Swept Away (7 page)

A
s I coast down Weatherby for my second day of Candy Cane duty, the breeze coming off the water blows strands of hair into my face. They keep sticking to my lip gloss, but I'm in such a good mood I don't care. I simply flick them away each time it happens. I just hope I'm not wiping off the Blushing Rose gloss each time I do. I forgot to toss it into my bag, since I don't usually travel with makeup, much to Cynthia's constant annoyance. At least the shadow, mascara, and shimmer face powder won't wear off. I'm not so certain about the shimmer. It might be a little much for sitting in a lighthouse all day, but I can always wash it off once I get there.

Even though I know it's unlikely that Oliver will come back, I took care not just with my face but with the rest of me too. The jeans that fit great and a cute top Cynthia picked out for me last month to “enhance my assets.” Not exactly sure what assets those might be, but whatever. If Oliver really is a “completist,” then he might come back today to make sure he didn't miss anything.

I hope!

I open up, humming a sea chantey that had been blasting from the open doors of Ahoy, a swimwear shop on Main Street. Once the season really gets under way, Rocky Point goes overdrive on the fishy and Maine Americana. It's as if summers send Rocky Point back in time, and that's the way the Regulars like it. They seem to come here to get back to the “good old days,” but truth to tell, I don't see what's so great about them. How people lived here in the winters before good heating, television, and cars is beyond me.

Today as I look around Candy Cane, I try to understand what Oliver finds so appealing. Is he a history buff? Into lighthouses, specifically? Drawn to all things sea-related? I've met all of those types of visitors, and I guess I'm even related to one, since Mom loves all that stuff. I can't remember if Dad did too, but since all my memories are of them happily together in never-ending conversations, I guess he did.

By noon there have been no visitors, and my stomach is growling. I poke my head out of the lighthouse door. No one. Not Oliver, not a tour bus, not even Mom to take me to another lunch.

That's probably a good sign,
I tell myself. It means she doesn't
feel the need to check up on me. But it also means that I'll have to settle for whatever's on the menu at the Keeper's Café. Luckily, I don't have to pay for the overpriced fare since it's a “perk” of the job, but I should really start thinking about bringing lunch.

I hang the
GONE FISHIN'
sign on the door and lock it. Then I walk around to the main entrance of the café, the one you can enter without having to go into the lighthouse.

The café is supercute, with lots of Maine-related decor and old photos, but the menu's limited to what can be prepared on a hotplate or in a microwave. The idea had been that the café would offset some of the costs involved in maintaining the lighthouse, but I don't see how that's possible. No year-rounder or even Summer Regular eats there since the menu is so limited and, frankly, pretty bad. And tourists to Rocky Point are only a trickle, not a deluge.

I've only taken a few steps inside when I realize there's someone sitting at the counter, talking to Celeste Ingram.

Not just someone. Oliver.

I spaz out. I freeze, and the screen door bangs me in the butt, making me yelp and drop the magazine I'm carrying. My scrunchy bag slides down my arm and lands on the floor with a
thwump
. All this commotion makes Celeste look up and Oliver swivel on his stool at the counter.

Invisibility spell now!
I plead silently.

“Mandy, hi,” Oliver says, a smile lighting up his face.

I give him a weak smile and an even weaker wave.
A wave? I'm waving at a boy just a few feet away?
Oliver seems to bring out the utter dork in me.

“Hey there, Mandy,” Celeste says. “You meeting Cynthia for lunch?”

This is even more shocking than seeing Oliver a second day in a row. Celeste Ingram not only knows my name, but she also knows I'm best friends with Cynthia? Not possible! Then I realize that it's more likely she knows who Cynthia is and recognizes me as the sidekick.

They're both looking at me, waiting. Right. Words. They're those things that come out of your mouth. “Actually, Cynthia's away till August,” I say, taking a few tentative steps into the café.

“Working today?” Oliver asks.

I nod and keep approaching the counter. Slowly. They don't seem mad about my being there, but I still have the awful fear that I interrupted something. Once a boy has Celeste's attention, his own stays pretty riveted on her.

“Lunch break, huh?” Celeste picks up a menu and drops it onto the counter right beside Oliver. Not that I need the single laminated page. Still, I take this as a sign that she completely expects me to sit there.

I like that assumption.

“You two have met?” Celeste asks.

I slide onto the stool and pretend to study the menu waiting to hear what Oliver will say about our encounter.

“I was in the lighthouse yesterday,” he explains.

The bare facts. Oh well. I suppose he doesn't want to admit to the celestial Celeste that we shared some serious eye beams at the festival, too.

“Can I have a veggie burrito?” I ask. “And a lemonade.”

“Sure.”

Celeste picks up the menu, slips it back beside the cash register with the others, then pushes through the swinging doors into the small kitchen.

Alone with Oliver, I'm stumped for things to say. He seems equally stymied. He just smiles at me. There's no plate in front of him. Did Celeste already clear it away, or did he come here just to see her? The Keeper's Café opens at eleven. Has he been here a whole hour already? Even a completist would have completed checking out the café decor and gift shop by now, since the upstairs exhibit area is closed.

“Here ya go.” Celeste returns with the burrito and lemonade. Microwaving doesn't take much time.

I feel Oliver looking at me. I turn to face him as if I'm capable of conversation. “Why are you eating
here
?” I blurt.

Celeste looks at me in surprise. My mom would be so pissed if she heard me bad-mouthing the café to a potential customer. “I mean, it's kind of far for you,” I add lamely.

Celeste has a new kind of surprise on her face. This isn't an “I can't believe you just said that” expression. This is a “you already know his deets?” face.

I busy myself trying to figure out the best way to eat the soggy burrito. It may be free for me to eat here, but I am
so
going to start bringing my own lunch.

“I was checking out the grounds,” Oliver explains. “When Cel­este opened up, I realized it had been a long time since breakfast.”

Of course. He took one look at Celeste and followed her inside like a baby duckling after its mama.

A woman with steel-gray hair cut in a short bob pops her head into the café. “Do you know when the lighthouse opens up again?” she asks.

I turn around, still chewing the big bite I took of the burrito, and say, “I can open up if you want.”

“Oh, I wouldn't want to interrupt your lunch,” she says, but her tone broadcasts she really wishes I'd hurry up already and let her in.

I take a swig of the lemonade and stand. I hastily wipe my mouth with a napkin, wad it up, and toss it onto the plate.

“Thanks,” I say to Celeste. I pick up the lemonade. “I'll bring the glass back later.”

“Sure. You want me to wrap up the burrito?”

“No thanks.”

I start walking toward the woman, who stands half in, half out of the café doorway.

“Hang on, Mandy,” Oliver says behind me. “I'll come too.”

I spin around in disbelief to see Oliver picking up a sketchpad that he had stashed under the counter. He's going to leave Celeste and come hang out with me?

But once I struggle with the door and take the woman's admission fee, it becomes apparent he's not there to hang out. He's back to visit the lighthouse again. “I thought I'd do some sketching, if that's okay,” he says.

“Sure. Just . . . if a group wants to go up to the tower, give them room.”

I refuse his five dollars; it seems like a lot to pay since he was
just here yesterday, and I'm hoping maybe it will encourage him to keep coming back.

I don't see Oliver—or anyone else—the rest of the afternoon. That's not strictly true. Oliver came down from the tower and then walked around outside, sketching Candy Cane from different angles. What's so fascinating?

When I lock up for the day, he's still outside, sitting at one of the picnic tables behind the Keeper's Café. My heart sinks. Is he waiting for Celeste? He doesn't look up when I cross to the shed to get my bike. Our great romance is over before it begins.

I slam the shed shut and yank the padlock closed. I walk my bike along the gravel path, the tires spitting up little pebbles. In case Oliver looks up, I don't want him to see me awkwardly mounting the bike. I've never quite mastered accomplishing this gracefully. I force myself not to look his way.

“Hey,” I hear him call. “You done for the day?”

I glance over. He's standing now, and heading toward me.

“Yup,” I say.

“Okay if I walk with you?” he asks.

There go those hormones again: from doldrums to delight. “Sure,” I say.

We fall into step, me pushing the bike, him carrying his sketchpad. I'm glad he doesn't have a bike too. I don't want him watching me huff and puff up Weatherby. I'm living proof you can be slim and not exactly be fit.

“I'm meeting my mom at the library,” he says. “You know where that is?”

I laugh. “I should. It's where my mother works.” Good. I'm managing sentences of more than single words.

“Have you lived here your whole life?” Oliver asks.

I nod. “Have you lived in California all yours?” There. A question about him. That's what the dating guides Cynthia and I pore over say to do to keep a conversation going with a boy.

“In Cali, yeah, but not in the same place. When my parents got divorced, my dad moved to Sacramento, where he works, and Mom and I moved to the suburbs not too far away.”

“Was that a big adjustment?”

The instant I ask I want to take the words back. It's such a personal question. Oliver just shrugs. “We were living in the suburbs before, we just moved closer to the city. The divorce part . . .” His voice trails off. I wait. “It was weird that it was suddenly official that dad wasn't living with us. But they had hardly spent any time together for a long time. Mom's job can take her practically around the clock, and Dad often had business trips.”

“When did they split up?” It's kind of amazing that he's so open about all this. Maybe it's a California thing.

“A few years back. I think they'd been planning it for a while but wanted to wait until it was time for me to start high school. You know, because of the move.”

We start the incline up Weatherby. I nod a greeting at Vicki Jensen and her dad standing outside Second Time Around. ­Vicki's eyes are huge, taking in the sight of me with a new boy. She makes the universal “call me” sign. I'm glad Oliver doesn't notice. He's too busy watching the ferry chugging toward ­Hubbard Island.

“So . . . you're visiting your grandfather.” Once again I have
to stop myself from calling him Freaky. “How come you've never been here before?”

“Partly the distance. And Mom gets antsy if she's too far away from civilization.”

“And Rocky Point isn't exactly civilized.”

He turns his head to look at me full-on. “I think it's great!” he protests. He stumbles over the curb, turns pinkish, and brings his attention forward again. “Mom, though. She grew up in Cranston and couldn't wait to get out of Maine.”

Cranston is a town just a ferry ride away. Or a circuitous drive to the next-door peninsula.

“Like me and Cynthia,” I say.

“Who's Cynthia?”

“My best friend. She's away for the summer. She practically has a calendar in her head where she's x-ing out the days until she gets to leave ‘Rock Bottom.'”

“This place is so beautiful,” Oliver argues. “It's like it says on that sign we passed on the highway.” He holds up his hands as if he's creating a banner in the sky. “‘Maine: The Way Life Should Be.'”

“The way it should be for a few weeks a year,” I counter. “If you were here year-round you'd get insanely bored. There's a reason so many people in Stephen King's books go nuts in Maine.”

“Maybe. But this is so much better than the suburbs. Except for the weather.” He gives me a grin. “See, I'm not
totally
swept away by all the beauty here.”

I blush. I think I know what he really means, but I can't help imagining what he means is me.

“Back home, it seems to be all stress all the time,” he continues. “Mom's job is wacky big. Like, millions of bucks at stake.”

“What does she do?”

“Matches investors with new tech. So she stays on top of everything that's out there, and tries to nab big money before anyone else can.”

“Intense.”

“No joke.”

“So why now?”

“Why now what?”

“Are things less busy at her job now?”

“She doesn't actually
have
a job. She
is
the job. But, well, some stuff happened that made her want to see her old man. So here we are.”

I wait, but he doesn't elaborate. It's probably too personal. I don't care what the reason is; I'm just glad that it brought Oliver here.

We reach the south end of the Square, where I make the turn onto Berry to go home. “Well,” I say, “this is where I get off.”