Julie’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding? No. Having my mom date the school principal was the worst.”
Camille studied her daughter’s face. Julie was so beautiful to her—curly dark hair, bright brown eyes, a sweet saddle of freckles across her nose. Sometimes she recognized a flicker of Jace in Julie, and it made her heart melt. You’re still here, she thought.
“What?” Julie rubbed her cheek. “Do I have something on my face?”
Camille smiled. “No. How’s your head?” She inspected the bump. It was barely visible now, thank goodness.
“Fine. Really, Mom.” She tucked her phone in her pocket. “I’m going out for a walk.”
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I saw the discharge papers. They said I can resume all normal activities. I’ll just go down to the lighthouse and back.”
“I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
“Not helpful,” Julie said, a storm gathering in her eyes. “It’s just a walk.”
Camille hesitated. Julie spent way too much time alone in her room, staring at her phone screen. Anything that got her out of the house was a welcome distraction.
“All right.” Camille didn’t have the energy for a big argument. “But be—”
“I know. Careful.” Julie went out the front door. “I won’t be long.”
Camille watched her walking down the road toward the lighthouse. In that moment, she looked so isolated and lonely in her shapeless clothes. It bothered Camille that none of Julie’s friends had called or come by to make sure she was all right. Ninth graders were not noted for their compassion, but when one of their own was taken to the emergency room, she assumed at least one of them would follow up. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any of Julie’s friends around in a while.
Three
Julie stepped out onto the ledge of the Bethany Point Light. The lighthouse was still in use, though it was all automated now. Every few seconds, the beam at the top swung in an arc to encompass the entrance to the bay. Most folks assumed the lighthouse interior was locked up tight, but Julie knew how to climb to the top. She and her friends—back when she had friends—had found an access panel under the stairs at the base of the tower.
Once inside, it was a matter of climbing the winding brick steps to the rim that surrounded the old Fresnel lens. Most kids were too creeped out to climb the cobweb-infested steps, but Julie had persevered, using a broom to clear the way. This was her special place. She came here to be alone, to think, to dream.
As far as she knew, she was the only one who still came here. Her friends had all dumped her, moving on to hang out with the cooler kids. The popular kids. The thin kids. The kids whose moms were not dating the school principal.
With one hand on the railing behind her, Julie leaned over and studied the rocky shoals a hundred feet below. She wondered what it would be like to fall that far. Would there be time to feel scared, or would it all be over in the blink of an eye?
From her vantage point, she could see the beach where this morning’s drama had occurred. In the deep sunset colors of the evening, she could pick out the eddies of the riptide, the one that had nearly carried her away to see her father.
Although it could be nothing but a fantasy, Julie held a vision in her head of where her father was now. He lived in a place that was parallel to the world she knew. It was right next door, yet invisible until she crossed the threshold, leaving the here and now behind and stepping into the new place.
There, Julie would be perfect. She would have friends rather than mean kids making fun of her. She would have boobs, not fat rolls. She would be everyone’s favorite, not some chubby loser.
It worked like this in her mind, anyway. She was probably wrong, but a girl could dream. Sometimes she felt like talking to her mom about it, but she never did. Mom worried about every little thing and she’d find a way to worry about Julie’s dream of paradise.
Plus she would start digging around and she might find out the real reason Julie kept getting in fights with other kids. Above all else, Julie could not allow her mother to find out what had provoked the fights. Because the only thing worse than having kids say her mother had caused her father’s death was having to tell her mother what the kids were saying.
She heaved a lonely sigh, and then watched the colors of the water change as the sun went down behind the east-facing lighthouse. The colors were so rich, they made her heart ache. Maybe that was where her father lived, in a world so beautiful that mere mortals couldn’t bear it.
She stooped and picked up a stray bird feather and held it out in front of her. It looked like the feather of an eastern shorebird, maybe a piping plover. When you grew up at the shore, you learned these things. She opened her fingers and let the feather drift downward, watching it dance on an updraft of wind, then swirl as it made its way to earth. Down, down, down.
She used to be light as a feather. When she looked at old pictures of herself—and there were hundreds, because her mom was a photographer—she was amazed at how cute she had been, like a little fairy. Not anymore. These days she was a fat blob. A fat blob nobody wanted to talk to, except to talk shit about her and tell lies about her mom.
She stooped and picked up a loose brick from the rim of the structure and sent it hurtling to earth. Then she picked up another and did the same, waiting for it to smash on the rocks below.
“Hey!”
The loud voice startled Julie so much she nearly let go of the railing. Her heart pounding, she jumped over the rail to safety.
“What the hell?” yelled the voice in a funny accent. “You almost hit me.”
Oh, good God. She had nearly hit someone with a brick. Then everybody would be calling her a killer, too.
Horrified, she yanked open the door and clattered down the dark, dank-smelling stairs. Maybe she could run away before the someone saw her. Maybe if she ran really fast, the victim of her falling bricks wouldn’t see her.
She pushed at the door at the base of the lighthouse and burst outside. It was nearly dark now. She sprinted over to the break in the fence, threw herself on the ground to crawl under. Before she could escape, she came face-to-face with a worn-out sneaker.
“You almost hit me,” the kid repeated.
She recoiled, scrambling backward and leaping to her feet. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know you were there.” She brushed off her jeans, studying him until recognition struck. “You’re Tarek,” she said. He had enrolled in school fairly recently, along with several of his brothers and sisters. They were a family of refugees, being sponsored by some people in town.
Tarek was in ninth grade, and he was even less popular than Julie. She took a perverse comfort in that. Some of the kids said rotten things about him, like he was a terrorist and stuff. He didn’t seem bothered by the insults; maybe because he didn’t understand.
Or maybe it was because the things he had seen in his homeland were a million times worse than a bunch of dumb kids teasing.
“And you are Julie Adams,” he said.
“That’s me. I didn’t mean to drop anything on you.”
“It is A-OK.”
“The sign says no trespassing,” she pointed out.
“And yet here you are.”
“I’ve been coming here all my life,” she said.
“Does that make you legit?”
“Makes me a native.”
“Makes you a trespasser.”
She shrugged. “Only if I get caught.” She grabbed the chain-link fence and crawled under it, then stood up and turned back to look at him. She felt self-conscious as she brushed herself off again. He was probably staring at her giant fat butt.
He was paying no attention to her at all. He simply opened the gate and stepped outside.
“Hey,” she said, “how did you get that unlocked?”
He turned and snapped the padlock in place. “Very simple. It’s a four-digit combination. I guessed the combination.”
“How’d you do that?”
He gestured at the lighthouse itself. Over the door were the numbers 1824—the year it was established. “Sometimes it is best to start with the obvious.”