The Last Song (4 page)

Jonah wrinkled his nose, staring at the half-rabbit/half-snake. “It doesn’t look like art.”

When Steve smiled, Jonah motioned to the stained-glass window on the worktable. “Was this his, too?” he asked.

“Actually, that’s mine. I’m making it for the church down the street. It burned last year, and the original window was destroyed
in the fire.”

“I didn’t know you could make windows.”

“Believe it or not, the artist who used to live here taught me how.”

“The guy who did the animals?”

“The same one.”

“And you knew him?”

Steve joined his son at the table. “When I was a kid, I’d sneak over here when I was supposed to be in Bible study. He made
the stained-glass windows for most of the churches around here. See the picture on the wall?” Steve pointed to a small photograph
of the Risen Christ tacked to one of the shelves, easy to miss in the chaos. “Hopefully, it’ll look just like that when it’s
finished.”

“Awesome,” Jonah said, and Steve smiled. It was obviously Jonah’s new favorite word, and he wondered how many times he’d hear
it this summer.

“Do you want to help?”

“Can I?”

“I was counting on it.” Steve gave him a gentle nudge. “I need a good assistant.”

“Is it hard?”

“I was your age when I started, so I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

Jonah gingerly picked up a piece of the glass and examined it, holding it up to the light, his expression serious. “I’m pretty
sure I can handle it, too.”

Steve smiled. “Are you still going to church?” he asked.

“Yeah. But it’s not the same one we went to. It’s the one where Brian likes to go. And Ronnie doesn’t always come with us.
She locks herself in her room and refuses to come out, but as soon as we leave, she goes over to Starbucks to hang out with
her friends. It makes Mom furious.”

“That happens when kids become teenagers. They test their parents.”

Jonah put the glass back on the table. “I won’t,” he said. “I’m always going to be good. But I don’t like the new church very
much. It’s boring. So I might not go to that one.”

“Fair enough.” He paused. “I hear you’re not playing soccer this fall.”

“I’m not very good at it.”

“So what? It’s fun, right?”

“Not when other kids make fun of you.”

“They make fun of you?”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Ah,” Steve said.

Jonah shuffled his feet, something obviously on his mind. “Ronnie didn’t read any of the letters you sent her, Dad. And she
won’t play the piano anymore, either.”

“I know,” Steve answered.

“Mom says it’s because she has PMS.”

Steve almost choked but composed himself quickly. “Do you even know what that means?”

Jonah pushed his glasses up. “I’m not a little kid anymore. It means pissed-at-men syndrome.”

Steve laughed, ruffling Jonah’s hair. “How about we go find your sister? I think I saw her heading toward the festival.”

“Can we ride the Ferris wheel?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Awesome.”

R
onnie

T
he fair was crowded. Or rather, Ronnie corrected herself, the
Wrightsville Beach Seafood Festival
was crowded. As she paid for a soda from one of the concession stands, she could see cars parked bumper to bumper along both
roads leading to the pier and even noted a few enterprising teenagers renting out their driveways near the action.

So far, though, the action was boring. She supposed she’d been hoping that the Ferris wheel was a permanent fixture and that
the pier offered shops and stores like the boardwalk in Atlantic City. In other words, she hoped it would be the kind of place
she could see herself hanging out in the summer. No such luck. The festival was temporarily located in the parking lot at
the head of the pier, and it mostly resembled a small county fair. The rickety rides were part of a traveling carnival, and
the parking lot was lined with overpriced game booths and greasy food concessions. The whole place was kind of… gross.

Not that anyone else seemed to share her opinion. The place was
packed.
Old and young, families, groups of middle-schoolers ogling one another. No matter which way she went, she always seemed to
be fighting against the tide of bodies. Sweaty bodies. Big, sweaty bodies, two of whom were squashing her between them as
the crowd came to an inexplicable stop. No doubt they’d had both the fried hot dog and fried Snickers bar she’d seen at the
concession stand. She wrinkled her nose. So gross.

Spying an opening, she slipped away from the rides and carnival game booths and headed toward the pier. Fortunately, the crowd
continued to thin as she moved down the pier, past booths offering homemade crafts for sale. Nothing she could ever imagine
herself buying—who on earth would want a gnome constructed entirely from seashells? But obviously someone was buying the stuff
or the booths wouldn’t exist.

Distracted, she bumped into a table manned by an elderly woman seated on a folding chair. Wearing a shirt emblazoned with
the logo
SPCA
, she had white hair and an open, cheerful face—the type of grandmother who probably spent all day baking cookies before Christmas
Eve, Ronnie guessed. On the table in front of her were pamphlets and a donation jar, along with a large cardboard box. Inside
the box were four gray puppies, one of which hopped up on its hind legs to peer over the side at her.

“Hi, little guy,” she said.

The elderly woman smiled. “Do you want to hold him? He’s the fun one. I call him Seinfeld.”

The puppy gave a high-pitched whine.

“No, that’s okay.” He was cute, though. Really cute, even if she didn’t think the name suited him. And she did sort of want
to hold him, but she knew she wouldn’t want to put him down if she did. She was a sucker for animals in general, especially
abandoned ones. Like these little guys. “They’re going to be okay, right? You’re not going to have them put to sleep, are
you?”

“They’ll be fine,” the woman answered. “That’s why we set up the table. So people would adopt them. Last year, we found homes
for over thirty animals, and these four have already been claimed. I’m just waiting for the new owners to pick them up on
their way out. But there are more at the shelter if you’re interested.”

“I’m only visiting,” Ronnie answered, just as a roar erupted from the beach. She craned her neck, trying to see. “What’s going
on? A concert?”

The woman shook her head. “Beach volleyball. They’ve been playing for hours—some kind of tournament. You should go watch.
I’ve heard the cheering all day, so the games must be pretty exciting.”

Ronnie thought about it, figuring, Why not? It couldn’t be any worse than what was happening up here. She threw a couple of
dollars into the donation jar before heading toward the steps.

The sun was descending, giving the ocean a sheen like liquid gold. On the beach, a few remaining families were congregated
on towels near the water, along with a couple of sand castles about to be swept away in the rising tide. Terns darted in and
out, hunting for crabs.

It didn’t take long to reach the source of the action. As she inched her way to the edge of the court, she noticed that the
other girls in the audience seemed fixated on the two players on the right. No surprise there. The two guys—her age? older?—were
the kind that her friend Kayla routinely described as “eye candy.” Though neither of them was exactly Ronnie’s type, it was
impossible not to admire their lanky, muscular physiques and the fluid way they moved through the sand.

Especially the taller one, with dark brown hair and the macramé bracelet on his wrist. Kayla would have definitely zeroed
in on him—she always went for the tall ones—in the same way the bikini-clad blonde across the court was obviously zeroing
in on him. Ronnie had noticed the blonde and her friend right away. They were both thin and pretty, with blindingly white
teeth, and obviously used to being the center of attention and having boys drool all over them. They held themselves apart
from the crowd and cheered daintily, probably so they wouldn’t mess up their hair. They might as well have been billboards
proclaiming it was okay to admire them from a distance, but don’t get too close. Ronnie didn’t know them, but she already
didn’t like them.

She turned her attention back to the game just as the cute guys scored another point. And then another. And still another.
She didn’t know what the score was, but they were obviously the better team. And yet, as she watched, she silently began to
root for the other guys. It had less to do with the fact that she always rooted for the underdog—which she did—and more to
do with the fact that the winning pair reminded her of the spoiled private school types she sometimes ran into at clubs, the
Upper East Side boys from Dalton and Buckley who thought they were better than everyone else simply because their dads were
investment bankers. She’d seen enough of the so-called privileged crowd to recognize a member when she saw one, and she’d
bet her life that those two were definitely part of the popular crowd around here. Her suspicions were confirmed after the
next point when the brown-haired guy’s partner winked at the blonde’s tanned, Barbie-doll friend as he got ready to serve.
In this town, the pretty people clearly all knew one another.

Why wasn’t she surprised by that?

The game suddenly seemed less interesting, and she turned to leave just as another serve sailed over the net. She vaguely
heard someone shouting as the opposing team returned the serve, but before she had taken more than a couple of steps, she
felt the spectators around her beginning to jostle one another, knocking her off balance for just an instant.

An instant too long.

She turned just in time to see one of the players rushing toward her at full speed, his head craning to catch sight of the
wayward ball. She didn’t have time to react before he slammed into her. She felt him grab her shoulders in a simultaneous
attempt to stop his momentum and prevent her from falling. She felt her arm jerk on impact and watched almost in fascination
as the lid flew off the Styrofoam cup, soda arcing through the air before drenching her face and shirt.

And then, just like that, it was over. Up close, she saw the brown-haired player staring at her, his eyes wide with shock.

“Are you okay?” he panted.

She could feel the soda dripping down her face and soaking through her shirt. Vaguely, she heard someone in the crowd begin
to laugh. And why shouldn’t someone laugh? It had been such a
fantastic
day already.

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

“Are you sure?” the guy gasped. For what it was worth, he seemed genuinely contrite. “I ran into you kind of hard.”

“Just… let me go,” she said through clenched teeth.

He hadn’t seemed to realize he was still gripping her shoulders, and his hands instantly released their pressure. He took
a quick step back and automatically reached for his bracelet. He rotated it almost absently. “I’m really sorry about that.
I was going for the ball and—”

“I know what you were doing,” she said. “I survived, okay?”

With that, she turned away, wanting nothing more than to get as far away from here as possible. Behind her, she heard someone
call out, “C’mon, Will! Let’s get back to the game!” But as she pushed her way through the crowd, she was conscious somehow
of his continuing gaze until she vanished from sight.

Her shirt wasn’t ruined, but that didn’t make her feel much better. She liked this shirt, a memento from the Fall Out Boy
concert that she’d sneaked out to with Rick last year. Her mom had almost blown a gasket about that one, and it wasn’t simply
because Rick had a tattoo of a spiderweb on his neck and more piercings in his ears than Kayla did; it was because she’d lied
about where they were going, and she hadn’t made it home until the following afternoon, since they’d ended up crashing at
Rick’s brother’s place in Philadelphia. Her mom forbade Ronnie from seeing or even speaking to Rick ever again, a rule that
Ronnie broke the very next day.

It wasn’t that she loved Rick; frankly, she didn’t even like him that much. But she was angry at her mom, and it felt right
at the time. But when she got to Rick’s place, he was already stoned and drunk again, just as he’d been at the concert, and
she realized that if she continued to see him, he’d continue to pressure her to try whatever it was he was taking, just as
he’d done the night before. She spent only a few minutes at his place before heading to Union Square for the rest of the afternoon,
knowing it was over between them.

She wasn’t naive about drugs. Some of her friends smoked pot, a few did cocaine or ecstasy, and one even had a nasty meth
habit. Everyone but her drank on the weekends. Every club and party she went to offered easy access to all of it. Still, it
seemed that whenever her friends smoked or drank or popped the pills they swore made the evening worthwhile, they’d spend
the rest of the night slurring their words or staggering or vomiting or losing control completely and doing something
really stupid.
Something usually involving a guy.