Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (6 page)

“They all love him.”

I turned around and found Mona standing behind me, watching me watch Henry. “Who?”

Mona pointed toward a wave cresting in the distance beyond Henry. “Henry. I don't get it, do you? Devon's been after him for months but he wants nothing to do with her, thank God. The last thing I need is my friend dating my brother.”

I figured it wasn't the best time to tell Mona that Emily was after Henry as well.

“You didn't tell me you went to Hawaii.”

“No?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“It wasn't really a big deal. Malcolm surprised my mom with a trip and we sort of tagged along. Now she's planning this big fortieth birthday party for him in August, tent on the back lawn, a band, the whole deal.”

I remembered when my dad turned forty. My mom took him to Boston for the weekend and they went to a Red Sox game. I was sure my dad would rather spend his birthday at Fenway Park than dancing to a band under a large white tent any day.

“How are things going with Malcolm and Izzy?”

Mona pressed her fingertip against her forearm and waited to see if she left a white fingerprint behind. It was her standard sunburn test. “Fine.”

I watched for some sign she wasn't telling me the whole
story, but that seemed to be the whole story. Malcolm was fine. Life in Boston was fine. And, according to Mona, her friends thought Henry was pretty fine, too.

I must have fallen asleep on my towel because when I woke up Mona and I were alone. “Where'd everyone go?” I asked.

“For a walk down the beach.”

I tipped my head to read the watch hooked around the handle of Mona's beach bag. Four o'clock. I watched the second hand to see if it effortlessly swept around the face or stopped at every hatch mark. It swept. Which meant it was a real Rolex.

I dusted the sand off my stomach and stood up. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow, so I think I'm going to take off.”

Mona seemed like she was about to protest but then stopped. “Okay, I'll walk you to the car,” she offered.

The beach crowd had thinned out, leaving only die-hard sunbathers and families with kids who refused to give up their sand castles without a fight. I looked out toward the horizon, but the waves had died down and there were no surfers in sight.

“Your friends seem nice,” I told her, stepping over a castle that was about three waves from being washed away.

“Thanks. They thought you were nice, too.”

I didn't know if that was true, but I wanted to believe her. “Thanks for lunch.”

Mona stopped suddenly, grabbing my arm. “Hey, how are things going with the deli?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess. At least it's finally going to open. Now we just have to wait and see what happens.” We started walking
again, past the white board propped against a rock, the day's water temperature and weather forecast written alongside the beach rules in dry marker.

“I'm sure it will do great. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go there and get a sandwich the very first day. When's it open?”

“Next Thursday, unless something else goes wrong.”

“Then next Thursday it is.”

I stopped in front of the wood slat walls separating the changing rooms and Port-A-Potties. “You don't have to walk me the whole way, I had to park way down the road.” I pointed toward Atlantic Drive, where Malcolm's house rose up in the background.

“Well, make sure you call me as soon as you get out of work to let me know how it went, okay?”

We both watched as a little boy came out of the Port-A-Potty, his mom hurrying to help him pull up the bathing suit still wrapped around his ankles.

“Sure.” This is what it had come to. Me and Mona sharing polite conversation and parting ways in front of portable toilets.

She reached out to hug me, her skin smelling like coconut oil and sweat. And even though we were both sticky from the sand and saltwater air, I hugged her back.

“Don't forget, I want to know everything about your job,” she whispered in my ear, and it reminded me of that day ten months earlier when we'd said good-bye at the ferry dock. Only back then I'd believed what she'd said, and this time I knew better.

“Talk to you later.” I turned to walk away, leaving Mona alone by the Port-A-Potties.

When we'd said good-bye at the ferry dock, I'd stayed there long after the last car was loaded, long after the ramp raised up into the air, freeing the boat to leave the island. I stood there and waited for Mona to make it from the belly of the ferry to the deck, where she waved to me from the railing until her hand, her face, her body faded into the distance and I couldn't see her anymore.

On my way to Lexi's car I looked over my shoulder, expecting to find Mona still standing there watching me, waving good-bye. But she was already gone.

“What are you doing here?” The last person I'd expected to see when I opened the front door was Mona. After I'd gotten home from the beach, Lexi had called from the deli to tell me that one of the suppliers screwed up the address and a shipment of five hundred ecologically sensitive recycled paper cups might be delivered to our doorstep within the next couple of hours. I was expecting the FedEx guy.

Mona shifted her weight from one foot to the other before answering. “I thought we could go into town.”

I noticed the still shiny Range Rover in our driveway.

“Lexi's expecting a shipment for the deli,” I told Mona, stepping aside so she could come in. I wondered if my house felt different to Mona, the foyer smaller, the furnishings older, everything a little more worn compared to Malcolm's house. If it did, she didn't let on.

“Can't you leave a note or something?” she asked. “Just tell them to leave it.”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

Mona jingled the keys in her hand and I noticed she wasn't
carrying her purse. “Look, I'm sorry about today, I know it wasn't exactly fun for you.”

“It was fine,” I told her. “I didn't have a horrible time.”

“Okay, you didn't have a horrible time, but still. I thought we could go into town and walk around, maybe get ice cream or something.” Mona reached for the pad of paper and the pen on the side table by the front door. She started writing, reading aloud as the pen moved across the page. “Dear Mr. FedEx. Please leave any packages on the front steps. Thank you, Kendra Bryant.”

Mona tore the sheet off and handed it to me. “Please?” she almost pleaded, holding out the FedEx note like an olive branch, waiting for me to take it.

It didn't used to be this hard. This up and down, the trying to figure out how to act, what to say to each other, it used to be so easy, so effortless.

I took the sheet. “Okay, let me get my shoes.”

Mona had the Range Rover, which seemed to dwarf her as she sat behind the steering wheel. The thing about Mona is that she's really petite—not just short; everything about her is smaller than you'd expect. Whenever we stood next to each other I almost felt too big, even though I'm only five foot seven and that's not exactly gigantic. At one time it felt like it was, when we'd have dances in sixth grade and the girls would line up on one side of the gym, the boys on the other. When the teacher yelled “go”, which now seems completely ridiculous and antiquated, like it was a race or something, it was a mad dash across the polished wood floor to our side of the room. Mona and I always stood next to each other, but when a boy was headed in our direction we couldn't tell who
he was going for, me or Mona. Rarely did the boys not care which one of us they danced with, because most of the time they had a type—small and dark or tall and blonde. Unfortunately it wasn't always the tall guy who wanted to dance with the tall girl, and I'd end up practically resting my chin on some short boy's head, wondering if he was trying to get a glimpse down the front of my shirt, especially given his perfect vantage point.

“Remember when Chris Stewart asked me to dance and he sneezed and blew his nose all over the front of my shirt?” I reminded Mona as she took a right down South Water Street at the four-way stop.

“That was so gross.” Mona laughed. “Who would have guessed he'd end up playing center on the varsity basketball team.”

“Are there any hot guys at Whittier?”

“You mean any who are hot
and
know how to use a Kleenex? A few.” Mona slowed down, hanging a right onto School Street. “Is that car leaving?” she asked, pointing to a Volvo with its brake lights on.

“I think so.”

“Do you want me to try to get closer to town, because I can,” Mona offered, even though in the past, we'd jump on any space we could get no matter where it was. Only tourists thought they could do better, or thought they were that lucky.

“No, this is fine. I don't mind walking.”

How Mona ever parallel parked the Range Rover is beyond me, because the space was barely big enough for the Volvo. But she managed to get in with relatively few tries, and we headed into town.

The thing about downtown Edgartown during the summer is that you can't really tell one day from the next, one time of day from another. It's just always packed. Here it was, a Sunday afternoon, and you'd think people would be home hanging out and relaxing, but instead it was as if the stores were giving things away for free. It wasn't even like the stores in Edgartown were that useful, mostly clothing and some home knickknacks, a few art galleries, and, of course, T-shirt shops. Unless you were in dire need of a T-shirt emblazoned with
MARTHA'S VINEYARD
across the front, people could probably get anything sold on Main Street in their own hometowns, but it didn't matter. The shopping bags dangling from practically every arm on Main Street was proof of that.

“So what are you going to do with yourself all week?” I asked Mona.

“I don't know. Maybe read, go to the beach.”

It didn't exactly sound like Mona could fill an entire summer by reading and going to the beach, but I didn't say that. I nodded my head like those were great ideas.

“That sounds like fun.” Oddly, for some reason I felt like it was Mona's turn to talk, like we were alternating conversation, being polite and letting the other person have her say before nodding in agreement. It didn't used to be like this. We used to talk right over each other, cutting in before the other person finished her sentence because we knew what she was going to say.

“Mad Martha's or Scoops?” Mona asked, sounding an awful lot like a tour guide.

“Scoops, shorter line.” She knew this; we never went to Mad Martha's, it was tourist hell, as if somehow ice cream tasted better when you waited in line for twenty minutes.

“Remember when, for April Fools' Day, Pete and Jack made the
SC
on the sign into a
P
so it became Poops?” Mona smiled at me. “For some reason they thought that was hysterical.”

“Probably because they were thirteen at the time.”

“Probably,” Mona agreed, only she stopped short of nodding, maybe to add variety.

Walking down Main Street had become a trip down memory lane, literally. It seemed like all we had to talk about was the past, things we remembered, old news. At this rate we'd be reminiscing about third grade by the time we got back to the car.

“Hey, Mona!” Emily came dashing across the street toward us, pulling Jilly behind her and almost making her trip up the curb. “We're going to the yacht club. There's some sort of beginning-of-the-season kickoff tonight. You guys want to come?”

Mona looked to me. I didn't say yes.

“I don't know,” Mona answered, still waiting for me to give her some sort of reply.

Emily didn't notice. “Well, we're going to run across the street, I saw a really cute dress in the window and we were going to check it out. We'll be right back and you guys let us know what you decide.”

Emily stepped out into the road and ran across the street, not even looking to see if any cars were coming.

“Do you want to go?” Mona asked me once Emily and Jilly were gone.

“Do you want to go?” I asked her right back. “Because if you want to go, then go.”

“I'm not going to ditch you, Kendra. If you don't want to go, we won't.”

“So you do want to go?”

Mona tucked her hair behind her ear, and then quickly untucked it, covering the sparkling solitaire. “Why are you making this so hard for me?”

“I'm making this hard? All I wanted to do was hang out with you, get some ice cream. You came to my house, Mona, this was your idea.”

“I know,” she breathed, shaking her head as if she wished we weren't having this conversation.

“Look, you can go with them or we can go get some ice cream.” I crossed my arms over my chest, unable to believe we were even talking about this, as if there was even a question as to what she'd rather do.

“Can't we just do both?”

Yes, we could do both. Of course we could. But that wasn't the point.
Why
did we have to do both? Why couldn't she just tell them that we'd already made plans? Fine, so ice cream and walking around town weren't exactly grand plans, but that shouldn't matter.

I shook my head. “Just make a choice, Mona.”

“Is that what you want?” she finally asked, her voice almost pained. “You want me to choose?”

Was that what I wanted? To have Mona choose me over her other friends? To prove to them that ski trips and spring formals didn't make them any better than me?

Yes. I wanted that, I wanted Mona to say “Screw the yacht club.”

But I couldn't say it. “I'm not asking you to choose, I'm just saying make up your mind.”

“How about we get some ice cream and meet them there?” Mona suggested, coming up with a compromise.