Chapter 64
— Chapter 64 —
The next day, I row my boat over to Eddie’s house. It’s one of those fall afternoons that tricks you into thinking summer could come back. I don’t know how many rowing days I have left. The pond will probably still be frozen when we leave in March.
Mrs. Davis is sitting on the porch with her aide.
“Freya!” she says brightly.
“Hello, Mrs. Davis,” I say as I climb the stairs.
“Did you get locked out of your house again?” she asks, and this time, I’m sure she’s not joking. I wonder if she sees me as I am now, or if I am nine years old in her mind.
I pull my house key from my pocket to show her. “No, Mrs. Davis. I’m fine. I was looking for Eddie.”
“Ed-WARD!” she shouts, the way she used to call him home from the beach when we were kids.
Eddie comes outside.
“Hey,” he says, and his eyes are bright. “Want to go swimming?”
“Pond’s closed.”
“I know. Martin and Jim were supposed to tow the dock in last month, but Martin broke his ankle. And you know, Jim has that bum shoulder anyway. I got to get it in before the freeze. Help me?”
“Sure,” I say. I have no idea who Martin and Jim are. Eddie lives in an entirely different Somers than I do.
I change into a pair of Eddie’s swim trunks and pretend my sports bra is a bathing suit top. We get in the water on the swampy side at the end of Eddie’s yard. Even though the day is warm, the water has been chilling for weeks—the kind of cold that’s hard to ease into. The mud and algae squish through my toes, and I can feel tough roots or snail shells as my feet sink deeper with each step. I used to love this feeling, but now it makes my skin crawl. As soon as the water is deep enough, I throw my body forward so I can swim away.
Eddie is still wading. “Don’t have the stomach for mud anymore, huh?” he calls, when I’m deep enough to tread water.
“Not so much!”
We swim out, surfacing underneath the dock, sputtering as we come up, sound bouncing off the water and blue plastic barrels that keep it afloat. Sunlight streams through the spaces between the wood slats above. We hold on to the anchor tether, my hands just above his.
“Hi,” Eddie says, smiling at me.
“Hi,” I say, feeling shy. “I talked to Lexi.”
“Yeah, she said.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”
“That’s the cliché, right? The guy who claims to be separated. I wouldn’t have believed me either.”
“Yeah. But I should have known you weren’t that guy.”
“I should have told you,” he says. “Explained it more.”
“I slept with Jam.”
I study Eddie’s face in the leaking light, hoping he isn’t angry, but he just looks confused. He says, “I kind of figured you two were always sort of—”
I shake my head. “I got mad at you and my life was falling apart and I just—”
“Are you still sleeping with Jam?”
“I don’t know.”
Eddie shakes his head. “You don’t have to know. We don’t have to know anything. I don’t know anything.” And then he kisses me.
After we get the dock to shore, Eddie collects twigs, and we dig a pit on the beach to build a little bonfire. The sand is warm from the sun and sticks to our wet legs, and the air carries the sweet smell of fallen maple leaves.
“How are you going to light it?” I ask.
He unclips the paracord bracelet on his wrist and shows me the flint hidden in the clip. “I just have to find a bit of tinder.”
“What are you? Inspector Gadget?”
He laughs. “My brother gave it to me. Comes in handy when I go camping.”
“I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail,” I say, my heart racing. “With Aubrey.” I picture both of us this time, packs on our shoulders, walking into the woods.
“Like the whole trail?” Eddie says. I think he sounds more awed than incredulous, but I’m scared to look at him. Our plan is too precarious to survive exterior doubt.
I nod, running my fingers through the sand, raking it toward my legs. “We start in March.”
“Wow!” Eddie says. “It’s like two thousand miles, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” My stomach churns. I dig my feet into the sand like I’m trying to plant myself. “This is really stupid of me, right?”
“No,” he says. “It’s awesome. I’m jealous.”
“I’ve never even been camping.”
“That doesn’t matter,” he says, standing. “We can go camping right now. Then you won’t be able to say that anymore.” He dusts sand from his swim trunks, offers me his hand to pull me up. We swim back to his house and change into dry clothes. He goes down to the basement and comes back with a tent and sleeping bags and a duffle bag full of gear. We load it all into my rowboat and bring it to the beach.
Eddie lets me light the fire with his flint. He shows me how to set up the tent and use his water filter and cookstove. He opens a packet of freeze-dried pad thai and makes us dinner. While we eat, he tells me about rain gear and bear canisters, how anything that smells like food needs to be stored outside the tent. And he promises to take me and Aubrey camping in real woods a few times before March.
“So, what do we do now?” I ask when we’re done with dinner. The fire is still going strong.
“Whatever we want.” He runs his hand through the sand—scooping it up, letting it slip through his fingers.
“Do you want to make a sandcastle?” I ask.
Eddie smiles. “Yeah.”
So we work like kids, digging lakes and moats and building roads and castles. By the time the sun goes down, we’ve made an entire civilization out of sand. It’s our best one yet.