Chapter 12
The day after Minnie and Viggo’s first kiss, Minnie was suddenly too terrified to go to school.
She woke up with a weight on her chest and heart palpitations, and she went down the hall and snuck into her mother’s bed, where she curled into her and cried.
The rain still hadn’t let up since last night, and Minnie felt that all the joie de vivre she’d gained last night had left her.
Hannah scooped her in her arms in bed and asked her, “What’s wrong, my girl?”
But Minnie could verbalize what was wrong.
She supposed it had something to do with Viggo, with everything moving so fast, with missing her father, with everything she’d lost. After the hot cocoa and conversation she’d shared with her mother, she wished that she could find a way to keep that communication going.
But instead, she wept and said, “I’m sick. I’m sick.”
Hannah seemed to understand, at least a little.
Minnie listened as she called the school to tell them she wouldn’t be coming in today.
After that, Hannah tugged at Minnie’s feet and said, “Why don’t we go downstairs and get cozy on the couch?
I can make banana pancakes. We can watch movies all day. ”
Minnie poked her head out from under the comforter. “All day?”
“We have nothing else to do,” Hannah promised.
Downstairs, wrapped up in blankets, Minnie listened to the sounds of her mother in the kitchen, humming and pouring batter and setting out plates.
Minnie had initially gravitated toward a rom-com, but then she’d panicked, thinking of Viggo, of all she hoped would come after their kiss.
She hated the idea that she’d go to school, and he wouldn’t be waiting for her.
She hated the idea that she’d sit alone in the lunchroom while he sat at his private table alone, ignoring her.
She wasn’t sure how anyone fell in love. It was the most painful thing.
She wondered why it hadn’t been like this with Gavin.
She guessed it was because she’d always known Gavin.
She and Gavin had grown up together, so their love had felt organic.
There was so much she still didn’t know about Viggo, obviously.
And more than that, she was sort of afraid that he’d turn around and fall back in love with Stacy, who had long legs and blond hair and money, so much money.
Eventually, Minnie selected a movie she knew her mother liked, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which turned out to be disastrous.
It was about two people who couldn’t get over one another, so they erased their memories to forget about each other, only to find their way back to one another, because their love was inevitable. It was meant to be.
But it was proof of how painful love was, too. For the first time, Minnie allowed herself to think about her mother and father’s love. As the credits rolled, she turned to look at her mother, then dared to ask, “Would you erase Dad if you could?”
Hannah looked at Minnie for a long time, as though she wasn’t sure how to respond. She reached for Minnie and wrapped her arms around her. Minnie could feel her mother’s tears on her cheek.
“I loved your father for a long, long time,” Hannah said. “Honestly, I still love him, in many ways. I would never want to erase that. I would keep all the bad, so long as I could keep the good.”
Minnie’s stomach flipped. She told herself not to burst into tears.
The following day, Minnie got up the nerve to go back to school.
Just as she’d expected, Viggo didn’t come find her in the morning, and he sat by himself in the lunchroom, sketching and not talking to anyone.
He didn’t even pick up his head when Stacy walked by.
Nervous and angry, Minnie decided to ignore him back, although each time she passed him, she felt as though her body was on fire.
During art class, she bit her tongue to keep from crying but made sure never to look over at him.
It felt incredible that they’d ever kissed, let alone spoken together for hours on the deck of that abandoned sailboat.
He was a stranger.
For more than two weeks, it went on like that.
Minnie went to school, ate lunch alone, avoided all contact with Viggo, did her homework, performed her daily chores at home, and told herself to maintain composure.
Minnie could feel her mother watching her like a hawk, but she wasn’t willing to talk about her broken heart, not now. She had to get through it.
Toward the end of May, as the clouds rolled away and lifted the temperature into the seventies and, sometimes, the low eighties, Minnie turned in her final papers and tests and prepared her heart and mind for a lonely summer.
Although she was sort of friendly with a few girls from school, she hadn’t developed any relationships that would extend into summer break.
Her mother had suggested that she get a summer job, maybe at a restaurant, and Minnie was considering it.
It would be nice to have her own money, for once.
In two years, she reminded herself, she would be out of here. She would be off to college.
It was when she’d completely given up on him that, as she walked out of school, Viggo pulled up in his ratty convertible. He had the top down, and there were two skateboards in the back seat. The Cure CD was playing from the speakers. Viggo’s eyes found hers.
Minnie’s heart pumped, but she told herself to keep walking, to avoid him, just as he’d been avoiding her. She continued down the sidewalk, her eyes straight ahead. She heard Viggo’s footsteps behind her. He was calling her name. “Minnie, wait.”
Minnie froze. From movies, she knew there were moments in women’s lives like this: moments when everything crystallized, when men took risks that changed everything. Was she willing to let Viggo fix everything? She felt his hand on her shoulder. Slowly, she turned and looked at him.
“Why are you ignoring me?” Viggo asked her, his face echoing his sorrow.
Minnie’s heart split open. All this time, she’d thought he was avoiding her. But then she remembered that the day after their first kiss, she’d skipped school. After that, she and Viggo hadn’t spoken to one another at all. Maybe, just maybe, it had been on her to say something.
Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
“Do you want to go for a sail?” Viggo asked.
Minnie was surprised. “In that sailboat? The one that’s broken?”
Viggo laughed. “No. I have my own. It’s small, but my dad helped me fix it up. I’ve been sailing since I was a little kid. It’s safe.”
Minnie hesitated. But a little voice in the back of her mind told her: Don’t say no. So she followed him back to his car. The breeze brought her hair up and behind her as they drove off for the harbor, where his sailboat was docked. Minnie couldn’t believe it.
“You still haven’t answered me,” Viggo said. “About why you’ve been ignoring me.”
Minnie decided to play coy. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” she said.
“We all do. Being this age is a trip,” Viggo said darkly. “Especially in a place like Nantucket Island.”
Minnie still wasn’t sure what that meant. That first week, Thomas Bard had died, but things had quieted since then, leaving her to wonder if all of Viggo’s talk of secrets was a performance.
At the harbor, Viggo parked and guided her to his little boat, which was dwarfed by the monstrous and expensive ones on either side.
Minnie sat and watched as Viggo manipulated the ropes and the sails and got them out of the harbor in a flash.
He’d packed a bag and told her to open it.
Inside were a bottle of cheap wine and store-bought chocolate chip cookies.
Viggo told her to crack the wine if she wanted to.
“I’ll have a few sips, but I don’t want to get carried away,” he said. “Although I have to say…”
“What?” Minnie felt like she was levitating.
“You make me a little crazy,” Viggo said finally, turning his back to her.
Minnie understood then that Viggo had been second-guessing everything. He’d maybe been as sick to his stomach as she’d been, all this time. For weeks, they could have been falling deeper in love. Instead, they’d been playing stupid games with their own hearts.
When she couldn’t bear it anymore, Minnie shot to her feet, turned Viggo around, and kissed him, right there beneath the wide-open, blue sky. She kissed him with reckless abandon. And when their kiss finally broke, they gasped with adrenaline. Minnie felt tears in her eyes.
She’d never felt this way before.
Of course, she knew that her mother and other adults would discredit it.
They’d call Minnie a “romantic teenager,” a girl who didn’t understand the weight of the world.
But Minnie knew herself. She knew how big these emotions were.
“I’m falling for you,” she told Viggo because she couldn’t keep it in.
“I’m falling for you right back,” Viggo said. He kissed her again, as the boat thrashed in the waves and the sails flapped overhead. Minnie was in a fantasy world.
For the rest of the school year, Minnie and Viggo went sailing nearly every afternoon. They kissed, swam, ate cookies, and sipped the wine. They were careful not to overdo it, but they loved flirting with being “bad” and pretending they were tipsy.
Their conversations deepened along with their love.
Minnie told Viggo more about her father, about how afraid she was that she would never see him again.
She told him how complicated things still were with her mother, although they were both trying to make it all right again.
And Viggo told her how stifling it had been to grow up in Nantucket, where everyone knew everyone else, where secrets always spilled to the surface.
“I’m sure everyone knows we’re dating,” Viggo said, “although I haven’t told anyone.”
“I told my mom,” Minnie confessed. “But she doesn’t have any friends.”