About this.
This joy.
Right now.
Maybe, just maybe, Icouldbe a water rat, after all.
Kablam.
KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING: Doorknob hotel sign placed inside a plastic picture frame and mounted with wall-hanging putty on the outside of the bedroom door of Evie Saint-Martin.(Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 16
Lucky and I take theNarwhalout almost every evening for a couple of weeks to the same spot. Turns out there’re these wristbands that Lucky found. You wear them on your pressure points, and they help stop nausea caused by seasickness. Well, that and the antihistamine that I’m now taking before we set sail.
I’m unscrambled, and I can be on the water without wanting to die.
Strangely, I actually like being on the boat now. It feels like we’re escaping the world for a couple of hours. A safe place. Just ours. And yes, we go out in theNarwhalto practice my swimming in the new bathing suit I’ve bought. But often we do a lot of other things, like:
Talk about the difference between art and craft.
Take photos.
Put our hands all over each other.
Play with Bean the Magic Pup, who sometimes rides along and barks at passing boats.
Trash talk Adrian Summers.
Plot revenge that we’ll never enact.
Put our hands all over each other.
Talk about our failed D&D campaigns from childhood.
Consider a trip out to our old secret North Star boatshed to test out a new campaign.
Decide the boatshed might be inhabited by ghosts or spiders and change our minds.
Watch the Fourth of July fireworks.
Eat iced lemonade.
Put our hands all over each other.
Here’s what we don’t do on the boat:
Talk about me going to California to live with my dad next year.
That subject is off-limits. Maybe if we pretend like it doesn’t exist, it will never happen.
Here’s what we also don’t do:
We don’t tell anyone that we’re more than friends.
I mean, sure. Half the town is probably talking about us. My mom has made the Bonnie and Clyde comments, and Lucky’s parents have been nosy too. And then there’s Evie, who definitely knows something happened in the darkroom … but I don’t even tell her.
It’s not because I don’t want people to know or because I’m ashamed of what I’m doing with my childhood best friend. I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s just no one’s business, that’s all. And this town has proven that they can’t be trusted to handle delicate information with grace. My name’s already being whispered; I don’t need to give the rumor mill any more fuel.
