We go back out so Nell can keep looking. The associate working the bridal section is talking with the only other customer in the place, a petite brunette in her twenties. Her hair is long, grown almost down to her butt, and she talks with her hands, stroking the fabric of the lilac bridesmaid gown she’s holding. “—think they’ll love it. Sunday works for everybody, so we’ll come up and do the fittings and everything then. . . . Oh, shoes, shoes, I meant to ask you about—”
I notice that Nell’s standing very still. All the joy and energy have drained from her face. She watches the girl flutter her hands, resting on the satin of the dress and then lifting off again like butterflies. This bride’s a stranger, but as I listen to her talk about her wedding plans, it hits home. Oh God. I know who this is without ever having met her, because of the look on Nell’s face.
I press my hand against Nell’s back, ushering her toward the counter so I can pay and get us the hell out of here.
“Nell? Don’t you want to try on some more?” Mags stops her.
“They want to close,” I say.
“But we might not get back up here again before the Festival.”
Nell drags her gaze away from the bride and looks at us. “It’s okay. It’s not here.”
“What isn’t?” Mags says.
“The one. The dress I’m going to wear.” Nell shakes her head. “I’ll look somewhere else.”
The lady at the counter boxes up my dress quickly, seeming glad to be rid of it and us. We almost make it—we’re actually turning toward the exit—when the bride says, “Nell?”
My stomach is an elevator with a cut cable, dropping thirty stories. She’s coming over and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nell waits, and I can’t read a thing in her face but sadness, like she’s remembering something she once watched drift away from her, bobbing and listing until it finally disappeared under the surface.
The bride’s smiling, getting these cute creases at the corners of her eyes. She’s firm and tan, wearing a T-shirt from the Blue Hill Co-op and cargo shorts, so I guess she’s kind of a crunchy granola type. “Do you remember me?” Hand to her heart. “Elise Grindle. Brad’s fiancée? We met at school a couple times.”
What’s she think, Nell’s some feeb who can’t remember anything just because she takes special classes? But that’s not what she meant, and I know it; it’s my hate leaking out all over her, this nice girl who has no idea what she’s putting us through right now. “How are you?” Nell says in a colorless voice.
“Great. Man, what a summer, huh?” Elise jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “I just picked out my bridesmaids’ dresses. Took forever to decide.” She laughs, then looks at us. “Are these your sisters?”
“Cousins.” Mags shakes her hand. “Margaret. That’s Darcy.”
I don’t want to touch Elise’s hand, but I have to. It’s soft and warm and it’s all I can do to keep from wiping my palm off on my shorts.
“So you’re going to be a senior this year, right?” Elise keeps smiling, trying to draw Nell out. “Nice. Brad really misses teaching at SAHS, you know. He’s always saying that your class was the best he ever had.”
“Oh, really?” Nell looks at a spot somewhere over her head.
“Are you here getting a dress for the pageant? Brad mentioned you were nominated as a Princess. Good for you.”
Something the size of a fist lodges in my throat. He mentioned. Just casually mentioned across the breakfast table: Oh, honey, remember Nell Michaud? Isn’t this nice, says here she’s a Bay Festival Princess this year. That’ll really boost her self-confidence. She always struggled. I step back, crushing my dress box under my arm. “We have to go.”
If Mom was here, she’d cuff me in the back of the head, but Elise rolls with my rudeness pretty well, stepping back and smiling again. “Oh, okay. Nice to see you again, Nell. I’ll tell Brad you said hi.”
Even though she didn’t. None of us did. But Elise soon-to-be Ellis is too caught up in her dream wedding to see two inches in front of her own nose, and I hate her for being happy and blind. And the worst thing, what I can’t get over as she walks back to the bridal section with her long, wavy brown hair hanging down her back, is how much she reminds me of Nell.
We all get into Mags’s car, and she takes the interstate ramp, I-95 South. I feel shaky and sick, like we’ve survived a disaster, a hurricane tearing through. Nell sits, looking down at her hands, not talking. Finally, Mags says quietly, “What just happened in there?” She waits. We all sit and wait, listening to the sound of the wheels beneath us, and we don’t talk.
SIXTEEN
MAGS WATCHES ME at breakfast. I say, “What?” hoping if I sound pissy enough, she’ll stop. She wants answers. I’m not giving any.
I wonder if all the lying I’ve done for Nell has changed my looks somehow, made me older, harder. I definitely don’t feel the same as I did sophomore year, before everything happened. I remember hearing a song once that said something like, I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. Wish to God it worked that way, for Nell and me both.
“Is Nell okay?” Mags stares me down.
Mom’s upstairs getting ready for work, and I want to kill this before she comes down. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Are you sure? Seems like something’s off.”
“She’s fine. When is she ever not fine?” Because I make sure of it. Mags thinks she takes care of everything, but really, it’s me. See how good a job I’m doing?
I got a look under Nell’s surface last night, and what I saw made me heartsick. I really thought she’d get over it. I figured she just needed some time, a new school year, to take her mind off everything. I should’ve known Nell would be different. She feels things too hard.
The day is whisper-still and dripping with humidity. Thunderstorm weather. We need a big one to roll in and break it wide open. Since I can’t put my anger away—Elise tore the lid off yesterday—I use it as fuel to rake against Shea. He doesn’t have as many followers today, probably because some of them decided it’s no contest.
“Are you even on the board anymore?” Shea calls over at one point while we’re both topping off boxes and stacking new ones.
“Guess you don’t know how to read.”
“It’s tough when the writing’s waaay down at the bottom.”
“Fun-ny. I haven’t had so many laughs since the Fourth.”
The other guys in earshot go “Ohhh.” That one hit home, but I won’t check to see how he took it, won’t waste the seconds. “You loved it,” he calls back.
“Oh, yeah. All three inches of it.”
The guys bust up laughing, can’t believe I said it. I grab my rake and walk back down the row. Not my fault if he doesn’t know better than to mess with me today. I hear him slam a box down, then another, hard enough to crack the plastic.
Thunder rumbles around four thirty. Storms love the Penobscot, come booming across the river with enough power to rattle our windows. We’re packing up our gear when the first crooked finger of lightning touches down over the water. Duke and Mr. Wardwell get the last load secured to the truck while Mrs. Wardwell crabs at them to hurry as she folds her chair and magazines.
Nell reaches us, the wind whipping her hair free of her handkerchief. Thunder booms overhead, followed by a flash up on the hill that makes everybody flinch.