The Stepping Off Place Read online

  “Hattie?” Happy tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Dang it!” she yelled, and I knew we were somehow back in that day. “That one was perfect!”

  “All right,” I heard myself say, just like I did back then. I spoke without hesitation, like I was a puppet, some keeper of memories operated from behind a billowy white cloud. “I’ll go on the next one,” I called, fairly certain I was lying. I couldn’t unsee the image of the surf on rowdier days, exploding against these same rocks with volcanic force.

  “If you go when I say, you’ll be fine! The tide’s perfect!”

  She watched the incoming waves. To me, they all looked the same. Hattie saw jumpers and duds. My fears were like an alien language to her.

  “Okay!” She pointed. “This one!”

  “Which one?” I yelled, shifting my weight.

  “Ready?”

  One wave did seem larger than the others.

  “Set . . .”

  I bent my knees, turning off my brain.

  “GO!”

  I shut my eyes and launched. The drop felt forever. I screamed. I’m pretty sure I peed a little.

  Splash!

  I flailed against the water, bubbling and swirling around me. My body swished one way, then back. I kicked toward the sunlight, popped through the surface, and sucked in a breath.

  “Woo-hoo! You were awesome!” She beamed with happiness for me. Or maybe for her, having coerced me into doing something roughly fourteen miles outside my comfort zone.

  “That was terrifying,” I said breathlessly.

  “Let’s do it again,” she said, paddling for shore.

  I paddled behind her, privately so proud. She showed me how to feel that feeling, I thought. She makes me better.

  Yes, again, I thought. Again. But when I looked for her, I found I was a shell, cold and hollow, washed up on the hard bathroom floor.

  Then

  June 19

  Tap tap tap.

  I stirred in my sheets.

  Tap tap tap.

  My eyelids unpeeled from my eyes. Hattie and I routinely snuck in and out of my bedroom window via the bushy pear tree, so a looming figure separated by a flimsy screen didn’t alarm me.

  “Reid, wake up.”

  I glanced at my clock: 4:11. Then I remembered. Gib. Hattie. Losing it. Next, Hammy, more or less inviting me to be his partner in crime this summer. The enormity of everything brought me to full consciousness.

  I flipped the light to its low setting, unhinged the screen, and waited while Hattie rolled onto the bed next to me. While I reaffixed the screen, I wondered if I should tell her about the Summer of Reid and Hammy. It didn’t really fit into our code, and it might be an unfair outing of Hammy’s love for her. Anyway, per usual, her story was sure to be far more interesting. Also, per usual, my story was derivative; if it weren’t for Hattie, there would be no pact between the Sandwich and me.

  “Well?” I said.

  “What?” She plucked a twig from her hair, then broke into a big smile.

  “Uh, Gib Soule, that’s what! I cannot wait to hear this,” I said. “Hang on.”

  I stumbled to the bathroom. When I returned, she was in her sleeping bag on the floor, eyes shut.

  “Oh no you don’t. You don’t get to go all cat-swallowed-the-canary on this one, Hattie. Don’t even try to fake sleep.”

  She snored and we cracked up.

  “I’m serious.”

  She rose on one elbow. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Where did you go?” I crawled under my covers.

  “Siwanoy Beach. It was closed, but he knew a hole in the fence, so we got in and went to the pier.”

  I pictured them walking in the moonlight to the end of the long dock of the town beach.

  She didn’t say more, so I waved my hands. “And?”

  “We talked.”

  “About?”

  “I don’t know.” She rolled to face the ceiling. “He told me about a time he and Max snuck into Siwanoy. They thought they saw a dead body floating off the pier. Max barfed before they realized it was a huge jellyfish.”

  I grimaced. “I hope this gets better.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Bull,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I dared him to jump off the pier. He said only if I did. So, we jumped.”

  I squinted at her, noticing for the first time that her hair looked damp and she’d put it in a ponytail. “What were you wearing?”

  She stayed quiet.

  I sat up. “Hold the phone, you skinny-dipped? With Gibson Soule?”

  She chuckled.

  “Oh my God.” I shook my head.

  “Don’t be such a prude. It was dark, mostly, and who cares? You’re forgetting my endgame.”

  “You,” I said, “are unbelievable. Keep going. So you’re swimming, nekid, with Gib Soule, also nekid, off the dock at Siwanoy, and . . .”

  “Seriously?”

  “Oh yes, seriously. I wish I had popcorn.”

  “We raced to the beach.”

  “And . . .”

  “I won.”

  “Of course you won. Duh. That’s not the part I need clarified. Unless . . . he didn’t get freaked out by your girl power, did he? That would ruin everything.”

  “No. He laughed it off. But we realized our clothes were still on the dock, and I made him get them since he lost.”

  “Sweet Jesus, you saw him running, nude, in the moonlight across the sand, like some kind of Greek Olympian?”

  She tapped her temple with a forefinger. “Always thinkin’.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to amp up my processing speed. Already she had the story of a lifetime and we hadn’t even gotten to holding hands. I steadied my breath. “Keep going.”

  “Can we get some food? I’m starving.”

  “Don’t make me kill you. He came back with the clothes, right?”

  “Yeah. A few cookies, maybe?”

  “Come on!”

  “Reid, get me some food or I stop talking.”

  “You’re infuriating,” I said, heaving my sheets aside. I crept down the back stairs and returned a few moments later with Mint Milanos and a glass of milk. “Now bring it.”

  “Ahh. Thank you.” She dipped a cookie into the milk, pausing for proper absorption time.

  I growled.

  “So, Gib comes back with our clothes and we”—she took a bite and looked at the ceiling contemplatively—“don’t put them back on.”

  “That’s it? You didn’t—” I don’t know what I thought they should have done. “You just went at it? On the sand?”

  “Okay, we had towels from his car and you’re creeping me out now.” She ate another cookie.

  “Sorry.” I rolled onto my back. “On the beach.” I blinked. “Like a movie.” Infinitely more romantic than on a golf course surrounded by duck shit. Still, I had a not-unpleasant flash of the kissing that happened on the well-manicured turf. If only Captain Dickhead wasn’t such a . . . dickhead. I shook my story out of my head. Hattie had Gib to flash to for the rest of her life. “Wow.”

  She gulped her milk and set it on the bedside table, then curled up like a caterpillar in her sleeping bag. “’Night.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Reid.”

  “Okay. Fine.” I flipped off the light. Her breathing lolled into the unmistakable pattern of sleep.

  “You are so . . .” I almost said lucky, but caught myself. Luck had nothing to do with it. Not a single thing. It was her. Hattie’s energy luminesced around her, but you couldn’t see it. You felt it. From the moment I met her, in our first middle school PE class, I recognized it without even realizing it. Something deep in my twelve-year-old bones knew being Hattie Darrow’s friend would make me better.

  The day we met went like this: I emerged from the locker room with the rest of the girls in a parade of powder-blue gym suits, sneakers squeaking. The smell of floor wax in the school gymnas
ium almost overwhelmed the stench of sweat and sixth-grade nerves. Almost. Our gym suits were one piece with stretchy necks you stepped through, designed to look like a striped tee and shorts. For rounder people, it looked like a Humpty Dumpty costume. Coach Collins, a towering and frightening woman, directed us to the bleachers.

  Meanwhile Coach Jenkins, a short, barrel-chested guy with hair like a black football helmet, filed the boys to the opposite end of the gym with a couple of curt, echoey commands. People said he and Collins were a couple, but it looked like she could take him out. In any case, the two of them made quick work of unfolding a partition wall, splitting the gym in half.

  “Thank God the boys are separate from us.” Emma Rose perched next to me on the middle bleacher bench, a gaggle filling in around her. “Can you believe these uniforms? Heinous.” She loved this word, heinous, and when I tried it out at home, Dad said, “That’s a word you use to describe war crimes, not spinach on your pizza.” This allowed me to feel slightly more worldly in the current context, but of course I’d never say anything. It was more salient at the moment that Emma Rose’s comment insulted half the girls in the class, since Emma Rose alone rocked the gym suit. I was still shaped like a skinny third grader.

  “Be glad you don’t have boobs yet, Reid,” Emma Rose continued. “The horizontal stripes make mine look huge.”

  I smiled awkwardly, trying to feel good that Emma Rose had anointed me her sidekick. In gym, anyway. Because really, in elementary school, I was a kid people didn’t tend to notice. In life, come to think of it. I’d made an art form of going unnoticed in public settings with Spencer. He rarely failed to raise eyebrows or cause eyes to flicker away awkwardly, and he’d embarrassed me during so many playdates, I’d stopped inviting friends over in fourth grade. Meanwhile, Scott managed to steal the spotlight effortlessly by way of his athletic prowess and social ease. My dad seemed almost starstruck by Scott, and my mom would flat-out say things like, “Reid, can I count on you to help with Spencer while I __________?” I wasn’t the type to answer, “No.” So, even if I didn’t like Emma Rose that much, being noticed by her felt pretty good.

  Coach Collins positioned two Little Tikes basketball hoops on the floor and hauled a dumpster-sized cart full of scooter boards in front of us. She pulled a pink rubber ball covered with nubs from a barrel in the corner. Spencer had one of these—they were extra easy to catch. “What game is this?” asked Sabrina Bradley.

  “Nippleball?” someone said. The class burst into laughter.

  A person I didn’t recognize a couple rows back said it. She had blond curly hair and was little, like me, but her skin was suntanned instead of pale and freckled. She looked directly forward, a smile playing at her lips.

  Collins, expression unreadable, stood in a half straddle and dribbled the ball three times. If there’s such a thing as aggressive dribbling, she was doing it. We shut up.

  “Okay, ladies, listen up! We’re starting off the year with a game of scooter basketball. First, let’s get to know each other. I’m Coach Collins. Say your name when I pass you the ball, then pass it back to me.”

  So it went, and when we got to the lone, funny girl, I learned her name was Hattie Darrow. We ended up on the same team. Emma Rose, too.

  Collins demonstrated how you sit on the scooter and use hands or feet to motor yourself around, then explained the rules of passing.

  “I am not playing basketball on this thing,” Emma Rose said, shoving her scooter away with her foot. “We look like idiots.” She glanced toward the open door. The boys were playing dodgeball. Gib Soule, sixth-grade hottie, dashed past. Emma Rose spun a lock of hair around her finger.

  Hattie propelled herself backward on her scooter. “Look, I’m a squid!” she called. She and I raced across the gym, cracking up, and practiced passing with our teammates. Scooter basketball was freaking fun.

  Emma Rose mostly rolled in small circles in a corner with her underlings, hidden from the view of any curious boys. Named Gib. Who as far as I could tell hadn’t even noticed our class existed. I probably could have motored over to Emma Rose and scooted my way right into becoming her full-time sidekick. But I didn’t.

  And I am awash in gratitude every day for my incredible judgment, even though I had no idea how brilliant it was at the time.

  Hattie snored softly on the floor, bringing me back to the present. I stared at the moonlight coming through my white curtains. Damn, I wished we could be together all summer this year. Our future seemed bright and I didn’t want to wait until September for it to begin. Closing my eyes, I thought of Hammy by the tree.

  It’s the Summer of Sam and Reid, he’d said. The idea made me anxious and happy at the same time. Maybe he would follow through. Maybe not. If he did, would I even be able to survive a social life without Hattie to lean on? Try, a voice somewhere within me said. Just try. It was probably the same daring little voice that told me to play scooter basketball.

  I took a shaky breath, nodding to the darkness, and let myself fall asleep.

  When I woke, Hattie’s sleeping bag was empty.

  Hattie often got up to make everyone breakfast. My family loved it. I found her standing at the stove, freshly showered.

  “I didn’t hear you get up,” I said.

  “I’m stealthy.” She nudged a couple of sausages with a spatula. “I wanted to make a farewell breakfast for everyone.”

  “Hmm. Perky for someone out so late. But I’d have a skip in my step too, if I were you,” I said, leaning against the doorway.

  “And you could be skipping.” She pointed the spatula at me. “You definitely could.”

  “Ha,” I said. “Not Gib-Soule-nekid-in-the-moonlight skipping.”

  “How would you know if you haven’t tried?” She flipped a pancake.

  Her faith in me was both ridiculous and heartening. “And now you’ll disappear to The Thimble like nothing happened?”

  “That’s the plan,” she said.

  “Man.” I shook my head and stole a sausage from a plate near her elbow. “No regrets?”

  “Nope,” she said, adding a pancake to the stack on another plate.

  “No guilt?”

  She laughed. “What, like Hester Prynne? Would you ask a guy that question?”

  “Good point.”

  “It’s not a big deal, Reid. I told you. I wanted to get it over with and now it is.” She held my gaze for a second. I thought her eyes hardened, but she smiled, so I must’ve been mistaken. “Now it’s your turn.”

  My neck prickled and I spun to gather utensils from the silverware drawer, allowing the clatter to fill the space between us. I piled forks and knives on the table. “Don’t you feel the slightest bit curious about where it could go?”

  “Where what could go?” She ladled batter onto the griddle.

  “You and Gib.”

  “Nah.” She pushed a sausage link with the spatula. “It wasn’t like that. Besides, Reid, the whole boyfriend thing is overrated. Too many demands.”

  I waited for her to flash me a grin, show me a sign that even the mighty Harriet Darrow could fall for Gibson Soule. Nothing. I clucked my tongue. “I’d say, ‘Demand on, Gib.’ You, Hattie, are made of some kind of crazy shit.”

  Her eyes were definitely hard.

  “What?” I asked uneasily.

  She stared over my shoulder, somewhere else momentarily, then blinked when Spencer, wearing underwear only, buzzed in carrying his Clifford the Dog stuffy in one hand and a red sock in the other. “Cazy shit!”

  “Spencer,” Hattie laugh-said. “Your sister is a bad influence.”

  “Oh, good one, Man-Eater,” I said.

  “Cazy shit,” Spencer repeated, rolling on tiptoes.

  “Spencer, don’t say that to your speech therapist, okay?” I chuckled.

  Hattie inspected him, her face brightening. She opened the cabinet and pulled out a set of red plastic measuring cups on a ring. “Hey, Spence. I have something for you.”

  Spencer
stared, captivated, then took them from her outstretched hand. He bounced to the family room.

  “What’s that about?” I asked.

  “He’s on a red kick. You can’t tell? Clifford, the red sock, and the red plaid boxers,” she said.

  Spencer went through spells of gathering objects that matched—the round kick, the vehicles-with-wheels kick—like a crow collecting shiny things. The objects’ attribute changed every few months.

  “He is pretty cute, isn’t he?” This was a continuation of a conversation that stretched years. Seeing Spencer through Hattie’s eyes helped me feel proud instead of embarrassed. The way she was curious about what made Spencer tick, and loved trying to teach him something new, and laughed when he was weird. “He’s the best,” she said, on her way to the bottom of the front hall stairs. “Mr. and Mrs. MacGregory! Scott? Breakfast is ready!”

  “I’m pretty sure they love you more than me,” I joked.

  She laughed. “Right. That’s how my family is about you. We should swap.”

  “It would make a good movie,” I said, pouring orange juice into glasses. “Like Freaky Friday.” But I knew her family didn’t love me the way mine loved her. We both did.

  She got Spencer to help set the table. He’s really good at things with repetitive steps. “Fork, moon, knife, spoon,” she said, laying the silver and plates in order.

  Spencer said, “Fowk, mooon, knife, spooon.”

  My dad appeared in his robe and pajamas. “Hey, good job setting the table, Spence,” he said, patting his shoulder. Spencer made a happy sound. “Mmmm, smells delicious, girls.”

  I pointed both barrels at Hattie. “All her, not me.”

  Mom, fully dressed for the day, joined us, then Scott. He looked like he’d been caught in a buffalo stampede—hair in six directions, eyes bleary.

  “I thought I’d make you breakfast one last time before I leave for the summer,” Hattie said.

  “Excellent plan,” Dad said.

  “Definitely an excellent plan,” Scott said.

  “Exceyent,” said Spencer. Hattie high-fived him.