[English] SECOND CHANCE SUMMER

Second Chance Summer
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I looked at Elliot, willing him to tell me what Henry had said about these meetings without having to ask him. “So…” I started, then stopped when I realized I had no idea how to ask this without sounding needy or pathetic—and with the added knowledge that this conversation might make its way right back to Henry. “Never mind,” I muttered, leaning back against the counter and taking a big sip of my now-cold chocolate.

“I think you’ve thrown him for a loop,” Elliot said, shaking his head. “And that is a guy who does not do well when thrown for a loop.”

I nodded as though this was perfectly understandable, all the while wondering what, exactly, this meant, and wishing I could ask Elliot more directly. Before I could say anything, though, two things happened almost at the same time—Lucy breezed in through the employee door, and Fred’s red face appeared at the window.

“My God,” Lucy said. “I’m freezing!” She glanced at me, then looked at my sweatshirt and raised her eyebrows just as Fred dropped his tackle box on the counter, loud enough to make us all jump.

“Hi, Fred,” Elliot said, as he scrambled off the counter (where we weren’t supposed to sit) and, maybe in an attempt to look busy, started straightening the display of chips.

“Hi,” Lucy said, sliding her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and leaning casually against the counter, as though she’d been there all along. “How’s the fishing?”

“Not so good,” Fred said with a sigh. “I think they’re onto me.” He pointed at me. “Are you ready for Friday?”

I just stared at him, waiting for these words to make sense. “Friday?” I finally asked.

“Movies Under the Stars,” Fred said, and I could hear the capital letters in his voice as he said it. “I told you on your first day. You’ll be running it. First one’s this Friday.” He dropped a stack of posters on the counter. Movies Under the Stars were movies shown on the beach once a month, with a large screen set up at the water’s edge on the sand. People brought blankets and chairs and, like the name suggested, watched movies under the stars. I’d gone a few times when I was younger, but usually they were old movies that I’d had very little interest in.

I looked down at the poster for longer than it took for me to read the title of the movie—What About Bob?—and the date and time. Fred had mentioned that I’d be doing something with this, but I had expected that I’d have more of a heads-up than three days. “Okay,” I said slowly. “So, what exactly do I have to do?”

“Well, we’re in a little bit of a situation after last summer,” Fred said, and both he and Lucy looked at Elliot, who turned bright red.

“You let me pick the movies,” he said, defensive. “If you had wanted specific movies, you should have let me know.”

“Attendance was very, very low by the end,” Fred said. “Very low. So we’re looking for movies that will bring in a crowd. Family-friendly movies,” he said, glaring at Elliot. “The first one’s already set, but you’ll pick the next two. And help put up posters around town. Everyone can help with that,” he added, as he pushed the stack across the counter.

“Oh,” I said. This didn’t sound so bad. “Sure.”

“Good,” Fred said, picking up his tackle box. He looked out at the nearly empty beach and shook his head. “We certainly don’t need three people working when there’s no customers. Two of you can go home, if you want. I’ll leave it to you to choose.” He nodded at us, then turned and headed toward the parking lot.

As soon as he was gone, Lucy turned toward me and Elliot. “Not it,” she said, quickly.

Before I could even draw breath, Elliot echoed her. “Not it.”

I shrugged. “I guess that means I’m staying.” I actually didn’t mind, since working by myself would basically be the same as working with Lucy—just as silent, but less stressful.

“Don’t sweat the movie thing,” Elliot said as Lucy passed him, heading toward the row of hooks where we all kept our things. “I promise it’s no big deal.”

“I won’t,” I said. “It sounds doable. But, um, what happened last year?”

Elliot blushed again, and Lucy returned, looking at her phone as she said, “Fred put Elliot in charge of choosing the movies.” This was the most direct thing she’d said to me since our initial confrontation, and so I just nodded, not wanting to upset whatever delicate balance had brought this about.

“He said ‘summer movies,’” Elliot said, his voice becoming defensive again. “He said ‘beach-themed.’ So…”

“He picked Jaws,” Lucy said, still looking at her phone and not me, shaking her head. “To be shown at the beach, right near the water. One kid had to be carried out, he was crying so loud.”

Elliot cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said loudly, “the point is that—”

“And then,” Lucy continued, glancing at me only briefly before looking at her phone again, “he picks some horrible sci-fi that nobody’s ever heard of….”

“Dune is a classic,” Elliot said hotly, though I noticed that he was blushing more than ever. “And there are no sharks it in, which was all Fred specifically requested.”

“Sand monsters,” Lucy said flatly. “Again… we were on a beach. Again, children carried out crying.”

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“But the lesson we can glean from this,” Elliot started. “Is that—”

“And movie number three?” Lucy said, shaking her head. “To show to an audience of kids and their parents?”

“Listen,” Elliot said, turning to me, as though pleading his case, “since my last two choices were apparently unacceptable, I went online, looking for the most popular summer movie. And still, apparently, it didn’t work.”

I turned to Lucy, who was shaking her head again. “Dirty Dancing,” she said. “It didn’t go over too well with the mothers of the six-year-olds.”

“So,” Elliot said, with the air of someone who very much wanted to change the subject, “when you have to pick, just check with Fred first. And keep your intro short, and you should be fine.”

“Intro?” I asked. I could feel my palms start to sweat. “What do you mean?”

“See you,” Lucy called, giving a backward wave to the snack bar in general as she slung her purse over her shoulder and headed out the door. Elliot watched her leave, and then continued watching the door for a moment after she’d gone.

“Elliot?” I prompted, and he turned back to me quickly, adjusting his glasses, something I’d noticed he did when he was flustered or embarrassed about something. “What intro?”

“Right,” he said. “I promise it’s no big deal. Just stand up before it starts, say a few things about the movie, tell people how long the snack bar is open. Easy.”

I nodded and tried to smile at him when he left, but my heart was pounding hard, and I wondered if this would finally give me the loophole I needed to quit. I hated public speaking for as long as I could remember. I was fine speaking to one or two people, but as soon as the numbers got big, I turned into a wreck—stammering, sweating, shaking. As a result, I tended to avoid it whenever possible. I really didn’t know how I was going to get up and talk in front of a group of people just three days from now.

The rest of the afternoon crawled by, with only two more customers, both of whom wanted hot beverages. When the hand on the clock above the microwave started hovering near five, I began the routine of shutting the snack bar down for the day—wiping down the counters, totaling the register and collecting the receipts, cleaning and turning off the coffeemaker. I was just about to pull down the grate and lock it when I heard, “Wait! Are you still open?”

A moment later, a red-faced (though not in Fred’s league) middle-aged man came running up to the counter, carrying a little boy piggyback. “Sorry about that,” he wheezed, as he set his son down and leaned on the counter for a moment, taking a breath. “We were trying to get here before five.” The kid, his head just clearing the top of the counter, regarded me solemnly. “Curtis is missing his shovel, and I think you keep the lost and found here?”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised but nonetheless relieved that they didn’t want me to turn all the equipment back on and make a milk shake or some fries. “Sure.” I pulled the box out and set it on the counter.

The father and son sifted through the items, and, as I watched, the kid’s face broke into a huge smile as he triumphantly lifted a red plastic shovel from the box. “Thanks so much,” the dad said to me as he easily slung his son up on his back again. “I don’t know what he was going to do without it.”

I just nodded and smiled as they went, glancing into the box once more as I put it away. It struck me that each of these items, discarded and left behind, had once been special, important to the people that they belonged to. And even though I couldn’t see it, all it would take was for someone to find them again for them to be restored. I took off the Teachers Do It With Class! sweatshirt and folded it carefully before placing it back in the box and closing up for the night.

Chapter fifteen

“I CAN’T DO THIS.” I STOOD OUTSIDE THE SNACK BAR, NEXT TO Elliot, staring at the crowds of people who had assembled on the beach, facing the screen at the water’s edge, spreading out blankets and towels in the fading light. Overhead, the stars were beginning to emerge, and the moon was almost full, hanging over the lake and doubling itself in the reflection. It would have been a perfect night to see a movie outdoors. But, instead, it appeared that I was going to have an aneurysm.

“You’ll be fine,” Elliot said, in what I’m sure he thought was a reassuring voice, but was actually just his regular voice, only deeper. He turned to Lucy, who was frowning at the popcorn machine we were using for the night. “Won’t she?”

“Okay, I have no idea how to work this,” Lucy said, poking at the metal contraption at the top. She looked at Elliot. “Do you?”

“Seriously,” I said, and I could hear that my voice was a little strangled. I leaned back against the counter for support, and even though I could practically feel Lucy rolling her eyes at me, I no longer cared. I was pretty sure I was about to pass out. Which didn’t seem like a bad idea, considering the circumstances. If I passed out, I wouldn’t have to introduce the movie.

“Are you okay?” Elliot asked, peering at me. “You look a little green.”

“Taylor!” I looked across the sand to see my mother waving at me. She had set up camp right in the center of the beach, on our enormous white beach blanket. Gelsey was talking to my dad, who was sprawled out on the blanket—he believed that beach chairs were for wimps and the elderly. Warren was next to him reading a book, aiming a flashlight at the text. They had all insisted on coming, even though I had tried to dissuade them. It was actually a little embarrassing to hear my mom going on about it, and it only served to highlight how few opportunities I’d given my parents to brag about me. We’d all been going to Gelsey’s dance recitals forever, and it seemed like we were always attending some mock trial competition or ceremony where Warren was winning yet another award for excellence. But aside from the mandatory stuff, like junior-high graduation, I’d never really had an event of my own.

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I waved back, wondering how much it would cost to bribe Warren to do this for me. He had no problem speaking in front of people, and had given his valedictorian address without even breaking a sweat.

“Did it come with instructions?” Elliot asked, leaning over to examine the popper that Lucy was still looking at dubiously.

“Can you do this for me?” I asked him, now desperate. “Because I think I’m about to collapse.”

“No,” Lucy said quickly, shaking her head. “Fred doesn’t want him out there. In case, you know, people remember him from last summer and leave.”

Since Fred was on a fishing trip, I didn’t think he had to know about it, but I didn’t mention that. I wasn’t about to ask Lucy—I knew she would say no—so I just nodded and tried to swallow as I looked down at the note cards in my hands. I’d found out as much as I could about the movie online, but the neatly written, bullet-pointed list of facts no longer seemed very helpful.

Leland, our projectionist for the evening, ambled over. “So what’s the plan?” he asked. “We ready to do this?”

I looked at the snack bar clock in a panic. I thought I had more time to figure out what I was going to say, and also remember how to breathe. But it was almost eight thirty. I caught Lucy’s eye and she arched an eyebrow at me, her expression a challenge.

“Okay,” I said, and part of me was wondering why I was saying that, since I really felt like at any moment I might throw up.

“Sweet,” Leland said as he loped off to the makeshift projection booth at the other end of the beach.

“Good luck,” Elliot said. He came with me as I started my slow walk across the beach. “Don’t forget to tell people when the next one is. And that the concession stand will only be open for another half an hour. Oh, and that they should turn all cellular devices off.”

“Right,” I murmured, my head swimming, and my heart pounding so hard that I was sure the people in the front row would be able to hear it.

“Go for it,” Elliot prompted, giving me a small nudge when, a moment later, I still hadn’t moved.

“Right,” I repeated. I took a big breath and forced one foot in front of the other until I was standing in the center of the projection screen. “Hi,” I started. But not many people were looking at me. I would have thought this would be reassuring, but it wasn’t, because I knew it meant that I was going to have to keep talking, and more loudly. “Hi,” I repeated, louder this time, and I saw heads turn toward me, expectant. From the center of the crowd, I saw my brother switch off his flashlight. “Um, I’m Taylor. Edwards. And I work at the snack bar.” I looked down at the notes in my hands, which were shaking slightly, and I could feel panic start to rise, as I heard the silence stretch on. “Welcome to the movies. Under the stars,” I finally managed to say. I looked up and saw just a sea of eyes staring back at me, and my panic increased. I could feel beads of sweat start to form on my forehead. “It’s What About Bob, tonight. Which… Bill Murray,” I said, seeing some of my bullet points and grabbing onto them. “1991. Old school. Comedy. Classic.” I wanted nothing more than to flee, but for some horrible reason, I was also feeling like I was glued to the spot. From the direction of the snack bar, I could hear a faint pop-pop-pop and realized, somewhere in the part of my brain that was still functioning, that Lucy must have figured out the popcorn machine.

“So…” I looked at the crowd again, many of whom were now regarding me with skepticism, my family with alarm. And I saw, in the back near the projection booth, as clearly as if they had a spotlight shining on them, Henry and Davy. Henry was looking at me with an expression of pity that was somehow worse than Warren’s look of horror. I looked down at my notes again, my vision blurring. I couldn’t seem to make any words out, and I could feel the silence stretching on and on, and my panic growing, until I was pretty sure I was about to cry.

“So thanks so much for coming!” Miraculously, Elliot was by my side, smiling at the crowd like nothing was wrong. “Snack bar’s only open for another thirty minutes, so don’t forget to stop by for popcorn. And please turn off your cell phones. Enjoy the show!”

There was a faint smattering of applause, and a moment later, the FBI warning was flashing blue on the screen. Elliot pulled me away, toward the snack bar, and my legs were shaking so hard, I felt like I was about to fall over.

“I guess I should have listened to you when you said you weren’t good at public speaking,” Elliot said, shooting me a sympathetic look that was meant to make me feel better but somehow made everything worse. I knew I should be able to move on, laugh it off, at least let him know how grateful I was for the rescue. But instead, I could feel the shame creeping over me, and his acknowledgement of how terrible I had been wasn’t helping.

“Thanks,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze. I knew I needed to get out of there, and as fast as possible. “I just have to… I’ll be right back.”

“Taylor?” I heard Elliot call after me, sounding puzzled, but I didn’t care. I speed-walked past the people who were now laughing at Bill Murray’s antics and headed straight for the parking lot. I’d just drive myself home, and in the morning, I would call Jillian and quit.

“Going somewhere?” I whipped around and saw Lucy standing by the Dumpsters, a garbage bag in her hand. She tossed the bag into the trash and then turned to face me, arms folded across her chest.

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“No,” I stammered, wondering why I felt so caught out, since I was going to quit in the morning. “I just…”

“Because it would be a really ****ty thing to do if you just left me and Elliot. Plus, isn’t your family here?” Lucy was staring right at me, as if daring me to deny any of this. I couldn’t help noticing that whenever she did decide to talk to me, it was generally to point out what a horrible person I was being. “But I’m sure that you were probably getting something from your car,” she continued, dropping the lid of the Dumpster and letting it fall with a bang. “Otherwise, it would be awful if you took off and left, with no explanation, when people were waiting for you.” Even in the dimness of the parking lot—it was almost totally dark now—I could see the hurt in Lucy’s expression, and I knew what she meant, and that she was no longer talking about what was happening now.

“I…” I started, and it was like every word was a challenge, like speaking them was going through an obstacle course. “I did a really bad job,” I finally managed to say. “I don’t know how I can go back there.”

Lucy let out a long breath, and shook her head. “Taylor, it’s okay,” she said, and her voice was gentler than I’d heard it yet this summer. “Nobody cares. Nobody will even remember.” She gave me a small smile, and then turned and strolled back to the concession stand. I looked at my car for a moment, but leaving no longer seemed like it would make me feel any better. In fact, I had the distinct impression that it would make me feel worse.

So I turned and walked back to the concession stand, ducking through the employee entrance. Elliot was ringing someone up for two sodas and a popcorn, and he smiled when he saw me. I busied myself straightening the cups, but it didn’t seem like the customers even noticed me—never mind remembered me as the girl who thoroughly messed up the movie’s introduction.

Lucy met my eye across the concession stand, where she was manning the popcorn machine, and she gave me a small nod, almost imperceptible unless you were watching for it.

Half an hour later, we were locking up the snack bar, and all the people on the beach seemed to be having a good time. The picture had only slid out of focus twice so far, which Elliot told me was much better than Leland’s track record the previous summer.

Lucy had disappeared a few minutes before, and now emerged from the bathroom wearing a jean miniskirt and even more eyeliner than usual. “Wow,” Elliot said, as I yanked on the padlock to make sure it was clicked into place. “I mean, you know. Where are you, um… going?”

“Hot date,” Lucy said, as her phone beeped. She pulled it out and smiled so wide at what she saw, she flashed the dimple in her cheek. “I’ll see you guys,” she said, meeting my eye for a moment before she turned and headed toward the parking lot, and I registered that I had been included, for the first time, in this farewell.

Elliot was still staring after Lucy, his expression wistful, and I yanked on the lock once again, even though it was clearly secured. “Are you going to stay and watch the rest of the movie?” I asked, and he turned back to me, adjusting his glasses hurriedly.

“No,” he said. “I like to see a movie from the beginning. And I think I’ve missed too much.”

I held up my note cards. “I have the plot here if you want to be filled in. Straight from Wikipedia.”

Elliot gave me a faint smile at that. “Thanks anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow, Taylor.”

I nodded, and as I watched him go, realized that I would. That I was staying, that maybe for the first time ever, I hadn’t gone running away when things got hard.

I held my flip-flops in my hand as I picked my way across the beach, ducking low to try and avoid blocking people’s views. I reached my family’s blanket and settled down into the spot next to my dad. My mom was sitting toward the front of the blanket, her back to me, next to Gelsey, who was stretching while she watched. Warren’s book was forgotten next to him and he appeared utterly absorbed, his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes glued to the screen. I dropped my shoes on the sand, and then sat down, brushing my hand over the blanket to make sure I hadn’t tracked any sand onto it. When I had run out of stalling techniques, I looked over at my dad, his face illuminated by the moonlight and by the flickering light from the screen. But it wasn’t judgmental or disappointed or any of the things I’d been afraid that I would see.

“You’ll get ’em next time, kid,” he said as he reached out and ruffled my hair. He nodded at the screen and smiled. “Have you seen this before? It’s pretty funny.” He turned back to the movie, laughing at the sight of Bill Murray strapped to the mast of a ship.

I leaned back against my hands and stretched out my legs in front of me, and turned my attention to the film. And by the time things were winding down, I was laughing out loud, along with everybody else.

Chapter sixteen

“TAYLOR. RISE AND SHINE. UP AND ADAM.”

I groaned, not only at my father’s bad joke—when I was younger I’d misunderstood the phrase “up and at ’em” and had asked my father who this “Adam” character was, to his lasting enjoyment—but because it was a Sunday morning, it was my day off, and I wanted to spend it sleeping in. “No,” I mumbled into my pillow.

“Come on,” my father said, and I heard the rasp of metal on metal as he pushed open my curtains, the decorative rings sliding on the iron bar, and it suddenly got a lot brighter in my room. “Time to get up.”

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“What?” I asked, squeezing my eyes tightly shut, not understanding what was happening. “No. Why?”

“Surprise,” he said, and then he tickled the bottoms of my feet, which were sticking out from under the sheet. I felt myself giggling uncontrollably—that had always been my most ticklish spot. I yanked my feet under the covers as I heard my father leave the room. “Meet you outside,” he called. “Five minutes.”

I tried to keep my eyes shut, and attempted to return to the dream that now seemed very far away—but I knew it was futile. Between the light streaming into the room and the tickling, I was now wide awake. I opened my eyes, sat up, and checked my watch. It was nine a.m. So much for a day off.

I had gone back to work yesterday following the movie debacle, and it had been fine—Lucy continued to be slightly more cordial to me, and nobody brought up how terrible I had been. But I was still happy to have a day away from the site of my most recent humiliation, and had planned on spending it sleeping until noon, and then maybe sunbathing out on the dock while reading a magazine. But that was clearly not going to happen.

Ten minutes later, I walked through the kitchen, glancing briefly at the calendar as I went, looking at the days that had been crossed off, a little unable to believe that it was June already. My dad was on the porch, pacing around, and he appeared entirely too awake for how early it was, especially considering that he’d been sleeping in lately, and usually hadn’t been up when I’d left for work.

“What’s the surprise?” I asked, as I joined him on the porch and looked around. I saw nothing except my father and the cars in the driveway. I was slowly getting the feeling that I’d been duped.

“Well,” my dad said, rubbing his hands together and smiling. I noticed that his clothing had relaxed very slightly—rather than a button-down shirt, he was wearing a polo shirt with his khakis, and ancient boat shoes. “It’s not so much of a surprise, per se. It’s more of an outing.”

I looked at him. “An outing.”

“You got it,” he said. “We’re going to get breakfast.” He looked at me, clearly waiting for a reaction, but all I was thinking was that it was very early, and I was awake when I didn’t want to be, and had been promised a surprise. “You need a good breakfast,” he said in his best persuade-the-jury voice. “It might be a big day.” When I still didn’t move, he smiled at me. “My treat,” he added.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting across from my father at the Pocono Coffee Shop, aka the diner, at a table by the window. The diner did not seem to have changed at all in the time I’d been gone. It was wood-paneled, with red booths covered with cracked leather. The cream on the tables was in squeezy syrup bottles, something that had provided endless entertainment for me and Warren when we were younger. There were framed pictures of Lake Phoenix though the ages covering the walls, and the one next to us showed a beauty pageant of some sort, girls with forties hair and sashes across their bathing suits, smiling at the camera as they lined up along the beach, all in high, stacked heels.

“What looks good?” my father said as he opened his large, plastic-covered menu. I opened mine as well, and saw that nothing on the menu seemed different since I’d last seen it, even though I was pretty sure that in the past five years, there had been some important discoveries about cholesterol and saturated fats. But maybe the management figured that adding healthier options would hurt their reputation—after all, the sign by the door read WALK IN. ROLL OUT.

“Everything looks good,” I said honestly, my eyes scanning down all the egg-and-meat combination options. I had been running so late for work every day this week, I’d usually been eating a granola bar as I drove.

“You folks set?” A middle-aged waitress, glasses on a chain around her neck, approached our table, her pencil already poised above her order pad. She was wearing a name tag on her red uniform T-shirt that read ANGELA.

My father ordered a short stack of the blueberry pancakes and a side of bacon, and I got what I’d always ordered, the Pocono Omelet, which was distinguished by the fact that it mostly contained eggs and different kinds of meat and cheese, without any vegetables whatsoever.

Angela nodded and wrote down our order as she walked away. And I looked across the table at my dad and felt suddenly on the spot.

It wasn’t that my father and I had never eaten together, just the two of us. We had certainly gotten ice cream together more times than I could count. But it was rare for it to be just the two of us at a meal, and, frankly, to have his undivided attention at all—no siblings, no BlackBerry constantly buzzing. I wondered if this was the time to do what I’d been thinking about ever since I’d gone with him to the hospital—the moment that I should tell him I loved him. But just as I thought this, Angela reappeared with her coffeepot and poured cups for both of us, and I felt that the opportunity had passed.

My dad took a sip of his coffee and made a face after he swallowed, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows at me. “Wow,” he said, deadpan. “So I don’t think I’ll be sleeping for the next week or so.”

“Strong?” I asked. I squeezed some cream into it and stirred in some sugar as my dad nodded. I liked coffee, as long as I could get it to taste as little like coffee as possible. I took a tentative sip, and even with my ad***ions, could taste how strong the coffee was. “Well, now I’m awake,” I said, adding in some more cream, partially to make it less strong and partially because the squeezy bottle just made it fun.

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Silence fell between us for a moment, and I found myself racking my brain for conversation topics. I glanced down at my paper placemat and saw that it was printed with ads for local businesses, and in the center was something billed as the Diner’s De-Lite! It had a word scramble, a Sudoku puzzle, and a five-question quiz. I looked at the quiz more closely and realized it wasn’t asking trivia questions. Instead, it was called The Dish! and was a list of personal questions—What did you want to be when you grew up? What’s your favorite food? What’s your best memory? Where’s your favorite place to travel? It seemed like it was a get-to-know-your-table-companion game. Or maybe you were supposed to guess the answers for the other person and compare—there weren’t any instructions.

I looked up and saw that my dad was also reading his placemat. “What do you think?” he asked, nodding down at it. “Should we give it a whirl?”

By the time our food arrived, we’d solved the word scramble and the Sudoku puzzle. My dad dug into his pancakes as I took a bite of my omelet. I tried to concentrate on the cheese-and-meat extravaganza I was currently experiencing, but my glance kept returning to the five-question quiz. As I read the questions again, I realized I didn’t know any of my father’s answers. And even though he was sitting across from me, adding more syrup to his blueberry waffles and tapping his coffee cup for a refill, I knew—even though I hated to know it—that at some point, some point soon, he wouldn’t be around to ask. So I needed to find out his answers to these questions—which seemed somehow both utterly trivial and incredibly important.

“So,” I said, pushing my plate a little off to the side and looking down at question one, “what is your favorite movie?” I realized I knew the answer to that as soon as I’d asked it, and together we said, “Casablanca.”

“You got it,” my dad said, shaking his head. “I can’t believe that none of my progeny have seen it. It is, from first frame to last, a perfect movie.”

“I’ll see it,” I promised. I’d said this to him a lot in the past when he’d started giving me a hard time for not having seen it. But I meant it now.

“Although,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s probably better to see it on the big screen. That’s what I’ve always heard. Never gotten the chance to see it that way, myself, though.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “You know the plot, right?”

“Sure,” I said quickly, but not, apparently, fast enough.

“So it’s the dawn of World War II,” he said, settling back in his chair, “and we’re in unoccupied French Morocco….”

By the time we turned down Dockside, I was thoroughly full and had heard most of the plot of Casablanca. He was now waxing nostalgic about the music when something at the foot of our driveway caught my eye. “Dad!” I yelled, my voice sharp, and he stepped on the brake, slamming me forward against my seat belt and then back against the seat again.

“What?” he asked, looking around. “What is it?”

I looked down from my window and saw the dog, who was basically doing the canine equivalent of stalking, sitting in the middle of our driveway. “It’s that dog,” I said. I got out of the car and shut my door. He looked particularly mangy in the bright sunlight, and I wondered, for the first time, collar notwithstanding, whether he actually had a home to go to. He wagged his tail as I approached, which surprised me, since the only interactions I’d had with him had not been friendly ones. Maybe this dog had an amazing capacity for forgiveness—or, more likely, a really short memory.

I reached my fingers under his collar and pulled him aside, out of the way of the car, and my father drove on past us.

“Is that the same dog from before?” my dad asked, and I nodded as I walked toward the house. As I’d been expecting, the dog followed, looking so thrilled to find himself on the promised land, the driveway, that he was practically high-stepping.

“Yeah,” I said. The dog stopped when I stopped, sitting at my feet, and I bent down and looked at his tag. I was hoping the scratched gold disk might give me an address or phone number where I could finally deposit him. But the tag read only MURPHY. This rang a bell with me for some reason, but I couldn’t remember why. “Same one.”

“No tags?” my father asked, bending down slowly and wincing a little as he did so, until he was crouched in front of the dog.

“No address or owner,” I said, “just a name. Murphy.” Upon hearing this, the dog stopped scratching himself and sat up at attention, tail thumping on the ground again.

“Hey there,” my dad said softly. He rested his hand on the dog’s head and scratched him between the ears. “Between you and me,” he said, almost confidentially to the dog, “you don’t smell too good.”

“So what should we do?” I asked. I knew, vaguely, mostly from TV shows, about shelters and vets’ offices, but had never had any experience with them myself.

“Well,” my dad said, pushing himself to his feet a little unsteadily, “I think the first thing is to talk to the neighbors, make sure he’s not just someone’s pet who wandered away. And then if nobody claims him, I think there’s an animal shelter in Mountainview.”

“What’s going on?” Gelsey asked as she stepped onto the porch, not wearing her tennis or her dance clothes, but instead, a pink sundress with sandals, her hair loose and hanging around her shoulders. Her eyes widened when she looked at the dog. “Did we get a dog?” she asked, her voice raising excitedly on the last word, making her sound actually twelve for once, and not twelve-going-on-twenty-nine.

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“No,” my father and I said together.

“Oh,” Gelsey said, her face falling.

“I should get to work,” my father said, turning to head inside. He was still working on his case, the FedEx truck still arriving with files from his office. The deliveries were no longer happening every day, but had gone down to two or three times a week. My dad had also taken to closing his laptop screen if any of us leaned in for a look, fueling Warren’s speculation that he was also spending a lot of time of this mystery project of his. “Can you handle this, Taylor?” he asked, nodding down at the dog. The dog was now scratching his ear with his back paw, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his fate was being discussed.

“Sure,” I said, even though I would have very much preferred someone else handle it, as my experience with dogs had been pretty much limited to watching Top Dog. I started to leave, to begin the process of talking to the neighbors, when I caught a glimpse of my sister still standing on the porch. When I was her age, I rarely just hung around the house. I always had something going on with Henry or Lucy. But, in fairness, Gelsey hadn’t been here since she was little, and she wasn’t the greatest at making friends. I glanced at the house next door and remembered the girl I’d seen. “Gelsey, come with me,” I called to her. “And bring the cookies.”

Chapter seventeen

WE HEARD THE ARGUMENT BEFORE WE MADE IT TO THE FRONT steps. It was impossible not to hear it—there was just a screen door, and the words carried all the way out to the gravel of the driveway, where Gelsey, the dog, and I all paused.

“You knew what this would do!” a woman’s voice, shaking with anger, rang out. “I told you back when we were undercover. You’ve killed Sasha with this, you heartless bastard!”

I looked at the front door again, then took a small step in front of my sister. Undercover? Who had ended up next door to us? “I’m not sure,” I said quietly, starting to take a step away. “Maybe—”

“You can’t blame this on me!” a man’s voice rang out, sounding equally angry. “If you’d done what you were supposed to in Minsk, we wouldn’t be here!”

The woman gasped. “How dare you bring up Minsk!” she yelled. “It’s just…” Silence fell, and then, sounding perfectly calm, she said, “I don’t know. It’s a little too much, I think.”

Gelsey frowned at me, and I just shook my head, totally lost, but thinking that there might be a better time for us to ask these people if they were missing a dog. And we didn’t even have the oatmeal raisin cookies with us. When we went to bring them, my mother had told us she’d tossed them out after a week when it became clear they were never going to be eaten. “Let’s come back later,” I said, taking another step away. Gelsey tugged on the dog’s collar, using the makeshift leash—a length of pink satin ribbon, the kind she used for her pointe shoes.

“Hey there!” I glanced up and saw a woman standing in the doorway on the front porch. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties, and was dressed casually, in jeans and a T-shirt that read IN N OUT. She had long, pale blond hair and shielded her eyes from the sun. “What’s up?”

“What’s going on?” a guy came to stand next to her, smiling when he saw us and raising a hand in a wave. He was African-American and looked around the woman’s age. He was dressed almost identically, except that his T-shirt read ZANKOU CHICKEN.

“We, um,” I said, taking a step forward, looking at them closely, still trying to make sense of the argument I’d heard. They didn’t look like spies. But really good spies probably didn’t. “Had a question. But if this isn’t a good time…” They just stared at me, looking blank. “It sounded like you might have been in the middle of something,” I tried to clarify. “I didn’t want to disturb.” They still were just staring, so I prompted, “Minsk?”

“Oh!” The woman burst out laughing. “I hope you didn’t think that was real. We were just working.”

“Working?” Gelsey asked, finding her voice and taking a tiny step forward. “Are you actors?”

“Even worse,” the guy said, shaking his head. “Screenwriters. I’m Jeff Gardner, by the way.”

“Kim,” the woman said, waving, a ring on her left hand flashing at me in the sun.

“Hi,” I said, incredibly relived that there was not international espionage going on next door. “I’m Taylor, and this is my sister Gelsey. We live right there,” I said, pointing through their tree hedge to our house.

“Neighbors!” Jeff said with a big smile. “So nice to meet you, Taylor, and…” He paused, looking at my sister. “Did you say Kelsey?”

This happened a lot with her name, and when it did, it was the one time I was grateful to have a name everyone knew and had no problems spelling. My mother hadn’t thought it would be a problem—when she’d named my sister for a famous ballerina, she obviously thought a lot more people would be familiar with it. “Gelsey,” I repeated, louder. “With a g.”

“It’s great to meet you both,” Kim said. Her eyes lingered on my sister for a moment, and she smiled before she turned her head and called into the house, “Nora!”

A second later, the screen door banged open and the girl I’d seen a few days before stepped out onto the porch. She had black curly hair and skin the color of my coffee after I’d added enough milk to make it drinkable. She was also glowering, which was in direct opposition to her parents, who both seemed thrilled to have met us. “This is our daughter, Nora,” Kim said, nudging her until Nora was standing by her side. “These are two of our neighbors,” she said. “Taylor and Gelsey.”

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In succession, Nora frowned at me, at Gelsey, and at Murphy. “What’s wrong with your dog?” she asked.

Gelsey frowned right back at her, pulling the ribbon, and the dog, a little closer to her. “Nothing,” she said. “What do you mean?”

Nora just nodded at him, wrinkling her nose as though it should be obvious. “It’s all matted,” she said.

“That’s actually why we’re here,” I said quickly, trying to head off Gelsey, who had just taken a breath as though to launch into an argument about the merits of the dog’s grooming habits. “We’ve noticed this dog wandering around recently. There’s no address on the tag, so we didn’t know if he might be yours.”

Jeff shook his head. “Not us,” he said. “Have you tried the house on the other side?”

Also known as Henry’s house. “Not yet,” I said brightly. “I guess we’ll ask them next.” We all just stood around for a moment, nobody really quite sure what to say. I saw Kim glance back into the house and realized that she probably wanted to get back to work. “So,” I said, as the silence was starting to edge toward uncomfortable, “screenwriting, huh? That’s cool.” I didn’t know much about screen-writing except for what I’d seen in, ironically, the movies, where writers seemed to be either going out to power lunches or throwing balled-up pieces of paper against the wall.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Jeff said, laughing. “But it pays the bills. We’re in Los Angeles most of the year. It’s our first summer up here.”

I nodded, but was really looking at Gelsey, who was looking down at Murphy, who was scratching his ear again. I no longer knew anything about how twelve-year-olds made friends, and I frankly had never seen Gelsey make a friend, but I figured that in terms of trying to help her, I had done my best. “Okay,” I said, raising my eyebrows at my sister, “we should probably get—”

“Microchipped!” Kim said, snapping her fingers, as she looked down at the dog. “Maybe he’s microchipped. Have you checked it out?”

“No,” I said. I hadn’t even thought about it. “Do you know where they can find that out?”

“Animal shelters, vets’ offices,” Jeff said. “And they do it at the pet store in town. Doggone something or other.”

Kim turned to him, eyebrows raised. “How do you know that?”

“I went in the other day while I was picking up the pizza for dinner,” he said. “I was talking to the girl who works there.”

Now Nora turned to look at her father as well. “Why?” she asked.

“I was thinking,” Jeff said, even more energy coming into his voice, “that it could be a great character. Maybe for a TV pilot—think of all the different people she’d come into contact with.”

Kim was nodding excitedly, her words overlapping his. “I like it,” she said. “And what if she’s also a detective? Righting wrongs, solving mysteries on the side.”

Jeff turned to her, and they now seemed to be talking only to each other. “And the animals play a part,” he said. “They help her solve the crimes.” They looked at each other and smiled, then turned back to us.

“It was great to meet you,” Kim said. “Good luck with the search.” Jeff waved and then they both practically ran inside. A moment later, I could hear the clacking of the keys from two keyboards.

“Come on, Gelsey,” I said, as I turned to go. “Nice to meet you,” I called to the very unfriendly Nora, who still had her arms crossed, and who hadn’t once lost her glower. It was behavior I recognized, but I didn’t remember acting like that until I was at least fourteen. Maybe things just moved more quickly when you grew up in Los Angeles.

“So,” Nora said, grudgingly, when we’d taken a few steps away. Gelsey turned back, crossing her arms in an identical manner. “Do you like the beach?”

“I guess so,” Gelsey said, with a shrug. “My sister works there,” she said, a note of unmistakable pride in her voice that surprised me.

Nora glanced over at me, unimpressed, then back to Gelsey. “Want to go over there?” she asked. “I’m totally bored.”

“Me too,” Gelsey said, the morning’s adventure of finding a home for a lost dog apparently now forgotten. “There’s nothing to do here. My mom’s even making me take tennis.”

Nora’s eyes widened. “Me too!” she said. “It’s so stupid.”

“I know, right?” Gelsey replied.

“Totally,” Nora said.

I had a feeling I knew what the rest of the conversation was going to be like, so I just took the ribbon from Gelsey, who surrendered it easily. “I’ll see you later,” I said. Gelsey waved at me over her shoulder and continued her conversation, not even looking back.

I pulled Murphy, who was far too interested in sniffing every rock on the Gardner driveway, back to the road. I couldn’t help taking a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that Gelsey seemed to be on the road to making a friend, that my plan had been a tiny bit successful. I walked with the dog to the edge of the Crosby driveway, but the house had the look about it that indicated all the occupants were elsewhere—no cars or bikes in the driveway, nobody in the tent, the curtains drawn.

I steered the dog back toward our house, wondering what I would have done if it looked like people had been home. I wanted to think that I would have gone up and rung the bell, but I wasn’t quite sure. I did know that ever since the ice-cream parlor, I had been thinking about Henry more than I probably should have, since he was still mad at me (with good reason) and had a girlfriend. But I couldn’t help it.

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When we reached the driveway, Murphy no longer needed to be pulled. Instead, he started running ahead, straining on the makeshift leash. I tied him up to the porch steps and walked into the screened-in porch, where my father was sitting in his normal dinner spot, frowning at his laptop, and Warren was reading a textbook, his legs extended in front of him on a second chair.

“Hey,” Warren said, looking up from his book after carefully marking his place with a sticky flag. He half-stood and peered out to the driveway. “What is that?” he asked, and I could hear a note of panic in his voice. “Why is there a dog there?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” I assured my brother, as my dad shot me a tiny smile, then looked back at his laptop before Warren could see. “He’s pretty much the world’s least frightening dog. Seriously.”

“Right,” Warren said, nodding like this was no big deal, but I noticed he was keeping an eye on the porch. He shifted his chair a few feet away from the door, in a move I’m sure he thought was nonchalant. “Sure.”

“No owner?” my dad asked.

“Not next door, at least,” I said. “But we met the neighbors. There’s a girl there Gelsey’s age.”

“Wonderful,” my dad said with a smile. “But what about the canine?”

“I was going to bring him to the pet store,” I said. “See if he’s microchipped.”

“Good thinking,” he said with an approving nod, and I wondered if I should actually tell him it was our screenwriter neighbor’s idea, but decided to just let it go. “Son,” he said, turning to Warren, “didn’t you say that you wanted to go to the library?”

Warren cleared his throat and cast another glance at the porch. “I did mention that,” he said. “But upon further consideration, I think that I can—”

“Oh, just come,” I said. “I’ll keep the dog away from you. I promise.”

“It has nothing to do with that,” Warren muttered, nevertheless turning a bright red that nearly matched his polo shirt. “I’ll just go and get my wallet.” He headed into the house and my dad smiled at me over his laptop.

“You see?” he asked. “An excursion. I told you it was going to be a big day, kid.” He hit a few keys, then leaned back in his chair. “You know, if you’re going into town, you’ll be by Henson’s. And if you wouldn’t mind picking me up some licorice…”

Ten minutes later, Warren, Murphy, and I arrived at Doggone It!, Warren staying a good three steps behind us. Despite the fact that I could lift Murphy with one hand—not that I wanted to; my father had been right about his smell, and we’d had to drive with all the windows down—Warren still didn’t seem convinced that he wasn’t going to turn into a murderous beast at any moment.

The store was fairly small, with birds in cages, a large aquarium full of fish, kittens in a pen along one wall, and the rest devoted to pet accessories. It looked like there was a grooming station to the back, behind the register. There was nobody behind the counter, and no helpful bell to ring, like there had been at Borrowed Thyme. I looked around for a moment, but the only sound in the store was one of the birds chirping loudly, in what I was pretty sure was an imitation of a car alarm going off.

“Hello?” Warren called, causing the bird to chirp even more loudly.

“Coming, coming, so sorry!” a voice called out from the back. The door opened, and the girl I’d seen before—the one who’d offered to make the phone call for my father—came out, wiping her hands on a red DOGGONE IT! apron that covered up a white T-shirt and jeans. Upon seeing her closer, I could tell she was about my age, with blue eyes, a sweet-looking, heart-shaped face, and long red hair in braids that reached past her shoulders. She glanced from me to Warren, smiling. “What can I do for you?” I noticed that the stitched embroidery on her apron read Wendy.

“Well,” I started, when I heard my brother make a strange throat-clearing noise. Warren was staring at Wendy, his mouth hanging open slightly, and he was apparently trying to form words, without much luck. “We found this dog,” I said as I lifted Murphy up to the counter, where he sat immediately, looking around, seeming to enjoy the elevated view. To my surprise, my brother didn’t immediately move away, but stayed right where he was, in close dog proximity. “And we didn’t know where he’d come from,” I said. “I heard you can check for microchips here?”

“Right,” Warren said, jumping in a moment too late, recovering the power of speech. “Microchips.”

“Are you lost, buddy?” Wendy asked. She reached forward and scratched just behind Murphy’s ears, not seeming to care about how he smelled. He closed his eyes and his tail thumped on the counter, onto a stack of pamphlets about flea collars. “Well, we can check for that, no problem.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a device that looked a little bit like a remote control, with a screen taking up the top half. She ran it slowly over the dog’s back while scratching his ears with her opposite hand. When she passed a spot just below his shoulder blade, the device beeped. “There you go!” she said, smiling at Warren and me. I noticed Warren smiled back, but not in time, because she was already sitting down and wheeling her chair over to the computer.

“So do we know who he belongs to?” I asked, leaning over the dog on the counter to try to see what she was looking at.

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“Not yet,” she said. “That only gave us the microchip number. I just have to check the database and it should tell us where this little guy lives.”

“Or girl,” I said, since we still didn’t have confirmation on this, and I was pretty much going off the fact that his collar was blue. Wendy stopped scrolling through her screen and stood up again, lifting the dog’s front paws up.

“Nope,” she said. “Definitely guy.” She sat back down again, and started typing.

“Did you know that the name Wendy came into usage in 1904?” Warren asked suddenly, all in a rush. “Through J.M. Barrie, in his play Peter and Wendy, which later became Peter Pan.”

Wendy looked at Warren quizzically, and I felt myself do the same. I was about to interject, say that my brother had had too much sun today or something, when she smiled wide. “I never knew that,” she said. “Thanks.”

Warren nodded, then said, in a voice that sounded like he was trying very hard to be casual, but failing miserably, “Have you, um, worked here long?”

“About a month now,” she said, giving him a quick glance before returning to the computer. “Just making some extra money before starting school in the fall.”

“Oh?” Warren was practically eye-to-eye with the dog, he was leaning so far over the counter to continue this conversation. The dog took advantage of this opportunity and licked his ear and Warren, to his cre***, only flinched slightly. “Where are you going?”

“Stroudsburg State,” she said, still looking at the computer. “They’ve got a great veterinary program.”

“Great,” Warren said, trying to disengage himself from the dog, who had now moved on to enthusiastically licking his face. “That’s great.”

I turned and stared at my brother, trying to contain my astonishment. Warren had always been a college snob, but it had just gotten worse since he’d gotten into an Ivy. I’d heard him refer to Stanford as his “safety.” The fact that he was talking positively about a school I was fairly sure he’d never heard of five minutes ago was so out of character that it was shocking. But then again, I’d never seen Warren this way around a girl before, ever.

“Okay,” Wendy said as she leaned closer to the screen, “it looks like we have a match!”

“Excellent,” I said, wondering what the next step was—if she would contact the owners, or if we would have to. Either way, as friendly as this dog seemed, I was ready to send him back where he belonged.

“And,” she said, scrolling down her screen, “it looks like the microchipping was actually done here, so he’s local. Which is a good thing. His address is…” She paused, then said, “84 Dockside Road in Lake Phoenix.” She looked at us and smiled, and I just stared back at her, sure that I’d heard wrong. “It’s not too far from here,” she added after a moment. “I could print out directions.”

“I know where it is,” I said, staring down at the dog. I now understood why he was so eager to make it up our driveway. “That’s our house.”

Two hours later, Warren, Murphy, and I returned home. The dog had gotten a thorough cleaning, and now smelled faintly of chemicals. The groomer must not have cared that Murphy was a boy, because there was a pink polka-dot ribbon tied into his wiry hair, just between his ears. We had a bag full of supplies, including a dog dish, water bowl, bed, leash, and food. I hadn’t been under the impression that we were keeping him, but once Wendy had started picking out “the basics we’d need,” Warren had trailed her around the store, nodding at everything she selected, not stopping to consult me about the situation. It wasn’t until we were in the car driving home, just the three of us, Murphy panting happily out the window, his breath now much improved, that I turned to Warren and said, “I can’t believe this.”

“I know,” Warren said, shaking his head. He must have been attempting to look serious—his default expression—but it kept slipping into something a little more dreamy. “It must have been the renters last summer, right?” he asked. “Wendy said that that’s when the microchip information was entered.”

“And that’s their name,” I said. “Pretty conclusive evidence.” I paused at a stoplight, noting the fact that my brother had pronounced Wendy’s name in the tone of voice he usually reserved for facts about tollbooths and lightbulbs. “So what happened?” I asked, speeding up again, even though I knew my brother, who had all the answers, wouldn’t know this one. “They left him at the end of the summer?” I asked. I could feel my anger rising as I said it, getting furious at these heartless, spice-stealing renters, treating the dog that way. “They just abandoned him at the house?”

Warren shrugged. “Or perhaps he ran away,” he said, his tone becoming, finally, one that I recognized—measured, careful, weighing all the facts. “We don’t know the situation. We’ll tell Mom, and she can contact them. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding.”

“Maybe,” I said, but not really believing it. I turned down Dockside, and as soon as we got close, Murphy pulled his head in from the window, scrambling up to try and sit on the console between us, straining forward, looking at the house, tail wagging wildly. And as I pulled into the driveway and he got more and more excited, I knew this was the proof, even more so than the computer’s confirmation. Murphy knew where he was, and was desperate to get back. When I killed the engine and opened the back door, he bounded out of the car and ran straight for the house, clearly delighted to have found his way home at last.