“Don’t you only have a learner’s permit?” she asked, as Mosey and Lila squeezed in on the round benches.
“My parents don’t care, if I’m just coming down to Little Spindle. And it means they don’t have to drive me. Where have you been, anyway?” Mosey glanced pointedly at Eli.
“Nowhere. Youvenirs. The usual.”
Eli said nothing, just carefully parceled out ketchup into a lopsided steeple by his fries.
They ate. They talked about taking the train into the city to see a concert.
“How come your family doesn’t stay at Greater Spindle?” Mosey asked.
Eli cocked his head to one side, giving the question his full consideration. “We’ve just always come here. I think they like the quiet.”
“I like it, too,” said Lila. “Not the lake so much, but it’s nice in the summer, when Greater Spindle gets so crazy.”
Mosey popped a fry in her mouth. “The lake is haunted.”
“By what?” asked Eli, leaning forward.
“Some lady drowned her kids there.”
Lila rolled her eyes. “That’s a complete lie.”
“La Llorona,” said Eli. “The weeping woman. There’s legends like that all over the place.”
Great, thought Gracie. We can all start hunting ghosts together.
She tried to ignore the squirmy feeling in her gut. She’d told herself that she hadn’t wanted to introduce Eli to Mosey and Lila because he was so odd, but now she wasn’t sure. She loved Mosey and Lila, but she always felt a little alone around them, even when they were sitting together at a bonfire or huddled in the back row of the Spotlight watching a matinee. She didn’t want to feel that way around Eli.
When Mosey and Lila headed back to Greater Spindle, Eli gathered up their plastic baskets on a tray and said, “That was fun.”
“Yeah,” Gracie agreed, a bit too enthusiastically.
“Let’s take bikes to Robin Ridge tomorrow.”
“Everyone?”
The furrow between Eli’s brows appeared. “Well, yeah,” he said. “You and me.”
Everyone.
TEETH
Gracie couldn’t pinpoint the moment Eli dried out, only the moment she noticed. They were lying on the floor of Mosey’s bedroom, rain lashing at the windows.
She’d gotten her driver’s license that summer, and her mom’s boyfriend didn’t mind loaning Gracie his truck once in a while so she could drive up to Greater Spindle. Gas money was harder to come by. There were better jobs in Greater Spindle, but none that were guaranteed to correspond with Gracie’s mother’s shifts, so Gracie was still working at Youvenirs, since she could get there on her bike.
It felt like Little Spindle was closing in on her, like she was standing on a shore that got narrower and narrower as the tide came in. People were talking about SATs and college applications and summer internships. Everything seemed to be speeding up, and everyone seemed to be gathering momentum, ready to go shooting off into the future on carefully plotted trajectories, while Gracie was still struggling to get her bearings.
When Gracie started to get that panicked feeling, she’d find Eli at the Dairy Queen or the library, and they’d go down to the “Hall of Records” and line up all of the Bowie albums, so they could look at his fragile, mysterious face, or they’d listen to Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas while they tried to decipher all the clues on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s. She didn’t know what she was going to do when the school year started.
They’d driven up to Greater Spindle in Eric’s truck without much of a plan, radio up, windows down to save gas on air-conditioning, sweating against the plastic seats, but when the storm had rolled in they’d holed up at Mosey’s to watch movies.
Lila and Mosey were up on the bed painting their toes and picking songs to play for each other, and Gracie was sprawled out on the carpet with Eli, listening to him read from some boring book about waterways. Gracie wasn’t paying much attention. She was on her stomach, head on her arms, listening to the rain on the roof and the murmur of Eli’s voice, and feeling okay for the first time in a while, as if someone had taken the hot knot of tension she always seemed to be carrying beneath her ribs and dunked it in cool water.
The thunder had been a near continuous rumble, and the air felt thick and electrical outside. Inside, the air-conditioning had raised goose bumps on Gracie’s arms, but she was too lazy to get up to turn it down, or to ask for a sweater.
“Gracie,” Eli said, nudging her shoulder with his bare foot.
“Mmm?”
“Gracie.” She heard him move around, and when he spoke again, he had his head near hers and was whispering. “That cove you like doesn’t have a name.”
“So?”
“All the little beaches and inlets have names, but not your cove.”
“So let’s name it,” she mumbled.
“Stone … Crescent?”
She flopped on her back and looked up at the smattering of yellow stars stuck to Mosey’s ceiling. “That’s awful. It sounds like a housing development or a breakfast roll. How about Gracie’s Archipelago?”
“It’s not an archipelago.”
“Then something good. Something about Idgy Pidgy. Dragon Scale Cove, or the Serpentine.”
“It’s not shaped like a serpent.”
“Beast Mouth Cove,” she said.
“Beast Mouth? Are you trying to keep people away?”
“Of course. Always. Silverback Beach.”
“Silverbacks are gorillas.”
“Silver Scales … Something that starts with an s.”
“Shoal,” he said.
“Perfect.”
“But it’s not a shoal.”
“We can call it Eli’s Last Stand when I drown you there. You’re making this impossible.” She flipped back on her stomach and looked up at him. He was propped on his elbows, the book open before him. She’d had another suggestion on her lips, but it vanished like a fish slipping free of the line.
Mosey and Lila were talking in low murmurs, tinny music coming out of Lila’s phone. Eli’s T-shirt was stretched taut across his shoulders, and the light from the lamp by Mosey’s bed had caught around his hair in a halo. She could smell the storm on him, like the lightning had followed him home, like he was made of the same dense rain clouds. His skin didn’t look damp. It seemed to gleam. He had one finger on the page, holding his place, and Gracie had the urge to slide her fingers over his knuckles, his wrist, the fine blond hair on his forearm. She reared back slightly, trying to shake the thought from her head.
Eli was looking at her expectantly.
“The name should be accurate,” he said, his face serious and determined as always. It was a lovely face, all of that thoughtfulness pushing his jaw forward, making that stern divot between his brows.
Gracie said the first thing that came into her head. “Let’s call the cove Chuck.”
“Because…?”
“Because you throw things into it.” Was she making any sense at all?
He nodded, considering, then broke into a ridiculous, light-filled, hideously beautiful smile. “Perfect.”
The ride home was like a kind of punishment—cool air rushing through the windows, the radio turned down low, this strange, unwanted feeling beating a new rhythm in her chest. The dark road spooled out in front of them. She wished she were home. She wished they would never stop driving.
* * *
Eli’s transformation was a betrayal, a bait and switch. Eli Cuddy was supposed to be safe, and now he felt dangerous. She cast around for someone else to want. She’d had a crush on Mason Lee in the ninth grade, and she made Lila take her up to Okhena Beach, where he was lifeguarding, in the hope that seeing him might jolt some sense into her. Unfortunately, the only amazing thing about Mason was the way he looked with his shirt off. He was like a golden retriever. She understood the appeal, but that didn’t mean she wanted to take him home.