19
REAL LIFE
Wednesday
“I THOUGHT YOU weren’t staying for the second movie,” I whisper to Cleo as we settle back into our seats. This time, Wyn and I are in the middle, and I can’t help but wonder if Sabrina nudged us into this position so we wouldn’t run out again.
Cleo shrugs. “This clearly means a lot to Sab. Plus, I don’t want her hanging it over me that I left early.”
“Pssst.” Kimmy leans forward around Cleo. She holds a plastic sandwich bag out to me.
I squint at the contents. “Are you trying to sell me drugs?”
“Of course not,” she says. “I’m trying to give you drugs.” She swings the little red gummy bears in front of Cleo’s face and tosses them into my lap.
“You are,” I say, “so discreet.”
“I don’t have to be discreet,” she says. “It’s legal here.”
Wyn leans in. “Is Kimmy selling drugs?”
“Want some?” she asks.
Sabrina shushes us, eyes glued to the screen as she shovels popcorn into her mouth.
Wyn looks at me, then back to Kimmy. “If Harriet’s in, I am.”
“How strong are they?” I whisper.
Kimmy shrugs. “Not too strong.”
“Not too strong for you or not too strong for me?” I say.
“Let’s put it this way,” she says. “You’ll have a great time, but you won’t make me call the hospital and ask them if you’re going to die. Again.”
What the hell. When in Rome.
Each of us takes one. We tap them together in a toast before throwing them back.
“Hey,” Sabrina says at full volume, “are you guys doing drugs down there?”
“We’re taking tiny weed gummies,” I say.
“Got any more?” Sabrina asks. “I haven’t gotten high in forever.”
Kimmy passes the bag down the line. Parth and Sabrina each take one. Cleo waves off the offer. “I don’t smoke anymore, really.”
“And I’m cutting back too,” Kimmy says. “So whatever we don’t finish this week, you all can fight over.”
“Okay, is it possible this is already making me hungry,” Sabrina asks.
“No,” Cleo, Wyn, and I all say in unison.
From the back of the theater, someone shushes us. We all duck down in our seats.
“Holy shit,” Kimmy hisses. “Did anyone know there was someone else back there?”
Parth sneaks a look over his shoulder. “I think he’s a ghost.”
“He’s not a ghost,” I whisper.
“How can you be sure?” Parth says.
“Because,” I say, “he’s wearing his sunglasses backward. That’s Ray. He’s a pilot.”
“Just because he’s a pilot doesn’t mean he’s not a ghost,” Kimmy says sagely.
* * *
? ? ?
THE GRAY-SHINGLED BUILDINGS on Commercial Street steadily drip, but the downpour has ended, and everyone is out for the first night of Lobster Fest. The concerts, contests, and parade of red-gowned former Lobster Ladies don’t start until Friday, but the food trucks and carnival games are open, their lights flashing not quite in time with the Billy Joel hit piping through the speakers. Kids in lobster and mermaid face paint dart through the crowd, couples in matching windbreakers dance in front of the wine-slushie stand, and glassy-eyed teenagers pass around suspicious water bottles.
“Do you smell that?” Sabrina literally skips ahead of us. “If there’s a heaven, this is what it smells like.”
Salt water and burnt sugar, garlic simmering in butter and clams frying in oil.
“I want a cup of extremely foamy beer,” she says dreamily.
“I want french fries covered in Old Bay,” Kimmy says.
Cleo’s nose wrinkles on a laugh. “I want a video camera so tomorrow you can see how high you all are.”
“I want to win at Whack-a-Lobster,” Parth says, peeling off toward the game’s flashing lights like a hypnotized magic show volunteer, and Wyn follows in a daze.
I hook an arm around Cleo’s shoulders. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t miss out on all this?”
“It wasn’t this I wanted to miss,” Cleo says. The others have moved on to a milk-bottle toss game. She jerks her head toward the lobster beanbags and the bottles painted to look like nervous lobstermen. “What do you think the narrative is here? The lobsters fighting back?”
“Let’s hope it’s not prophetic, or this town’s the first to go,” I say.
She turns back to me. “I guess I feel like . . . this week’s already half-over, and we’ve all barely gotten to catch up. And I know how important this is to her—to everyone. Doing all these things one last time, and I get that.
“But it’s also been a long time since we’ve been together, and today just felt like kind of a bummer. Sitting through hours of movies when we could be talking.”
I grab her hand. “I’m sorry. That makes complete sense.”
She glances back, to where Sabrina and Parth are taunting each other in front of the game, and smiles a little. “I just want this week to be perfect for them.”
“Me too.” I squeeze her hand. “But hey, the night is young and so are we. What do you want to do? I’ll go on any ride or play any game. I’ll even let you monologue about mushrooms.”
She laughs and tucks her head against my shoulder. “I just want to be here with you, Har.”
The weed must be hitting me hard, because I instantly tear up a little.
It’s that happy-sad feeling, that intense homesick ache. It makes me think of my semester abroad. Not the old cobbled streets or tiny pubs overstuffed with drunk university students, but Sabrina and Cleo FaceTiming me at midnight to sing me “Happy Birthday.” The feeling of being so grateful to have something worth missing.
We walk, we talk, we sweat and frizz and eat. Funnel cakes and lobster rolls, overstuffed whoopie pies and battered-and-fried fiddlehead ferns, caramel corn and salted popcorn.
“Does anyone else feel like time’s moving really fast?” I ask when I realize it’s full dark.
Cleo and Sabrina look at each other and burst into laughter.
“You’re so high,” Sabrina says.
“Says the woman who spent like nine minutes making us stand in one place while she googled whether corn is a nut or a vegetable,” I say.
“I wanted to know!” Sabrina cries, eyes shrunken.
“A nut, babe,” Cleo says. “You thought corn was a nut.”
“Well, they look like little nuts before you pop them,” Parth says, coming to Sabrina’s defense. Cleo is now laughing so hard she’s doubled over.
Wyn is wandering toward the Ferris wheel, saucer-eyed.
“Dude, Wyn’s about to be beamed up,” Kimmy says, and I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it makes me laugh anyway.
Wyn looks over his shoulder and says, “Look at it. It’s beautiful.” Sabrina stares at him for one second, then throws her head back and cackles.
But he—and his not-quite-tiny gummy—is right.
Everything looks soft around the edges, dreamy.