25. Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jackie
T he next morning, we have breakfast up on Trudy’s back. Silas’ idea, not mine. He wakes me up at five-twenty in the morning to ask if I feel like watching the sunrise with him on the roof, and no way am I going to say no to that—even if five-twenty is really, really early. But once I’m up, I’m so grateful that he did wake me, because it’s one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve ever seen. And we’re the only people awake anywhere on the festival grounds, so it’s all ours.
Silas somehow lugs his mattress up onto the roof and I pass up a couple of blankets to keep us warm since it’s still kind of cool. I put his hoodie on, too. I never gave it back to him after the other night, and I’m hoping he hasn’t noticed.
We sit huddled close together, and it doesn’t feel as weird as I thought it would. The sunrise unfolds before us like a live water-color spectacle just for us: oranges that melt into pinks and purples and finally a multitude of blues. It’s weird to think that these sunrises happen every single morning, and I’ve spent most of my life oblivious to them. I’m ashamed I’ve turned my back on something so beautiful just for an extra couple hours of sleep.
I doubt Silas would see it that way. I know he is up at this time every morning, but it definitely isn’t by choice. It makes me wonder if he would miss these beautiful sunrises if he ever found a way to get rid of his insomnia.
He pulls a course plastic bag from beneath his hoodie: the interior package of a cereal box, I realize.
“Dry Fruit Loops?” he asks, offering the bag to me .
I laugh. This boy, with the criminal record and two-year stint in juvenile hall… still managed to hold on to some of his most boyish qualities—the ones I always loved the most: the little quirks that had the rest of us wondering what crazy plan he would come up with next, what weird object or food item or insect he would produce from his crumb-filled pockets.
“I would love some,” I tell him, dipping my hand into the bag. I scoop up a handful. “Thanks.”
As I pull my hand out, I notice that his own hands are shaking. Badly. And I don’t remember noticing that before.
“Silas…” My eyes crease. “Are you okay?”
He gives me a quizzical look, then glances down at where I’m staring, at his still shaking hands.
He pulls the bag away.
“Yeah. Just… I need another coffee, I guess.”
He suddenly looks embarrassed and I hate that I seem to have a special knack for making him feel self-conscious, when I want to be the one who makes him feel comfortable and unequivocally accepted.
“Did you sleep last night?”
“Yeah… Some.”
Which means he didn’t. So that must be the reason for the shaky hands.
But I don’t get why he acts so cagey about his sleeping patterns. It’s not like insomnia or whatever is something that’s his fault. It’s not a poor reflection on him . And I understand some of the other things he gets defensive about, but not this.
We’re quiet again as we watch speckles of pink-hued clouds float above our heads, then toward the ocean, where they separate and shimmer and finally disappear.
“I got my job back,” Silas says after a while, his voice more serious than earlier.
I turn to him. “Wow… that’s awesome!”
He nods, unsmiling. “Yeah. I promised I wouldn’t mess up again…”
He looks like he wants to say more, so I sit, quietly waiting. There are no more clouds to watch now. Just streaks of oranges and blues .
“I’m gonna cut back on the drinking,” he finally says, and it isn’t what I was expecting. It’s so much better. And the words evoke much more emotion from me than I’m ready for. They mean… a lot.
They mean everything, actually. Because those words mean he wants something; that he is dedicated to making a change. They mean he is hopeful.
“Wow. That’s awesome,” I say, ironically, trying to sound super chill about his glorious revelation. But I know anything more will put him on edge. That’s something new about him I’m still getting used to. But at least I’ve noticed. At least I’m trying to adapt, too.
“Do you think that will be hard?” I ask softly.
He turns his head, and his eyes slam in to me, iced over suddenly and crackling with hostility.
“Of course it’ll be hard,” he snaps.
I flinch, leaning away, stunned by the intensity of his reaction. And the annoyance is suddenly replaced with shame. He rubs a shaky hand along his outstretched leg.
“Sorry…” he averts his gaze. “I shouldn’t have… I mean—I didn’t mean to flip on you like that.”
“It’s okay,” I say. But I wish I knew what to say that would make it okay.
He looks at me now. “Shit, Jax. I’m really sorry.”
His eyes are so intense. There is so much going on behind them and I’m glad he’s at least starting to face some of what’s there. And I don’t think I even know the extent or the weight of everything he’s dealing with.
I lean in, slowly, so he has time to process what I’m doing, in case he doesn’t want me to. But I feel his shoulders relax as I touch my lips to his nose.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I whisper, depositing a gentle kiss. And I feel the skin crease where his nose meets his forehead.
“A nose kiss ?” he moans… “Man, I thought you were going in for the lips.”
I smile against his skin and trail my lips lower, along the slight bump on the ridge of his nose, then down to his pouting lips .
“Sorry…” I breathe. “Do-over.”
And this time I do kiss him on the mouth, and he’s the one who smiles against my lips. He doesn’t taste like cotton candy anymore. But fruit loops are close enough.
When I lean back, he’s still grinning.
“You’re somethin,” he says. And I can tell he means it in a good way.
He reaches into the bag again, only this time he turns away from me, even though the only thing to see is more sky, and the giant waving burger on the roof of the neighboring food truck.
Silas suddenly whips a fruit loop across the expanse between our camper and the Burgers Burgers Burgers truck.
“Whoever hits Burger Dude’s hand first gets off dish duty for the next two nights!” he announces. And he’s already reaching into his other palm to grab another fruit loop, which he launches after briefly narrowing one eye to take aim. It misses horribly and sails a good six feet to the right of Burger Dude’s wiry outstretched arm.
I scramble for the bag, stuffing my hand in to scoop out my own stash of cereal. I take more time aiming than Silas did, though.
It still misses by a mile.
Silas launches another one and we both hold our breath for a second because it comes really close to the waving hand. But not close enough.
He curses under his breath and whips two more in a row, without even bothering to aim this time. He’s going for quantity over quality now and I lean my body into his, totally ruining his next throw.
“You can’t do that! You can’t launch a bunch in a row,” I laugh. “We need to take turns or we won’t be able to tell who’s Fruit Loop hits the hand!”
He throws another one. “Won’t matter,” he says. “Caus it’ll be mine.”
But he waits this time for me to throw my own orange Fruit Loop, which also comes close, but then falls like most of the others onto the burger truck’s roof.
Burger Dude smiles back at us with his goofy grin; taunting us both, and soon, we’re flinging our Fruit Loops in rapid-fire succession. We’re both laughing the whole time, the longer the silly game draws on. But still not enough to slow our pace .
Silas has always been ridiculously competitive. He would make competitions out of everything with the neighborhood kids: who could somersault highest off the dock, who could eat their hot dog fastest, who could spit the farthest along the crosswalk on the way to school…
I always participated just so I could feel like I was part of the fun, but it never even occurred to me to care about winning.
But today, I do.
My fruit loops get closer and closer to the target, while Silas’ are all over the place—mostly sailing way over the food truck.
“Focus over power,” I whisper in his ear, just before his next aim, and he lets out a loud laugh.
The Fruit Loop misses even more than the others.
And my next one lands smack dab in the middle of Burger Dude’s smiling palm.
“Bullseye!” I shout.
And Silas groans.
I pat him on the shoulder. “Aw… good effort, Sport. Maybe your skills just lie in other areas. Like, I don’t know… washing dishes.”
“I was so close,” he mutters.
He really wasn’t.
“If only you had an axe,” I muse. And Silas grins.
“Yo HO!” he calls, punching his fist in the air. And we both fall back against the mattress in peels of laughter.
After we’ve put away everything from the morning (except for the puddles of Fruit Loops now littering the roof of the Burgers Burgers Burgers food truck), we head to nearby Acadia National Park and set off on an easy hike that takes us to a waterfall. Obviously.
I was wrong when I told Silas that once you’ve seen one waterfall, you’ve seen them all. I’m starting to realize that every waterfall is amazing and totally unique. And I get why he’s become almost as obsessed about scouting out waterfalls along our route as I am about scouring for weird roadside attractions. Honestly, the two are a perfect pairing.
We pick up ingredients and supplies on our way back to the festival grounds and spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon baking. Actually, Silas bakes while I work on my second book cover from those two commissions. It’s the one I’m most excited about doing: a teen fantasy novel, which will allow me to combine my favorite aesthetic with some cool new techniques I’ve been playing around with.
And that’s not even the best part. The best part is that when I log into CreateHire, I have four more sales and another commission request! I am kind of in awe of this whole spontaneous endeavor. I enjoy it too much for it to feel normal to get paid to do it. It’s one of the best feelings ever, honestly.
I’m in such a great mood that I even tell Silas to make up a selection of “cookie sandwiches” to sell tonight, using Nutella and Marshmallow Fluff and whatever else he wants to slather on them. The offer isn’t as spontaneous as it sounds, though. I’ve been thinking about it lately, and the idea of Meryl being proprietary about anything to do with me is totally off-base. She’d probably be proud that we added a unique twist to her famous cookie recipes.
Shortly before the gates open for the second and final day of the Bar Harbor festival, Silas sets the cotton candy machine up outside the camper, just beside the order window. I have no idea why we didn’t think of that yesterday. Secretly, I’m glad we didn’t, though. Even if it took us almost a full hour to clean the sticky sugar off every single surface last night.
We’re having an even better night of sales tonight, and I’m on cloud nine. Silas seems happy, too, so he’s kind of bummed that Richard told him he wants to talk for more than five minutes tonight. Those longer conversations are tough for him.
He closes up the cotton candy station temporarily and calls Richard from inside the camper. But after the first two minutes, he walks off somewhere else for the rest of the conversation. I try not to be hurt, but I am… just a little. I know it’s normal for him to want to discuss a lot of that stuff in private, but it’s still hard. I want to be the one who helps him deal with the baggage from his past. And it sounds ridiculously messed up when I put it that way, but I can’t help how I feel. I have this unrelenting need to balance out the after-effects of the tragedy that changed both our lives.
At least I have the foresight not to question him about anything he talks about with Richard in private. I can respect his need for privacy even if I resent it sometimes.
After serving four middle-aged men who bought six cookies each, I hear a group of teenagers somewhere close to Trudy’s large rear end.
“Oh my God! You guys! ” one of them squeals, “Check out all the Fruit Loops on the grass!”
A guy’s laugh follows. “It musta rained Fruit Loops last night.”
More group laughter.
And then: “Oh my God, I would totally devour a bowl of Fruit Loops right now.”
“Man, me too. Or Lucky Charms.”
“I love Lucky Charms!”
And a second later, they appear at the order window: a group of about eight of them, asking if I sell sugar cereal. And I tell them that no, sadly, I don’t.
But next festival, I will .
It’s a brilliant idea: I’ll buy a few wholesale-size boxes of a bunch of sugar cereals, and sell them in paper bowls. I feel like Silas will be all over the idea.
He wanders back about half an hour later, a lot more somber and a little less enthusiastic. He lifts a hand to me in greeting, then goes back to manning the cotton candy machine. I decide to tell him my idea later.
He seems to perk up a little as he gets back into the groove of spinning. And a little while later, when there’s a brief pause in customers, I feel something flick the side of my cheek.
Silas is flinging the stray Fruit Loops at me. When I lean further out the window, I find him crouched down, picking another one up off the grass near the Burgers Burgers Burgers food truck, and he whips it before I can duck. It hits my earlobe this time .
Why is it he suddenly has perfect aim when it’s me he’s throwing stuff at ?
“Close the window for fifteen minutes!” He calls over. “Let’s go watch the fireworks from the roof.”
My eyes crinkle. “There are fireworks?”
This is news to me.
“Yup.” he tosses a yellow fruit loop at me. “And we’re watching them!”
I duck and the fruit loop flies right through the order window and onto his bed. I decide to leave it there for him to roll over onto in the night.
“We can’t just—”
“Sure we can,” he cuts me off. “Screw responsibility and your schedule for fifteen minutes.”
His eyes scour the grass for more fruit loops and when he doesn’t find any, he pushes his hands into his pockets. “I’ll pay you the sixteen bucks you’ll miss out on in sales.”
I glance around outside the window, not sure what I’m looking for exactly. Maybe the courage to play hookie with Silas for fifteen minutes without feeling guilty.
“Come on…” he pleads, rocking back on his heels.
I break off a piece of one of the cookies on the rack beside me, then launch it at Silas through the window. It hits him square in the chest before he even has time to react.
His eyes widen in surprise.
“Okay, let’s do it!” I call, laughing at his expression.
“Yeah?” An impish grin spreads across his face. I don’t think he was expecting me to agree. “Awesome!”
He doesn’t even bother brushing the crumbs off his T-shirt.
I grab the bag of penny candy I bought earlier at the store, so this time I can be the provider of rooftop snacks. Then I close the order window and meet him outside.
“By the way, I’m not going to let you pay me sixteen bucks for fifteen stupid minutes of lost sales,” I tell him as we climb the ladder onto the roof.
“Good,” he smirks. “Caus, I wasn’t really gonna pay you.”
The fireworks are totally worth playing hookie for.
I sit between Silas’s bent knees, and he folds his arms around me from behind. I pass candy back to him over my shoulder and I can feel the vibration of him chewing close to my neck. It tickles, but I like having him close to me like this. After a while, he rests his chin on my shoulder and we make oohhh and aahhh sounds in unison as the fireworks flare and blossom in the night sky.
Fifteen minutes go by way too fast and soon the largest, most impressive fireworks paint the sky in cascades of blinding color.
“By the way,” Silas whispers, after the grand finale and cheers and applause from the crowd. “Marshmallow bananas are still my favorite.”
I feel his lips brush against my cheek when I smile, and I don’t have to look back to know he’s smiling, too.
The next band starts up then, and we sit for another couple of dreamy minutes, tangled in our own personal bliss, before climbing back down to man our stations. And soon, Silas is heading off to help with tear-down while I deal with the last few sales of the night and do the cleanup.
Once I’m done, I get ready for bed and lie on my side reading, waiting for Silas to get back. But I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, his thumb is sweeping a strand of hair off my face, and my eyes flutter open to find him in the doorway leaning over me.
“Hey… it’s just me,” he says, picking up the e-Reader lying on my pillow and tucking it into the wall pocket. “Go back to sleep.”
“Kay…” I smile up at him. “Good night.”
I let my eyes fall closed again, and the last thing I feel are his lips brushing against my forehead.
“Good night,” he whispers.
And I fall asleep.