world. Ooh, and look at this… Monday afternoon, huh? Tom and Teresa, sitting by the sea, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then they ride off in their ’lectric carriage… Ow!”
“Do Mum and Dad know you sing such naughty songs?”
“The main point is, I was right. She is from another world. You’re in love with an alien!”
“I am not in love with anybody. I have yet to meet this girl. She may not even exist.”
“Oh, she exists all right. Though her handwriting is pretty messy for a girl’s.” A mischievous look came into Jo’s eyes. “What do you suppose she looks like?”
“She is a tall redhead with jade-green eyes and long legs… No! I did not mean to say that!”
“That’s your ‘type,’ huh? Oh, I remember! That’s what Ginny Jones looks like.”
Ginny was in my class at Gingo Teag High School, before my parents sent me off to St. George’s. She was Miss Junior Nanticoke two years ago. As to her awareness of my existence, we might as well have lived in different universes rather than the same island village.
“It’s all right, big brother,” Jo said, giving me a hug. Clever—I could not hit her while she was hugging me. “I’m sure she’s beautiful, whatever she looks like. Hey, do you think I could convince Mum and Dad to let me stay here through Monday? No? Well then, you’re just going to have to send me a voice-gram as soon as you return from walking out with Teresa!”
“And what makes you think I would do that?” I said, pushing the annoying little pest away.
“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell Mum and Dad everything!” She squealed as I grabbed for her, ducking under my arms and scuttling off to the front of the store. By the time I caught up with her she was behind the counter, frowning thoughtfully at her reflection in the mirror. “What am I supposed to put in here that’s worth six unknown works by the greatest musical genius who ever lived?”
“I do not know,” I growled. “I do not think you own anything worth a farthing!”
“Now Tom, that’s just mean. You have to try for witty, big brother. Like, ‘I do not think you own anything that is worth as much as my life once Dad discovers that I do not want to become a DRRAGON engineer!’”
This time I actually tried to punch her in the nose, but I could not reach her over the counter. However, she ducked and, with a thump, hit her head on the corner of the counter.
“That’s it! I’m telling!” she howled.
“Go right ahead,” I said nastily. “And you can tell them where it happened, too, which is not where you said we were going in your note!”
We had both forgotten about Tiferet, who suddenly leapt on the counter between us and hissed, with her tail fluffed up and her teeth showing. We both started back. But instead of being afraid, we were both ashamed. Or at least I was, and Jo blushed. We both straightened up, Jo rubbing her head where she’d hit it.
“You’re not developing a lump, are you?” I asked uneasily. Mum would kill me if she heard me contracting my words! If she doesn’t kill me for what just happened to Jo!
“I don’t think so,” she muttered, avoiding my eyes. “Let me see what I have to leave.”
She spilt out the contents of her pockets on the counter. Some loose change, a miniature harry bear—one I had not seen before, so it must have been new, with its hopeful smile and little bow tie—and a tiny cobalt-blue whelk shell, worn smooth and bright from years of being carried around.
She had found it on a trip to Assa Teag. Only six or seven at the time, Jo was so proud when she found it out on Dragon’s Cove Hook, a long flat streamer of grey sand at the southern tip of the island. What she never knew was that I saw it first, rolling around almost invisibly in the swirling muddy water of the cove, and I picked it up and put it carefully down beside her when her back was turned so she would think she had found it. Now she looked at the shell, and raised her head, tears in her eyes.
“Shelly? I have to give up Shelly?” she whispered.
I shook my head slowly, not to say no, but because I did not know what to say.
“Can’t I give up new harry bear instead?” she pleaded.
I looked away so she would not see that my eyes were damp too. A moment later I heard a clatter from the register. Then she took my arm.
“Come on, Tommy, let us go find Mum and Dad now,” she said. She took Teresa’s letter out of my hand as we walked out the door into the grey cold. “Remember, big brother, not to worry about anything. As Gloria said, just relax and enjoy the walk.” Then she paused with a frown. “Who’s this ‘Einstein’?”
Chapter 5
Mom drove me to 30th Street Station the day before Thanksgiving, grumbling all the way about how unfair it was that Dad got me for the holiday “when we’ve always gone to Aunt Maria’s house for Thanksgiving.”
That had been our family tradition only since Nana died, but all I said was, “It’s all right, Mom. I want to go.”
This didn’t improve her mood any, and besides, she was still unhappy about me taking the train on my own. As if I was ten! But she looked so miserable I hugged her extra hard.
“Save some of Aunt Maria’s cranberry sauce for me. Make sure it has lots of orange peel in it,” I said.
She nodded, her eyes welling up. Sheesh, you’d think I was going off to college. I was so glad they don’t allow non-passengers down onto the platform anymore. I didn’t want Mom to make a scene and embarrass both of us.
The train was super crowded, of course. I sat next to an old lady who reminded me of Nana. She was so nice I had to bite my tongue so I didn’t start crying.
No wonder the other girls always make fun of me, being such a sap. I pressed my forehead against the cold window. What was Tom doing? I hoped he had some kind of holiday weekend. Would he get to see his family? If he was in a boarding school in Philadelphia, they must live far away. And if he’d never heard of cell phones, who knows, maybe they were still using horses and buggies and he wouldn’t get to see them at all for, like, months. Could he be even lonelier than me? It didn’t seem possible.
Outside, darkness was falling on the bare trees and empty fields south of Wilmington. A silvery gleam shimmered off the water as the train crossed a bridge high over the Susquehanna River, just north of where it broadens into Chesapeake Bay.
Tom’s family probably came from somewhere down the bay. I’d looked up Gingo Teag on the Internet and came up empty, but the Nanticokes were an Indian tribe who used to live in Delaware and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Maybe his family were crab catchers. What did they call them? Watermen.
We took a trip there once when I was little, when Dad was still working for that big architecture firm downtown. We used to joke that he was Mr. Brady from the Brady Bunch, and I had to be all six Brady kids by myself. It seemed like forever ago, watching the wild horses of Assateague Island, the “Chincoteague ponies,” who were potbellied from their marsh grass diet. I thought they were pretty anyway…
Chincoteague.
