Des hasn’t heard of it, but she feels as though she should have. She’s an artist too, isn’t she? That’s the kind of thing she should know. Her not knowing feels like proof that Remington Hollow is a stupid hick town and, having lived here all her life, having no real plans to go anywhere else, she is a stupid hick too.
Of course this girl is an artist. She looks like one, with her vivid purple hair and mouth and the bright tattoos spiraling up and down her pale arms. Des feels embarrassingly plain in her ripped blue jeans and faded, worn-soft Pride and Prejudice T-shirt. She’s not wearing any makeup, and her red curls are pulled back in a simple ponytail. Everyone in Remington Hollow already knows how she looks—how she looked at four and nine and fourteen too—so there’s usually no point in trying very hard.
“I’m here for the summer. Staying with my grandmother.” The girl confesses it like a prison sentence.
Des looks at the bookstore on the corner, at Tia Julia’s next door, at the SunTrust and the pharmacy farther down Main Street. At the wooden benches spaced along the uneven brick sidewalks, and the U.S. and Maryland flags flapping in the wind outside the post office. Down the hill, four blocks away, the river sparkles in the sun. The briny scent of the water carries on the breeze, hidden beneath espresso beans from the Daily Grind and the fragrant blue hydrangeas in Mrs. Lynde’s window box.
Des loves Remington Hollow. Yeah, it’s small. But she has never been desperate to escape, to get away for college like some of her classmates. Like her best friend, Em. Like Bea and Kat and sometimes even Vi.
It’s a good thing Des doesn’t want to escape, because Gram is counting on her. Most people are retired at seventy, not running their own business and raising four teenage girls. Gram needs Des, and honestly, Des has always liked being needed.
She looks up. The girl is watching her. She’s pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing smoky eyes and long, black lashes. Des flushes, knowing that she’s going all blotchy-pink from the vee of her V-neck all the way up to her cheeks. It’s the downside of being a fair-skinned, freckle-faced redhead: she can never hide her mortification.
“I’m Paige,” the girl says, holding out a hand with lavender nails.
“Des. Desdemona, but everybody calls me Des.”
“Desdemona?” Paige raises two perfectly winged dark brows.
Des winces. She’s not used to having to explain. Everyone in Remington Hollow already knows the Garrett sisters and their tragedy.
“My mom really loved Shakespeare,” she explains. “My sisters are Beatrice, Katharina, and Viola. She named the bookstore too.” She gestures behind her at Arden Books. “As in the forest of, from As You Like It.”
“That’s some serious literary devotion. So your mom owns the bookstore?”
“My grandmother.” After the accident, Gram remortgaged the house, quit her job as an English teacher up at the middle school, and devoted herself to the store. She thought it was important for the girls to have that part of their mom. Maybe it was important for Gram to have it too.
Thankfully, Paige doesn’t press. “Are you working here for the summer? I’m waitressing next door. Grandma Lydia got me the job.”
Des isn’t a college student home for the summer, working at Arden to pay for books and extras; she’s been working there full-time since she graduated last June. Even before that, she worked after school and every weekend. Arden Books is her past, her present, and her future. She’ll take over when Gram retires.
But she decides not to get into all that. “Grandma Lydia? Lydia Merrick?”
“Oh my God, does everybody in this town know everybody else?” Paige crouches on four-inch black heels and starts tossing everything back into her bag.
“Pretty much, yeah. My gram is friends with yours.”
Paige covers her face with one hand. “Grandma Lydia is the most—she’s so—I mean, I love her, but—”
“She’s a character,” Des agrees charitably. Lydia Merrick is one of the town matriarchs, owner of the Tabby Cat Café, and an enormous gossip. “Why aren’t you working for her?”
Paige’s big gray eyes dart up and down Main Street like she’s checking for spies. She lowers her voice to a husky, secret-telling whisper. “I told her I’m allergic. Have you been inside that place lately? I loved it when I was, like, five, but as a grown-ass adult, it gives me nightmares. Those porcelain plates are going to come to life someday. And all those cat figurines? They’re going to form an alliance with the real cats and organize a mutiny and take over the town.”
“You don’t like cats?” Des asks dryly.
“I think Snowflake is their general,” Paige whispers.
Des throws her head back and laughs. Snowflake is Mrs. Merrick’s finicky, long-haired Persian. “Not Cinnamon?” Cinnamon is the original tabby the café was named after. He’s fat and affectionate and super spoiled.
“Oh my God, you know all my grandma’s cats. This town is so small!”
“Haven’t you ever visited?” Des doesn’t remember her, and she feels like she would. Even without the purple hair, Paige stands out in Remington Hollow.
“Not since I was ten. Mom and Grandma had a falling-out.” Paige turns toward the river. “Last time I was here, we went to a Fourth of July raft race. Do they still do that? And the reenactment on the old ship?”
“Definitely.” The Fourth of July is a huge deal in Remington Hollow. Townspeople reenact the Remington Hollow Tea Party, a smaller and less publicized version of the Boston Tea Party, in which a group of intrepid citizens boarded the ship anchored at the town dock and dumped crates of tea in the river to protest the British tax. Remington Hollow was kind of a big deal in colonial times. Now, men dress up in Revolutionary War–era costumes and march with old muskets down Main Street. The high school band plays, and the color guard twirls red, white, and blue flags. After the parade and the reenactment, there’s music and food and vendors in the park. Then, the next afternoon, everyone watches the big race across the river on homemade rafts. People get extremely creative—and extremely competitive. Last year, Bea’s team built the raft that won, and Kat’s raft sank but got the most applause, because she and her drama club friends were singing songs from Hamilton as it went down. “That’s tradition. Remington Hollow is very big on tradition.”
“Oh wow.”
Des can’t tell whether Paige means wow as in cool or wow, what a totally stupid tradition.
“Yeah.” Des doesn’t say that it’s her favorite weekend of the whole year. “So, how come you’re staying with Miss Lydia for the summer?”
“It wasn’t exactly my decision,” Paige explains, winding her purple hair into a neat bun and checking her phone. “Damn. I’m going to be late—I’ve got to go.” She flashes Des a dark-lipped smile and hurries toward Tia Julia’s. “Thanks again for the quarters. See you around, Desdemona.”