I made a face. “I’m freaking out. What am I doing? Why am I here?”
“Breathe. You’ve been there literally two seconds.”
“What if I don’t make any friends? How did you make friends at coding camp? We haven’t met new people since we were six!”
Niko frowned. “Who did we meet at six?”
“It was an arbitrary number.”
“Anisha moved to South Hadley when we were twelve, so maybe she’s our newest friend.”
“Nikoooo.”
“Okay.” Niko put on her serious face. “Think of this like college practice. You’re going to meet people, and you can be whoever you want—you can reinvent yourself, too. Focus on more than your grandma, because you’re seventeen, not seventy. Go crazy. Be bold. What’s your dad say? Have some chutzpah!”
“My dad is literally the dorkiest person alive.”
“I love your dad. Remember how excited he was when you let him chaperone the aquarium trip?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“He loved the tiny penguinsso much. I’ve never seen anything so pure.”
I felt better by the time we hung up. So I’d sent myself to an island thirty miles off the coast where I didn’t know anyone. But no panicking. I had video calls and deep breathing and towels.
At a little past nine, the door flew open and a girl blew in, a tangle of tiny black braids and flour dusting her shirt. She had double-pierced ears and dark skin and three inches on me. She stopped abruptly. “Hi.”
“Hi!” I bolted upright. “You must be Jane.”
“Yeah. You’re Abigail?”
“Abby.”
“Cool. You’re working at the Prose Garden, right?” She tore offher T-shirt and pulled on a red top. “Sorry I’m a mess, I just finished my shift.”
“Oh? Where?”
“My aunt’s bakery.” She turned to the mirror and swept two perfect winged lines on her lids. “I’ve come up the last two summers to help, and also to avoid my brothers and sisters. Thank god Mrs. Henderson has this room for rent. I’m from Rhode Island. You?”
“South Hadley—it’s in western Mass—”
“Yeah, nice, I’m thinking about applying to Smith.” She straightened. “Okay, sorry to rush in and out, but I have to run.”
“Oh.” I tried not to wilt. Last thing I wanted was for my roommate to think I was clingy. “Nice to meet you.”
She hesitated. A space hung between us, charged with risk and potential. I was an unknown quantity, overeager and possibly too much effort. She had a life and friends and plans and no responsibility toward a stranger.
Yet she offered me a kindness anyway. “You want to come? I’m meeting my friends on the beach. There’ll be a bonfire.”
Relief and gratitude pooled through me. The anxiety wrapping around me all evening began to unspool. “I’d love to.”
The setting sun dyed the sky royal blue as we walked out of town, down North Beach Street and Bathing Beach Road. Sand edged the pavement, cropping up beneath the patchy grass. “So, how’d your aunt end up on Nantucket?” I asked my new roommate. “Did she just decide to open a bakery here?”
Jane laughed. “God, no. We’re from here.”
“Seriously? That’s so cool.”
“Yeah, there’s a decent Azores and Portuguese population on Nantucket. It’s the same latitude, you know, so traders crossed back and forth a lot.” She pointed to the globes of blue blossoms I’d already noticed all over the island. “They say the hydrangeas here were actually originally brought from the Azores, which is between Nantucket and Portugal. It’s the first land you hit if you sail east.”
