Joe was quiet, which he’d learned from Rob was enough to keep her talking.
“It was fine. It’s not like I want to be in a relationship right now,” she added. “Who needs the drama? All that pressure. I’d rather dance and hang out with my friends.”
The ones she was leaving behind.
“I can walk you to the hotel,” Joe said. “If you want to go back.”
“No. Thanks, but…” She tilted her head up to look at the sky, like she could see something there—her future, maybe, sparkling as bright as those stars. “I guess I felt, once Zackshowed up, I don’t really belong anymore,” she continued softly. She released another huff of warm breath, half laugh, half sigh. “Maybe I never belonged.”
He felt a tug in his chest, which was stupid, considering. “You belong. You grew up here. Everybody knows you.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. We’ve been in school together forever. They all think they know me—Annie Gallagher, who stares out the window and talks too much and wore her rain boots on the wrong feet in kindergarten—and I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t want to be that girl. I want to be different. More. I want someone to see me as…new.”
Joe knew how the stupid things you’d done could follow you around on the island. Every time he walked by the police station he remembered the afternoon he got caught shoplifting a bottle of cheap perfume from the drugstore because he couldn’t afford to buy a present for Mother’s Day. He could still see his mom’s face when she got off work to pick him up, worried, angry. Embarrassed. He thought mostly he’d put it behind him. But to some people, he would always be that kid, the one who was never going to amount to anything until Rob took him on and gave him a chance.
He cleared his throat. “Your dad is really proud of you, going off to college.”
“He’s proud of you, too,” she said, which was a novel enough thought that he stared at her a moment, speechless. God, he hoped the prickling in his face didn’t mean he was blushing. “You’re like the son he never had. He told me you finished the coursework for your apprenticeship.”
“Night classes in Grayling. Not the same.” He’d never had the grades for college. Or the money. He didn’t see the point of graduating with a bunch of loans when he had a good-paying job right here. When his mom was working two jobs to make ends meet.
“You’re a hard worker. You get that from your mother,” Rob said to him sometimes.
Which was nice, but Joe was aware of how much he still had to learn, how much he needed to catch up on. Not just the training classes, the construction skills and certifications, but the management and accounting courses he should have taken in high school, the books on wood restoration and period design he had to request from the library because they cost so damn much.
“I had all these dreams about making it off the island,” Anne said. “Being grown-up on my own. Going to museums and restaurants and concerts, you know? My life in the big city.” There was a certain awareness in her voice, hopeful and self-mocking at the same time. “I have a whole list.”
Joe didn’t know much about dreams. But he understood having plans. Goals. “Lists are good,” he said.
She smiled, pulling his shirt closer around her. “The thing is…I always thought I’d be doing those things with Daanis. What if I screw up? Chicago is so far away. What if I go and I don’t belong there, either? What if I don’t fit in?”
He didn’t know what to say. “Maybe that’s why you have to go. To find out.”
He thought for a moment she didn’t hear him, walking with her head down past the old fort, holding on to his shirt. She shivered.
“Still cold?”
She shook her head.
“Sure?” he asked gently.
“I’m scared.”
He was no good at this stuff. He should let it go, change the subject. He heard himself say, “You’ll do fine.”
She blinked. And then grinned, her face transforming in one of those lightning-quick mood changes he should be immune to by now. “Not about school. It’s the ghosts.”
It was his turn to stare.
“At the fort?” she prompted. “You know it’s haunted, right? Sometimes you can hear babies crying. And in the hospital, disembodied legs and arms can materialize out of nowhere. I used to make up stories about them to scare Daanis—the ghosts. I’m cool with them, honestly, during the day. But walking past this place at night…?” She gave another exaggerated shudder.
Above the deep shadow of the hill, the fort blockhouse blazed with light. Joe bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Anne’s imagination had always been as big as her mouth. He liked it. Likedher, her energy and enthusiasm, even when she got under his skin. Which she did, sometimes in ways that weren’t her fault.
He cleared his throat again. “Anne. The stuff you’re scared of…none of it’s real.” He held her gaze, hoping she could hear him, could believe in the things he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.You can be anything you want to be.“You’ll do fine,” he repeated.
She looked up at him, smiling, her eyes shining in the moonlight. “Thanks.”
He smiled back, thinking with some relief that he’d said the right thing, offered the kind of reassurance Rob would have given her.
