Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171) (10 page)

She laughed at me. “Yes, Kendra, I remember the number.”

“Maybe if you called him tonight we could all do something together on my day off.”

“When's that?”

“Wednesday.”

Mona didn't answer. Instead, she went back to braiding.

“What's wrong with Wednesday?”

“Nothing's wrong with Wednesday, it's just that we'd planned to go over to the beach on Chappy on Wednesday.”

She didn't have to explain who the
we
was.

“Then go out with him some other day, I don't have to be there.”

“We could do it next week,” she offered. “I can wait.” But even though I knew she was trying to make me feel better, to let me know that she'd like me to be there, it felt like a consolation prize. Like first place went to the Whittier girls and I was the first runner-up.

Why was this so difficult? Our conversation seemed so forced, like a game of chess, each of us trying to figure out the other's moves before she made them so we knew what to say, how to act. It never used to be this way. And I always hated chess.

“Fine, whatever you want.” My tone was clipped and there was no way Mona could miss it.

But if she had noticed, she'd decided to ignore it. “Tell me about the Willow. I want to know all about it.”

“You know, I don't really feel like talking about work right now,” I told her.

“Come on, I want to know. Jilly's cousins say it's gorgeous, maybe I could come by and see you one day for lunch.”

“I'm
working
there, Mona. I'm making the lunches Jilly's cousins are taking to the beach. I'm serving them breakfast. It's
my job
.” I spat out the last two words so Mona would get the point. “You can't just show up and meet me for lunch like I'm one of your friends.”

Mona inhaled sharply and pulled one of the lavender and green throw pillows onto her lap. “But you are one of my friends, Kendra.”

“You know what I mean, Mona. I'm not one of your Boston friends.”

Mona hugged the pillow close to her chest as she thought about what to say next. She had to realize that no matter what she said it wouldn't make a difference. Our conversation had reached the point of no return and there was nothing she could say to change that.

“Look, Kendra, I realize you don't know my friends very well, or maybe you don't even like them,” she started, but before she could continue I jumped in.

“Like them? Why would I like them? I have nothing in common with them, Mona. Their hair is highlighted, their teeth are whitened, and they've probably all had nose jobs.”

Mona's hand reached for her nose.

“Don't even tell me you want a nose job,” I warned, and she dropped her hand. “You can't be serious.”

“I don't know, Abby says her mom knows a really good doctor.”

“And does Abby also know that you don't need a nose job? That it's all part of your imagination?”

Mona didn't answer. Instead, she got off the bed and walked toward the French doors, stepping out onto the small deck off her bedroom. She stood there on the deck, staring
out at the pool, or at the ocean, from where I was I couldn't really tell. But it didn't really matter what she was staring at. She wasn't looking at me. “Do we really have to get into this, Kendra?” she asked, sounding exhausted.

At this point, I couldn't imagine how we could
not
get into it. It wasn't even the nose job that pissed me off so much, even though Mona
did not
need her nose fixed. It was that, even though Mona always rubbed it and claimed to hate the bump that was invisible to everyone else, I knew she liked her nose. She liked that it was something she must have inherited from her dad, like her eyes. And yet now she was willing to change it because Abby said so.

Even if Mona was tired of our conversation, I wasn't ready to let it drop.

“God, you've changed, Mona. I feel like I don't even know who you are anymore.”

She spun around to face me, and even though I was so angry my hands were shaking, I couldn't help but notice how pretty she looked, her dark hair and pale skin illuminated in the sunlight flooding the deck. It was almost as if she'd been posed there.

“That's mean, Kendra.” Mona's voice was steady and controlled, like she still thought we could work this out. I already knew we couldn't.

Before she could say anything else I stood up. “It's been a long day, I'm going home.”

“I can drive you,” she offered, only instead of moving she just stood there, squinting in the sun.

Damn. I'd forgotten I didn't have the car. I'd forgotten that Mona had access to not one but three cars in Malcolm's circular driveway. But worse than realizing I had to either take
Mona up on her offer or take the bus was realizing that for the first time in our lives, Mona was the one in the driver's seat.

“That's okay, I can take the bus.”

There was no bus. Just me waiting underneath the VTA sign for five minutes as I imagined Mona standing on the deck outside her bedroom, watching me. And even though I turned toward the beach so Mona wouldn't be able to see my face, I hated it. I hated that I didn't know if Mona offered me a ride because she really wanted to or because she felt sorry for me. I hated that she kept her whole life in Boston a secret from me. And I really hated that I probably looked completely pathetic standing at the bus stop kicking rocks with my foot while tourists passed by me as they left the beach. Which was why I finally gave up on the bus and started walking home.

I didn't live within walking distance of Malcolm's house, so it wasn't like I actually expected to walk the entire way. I was just hoping to catch the bus somewhere along its route and in the process get as far away from Malcolm's house as possible. But because the only land running along Atlantic Drive was the grassy pasture of the Katama airfield, no matter how far I walked, Malcolm's gray shingled house was visible in the background, a five-thousand-square-foot reminder that I might have just lost my best friend.

I kept my eyes on the fence running around the perimeter, only taking them away to watch a bright red biplane taking off down the grassy runway, looking up as it lifted into the air above me.

“Hey!” someone screamed over the sound of the propeller, startling me.

I turned toward the road, where a pickup truck had slowed
and was creeping along beside me. There could only be one truck that color, a dull, milky pea green. And even if there managed to be another truck that color, I doubted it would have the same brownish red rusty patches running along the bottom of the passenger-side door.

“What are you doing?” Henry asked, yelling across the empty passenger seat.

“Walking home,” I told him, even though we both knew it wasn't likely.

“Come on, I'll drive you.” He reached over and opened the door from the inside, pushing it out so I could get in.

I had two choices: continue walking and hope the bus showed up at some point, or take Henry up on his offer.

I got in.

“That's a long walk,” Henry said as the truck started moving faster. “Isn't standing on your feet all day enough for you?”

The front seat of Poppy's truck was just like I remembered, the vinyl bench seat slippery from so many years of wear. Whenever Poppy and Mona picked me up at my house, Mona always slid over to the middle, saying she liked sitting like that, sandwiched between us. There was no CD player, just a broken cassette player and a radio that only got the AM stations. “I went to see Mona.”

“And she wouldn't drive you home?”

I didn't have to tell Henry what happened. I could gloss over the entire argument, make it sound completely normal that I'd choose to walk four miles rather than let my best friend drive me home, and hope that Mona would call me and we'd work it out. But I wasn't that optimistic. And I kind of wanted to hear what Henry would say, whose side he'd take.

“We had a fight.”

“What? Like that time you two were fighting over that Snoopy Sno-Cone machine and who got to pick the first flavor?” Henry looked over at me, a serious expression on his face. “The battle between cherry and grape, how you ever managed to settle that one is still a mystery to me.”

I almost laughed, which I think was his goal. “No, Henry. It's a little more serious than that.”

“So what is it?”

“I don't know if I can explain it.”

“Try.”

I don't know why it was so hard, but it was. It was more than simply saying that Mona wanted to be with her new friends, because that wasn't entirely true. She hadn't actually chosen them over me, she just wasn't willing to choose me over them.

So instead I just said, “Mona's changed.”

“And that's bad?” he answered, which wasn't exactly the response I was looking for.

“Yeah, it's bad. She's not like she used to be when she lived here.”

“And how was that?”

“See, this is why I said I couldn't explain it. I don't know how.” I lay my head back against the headrest and turned to look out the open window. “Don't you think Mona's friends are totally different than her friends here?”

“You mean you?”

I turned to face Henry. “I mean all of us.”

Henry was quiet, and I assumed he was thinking about my question. I watched him in profile as he drove, noticing the straight nose that turned up slightly at the end, the high
cheekbones that became even more defined when he smiled, all the features that made him resemble Izzy so much and Mona so little. But even if it wasn't immediately obvious from the blond hair and tanned arms, which lacked even the slightest hint of pink from the beach yesterday, I could see Mona in Henry's mannerisms. The way he squinted his eyes while thinking, creating little crinkles at the corners that reminded me of ice crackling in the spring. How he folded his thumb against the palm of his hand and rubbed the small, round pad of skin at the base of his pinky without even realizing it. His bare left foot tucked under his right leg while he drove. The big picture may have been all Izzy, but I had a feeling that Henry's details had to be his father.

He looked different from this morning, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. He'd changed his clothes, but it was the same style of shorts, this time in olive green, and just another T-shirt. So it wasn't that.

“I guess I'd have to say they're not the same, but they're not that different either,” Henry finally answered, if you were even willing to call his circular logic an answer.

“That doesn't make sense.”

“Sure it does. Are they exactly the same? No, but who here is exactly the same? I actually think you and Mona are pretty different.”

“How can you say that? We practically agreed on everything until you moved away.”

“That's not true.” Henry flipped on his blinker and slowed down as we approached my street. “Most of the time you'd make a decision and Mona would agree.”

“That's what I said.”

“No, what you said was that you agreed on everything.
What I'm saying is that most of the time Mona went along with you.”

I didn't really see the difference.

“This is it, the end of the road.” Henry stopped the truck in my driveway and waited for me to get out.

I placed my hand on the door handle but didn't open it. “Are you going fishing again tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Every day. Maybe I'll see you for a little breakfast?”

“Maybe, if Shelby forgets something.” I stepped out of the truck, shutting the door behind me. When I turned to say good-bye, I finally realized what was different. “You shaved,” I told him, leaning in the open window.

Henry reached up and stroked his chin, puzzled. “Yeah.”

“You didn't shave this morning.”

He smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “I was up at four thirty, give me a break.”

“That's not what I meant, you looked fine.”

Henry shifted the truck out of park and I stepped back so he could leave.

“See you later, Kendra.”

I waved as Henry drove away, then turned toward the house and went inside.

I hadn't really expected Henry to fish on the weekends, but there he was at Stop & Shop, waiting for me as usual, even on a Saturday.

“You should come with me one morning,” Henry suggested as I paid for the ground cinnamon. This morning Shelby was making her famous lemon curd squares for afternoon tea and discovered, as she seemed to just about every morning, that she was missing some vital ingredient that would absolutely ruin her recipe if not included. Yesterday it was the dark corn syrup for her pecan sticky buns, and the day before that, walnuts for her sour cream coffee cake.

“I'm not exactly a morning person,” I told him as we walked toward the pickup truck. Since that day he drove me home from the airfield, I hadn't asked him about Mona, whether she'd told him about our fight or if he'd even mentioned to her that he'd driven me home. It had been five days since our fight, and we still hadn't spoken. At least while I was at the Willow I didn't have the time to think about Mona, about what I'd said to her and the look on her face as I left her bedroom. “The last thing I want to do is get up even earlier
than I get up for work,” I told Henry, pushing Mona out of my mind.

Ever since we met up at the grocery store that first day, Henry and I had made our morning meet-ups a regular thing, thanks to Shelby's inability to write out a grocery list for Wendy. The second time we met up it was awkward. I mean, we'd just seen each other the day before, and how much small talk can you make walking the aisles of Stop & Shop and looking for walnuts? But after the third and fourth time I think we both just got used to it. The third day he was even waiting for me before going in to grab his poppy seed bagel with cream cheese. And now he didn't even ask if I wanted a ride back to work. I just got in the passenger side of the pickup for the quick two-minute ride down Main Street.