As Nicole followed Caitlin to the loft, Lydia said to Pam, “Here are your keys and your welcome packet. The windmill’s unlocked during the week, and we keep extra paper goods beside the filing cabinet. Feel free to take what you need. Either my husband or I are always on-site, so if you have questions or need anything else, please let us know. You can also ask Caitlin if you see her around—she’s happy to help.”
Pam replied at length, but she must have lowered her voice, because suddenly Caitlin couldn’t distinctly hear what she was saying. Nicole apparently had noticed the drop in her volume, too.
“She’s asking your aunt if you’ll babysit me,” she muttered bitterly, nudging aside a bucket of rags with her toe; she seemedmore interested in the floorboards beneath her feet than in the view beyond the window.
“Why does your mom think you need a babysitter?” Caitlin asked since the girl appeared only a year or two younger than she was. “You must be at least fifteen.”
“I’ll besixteen next month and I don’t mean a literalbabysitter. I was being sarcastic,” sneered Nicole. She glided across the floor to the window. Resting her elbows on the wobbly board along the bottom, she peered into the distance, and slowly batted her thick, curved lashes. “She doesn’t trust me enough to let me go anywhere or do anything by myself, but she doesn’t want to have to spend time with me, either. It’s a classic parenting dilemma.”
A hurt look came across the girl’s pretty profile, and Caitlin detected a note of vulnerability beneath Nicole’s flippant veneer. Feeling sorry for her, she said, “I help my aunt and uncle until noon or one o’clock during the week, and for a little longer on Saturdays. But after that I usually go to the beach or hiking, and sometimes I meet up with my boyfriend and some other kids. You can come with me any time you want—it’ll be fun.”
“Oh, goody,” said Nicole in a way that made Caitlin wonder whether she meant it or if she was being sarcastic again. She had a sinking feeling she was going to regret telling Nicole she could join her, but it was too late to take back the invitation now.
Oh well, she might not want to come with me very often anyway, and even if she does, it’ll only be for a couple of weeks,she thought.Besides, I want to help Aunt Lydia and Uncle Albert give the guests the best vacation they can have, and that includes Nicole and her family…
Nearly two weeks later, Caitlin lugged a barrel of broken branches and twigs across the lawn. A recent tropical stormhad fractured one of the windmill’s arms, knocked down a large section of the picket fence near the driveway, and toppled a black locust tree, making a mess of the yard. Because Albert had been stricken with severe stomach pain, he was too weak to get out of bed, much less to make repairs to the property. So while Lydia was caring for him and managing the guests’ needs, Caitlin was trying her best to clean up the grounds.
The air was heavy and humid, and she paused to wipe sweat from the back of her neck.At least the electricity is on again and I can take a shower before the beach party tonight…
The thought of seeing her boyfriend put a smile on her dirt-streaked face. Caitlin had met Donald while she was hiking through the conservation land. Like her, he was also entering his senior year in high school, and he’d come from Iowa to Dune Island to participate in a summer work-study program for students interested in pursuing higher education in ecology, environmental science, or wildlife management.
Tall and husky, Donald had fine blond hair like corn-silk, and his big blue eyes were magnified by thick-rimmed glasses. He’d been combing the trail near the marsh for litter and other debris—one of his responsibilities as a student ranger—when Caitlin first crossed paths with him. She’d excitedly described a turtle she’d seen with beige, brown, and black concentric markings on its shell, and asked if he knew what kind it was.
“It sounds like a diamondback terrapin. It gets its name because of the pattern on its scute,” he confidently answered. “That kind of turtle only lives in brackish water, and it’s on the ‘threatened’ list in Massachusetts, which means it’s illegal to harass or move them. I need to make sure that’s what it is so I can tell the sanctuary staff. Where exactly did you see it?”
Caitlin had led him to the shallows near the grass where she’d spotted it swimming. When they got there, it was gone, but they kept looking for it until another student ranger came to tellDonald that everyone else was waiting in the van to head back to the station. By that time, he and Caitlin had bonded over their mutual fascination with science and nature.
“Tomorrow I’ll be working at Pilgrim’s Park on the northern end of town. If you come by, I can show you the turtle nest protection boxes we’ve installed near the marsh there,” he suggested before leaving. “The boxes are supposed to keep animals like raccoons and foxes and coyotes from digging up the turtles’ eggs and eating them.”
Even though it wasn’t the most romantic proposal in the world, and even though he technically hadn’t asked her out, Caitlin couldn’t have been more thrilled by Donald’s invitation. At seventeen, she’d never had a boyfriend; to her disappointment, she’d never even been on a real date, except for the time she’d gone to the junior prom with the boy next door, and even then, it was his mother, not the boy himself, who’d asked her to accompany him.
How could Caitlin develop a romantic relationship—or even socialize with her peers—when her father and stepmother expected her to earn top grades at school, as well as keep the house, make supper, and take care of her little stepbrother every evening and most weekends until they got home from work?
It was no wonder she could hardly wait until school ended each year, and her stepbrother was sent to his grandparents’ house in Nova Scotia, and Caitlin got to go to Dune Island to help Lydia and Albert. The chores she helped with in the morning paled in comparison to the amount of freedom her aunt and uncle gave her in the afternoons to do whatever she pleased. Because she was so responsible, they trusted her to exercise good judgment, even allowing her to borrow their car if they didn’t need it, which was something she rarely got to do at home.
So after she met Donald, Caitlin spent nearly all her free time visiting the parks or beaches where he was scheduled to work.She’d sign up to participate in the guided tours he conducted, and they’d arrange to meet for a picnic during his lunch hour.
Because the program he was enrolled in was closely supervised, and the high schoolers were expected to participate in group recreational activities after hours, most of Caitlin and Donald’s evening “dates” had been spent in the company of the student park rangers and other youth from the community. But once in a while, they’d manage to steal away to a secluded spot, and their conversations quickly progressed from discussions about plants and animals to more personal topics. They’d talk about things like their taste in food and music, their classmates and families, their secret struggles, and their hopes for the future—things Caitlin had never shared with anyone, except maybe her aunt.
In between all that talk, there’d been lots of sitting in silence, holding hands, lots of hugging, and lots andlotsof kissing—Caitlin’s favorite newfound activity. Donald’s, too; like her, he was a bit of a late bloomer. Initially shy and reserved, after his first tentative, bumbling pecks on her cheeks, he’d grown increasingly zealous, and it was almost as if they were both making up for lost time.
Caitlin liked Donald so much, it nearly caused her physical pain to be apart even for a day. And now that summer was ending, the very thought of saying a permanent goodbye to him made her ache from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair.
Tonight, I need to tell him how I feel, she decided as she stopped to pick up another broken branch. She cracked it in two over her knee before adding it to the barrel.Maybe there’s a way we can get together this winter…
“Hey, Cinderella.” Nicole’s voice snapped Caitlin from her reverie. “What time are we leaving for the party tonight?”
“We?”
“We?” Nicole repeated, imitating Caitlin’s incredulous tone. As an aspiring actor, she had developed some impressive but annoying impersonation skills. “Yeah,we. It’s a pronoun. It means you and I.”
Caitlin had barely seen Nicole since the storm struck three days ago, and she didn’t recall telling her about the student rangers’ end-of-summer get-together. “But I-I-I didn’t know you wanted to go to the party.”
“I-I-Idon’t,” mocked Nicole. “But I want to go to dinner at the Club even less, and Pam and Bob won’t let me stay at the cottage by myself.”
She usually referred to her mother by her first name behind her back, but Caitlin noticed that Nicole always called herMomto her face, which made her suspect that Nicole wasn’t quite as irreverent as she often pretended to be.
“You know it won’t be like, a real party, right?” Caitlin reminded her. The few times Nicole had hung out with Caitlin, Donald, and the other student rangers, she’d complained about how nerdy and boring they were. “We’re just going to eat pizza on the beach and watch the sunset. Dave, the chaperone, will probably bring his guitar, so…”
