Maine Squeeze (3 page)

“You know what? Hutch is great. Hutch is cool. I yearn to be as relaxed as he is sometime in my life,” Dad said, and I laughed.

Mom came outside, carrying a large sheet of hot pink poster board.

“What's that?” I asked.

“This is your contract,” she said, looking it over. “Just want to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Honey, do you have a pen?”

My dad pulled a felt-tip marker out of his pants pocket. I don't think he's written with an actual pen in years. He even writes and signs checks with Magic Markers.

“You know how we talked about setting some ground rules, so we wrote them down to make them official and binding. This is a very big deal, you know. Us leaving you here by yourself. In fact, I'm almost having second thoughts about it.” Mom tapped the marker against the porch railing.

Second thoughts? She couldn't. She wouldn't. Haley had already moved in. And I had the perfect picture of my perfect summer in my head. It definitely did not include Mom and Dad hanging around, crowding in at the corners of the photograph, waving hello.

“Mom, we've been over this. I'll be responsible,” I said.

“Yes, I think you will be,” she said, “but I'm not so sure about the other girls. I just … I'd hate it if anything happened.”

“To the house?” I asked.

“Not just the house. To
them
,” she said. “And to
you
.”

“Oh.” She did have a point there. “But, Mom, we'll all look after each other—we always do.”

“But I won't be here to make sure of it,” she said, her voice quavering.

“Mom, don't worry.” I put my arm around her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze. It was a warm and fuzzy moment.

Then she stepped out of the hug and slapped the poster board on the slatted table. “Read, initial, and sign.”

I smiled as I scrawled my signature in purple ink on the first line marked “Signed and Agreed By.”

Mom carefully inspected my signature, as if I could have forged it. “It's up to you to post the rules in the kitchen—and get each girl to sign this.” Then, out of nowhere, she started crying. “I don't want to go,” she said, hugging me, her tears dropping onto my shoulders.

“Mom, please,” I said. “You
do
want to go. You're not setting Dad loose on the Continent by himself, are you? I mean, he could really give Americans a bad name.”

My father cleared his throat. “Ahem.”

“Okay, a worse name,” I amended.

“That's not what I was thinking about!” he said with a laugh. “Anyway, it's not as if I'm an embarrassment to anyone.” He stood there, saying this, wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt Mom had given him last Christmas that said “I'm a Mainiac” over the outline of a moose.

“Are you wearing that on the
plane
?” I asked.

“Good point.” He ran upstairs to get changed into his traveling clothes, and Mom and I just laughed as we taped the poster board onto the kitchen door.

I headed to Erica's house in Portland that afternoon around four o'clock, after a dreadfully sobby drop-off at the airport.

Dad kept cracking bad jokes about what souvenirs he would bring home for the cats, and Mom kept telling me how to look after the garden, even though she knew I was hopeless when it came to having a green thumb. And she kept crying, too. I guess we never had been separated for as long as we would be that summer. Maybe it was good practice for my leaving home in the fall, like she said, but neither one of us liked it. And okay, so I cried, too. Miserably. Embarrassingly.

Now, while I was at a stoplight, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that my eyes were only starting to unpuff. I reached over to the passenger seat for my sunglasses and slipped them back on, then stuffed a crumpled Kleenex into the pocket on the driver's-side door.

I wasn't going to cry—I didn't think I would. But after we unloaded their suitcases and bags, as Mom and Dad were hugging me good-bye, this police officer started yelling at us because we were staying in the pickup and drop-off area too long and we were getting in the way of other people. Also, I hadn't parked quite as close to the curb as a person should, and this hotel shuttle bus was sort of stuck until the driver went up onto the
other
curb. It was chaotic, to say the least. I was about to be blamed for something.

Naturally, I burst into tears.

I think in some weird way that made my parents happy, though, because then they shifted into their “take care of Colleen” mode and suddenly stopped being upset themselves. Mom gave me a tissue (with a teddy bear print, of course) from her purse, and Dad gave me a Lifesaver, and off they went through the doors for their first flight. They just whisked away and left me there with the scowling police officer and a wet face. They'd land in Frankfurt in the morning. I'd wake up at home, without them. It was a bit hard to fathom.

Good thing my three best friends in the world would be there with me.

I pulled up in front of Erica's house and parked. She lived on top of a hill, in a large brick colonial house with a great view of the water. The last time I'd seen Erica was in May, when she came out to the island for her grandfather's birthday. We usually saw each other every other month or so—either she came up or I went to Portland with my mom and dad to shop, or eat out, or visit their friends.

Erica was going to the University of New Hampshire in the fall, so she could be close to home. Erica's parents were a tad overprotective.

Erica was the sweetest, nicest person in the world. She worked as a hostess at Bobb's, which was a perfect fit for her. Even when people got angry about waiting too long for a table or were rude to her, she'd just “kill them with kindness,” as the saying goes. She earned a lot of overtime money because she couldn't say no when others asked her to cover their shifts—great for the money part, but bad because she'd work too many hours and get completely exhausted. (Being too nice occasionally has its downsides. That's why I try not to go overboard. That, and the fact it doesn't come naturally to me.)

“Look who's here!” Erica's mother cried when she opened the front door. “It's Colleen Templeton!” She always says this, as if she's announcing my arrival at a fancy dress ball. Instead, I was standing on their doorstep wearing cut-off khaki shorts, a bright pink tank top, and unlaced sneakers.

Erica came running to the door and we gave each other a quick hug. After talking to her for a few minutes, we quickly tossed two large duffel bags and a box of Erica's stuff into the back of the car, grabbed some juice and sodas from the fridge, and were about to be on our way when Mrs. Kuhar caught up to us.

Erica's parents were coming up to the island the next weekend, but her mom acted as though Erica was leaving the country when she said good-bye (and I knew what that looked like, having just been through it myself). She gave Erica several instructions on when to call home, how to dress for the changing weather, how to arrange her schedule at Bobb's so she didn't get overworked like last summer.... Then Erica and her mother hugged, then her mother hugged
me
, and eventually we were on the road.

“We're on the way!” Erica said, putting down her window and resting her arm on the door as we hit Interstate 295. “Wow, what a nice day, huh?”

“Can you believe we're really doing this? I mean, we've been talking about it since April, and now it's finally happening.” I took a sip of orange soda. “Isn't this great? This summer is going to be
so
amazing.” I reached down to turn up the radio.

Seconds later, Erica leaned over and turned down the radio. “The thing is, Colleen,” she said, sounding a little nervous. “I can't actually live with you.”

Chapter 3

“You can't?”

Already there were some glitches in the perfect plan, some “flies in the ointment,” as my father would say, only he always made a point of mentioning they were black flies, because that's the fly variety here in Maine that will bite you until it hurts.

Anyway. The fact that Erica wasn't going to live in the house with us came as a complete and utter shock to me. She was more reliable, nice, and—maybe it's shallow to say, but she's really skilled at cooking, and I'd been relying on her to feed me all summer—than the rest of us put together. What would we do without her? What would I eat? Toast only got you so far. Now I was looking at toast and leftovers from Bobb's. Leftover reheated lobster stew on toast. Yuck.

I told myself to stop thinking about my stomach and get this figured out. “But wait. If your parents won't let you live with us, then how come they're letting you ride up with me today?” I asked. It didn't sound exactly logical.

“I needed to get there?” she said meekly. “And you were coming down anyway to drop off your parents?”

I laughed. “Well, true. But why are they against the idea of you living at my house? I mean, when have you ever given them a reason not to trust you?” I asked.

Erica fiddled with the knob on the glove compartment. “Well, uh …”

I couldn't believe it—Erica was almost acting guilty. “What? Did you do something?”

“No! I was going to say … well, it's not me they're worried about,” Erica said slowly.

I nearly slammed on the brakes, which was not a good thing because we were on the highway. “What? It's
me
?” I felt terrible. Did Mr. and Mrs. Kuhar really think so poorly of me? They'd always acted so friendly toward me, so
nice
. Just like Erica—they were almost
too
nice sometimes. And since when could I not be trusted? I was extremely … trusty. Trustworthy. Whatever.

“No, no! I mean, it's not you,” Erica assured me. “It's the entire situation. Four girls on their own. My parents think I'm still too young for something like that. You know how they treat me as if I'm ten sometimes. Plus, they said that they want me to look after my grandparents this summer.”

“Your grandparents are sixty-five, going on thirty!” I said. “I held the door for your grandmother last week at the store? And she stared at me and said, ‘Are you working here now? Well, what are you waiting for? Are you doing arm-strengthening exercises? No? Then go
in
already.'”

Erica laughed as she leaned down to adjust the back straps of her brown sandals. “Yeah, that sounds like her, all right. I know, they're completely self-reliant. And, Coll, I'm
really
sorry. I should have told you sooner. I just kept hoping I'd convince my parents to change their minds.”

“Don't apologize!” I said. “I mean, I'm disappointed. I wish you
could
live with us. But it's perfectly fine. You'll be over all the time anyway. Right?”

“Of course! I just won't be able to sleep there, that's all. And hey, that means you'll have a guest room now.”

I swear, she could put a positive spin on anything. She was amazing that way.