Page 99 of Songs of Summer
Jake whipped out his cell and dialed a crew member. When the call was answered, he commanded, “Hold the boat!”
Two seconds later, he held the phone out to his side and addressed the three anxious faces in front of him.
“It already left.”
“No!” Dylan and Renee shouted.
“Oh well, you tried,” Matt conceded—clearly relieved.
Jake put his phone back to his mouth.
“Turn the boat around!” he ordered. “Of course I’m serious. Have you ever heard me make a joke?”
He put his phone aside again, this time with a big smile.
“It’s done. Go get her.”
Dylan licked her fingers, wiped down Matt’s cowlick, and took her gum out of her mouth.
“Here,” she said, popping it in his mouth, “it still has lots of flavor in it.”
Aside from the chewing, he froze.
“I don’t know what to say to her,” he bemoaned.
“Just say anything,” Dylan advised.
Matt’s face lit up at her suggestion. He grabbed his old boom box from on top of his desk and bolted, stopping only to warn the three of them:
“Don’t follow me.”
Obviously, they didn’t listen.
Track 50
In Your Eyes
Maggie
Maggie sat onthe ferry, staring off at the bay. She had spent the morning imagining what she would say to Matt—and what he would say to her. A scenario where he didn’t show up at all was not among the choices she had envisioned. She composed a text but didn’t bother sending it. It had been a late night, to say the least. Maybe he had overslept. She went with that.
Maggie’s feelings about the last five days hadn’t even begun to catch up to her. Even with the crazy winding road she had taken to get there, she knew that her life would forever be divided in two, like a line in the sand—before Fire Island, and after.
She was happy to be leaving, though. The island had a way of swallowing you up and making you forget that anything existed outside of it. She wanted to go home, plant her feet firmly on the ground of her landlocked town, and unpack all that had happened.
But as the boat pulled away, quite unceremoniously, she feltan aching pain deep in her soul, as if she had left something behind. She twisted her mood ring on her finger. It was black.
“I’m sorry he didn’t show,” Jason said consolingly.
“It’s fine. It’s better for me not to go from one lifeboat to the next. You know, stand on my own two feet for a bit.”
“You stand on your own two feet all the time.”
“Yes, but you are always there to catch me when I fall.”
“That will never change, Maggie. I’ll always be here for you.”
“Me too,” she said, squeezing his knee for reassurance.
