“Baby steps,” she says. “A slight downward slope, crossing this street that isn’t Third Street.”
I smile. “Okay.” I hear a car pass slowly by.
“Oh, Betty!” She gets all dramatic, like we’re in a movie. “If only you could see the hummingbirds feeding off the blossoms on the stalks above!”
I laugh.
“Really, though,” she adds, “there’s a ton of them. Ocean Park is like pollinator heaven. Like a hummingbird buffet.”
I feel the breeze come up the hill, against my face, lifting the brim of my hat. It smells like pollinator heaven, with blossoms whose fragrances are new to my nose.
“Almost there,” she says. “Now a slight incline onto the sidewalk. Shall we go past the dreaded sign?”
“Please.”
“Okay. This way a little. Now here comes the miracle. Open your eyes!”
I do.
She’s standing before me, smiling brightly. “We did it!”
“We did it.” One corner of my mouth turns up. “Thank you.”
I feel like a weight has been lifted from me. More because I’ve told her about one of my fears than the fact that we’ve gone past the number on the sign. Fear of revealing my fears has been standing between us in my mind ever since the first time at Ignore Alien Orders. Fern is the only other person I talk about them with. But Fern keeps me away from the things I’m afraid of instead of walking me through them.
As for Summer, it’s like she’s completely forgotten it as we continue down the hill. She’s pointing out the things we see.
“That’s the little local library branch up there on the right. It’s so cute. We can go there and you can check out books with my card.” She turns to me. “You like to read, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew it. Down on Main Street to the right there’s a good breakfast place. Waffles to die for. Do you like waffles?”
“Of course.”
She keeps talking, keeps giving me the tour of everything we pass, until we’ve made it through the little park before the beach, where bikes and skaters roll past on an endless, winding sidewalk, and on to the edge of the sand.
“Here we are! Take off your high-tops.”
I’m not really excited about taking my shoes off. When I look at my feet I feel like they belong on somebody else. Somebody dead. But Summer makes no remark of them as she pulls the sunscreen from her bag and douses them with spray.
“Let’s go!”
The sand is warm but not hot. As we walk, getting closer to the water’s edge, the sound of the surf gets louder and louder.
Seagulls cry. The wind tells us to go back, but we don’t.
“Also,” I say, as Summer drops the canvas bag where the dry sand becomes damp, “I’m afraid of the ocean. I’m afraid of the waves, and the undertow, and rip currents. And tsunamis. Which I realize are not likely.”
“Is this also because of Miss Snarfle?”
“Mistress Scarfia. No. I’m just afraid of all those things because they can kill you. Even if it isn’t likely.”
She beams. “It’s so brave of you to come here!”
“Unless of course there’s an earthquake. In which case tsunamis are a real possibility.”
She steps to me and drapes her arms over my shoulders. Again my arms stay stiff at my sides.
“We don’t have to do it,” she says. “But if you’d like to try it, we could just get our ankles wet. I’ll stay by your side.”
I think of the list of goals in the drawer at the cottage. Get outside your comfort zone. Learn to surf.
“I want to do this.” I raise my left hand like a dog ready to shake. She takes it.
I walk beside her, taking little steps. I’m wondering whether she’s done this before today, walked beside someone so filled with fear.
“I’m also afraid of sharks,” I add.
The sand turns from damp to wet. It feels strange under my feet, different from the shore of the lake back home. Like it’s alive.
We keep walking, slowly.
Then the remnants of a small wave roll in. I stop, and hold my breath. My jaw clenches, I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.
The wave keeps coming. My right foot picks up, takes a half step back. But I hold my ground, and it comes, the ocean, and it washes over my left foot, then my right, just enough to cover them.
The wave retreats, and the sand beneath my feet crumbles away. Air bubbles appear on the beach where the water has withdrawn. Another wave comes to die at our feet, this one a little bigger, but I stand firm, watching it.
Again and again they come, in rhythm, and I look out to the swimmers and splashers, and watch the waves forming, being born, and coming to us. I watch one march all the way from where the boogie boarders wait for their rides, watch it fight against waves that are on their way back out to sea to be reborn, and watch it all the way up to my toes, my shins, and I laugh.
I look to Summer, and she’s watching me. She’s been watching me—smiling. She squeezes my hand.
“Welcome to Ocean Park,” she says. “Welcome to my world.”
I’m asleep on the couch when Mom comes home. The opening door wakes me.
“This is a bit early for you to be asleep,” she says. “Did you have a big day?”
“Yes.” I bite a fingernail. “I’ve met a new friend.”
“Really? That’s great!”
“Yeah. Her name is Summer.”
“Appropriately enough.”
“She lives down the block. She was behind us in line at Pinkie Promise on our first day here.”
Mom sets a brown takeout bag on the big table. “What did you guys do?”
“Just ran around. Looked in stores.”
I think the whole reason I’ve told her about Summer is that I feel like I need to reveal something, but I don’t want to tell her about stepping into the ocean, or the street I knowingly crossed to get there. I don’t want her to have any more reason to dismiss my fears, to act like they aren’t real, because I’m not sure getting my feet wet and crossing that street are experiments I can duplicate. I don’t know if I ever want to step into the ocean again, with Mom or Summer or anyone. Mom has been saying that this new me—the girl with the dark makeup, filled with fears—is just a costume I’ve been putting on every day. I don’t want her to think that she’s right.
“Well, I’m glad.” Mom takes a humongous burrito wrapped in foil from the takeout bag, then cuts it in half. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
She asks me questions as we share the gigantic burrito, and she tells me about her day. I try to listen, and to answer her questions, but I’m momentarily distracted by wondering what Fern would say about what I did today. She might say Summer was trying to get me killed, that I should find some safe mall to hang around instead. And maybe she’d be right to say it, but right now I’m too tired and hungry from a day of adventure to listen to those thoughts.
4
INDEPENDENCE DAY. SUMMER said she would be busy today but didn’t say why. Since I don’t have any other plans or any kind of idea how to entertain myself in this town without her, I hang around the house and the little table outside behind the tall hedge, listening for her skateboard, watching for a flash of her golden hair, even though she said she wouldn’t be around. She never appears.