12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Jackie
I wake up way before the alarm goes off the next morning and I’m about to go back to sleep because it isn’t even really morning yet. But then I remember Silas is here—sleeping just a few feet away. And the feeling is too momentous to cram into one small compartment of my brain. It white-washes any of the dreams I might have been having seconds ago and I can’t fight the urge to turn on my other side just to see him, because for so many years he’s been just a memory, or a concern, or an aching loss. A lot of things; but never anything real.
But when I prop myself up to peer over at him, his bed is empty. Instead, there’s just a purple-ish glow filtering through the curtains across his cheap Walmart comforter. I get out of bed and pad down the galley, glancing over at the step in front of the door.
His boots are gone.
I pull a hoodie over my thin tank-top and yank a pair of sweatpants on. Then I slip into my flip-flops and open the door slowly, pushing it carefully closed behind me with a tiny click . But even that small gesture feels loud and intrusive in the surrounding quiet.
The sun is just barely coming up, and the sky is an intoxicating pallette of navys and oranges and deep mauves. And everything is so still . No sign of movement except for a lone seagull that swoops and soars above the dark canopy over the stage area. He squawks twice and then disappears up and up into the deepest blue part of the sky, somewhere way above the ocean.
The dark silhouettes of trailers scattered across the field lie like sleeping beasts; kind of eerie, but also sort of beautiful. And there’s no one awake yet to ask if they might have seen a boy who looks like Silas.
Only he’s not a boy anymore, I remind myself. Not really. I’m guessing he hasn’t been a boy now for quite some time. Maybe since the day he found both his parents on the kitchen floor in a pool of their own blood.
I shove the vision from my head and shuffle quietly across the flattened grass. I have no idea where to look for him. I don’t even know this place. But then, I didn’t know Provincetown either, and that didn’t stop me from searching for two hours straight and finding him.
I weave my way through the field of trailers and merchant booths, past the stage and the two rows of band trucks and buses. I even sneak into the two collapsable huts they use for the backstage area, but the only thing I find there are piles of cables and boxes and a couple of soda crates.
In less than ten minutes, I’m all the way to the other end of the fairgrounds, where a concrete path runs parallel to the beach. I walk along that for a while, my eyes scanning left and right. But there’s nothing to my right except for the wide stretch of deserted beach and the purple-hued waves lapping at sand that looks like molten lava: more red than pink even, because of the light cast from the sunrise.
Up ahead, about two-hundred feet away, is the long silhouette of the pier jutting out over the ocean. From this distance, it looks like a set from the Waterworld movie: like someone crammed a bunch of random wooden fishing huts and shingled houses onto a high stilted dock. It’s definitely nothing like the elegant, twinkling piers you see in romance movies. This one looks rickety and temporary; gritty and unpretentious. And it’s way more interesting than glamorous.
And that’s when I spot it: the male silhouette propped against one of the tall stilts that supports the wooden boardwalk — at the end closest to the shore, just barely out of reach of the lapping waves.
I recognize him by his hair. And the profile of his face: the nose that used to be long and straight but now has a slight bump. His square, defined jaw and the way he holds a cigarette up to his lips with a muscled arm to take a long, desperate drag. And also the way he lets his head fall back against the wooden beam in a way that looks resigned and sad and thoughtful all at the same time .
I let out a sigh, rubbing my hands across my face in relief—because Silas is still here. He’s still here he’s still here he’s still here.
I bend over, hands on my thighs like I just finished a half marathon. It feels like I just finished a run. Maybe not physically; but definitely the sudden release of heightened emotions is similar.
I straighten again, then I just stand there for a while, watching Silas; wishing I knew what weight dragged him out of his sleep. Or why he felt the need to seek solitude at five in the morning when he’s already such a lone soldier during the rest of his waking hours.
I start walking again, but instead of veering right off the walkway toward the pier—toward Silas, I head left into the small town instead. Nothing will be open on the boardwalk yet, but maybe in town I’ll have better luck finding somewhere to get a coffee. Because it may have only been three days, but it’s still long enough for me to have learned that trying to deal with Silas before a strong cup of coffee is a bad idea.
I eventually find a small 24-hour convenience store slash coffee shop slash smoke shop. And I’m heading back in the direction of the beach just ten minutes later, balancing two large coffees and a bag of stale danishes.
The sand that seeps into my flip-flops when I reach the beach is warm and sugary-soft. It feels like home and it makes me wonder what Meryl and Richard are doing right now. Or Xavier and Sebastian and the rest of my friends.
Sleeping, I guess. No one else I know would be up at five-twenty on a summer weekday morning.
I squint up at the sky, which has lightened to pinks and golden yellows. The light brushing against the boardwalk stilts casts long shadows across the sand, and they ripple and blur every time the waves lap up and then retreat into the ocean. It’s sort of hypnotic.
Silas is still sitting against the same post. His legs are pulled up and one arm rests casually on his knee, the other one holding that stupid cigarette. Probably not even the same cigarette from a few minutes ago. Probably a new one .
He must hear me approaching because he cranes his neck to look over his shoulder. His muscles stiffen when he sees that it’s me, and I can’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt.
His hair looks darker in this light; his eyes, a more bluish-grey tinge. He scans me with an expression that’s unreadable. Not angry exactly, but also not like he’s happy to see me. Definitely not that.
“Hey,” I say, but he doesn’t answer.
I lean down and twist one of the cups into the sand next to him. “Coffee… If you want it. ”
I set the bag on the sand beside it.
“And danishes that look like they were probably made sometime last week.” I toe at the bag with my flip-flop. “But they’re chocolate-filled, so you know… they can’t be that bad.”
He looks down at my offerings and nods. He still doesn’t say anything, though.
I wrap both hands around my coffee and take a long, slow sip. I swallow.
“It’s beautiful, huh?” I motion with my chin toward the horizon. Silas grunts in agreement.
Apparently, he’s back to the mono-syllabic responses. His mood swings are almost dizzying.
“The colors seem more orange than back home.” I continue, desperate to fill the quiet.
There’s no response at all this time, and I drop my gaze to study him. He’s staring off into the distance—not looking at anything, really. He looks exhausted, to be honest.
“Have you been awake long?”
He shrugs. “A while.”
I refrain from rolling my eyes, but geez, talk about evasive. Maybe I should have just left him alone once I saw he hadn’t run away. He clearly wants to be left alone. But I stand there for another few minutes, sipping my coffee and toeing at the sand with the end of my flip-flop— hoping maybe his mood will start to thaw .
Once I’ve downed the last dregs of caffeine, I give in. I roll my shoulders.
“Well, um… I guess I’ll get back, then.”
I turn and start walking, because I know better than to expect a response. But his gruff voice interjects.
“It’s fine, Jax,” he mumbles. “You don’t have to go.”
I stop.
He just called me Jax.
Again.
I take a breath and turn slowly to face him.
“It’s okay,” I say as nonchalantly as possible. “You obviously want to—”
“I said it’s fine. Jesus.” He rolls his eyes. “Sit, though. You’re making me feel like I’m about to be interrogated or something.”
“Oh. Sorry. Um, well… Yeah. Okay.” I lower myself next to him and I can feel the dampness of the sand through my sweatpants. The tide must be going out. I’m definitely going to have a wet spot on my butt when I get up.
There’s just enough room against the sea-worn beam for me to lean back next to Silas, and from this low vantage point underneath the floor of the pier, the only slice of sky I can see is the horizon line: an orangey-yellow strip with an intensity so fierce it’s hard to believe it’s a color custom-mixed by nature.
The sound of the water lapping against the sand is calming. It’s rhythmic and really peaceful, and I sit there, transfixed by the tiny rivulets the waves create every time they shrink back into the ocean. I kick off my flip-flops and dig my toes in, wiggling them and then patting the sand down again with my foot; over and over.
I glance at Silas, who’s reaching into his shirt pocket for his pack of smokes. Again.
Geez.
I bump his leg with my knee. “You should take your boots off. The sand feels really good.”
He taps the pack against his palm and slides out a cigarette, which he places between his full, bowed lips .
“I’m good,” he mumbles as he cups his hand around the end while he lights it. Then he stashes the lighter back in his pocket.
“Okay.” I wiggle my toes again. “I just think you’ll regret it later — that you watched the sun rise from underneath a legit beach boardwalk, and didn’t even bother to take your shoes off. You’re definitely not getting the full experience.”
He takes a long drag off the cigarette and holds the nicotine in his mouth for a second before turning his head to exhale the smoke away from me.
“I’m sure I’ll get over it,” he mumbles.
“You might…” I shrug. “Or maybe, someday when you’re old and feeble and on your death-bed, you’ll be thinking ‘man, I sure wish I dug my toes into the sand under that rickety old boardwalk in Old Orchard Beach back when I was a spritely young buck’…”
His upper lip curls into just the tiniest hint of a grin around his cigarette, and he exhales another column of smoke through the corner of his mouth
After a beat, he leans forward and reaches for his right boot, cigarette still dangling from his lips. He pulls it off in two sharp tugs, then tosses it, then does the same with the other one. Then he takes off both socks, discarding them in the sand next to the coffee that he still hasn’t touched.
He arches an eyebrow at me. “Happy?”
He isn’t grinning anymore, but I can tell he’s grinning inside. Which is almost as good.
“Yup.”
The smile that I give him is definitely real. And totally unapologetic.
He shakes his head again. “Spritely young buck…” he mumbles, and he lets out another singular chuckle before taking another drag from his cigarette.
A couple of seagulls swoop under the pier, squawking and pecking at the sand. We’re the only people around, except for a couple so far down the beach they’re just black dots moving against the sunburst-sky.
Out of my peripheral vision, I see Silas digging his toes into the sand just like I was doing a few seconds ago, and I tilt my head upwards, biting back a grin and pretending to be fascinated by the planks and wooden beams criss-crossing the underside of the pier so he won’t see me gloating.
“So,” he drawls. “You have the whole day mapped out again?”
He might be teasing me. Or not. I still don’t have Badass Silas anywhere near figured out.
“Kind of,” I say. “I have to bake. Another six batches of cookies before the gates open at two.”
He takes a final drag from his cigarette, then tosses it onto the sand a few feet away.
Unbelievable.
I jump up and scurry over to grab the stub before the next wave takes it out to sea, then come back and drop it into my empty coffee cup.
Once I’m settled back into the sand beside him, Silas continues the conversation like there wasn’t any interruption.
“You’re gonna roast in that camper,” he says.
And he’s right. The AC unit has been acting up again. I think Trudy is rejecting it because it looks so tacky, having that white plastic unit wedged in her back window. But no way am I doing any complaining about that kind of thing on a full-summer road trip adventure.
“It’ll be fine,” I say, scrubbing my wet hands against the sides of my sweatpants. “I can come cool off in the water after, if I have time.”
He nods. “Dodge all the cigarette butts while you do the backstroke.”
I shove my elbow into his side and he grunts.
“Plus,” I continue, otherwise ignoring his jibe. “I have an extra fan I plug in when it gets really hot. And I’m going to finish the new playlist I’ve been working on while I eat breakfast, which will put me in a good mood.”
I trace a long spiral in the sand with my finger, then erase it with the back of my hand. “Music helps distract me from the heat.”
Silas stretches out his long legs. “Another playlist,” he mumbles.
It’s just a two-word statement, but there’s a derogatory implication in his tone. Which is why my next sentence comes off sounding defensive.
“I make great playlists.”
He doesn’t respond, but I don’t miss the dubious lift of his eyebrows .
“I do. My playlists are legendary; I have seventy-eight followers on Spotify. And the school radio plays my mixes all the time during lunch. So quit with the judgey eyebrows.”
He chuckles. “Judgey eyebrows?”
“Yeah. Like you’re doing right now.”
He shakes his head, digging his long fingers into the sand. He pulls out a smooth rock and brushes it off, then lifts his arm and tosses it. The rock shoots straight through the wooden pillars and bounces off a wave before disappearing into the low surf.
He brushes off his hands. “Your school has its own radio station?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” He leans back against the wooden pillar. “Fancy.”
After that, we sit in silence, listening to the frothy waves rolling across the flattened sand. Right now, we’re just two low silhouettes camouflaged beneath the shadows of the pier.
There are a few more people on the beach now: hardcore vacationers, I guess, who want first dibs on the best square-footage of sand. The sun is higher, its rays squinting through the pillars at us like fuzzy-edged blades.
“Let’s see it.” Silas says after a while.
I turn my head and blink back at him. “Huh?”.
“Your latest epic playlist. Let’s see what’s on it.”
“It isn’t finished,” I say. “I’m still working on it.”
“Okay.” he studies me with slate-grey eyes. “So let me see what you’ve got so far.”
I know he’s just going to make snarky comments about the songs I’ve got on it, but I really couldn’t care less. I love my playlists. They’re mood-enhancing. Mood changing , even — for anyone who isn’t a longtime recruit of the Dark Side, that is.
I dig my phone out of my pocket and swipe to Spotify, and then to my latest playlist. Then I slap my phone into Silas’ calloused palm.
“Careful you don’t become blinded by the brightness emanating from this curated collection of joy-inducing tunes. ”
He squints down at the screen. “I’ll try not to,” he mumbles, scrolling down slowly with his thumb. After a couple of seconds, he makes a face, pausing on what is likely one of my shiniest gems. “God… I can’t make any promises, though.”
He keeps scrolling, his large fingers making my iPhone seem small and delicate. He pauses again.
“Technotronic?” He looks up at me. “Seriously?”
“ Pump Up The Jam . It’s a classic.”
“ Bohemian Rhapsody is a classic. All Along the Watchtower is a classic. Even Enter Sandman is—”
“Pump Up the Jam is a positivity, mood boosting classic.”
“Pump Up The Jam is what tripped-out carnies play on the scrambler all night on repeat.”
“Exactly.” I smirk. “To boost people’s moods.”
He narrows his eyes at me and shakes his head.
“Man…”
“What?”
He goes back to scrolling. “Nothing.”
I back away but keep watching over his shoulder as he skims through the songs.
“Everything Now, Arcade Fire…” he nods approvingly. “That’s a good one.”
“They’re all good.”
He ignores me, still scrolling.
“Beast of Burden,” he mumbles. “Also not bad.”
“Because it’s uplifting.”
“Because it’s The Stones.”
I raise my index finger. “Which is an uplifting band.”
He shakes his head again, eyes slanted at me like every word out of my mouth is beyond his comprehension. Which may actually be the case. His lips are slightly upturned though, like he might be fighting a grin. And that’s before he’s even listened to my latest mood-boosting playlist.
When I glance down again, he’s tapping into my phone .
“Hey!” I nudge his arm out of the way to get a better look at the screen. “What are you doing?”
He leans away from me, scrolling now. “I’m making you a new playlist.”
Oh.
Wow… okay. I sit back against the post. I’m totally okay with that: he’s interacting with me. Sort of. In a non-confrontational, non-angry-explosion kind of way.
“Make sure it’s only upbeat stuff,” I tell him. “Nothing depressing.”
He keeps adding songs to the queue, and I keep watching him. And occasionally I make a suggestion, which he turns down every time. So after a while, I point out that it’s unfair that he gets to choose every single song on a playlist that I’ll be baking to.
“So.” He shrugs, still not looking up. “I’ll bake too, then.”
I’m glad he’s looking at my phone because my eyes must almost bug out of my face. Cranky Silas is offering to bake? With me?
“Okay.” I say, cool as can be. “That sounds fair.”
Turns out, Silas is a boss in the kitchen. He measures and mixes and moves from task to task with the efficiency of a Michelin-star chef. Jimi Hendrix Crosstown Traffic is blasting full volume from the speakers and Silas is in the zone. He squints down at Meryl’s block-letter recipe scrawled on a laminated card as he cracks an egg into the bowl.
“Kay… we need oats,” he says.
I squeeze behind him toward the extra food storage shelves in the front.
“On it.”
After I deposit the large tupperware onto the counter, he immediately starts measuring.
“So, do you make cookies every day after school or something?” I laugh, “Caus this sure doesn’t seem like your first rodeo.”
He dumps the first cup of oats into the bowl, then measures out another one .
“I worked in the kitchen at Trenton.”
“ You baked in juvie? ”
“Yeah.” He dumps the second scoop of oats. “For over a year. Three afternoons a week. Sometimes on Sundays.”
I lean against the counter, watching him; hungry for any tidbit of information about his life these past few years.
“Huh. What kind of stuff?”
“A lot of casseroles and soups, mostly. Pasta… grilled cheese. Lots of cookies.” He grins. “Clearly.”
“Clearly.”
“Mostly chocolate chip, though. None of this oatmeal raisin hippie shit.”
I push away from the counter. “I expect great things from the chocolate chip portion of the afternoon, then.”
“Well, I won’t burn them,” he says, containing a grin. “So that’ll be an improvement right there.”
I roll my eyes. He isn’t going to let me live that one down.
Once I’ve put the oats away, I resume my perch against the counter; far enough from him that I’m not in his way, but close enough to watch any emotions flit across his face.
“What did you do to get sent away?” I ask tentatively. “To juvenile hall, I mean.”
“Got busted breaking into a convenience store, and was a wee bit resistant when the cops tried to arrest me.”
“Oh… Wow.” I watch his face for any telltale emotions, but nothing. “What were you stealing from the convenience store?”
“Liquor…” The corner of his mouth quirks. “… and a Mars bar.”
I roll my eyes.
The confession reminds me again that our lives back home are a million miles apart. We might as well live in different worlds.
“Geez,” I muse. “You really have a thing for stealing chocolate bars.”
He doesn’t say anything .
“You should hit a Costco next time… They have family-size boxes of Mars bars.”
He grins. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
We’re quiet for a while as he concentrates on measuring out the last ingredients.
“So what was it like?” I ask after a while. “Trenton?”
He keeps stirring.
“It was fine,” his mouth says.
“It was hell,” his eyes say.
My gaze dips to the floor, then back up. He’s rolling the batter into balls and placing them on a large cookie sheet. He’s way faster at this than I am.
“Is it because of juvie that you have a hard time sleeping?” I venture. It’s the first thing I want to help him with, I’ve decided - to figure out how he can get a good night’s sleep.
His body stills and he turns to look at me, cookie dough still in his calloused hand. Our gazes lock for a moment.
“I sleep fine,” his mouth says.
“Back off,” his clenched jaw says . So I do.
For now. I look away; outside the window at the food truck next to ours. A middle-aged fat guy is up on the roof, securing a waving burger sign.
Silas places the doughy ball on the pan alongside the others, and I shift.
“Your playlist isn’t awful,” I tell him, hoping it will lighten the mood. And I’m not completely lying: his playlist is pretty decent. Definitely heavier than my usual taste, but still good.
Silas’ face relaxes, and it makes me feel bad for putting him on edge a second ago. But how am I supposed to help him if he won’t even let me in?
“What about you?” he asks then, taking me by surprise. “Sandy Haven Prep - what’s that like?”
I stare back outside at Burger Truck Guy, who’s climbing down a ladder now at the back of his truck. He’s wearing cut-off sweatpants and they slip a little lower every time he takes a step down. By the time he reaches the final rung, he’s pretty much flashing me a full, hairy moon.
“Sh Prep is good,” I shrug. “I mean, there are definitely a lot of douche-bags and stuff… but I’ve made some good friends. And I like the classes, mostly.”
I actually love the classes. I love most things about the school, if I’m being totally honest. But I’m not going to come out and say that: rub it in his face how great my life’s been… while he’s been stuck in Allerston Lake. Or locked away at Trenton.
“Cool,” he says, “That’s good…” His voice is barely audible above the music; barely more than a whisper.
I’m starting to think he doesn’t hate me as much as he makes out he does. I think he’s just angry—at his situation. At me. At the whole world.
But anger can be unraveled and flattened out. If he lets me in, surely together we could find a way to deal with the anger. But if it is hatred, that’s a whole other thing. Because hatred runs bone deep. I wouldn’t know what to do if he truly did hate me.
Once we’re done with the oatmeal cookies, we move on to chocolate chip. I’m the ingredient-fetcher; he’s the measurer. He stirs, I taste-test. I put away, he taste-tests. He forms the batter into balls and puts them on cookie sheets. I re-organize them into straighter rows: line them up; everything equal, everything aesthetically pleasing. He smirks. I shrug dismissively—because, yeah, I may have ruined the last two days' worth of cookies, but not once did I toss them carelessly onto the pan, disorderly and sloppy before even touching the oven. They always looked nice before going in.
When they’re done, we taste-test one cookie from each batch. Just to be sure. I’m doing whatever I can to stack the cards in my favor this time, because I’m not having them tumble down on me again tonight. And by one o’clock we’re both full from all the cookies we’ve tested and the batter we’ve licked… chocolate chips we popped into our mouths one by one at first, then by the handful; and the milk we drank to wash it all down. We’re like a couple of eight-year-olds who don’t know any better and it’s the best feeling in the world .
The last batch is finally in the oven and it’s almost time to open up shop. I slide into the banquette to quickly check on my CreateHire account, in the off-chance that I made a book cover sale.
Silas is sitting opposite me, legs stretched out on the bench as he scrolls through his phone. It feels nice. Amiable. I don’t ask if or when he needs to head out to help backstage. I want to soak up as much of this day as I can, because I don’t want anything to ruin this feeling like maybe things could be easy between us again… Like we could become friends again.