at Boston’s Quincy Market eating ice cream cones, and Gigi is giving Mom a piggyback ride. Gigi is big enough and Mom is short and wiry enough that this is an easy feat for both of them. Mom’s frizzy blonde hair takes up half the picture, but your eyes go straight to her legendary smile, complete with ice cream mustache. The two of them look like they’re having a blast.
“If this Bubbles is such a great friend,” I said, “how come I’ve never heard of her before? Has Mom ever mentioned her to you?”
“Well no, but—well anyway, it doesn’t sound so bad, this place, does it?”
“I’m not going.”
“Of course you’re going. You have to go.” Gigi pushed her plentiful body off the couch and gathered up silky white Boccaccio, her favorite. Boccaccio jumped from her arms straight onto my lap and started rubbing his white whiskers against my cheek. I pushed him away.
“I’m not going,” I said again. I stared at the blank TV screen, wondering how Gigi would try to handle me. What could she do, anyway? She couldn’t throw me over her shoulder and haul me onto the plane. She could try calling my mother, but even if she got through, what could Mom do all the way from Idaho?
So this is what being in control felt like. And I was. For once in my life, I was in control. No one could make me go to this stinking island if I didn’t want to. I could stay right here if I felt like it. I was in charge, and you know how it felt? Rotten. Because if I didn’t go, Gigi would end up skipping her family Christmas to be with me. And when Mom found out, she’d make my life even more miserable than it already was, if that’s possible. So I wasn’t really in control at all. Mom had won again.
Chapter 2
December 19
It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.
—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Slumped on the subway to Logan Airport, I squinted at the blue-cold day outside and felt frozen to my graffitied plastic seat. There were a few other people in the car, newspapers and paperbacks pressed to their faces. They looked like headless bodies to me, holding their books and papers up not to read but to cover the holes at the tops of their necks. I shouldn’t have been surprised. No one with a head on their shoulders would be going where I was.
To distract myself, I dug through my duffel until I found the book I was halfway through reading, The Adonis Murders. I love murder mysteries, the more harrowing the better. In fact, I spend so much time at The Poison Pen, a used mystery and suspense bookstore in Central Square, I’m on a first name basis with the owner, Bea, and her resident Yorkie, Laptop. This novel, recommended by Bea herself, was about a string of barbaric murders where all the victims were handsome young men, and it described the corpses in such excruciating detail, I had to skip some passages. Now I was at the part where the detective was receiving death threats at his girlfriend’s house, and it felt like the perfect accompaniment to my already dark mood. I opened to the turned down page and plunged in.
At the Airport Station stop, I got off and caught the shuttle the rest of the way to Logan, walking into the terminal—waddling, really, under the weight of my duffel bag—early enough to swing by the coffee bar. Not to buy a five dollar half decaf extra soymilk single shot of almond cappuccino like a normal sixteen-year-old. On my budget, all I could do was inhale and hope some secondhand caffeine was floating through the air. I just stood there, visualizing wakefulness, wishing I were somewhere else, and that’s when it happened. It, as in the one thing that could make this day even worse. It, as in Chad Laramy.
Chad is the choicest guy in school: sparkling eyes straight from Tiffany’s, black hair hanging irreverently past his ears, a swimmer’s body. He’s a year ahead of me in school, but we’re in the same creative writing class. Not that being in the same room together five days a week means he knows who I am or would ever dream of saying hi to me. Still, in my current natural state (no makeup, no blow dry—hell, I couldn’t even remember if I’d put deodorant on this morning), the thought that he might vaguely recognize me was nothing short of terrifying. I tried to move out of the way before he got in line for coffee, but I ended up bumping shoulders with him.
“Whoops,” he said. “Sorry.”
“No, my fault,” I said, hoping there was still time to duck away.
His eyes narrowed. “You look familiar. Do I, do we –”
“Mr. Doyle’s writing class.”
He flashed his orthodontically perfect smile. “Yeah, that’s it. Patty, right?”
“Penny, actually.”
“Right. Penny.”
“You, um, start your short story yet?”
“Naw,” he yawned with out-partying-all-night contentment. “I’ll probably whip it out on the plane ride home.”
“Me too,” I said, even though I’d been working on it for two weeks now. “Well, I liked your last piece, the one about finding your old finger paintings in the attic.”
“Thanks,” he said, but at this point he was looking past me, not at me, like he was hoping to spot someone more interesting in the terminal to talk to. I wished he’d put me out of my misery and leave, but he just stood there, and I didn’t like the silence.
“So…” I fumbled, “you going somewhere for the holidays?”
“Yeah,” he said brightly. And why wouldn’t he be cheerful? He was surely going on a real vacation. “I’m on my way to Aruba,” he said. “You?” Now he was looking straight at me.
Damn, he had to ask. It was bad enough that I had to go to Islemorow. Did I have to confess it to Chad Laramy? “I, I’m going to the islands too,” I said.
“Really, which one?” But he was already looking away again. “Oh wait, there’s my girlfriend and her mom. Finally, ready to board.”
“See you back at Mr. Doyle’s then,” I said.
“See ya, Patty.”
As he walked away, all I could do was wonder: why was it that the only boys who liked me had tails and a litter box? Apparently, that was not for me to know.
I boarded the plane only to discover that it wasn’t really a plane. It was a glorified kite. I’d never flown before, and I’ll admit I was feeling a little jittery. Well, jittery isn’t quite the right word—scared sick is more like it.
…Okay, I told myself once my teeth stopped chattering. Okay, we’ve taken off, and I’m not in the fetal position. I can get through this, I can. After all, what choice do I have, right?
Somehow, we made it safely to Augusta, Maine, even though I swear the propeller outside my window wasn’t rotating. I caught lunch at a vending machine in the airport lobby—M&Ms, the peanut ones (for protein)—and then headed for the puddle jumper that stopped in Waterville, Bangor and Bar Harbor before finally dropping me in Jonesport, where I had to catch a ferry to the island.
The sun was setting on Islemorow by the time the ferry docked, and it was beyond cold. The wind whipped little ice swords at me, and my nostrils froze together in a futile attempt to keep the arctic air out. Thank God the inn’s driver was waiting for me at
