,” I say. “That’s right. Yup, otherwise, he’s unstoppable.”

“Not much Kryptite here,” he assures me. “So all okay.”

He resumes drawing, bearing down hard on his red Magic Marker. He’s sprawled on his stomach on the floor, comic book laid out next to his pad. The summer light slants through our kitchen/living room window, brightening the paper as he scribbles color onto his hero’s cape. I’m lying on the couch in a drowsy haze after taking Em into White Bay for speech class earlier.

“Good job,” I say, gesturing to his pad. “I like the shooting stars in the background.”

Emory tilts his chin at me, forehead crinkling, so I suspect they aren’t stars. But he doesn’t correct me, just keeps on drawing.

An entire day after running into the boys at Castle’s, I’m still wanting a do-over. Why did I let them get to me this time? I should have laughed; flipped them off. Not very classy, but I’m not supposed to be the classy one here. I should have said, “Well, Spence, we all know that with you, it wouldn’t take more than a sec.”

But I couldn’t have said that. Not with Cassidy Somers there. The other boys don’t matter much. But Cass . . .

Kryptonite.

An hour or so later, our rattly screen door snaps open and in comes Mom, her dark curly hair frizzing from the heat the way mine always does. She’s followed wearily by Fabio, our ancient, half-blind Labrador mix. He immediately keels over on his side, tongue lolling out. Mom hurries to push his bowl of water closer to him with one foot while reaching into our refrigerator for a Diet Coke.

“Did you think about it some more, honey?” she asks me, after taking a long swallow. Caffeinated diet soda, not blood, must run through her veins.