"Argh, join the summer fair, really?" I mumbled, mortified at how much I must have embarrassed myself. It didn't help what little pride I had left that I could hear Sammy's laughter — that hyena-like laugh he gave, especially whenever I had just embarrassed myself, all snorts and cackles, like he'd been saving it up for the precise moment.
"Oh, shut it," I more like coughed out, because I could still feel the heat on my face.
"Real smooth. Hey, do you want to join the summer fair?" he teased. It was days like this, when he was hunched over at my expense, that I questioned our friendship.
"I haven't laughed like this in a while," he wheezed out as he straightened himself.
"If you're done, we should get going now," I stated, leaving him behind to catch up. The walk to the counter felt longer than usual. Was Agatha's store even this big? I couldn't help but do a quick sweep of the room when I got to the front — it was stupid, I know, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed she wasn't there. Sammy must have noticed, because he gave off a devious smile before patting me on the shoulder.
"Don't worry, you'll get her next time, tiger," he said, winking at me.
"Get who next time?" Agatha asked, popping out from behind the counter. She had that look in her eyes I recognized as trouble.
"Are you talking about Gwendolyn, Miss Ari's niece?" she pressed for more information. But for once I was thankful for her being nosy, because now I knew her name — but the thing about small towns is the gossip vine, and no offence, but Agatha has been the source of much of the information. If I gave her something, by the time I got to my car, everyone would know about my encounter with Gwendolyn.
"No, we aren't," I replied, casting a look at Sammy, and to his credit, he didn't say anything. So we ran our errand and left the store. Thankfully — for whatever reason Sammy was quiet. That's never usually a good thing, but I could think about that later. Now I was thinking of Gwendolyn. I had never known a Gwendolyn everyone I'd ever known was either a Tom, an Amy, a Molly names that fit easy on the mouth. Hers doesn't. It takes up space, just like her, even in Agatha's dark store, standing there. She stood out.
Gwendolyn.
It suits her.
I should've realized Sammy being quiet wasn't good especially for me because the minute he turned off the car, he rushed inside, forgetting to help me get anything out of the trunk. That should have alerted me to his antics.
"Dude," I called out, bending over to catch my breath after wrestling just one of the wooden steamer trunks onto my shoulder. The thing looked harmless enough old, faded, brass corners gone dull —but it had to weigh close to what I did. Aunt Nora and Aunt Trish had ordered two of them from Agatha's antique shop , and Sammy was supposed to help me haul them in before I returned the favor for his mom's.
"I am not helping you move the other one," I yelled toward the front door, arms shaking, already regretting every choice that had led me to this driveway.
No response.
That should've been my first clue. I did what any reasonable person would do i dropped the trunk a little harder than I meant to and stormed inside only to find Sammy mid-performance, giving Aunt Nora and Aunt Trish a full narration of my fumble outside Agatha's, complete with sound effects. I lunged, tackled him off the couch, and we ended up rolling around on the rug like we were twelve again.
"That's enough roughhousing, boys," Aunt Trish called out in what I call her mayoral voice. She flicked Sam when he dumped himself back into the seat beside her, then turned to look at me, unbothered by the fact that I was still catching my breath from the trunk and tackling sam.
"She's really pretty just like her aunt," Sam said. I rolled my eyes, because it's an open secret that Sammy had a huge crush on Miss Ariana Lancaster back when she was our guidance counsellor in high school.
"Ohh, then she must be really beautiful, then," Aunt Nora added, mischief evident in her tone.
"I'm going to move the other trunk," I said. I know when I'm losing a battle, and this was one of them. Sam joined me a few minutes later no apology, just a grin —and together we hauled the trunk in and spent a few minutes angling it just right for Aunt Nora, the way I already knew I'd end up doing for Aunt Trish's, too.
I came to live with Aunt Nora after my parents died in a car crash that left me the only survivor. She'd been a surprise baby, fourteen years younger than her brother, Uncle Joe, and she'd had me early. After the crash, I came here, and she and Uncle Ben took me in and raised me as their own. I made friends. Sammy became my best friend.
"You boys are back early," Aunt Trish said, just as Uncle Ben and Uncle Joe walked in, draped in fishing gear and smelling like the lake.
"Good day today?" Aunt Nora asked, kissing Uncle joe hello.
"Yeah, it was," he said.
"We caught a big one," Uncle Ben added.
"Guess we're having fish for dinner," Aunt Trish said, and we all carried the coolers into the kitchen. It was the kind of open, oversized kitchen built for exactly this everyone underfoot, everyone with a job, nobody actually in charge.
"How was everybody's day?" Uncle Joe asked. I caught Sam's eye and knew he was about to start in again, but it was Aunt Nora who beat him to it.
"Riv has a crush."
That bought them a solid twenty minutes of material at my expense, before the conversation finally drifted to the fishing season, to the tourists starting to trickle in for summer, and then, quieter, to the thing everyone in town had apparently been talking about all week: a hiker who'd gone missing off the north trail. His friend was telling anyone who'd listen that something had taken him not wandered off, not fallen, taken. Nobody in the kitchen laughed at that part. Uncle Joe just shook his head and said the search team was still out there. I sat with that for a second, the fish and the trunks and Gwendolyn all forgotten. I'd never known anyone to just disappear from a place like this before.