This doesn’t sound like an offer: it sounds like a directive. Sam tries not to mind. She gets dressed: cutoff shorts, a tank, a Middlebury baseball hat that Henry gave her for Christmas his freshmanyear. What a relief it is not to worry about what she looks like all the time. What a relief also not to have to worry aboutcontent.
“Where are we going?” she ventures, when they are in Floyd’s borrowed navy jeep, pulling out of the long driveway from the borrowed house, and then driving the rolling hills with the sparkling (borrowed) morning water to the right of them. They pass the giant white hotel with the red roof and the strip of Adirondack chairs in front of it; they go around the tiny traffic circle with shops to either side of it; they pass the theater. Her uncle showed her on her first day that this is where the play will take place. She glances sidelong at Uncle Timmy. He’s wearing a Red Sox hat and a white T-shirt and a pair of knee-length gray shorts with faint black stripes on them. He’s so familiar, and yet he’s also a stranger.
“We’re going for coffee,” he says. “And summer atmosphere. One thing about this place you have to give it credit for is how summer feels like summer.” He maneuvers into a parking space on a street just off the main road. It’s a tight fit, and a car pulling up behind him honks. He turns to Sam and says, “Goddamn tourists.” Then he gives her a wicked smile and says, “Just kidding. I don’t care about the tourists. I just wanted to feel like a local again.”
“Isgoddamn touristswhat locals say?” She’s lived close to here for much of her life, but she isn’t a local.
“I suppose so. I don’t know, really. It’s been a long time since I was a local on Block Island.”
Sam looks around. She sees a place that rents bikes and mopeds, and a clothing store, and an ice cream shop. She’s sees a guy who she would absolutely swear, from the back, is Tucker, but then he turns around and she sees that he has a longer, thinner nose and a completely different hairline.
“This does not seem like a place you would have come from, Uncle Timmy,” she says, once her heart has quieted from the shock and then the un-shock of the not-Tucker.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—it just doesn’t. You’re soCalifornia.”
“Really? I think I’m exactly half there and half here. I just hide the here part most of the time when I’m out there. Come on, I want to show you this place.”
They get out of the jeep and she follows him into a little café with a sign out front that readsjoy bombs. Timothy says, “I discovered on my first day here that this shop has the best coffee in town outside of Floyd Barringer’s espresso machine. And they make these mini whoopie pies that are out of this world. You ever have a mini whoopie pie, Sam?”
“I don’t think so. No.”
“You ever been to this café?”
“Nope.” Even though Block Island is just a short drive plus a ferry ride from her childhood home, Sam’s family didn’t come here much, or really at all, once her grandmother, Rose, sold her house and moved off the island. They have beaches close enough to them, and Sam spent those months in New York City forMockingbirdwhen she was twelve, then the year in L.A., and then, by the time she was back, until she left again for the collab house, she just wanted to live a regular life with her friends. It didn’t occur to any of the Trevinos to catch a ferry to Block Island, in the same way it doesn’t often occur to New Yorkers to take in the view from the top of the Empire State Building.
Joy Bombs is small and homey, with several little tables, half of them occupied, and a glass case holding the mini whoopie pies her uncle mentioned as well as an assortment of other baked goods. The whoopie pies come in several flavors: chocolate, key lime, raspberry cream, espresso, lavender. Sam orders a cappuccino and a key lime whoopie pie, and Timothy orders an Americano and a cinnamon scone. When Sam holds out her debit card he waves it away and says, “Don’t be silly. It’s on me.” Sam pulls her baseball cap lower on her face, but even so, she thinks the teenager ringingin their order might be making a connection. She turns quickly to find a table.
The waving away of the debit card reminds Sam of the conversation she needs to have with her uncle, so when he brings over the two coffees (Sam has carried the glass plate with the scone and the whoopie pie) she says, “Uncle Timmy. How much do you want for rent?”
“I don’t want rent, Sam. But thank you for offering.”
“I can pay you. I made money this year.” In addition to her TikTok money Sam has a significant chunk from her acting work—which, she knows, her mother is hoping she’ll use to go to college. Uncle Timmy gives Sam a look that might be—what? Disdainful, that’s what. But he hides it quickly. “I did,” she insists. “I made money. At the collab house, in New York.” She eats the whoopie pie in two bites. It’s delicious: the perfect size, the perfect flavor.
Uncle Timmy pulls apart the scone and looks at it. “You made money at the collab house?” He sayscollab housethe way some people might saysandwich made out of rotten garbage.“No, thank you, Sam. I don’t want money from you. Especially from there.”
Especially from there? she wonders. What is that supposed to mean?
“Okay,” she says. “Thank you?” (It’s sort of a relief, actually. She might need her money, for what’s coming next. Whatever that is.) “If you change your mind though...”
“I won’t.” (Is it bad that she’s relieved?) “But I do want something.”
“What is it?”
“I want you to audition forMuch Ado.”
Sam is horrified. The thought of getting up on a stage! Absolutely not.
“Absolutely not,” she says. Then, seeing her uncle’s expression, she softens her voice. “I mean, no, thank you. I can’t do that.”
Uncle Timmy takes a long pull of his coffee. “Why not? We haven’t found our Hero yet.”
“Your hero?” She twists her mouth.
“CapitalH.Hero. Second female lead behind Beatrice.”
“Oh, right.” She remembers now, from the movie. She’s never read the play.
