Maine Squeeze (8 page)

I just looked at him, remembering the day last summer when that happened, and how hard we'd laughed when Evan had intentionally cracked a claw so that it shot pulpy liquid into one of the kids' faces.

Then Trudy was off on one of her let's-all-pretend-we're-crustaceans-and-bond lectures.

“Remember, we all have to work together as a team if we're going to make it through another crazy summer. A lobster has eight legs and two claws, and needs every one of them to walk.” Trudy was constantly trying to integrate things about lobsters into her management technique. It was funny—when it wasn't extremely annoying. Because right now there were some legs on this team that I wouldn't mind losing. Legs with Birks attached to them. Why did he have to be in such good shape? I hated that about him. Running around the island, Little Mr. Triathlon.

It was appropriate that he was sitting on the freezer all the time. He could be so cold. All those times I called him, E-mailed him, told him that I wanted to visit. And he totally encouraged me, until push came to shove and it was time to set a date, and then he dropped me.

“Colleen?” Trudy asked.

“Oh. Yes?”

“Are you still with us?” Trudy waved her hand in front of my face.

For the moment,
I thought. If I could find another job on the island, then … no.

“Are you getting enough sleep?”

“Not last night,” Samantha commented.

“Oh, really.” Trudy frowned at me.

Evan was staring at me, and I felt this heat rising from my toes all the way up to my face, and I knew I was turning bright red. Almost cooked-lobster-like.

“Well, I was wondering: If you could be a sea creature, Colleen, what would you be?”

“Anything with a hard shell,” Evan said before I could think of anything, and everyone laughed. Me, with a hard shell? He was the one who'd retreated, not me. I was the one who'd gotten hurt.

“Soft-shell crab,” I said, staring right back at Evan, who had this idiotic grin on his face. “With a baked potato on the side.”

“Yeah, well, I think I'm more of a squid,” Evan said. “Squids are the smart ones, right?”

No, squids are the slippery, elusive ones. So yes, that fits you perfectly,
I thought.

“Now, one last announcement before we throw open the doors and meet our public,” Trudy said when she wrapped up the meeting about five minutes later. “Blair is still looking for a place to live this summer. For now she's camped out on our living room floor, but I'm sure she'd like something a little more permanent and private. If anyone knows of anything … please don't hesitate to speak up. All right, you guys. Let's have a great summer!”

Erica, Samantha, and I immediately headed off to a corner of the kitchen where we could talk privately.

“So what do you think?” Sam asked me. “Should we tell her we have space in the house? Would you be okay with that?”

“We don't really know her. I mean, we don't know her, period,” I pointed out. “We have no idea what she's like.”

“No, but she seems nice,” Erica said. “Doesn't she? And you have that empty bedroom that used to be for me, right?”

“Unless Ben sneaked in there when we weren't looking,” Sam joked.

“I don't know, Erica. My parents … they wanted to approve of everyone living there,” I said.

“So what's not to approve?” Sam asked. “She's employed. She must be okay or Trudy wouldn't have hired her. How about we invite her over and show her the rules? Ask if she wants to agree to the terms? If she does, great. If not, then no big deal—she can keep looking. But … you know how hard it is to find a place to stay here, Coll.”

“And she seems really nice,” Erica said again. “She even volunteered for the Monday and Tuesday lunches because no one else did, because everyone knows you don't make good money.”

“I wonder if her parents would let her live with three total strangers,” I said.

“We're not strangers, we're co-workers,” Sam said. “All you can do is ask.” As I said earlier, she has a way of cutting to the chase and making things seem simple—things that I could obsess and worry about.

I nodded. “Okay.” The three of us approached Blair, who was studying the back-of-the-house menu of abbreviations, no doubt trying to memorize some of Trudy's bizarre nicknames.

“Blair? How about living with us?” I asked. “We're all splitting a house, and we have an extra bedroom.”

“You're kidding. Really?” Blair asked.

“I was going to live there, but then my parents changed their minds and said I had to stay with my grandparents instead,” Erica said. “So yes, really. It's available.”

“There's no rent,” I said, “but you'd have to kick in some money for basic house expenses, split the groceries, all that. It's about a mile from here—” I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turned to see Evan standing at my elbow.

“What are you talking about—you're all living at your house?” Evan asked. “Where are your parents, Coll?”

“In Europe,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that (a) he had just called me “Coll,” (b) he still had his hand on my shoulder, and (c) it was making me feel very uncomfortable.

“You're kidding!” Evan said. “They left for the whole summer?”

“Practically, yeah,” I said. “They'll be back at the end of August.”

“Oh. That's too bad. I was looking forward to seeing them again,” Evan said.

Don't take that tone with me,
I thought. That I-know-your-family tone. So aggravating. “Yeah, well. Too bad.”

Actually, if my parents had known Evan was coming back, they probably wouldn't have left me here by myself. They thought he was “semi-dangerous.” At least that was how my dad put it when he was trying to console me during the days when I was trying to get over Evan and spent every spare moment moping around the house.

Maybe I should spare them the bad news and not tell them Evan was back for the summer, so they didn't spend time worrying on the Continent and ruin their trip. He wasn't that important.

Evan shrugged. “I guess there's a lot that's been going on that we don't know about each other.”

Um … yeah. For instance, I didn't know if he had a heart or whether he was running on battery power. How many Duracells would it take to make someone appear human?

Suddenly I realized that Sam, Blair, and Erica had drifted away, leaving me and Evan alone. “Um, yeah,” I said. “There probably is a lot we don't know. For instance, where are you going to college?”

“Actually, I'm going to B—”

“Not Bates,” I interrupted him. “You're not going to Bates. You can't.”

“I can't?” he asked.

“No—”

“Can I finish what I was going to say?” he asked.

“But Bates—that's not fair, because
I'm
going to Bates—”

“Oh, and you have to approve who can be there at the same time with you? You're on the admissions board?” Evan asked.

“No. I just thought … maybe we shouldn't be at the same college because maybe that would be weird. Right?”

“Maybe it would be. Yeah, it probably would be,” Evan said. “But you don't have to worry about that, because what I was trying to say was that I'm going to Boston University,” he said. “That's where I'm going. BU.”

“Oh.” I felt like a complete idiot. Why couldn't I just shut up now and then and wait for people to speak? Did I have to rush in and embarrass myself like that? “So, BU.” I smiled weakly. “That sounds great.”

“Yeah. What is that—a three-hour road trip from Bates?” he mused.

As if it mattered, I thought. As if I were going there, or he would come see me. “More like two and a half,” I said, and then I could have kicked myself. Why did I want it to sound shorter?

We exchanged awkward glances. The last time we discussed a road trip, it was me to Philadelphia. And as we both knew, that never happened, which was part of the reason I was standing there feeling like I wanted to shove him into the walk-in freezer and lock the door behind him.

Not that I would. But picturing icicles on his stupid stubbled face
really
made me smile.

Evan, not knowing what I was thinking, smiled back at me.

“It really is good to see you.”

Don't! Don't be nice like that,
I thought. “Yeah. You too,” I said.

And then the lunch shift began. It was completely busy, and I didn't get a chance to take a break until two thirty. Sam was finishing up with a large party, so I signaled to her that I was heading outside, and grabbed a bottle of chocolate milk from the fridge. Then I went outside to get some fresh air. The air doesn't circulate all that well at Bobb's—or at least not in the kitchen, with the giant steaming pots of hot water and soup simmering all day long.

I got a shock when I opened the back door. The wind had shifted direction so that it was now blowing off the water towards, well,
me
—and it was getting really cold. It felt good, though, and I knew I would cool down in about two minutes. Then I could go back inside, wipe down my section's tables, and wrap some silverware in napkins (Trudy called it “bundling”) before the end of my first shift of the day.

I cracked open the twist top on the chocolate milk and leaned back in the doorway, taking a few gulps. I was in mid swallow when Evan came up to me, carrying a bag of garbage for the Dumpster.

I was going to offer to move when he squeezed past me in the narrow doorway. And then he stopped and stood there for a second.

“So. Still got milk, huh?” he asked.

I just glared at him. He thought he was so funny. Him and his Ultimate Endurance, which somehow got activated to smell even better when he was standing that close to me. He wore it, he lived it … and I had to suffer because of it. I didn't have high endurance for this. I had low tolerance. And now he was cracking jokes about my beverage preference.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Evan smiled.

“You know why,” I said.

“Not really, no,” he said.

And there was this electric feeling in the air all of a sudden, as if a storm were about to hit. Suddenly it didn't feel chilly.

“That trash bag is touching my leg,” I said. “What else?” I wriggled out from the doorway and went back into the kitchen to safety. I wasn't ready to be alone with Evan like that. I didn't think I'd ever be ready for that again.

Chapter 7

“This is it? No way!” Blair said as we walked up to the house. The four of us were sneaking in a visit between shifts at the restaurant so we could show Blair the place. “How long have you lived here? You're so lucky!”

“Well, we moved here about ten years ago,” I said. “When my grandparents died, we moved into their old house. Well, first we moved back to help take care of my grandfather, and then we stayed here.”

“Your grandparents died?” Blair gave me a sympathetic look. “I'm sorry. They must have been pretty young.”

“Yeah, they were. In their sixties.” I still missed them, and I wished we could have all lived here together—if not in this house, then at least on the island. I had lots of great memories of the weeks we'd spent here together when I was little.

I'd inherited not only my grandmother's bike, but also a little of her artistic skill. She had done illustrations for a book about the island, and it had become so popular that she'd been asked to work on a few other books—one was all botanical illustrations, and another was about the ocean. She'd had a fatal stroke about ten years ago, and I'd always regretted that I hadn't gotten to know her better. After she passed away, my grandfather didn't do very well. He ended up with heart trouble, and he died about two years later.

“Wow. That's terrible,” Blair said when I told her the story. “Sorry if I brought up a painful subject.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I don't mind talking about it.”