From: GDL824@yahoo.com

Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 4:24 PM

To: EONeill22@hotmail.com

Subject: birds of a feather

I couldn’t find the rock you were talking about, but I think I’m at the right place. It’s pretty much just me and the seagulls, so I should be easy to spot…

(I’m the one without feathers.)

Graham was a million miles away when she finally arrived at the beach. He’d been trying to run through his lines for tomorrow’s scene, an impassioned monologue his character makes after leaving his father’s funeral and heading out to the very place where he’d died, an old lobster boat called the Go Fish. But the words were proving slippery today, whipped away by the wind coming in off the ocean.

He was picking through the smooth stones that blanketed the beach—so different from the pale sands of California—when he heard the sound of her footsteps behind him. He pulled in a breath before turning around.

“Hey,” he said, glancing up at her and then away again. For some reason, he was having trouble looking at her directly, though it was all he wanted to do at the moment. Everything around them was gray—the trees, the rocks, the sky, even the slate-colored water—and in the midst of it all, there was Ellie, with her red hair and white T-shirt, her jean skirt and rubber flip-flops. It should have been the most ordinary thing in the world—this girl on the beach—but somehow, it felt to Graham like he was staring at the sun.

“Find any treasures?” she asked, nodding at the rock in his hand, and when he held it in his palm to take another look, he realized that he actually had. It was, to his surprise, shaped like a heart. His cheeks went warm, and he slipped it into his pocket with a little shake of his head. If he showed it to her now, she’d think he was some kind of sap. She’d think he was no different from the characters he played in his movies.

“Want to walk?” he asked, his voice unintentionally gruff.

She nodded, and they set off together down the beach, their feet slipping on the rocks. Neither said anything for a while, but the silence was comfortable, and the sound of the waves provided all the soundtrack they needed. Ellie was half a step ahead of him, and he wondered where she was leading them. The stones were loose and uneven, and Graham found himself stumbling every so often. As he lurched forward once again, he saw a hint of a smile on Ellie’s face.

“This is crazy,” he said. “How can you call this a beach?”

“I guess we’re just tougher out here,” she said with a grin.

“Are you saying Californians are wimps?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just saying you’re a wimp.”

Graham laughed. “Fair enough,” he said. “But when do we get to solid ground?”

Ellie pointed, and up ahead he could see the thin ribbon of a trail leading up a small embankment on the opposite side of the beach. They followed it into the woods, ducking beneath the low canopy of leaves, and within minutes, they were spit out onto a quiet road.

“Are you planning to murder me?” Graham asked, looking around at the empty street, the rutted asphalt, and the swaying trees.

“Only if you keep asking so many questions,” she said as they set off down the road, keeping to the shoulder, which was strewn with pebbles.

“Seriously, though, where are we going?”

Ellie gave him a sideways glance. “We’re on a quest,” she said, as if it were obvious.

“A quest,” he repeated. “I like that.”

“Like Dorothy trying to find her way home again.”

“Or Ahab looking for the white whale.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Only we’re on the hunt for whoopie pies.”

“Aha,” Graham said, looking pleased. “So you’re a believer now.”

She shook her head. “I’m still skeptical. But if there’s anywhere that would have them, it would be this place.”

He was about to ask what place she was talking about, but then the road forked, becoming abruptly busier, and he could see a strip of buildings up ahead—a home and garden store, a real estate office, a used car lot, and right in the middle of it all, one of the pinkest buildings he’d ever seen. The yard surrounding it was dotted with picnic tables, each topped by a bright green umbrella, and there was a giant vanilla ice cream cone wearing sunglasses perched on the roof.

“The Ice Cream and Candy Emporium,” Ellie said, sweeping her arm grandly in its direction.

“Wouldn’t this be the competition?”

“It’s summer in Maine,” Ellie said. “Trust me, there are enough customers to go around.”

“I’m getting a little nervous,” Graham joked as they made their way across the parking lot. “What if they don’t have them?”

“I doubt they will,” she said. “I keep telling you, they’re not a thing.”

“They are,” he said. “They’re the official state treat.”

“So you keep saying.”

Graham paused just outside the door. “Should we put some money on it?” he asked, but her expression changed, the smile slipping away, and he realized he’d said the wrong thing. “Or not money,” he said quickly. “But let’s make a bet.”

Her face relaxed again, much to Graham’s relief. He was reminded of an e-mail she’d sent him months ago, not long after they’d first started talking, about how she’d gotten into some kind of summer poetry course and wanted desperately to go.

So why don’t you? he’d written, but as soon as he’d hit send, he realized what the answer would be, and his face burned as he sat at his desk in the sprawling house, wishing he could take it back.

It wasn’t long before her response reached him.

I can’t afford it, she’d written. Isn’t that the worst reason you’ve ever heard? I’ve got to figure out a way to make it work, because I’d hate myself for missing it because of something as stupid as money.

She’d assumed he would understand, he realized, because he was seventeen, and what seventeen-year-old doesn’t have money problems? He could no longer remember exactly how he’d responded, and he wondered what had happened, if she’d figured out a way to pay for it. He hoped so.

It was a strange thing, attaching those floating conversations to the girl in front of him now, pinning so many collected details to the person like buttons on a shirt.

Ellie was still watching him with raised eyebrows. “What kind of bet?” she asked, and Graham thought for a moment.

“If they have whoopie pies in there, you have to have dinner with me tonight.”

“That’s not much of a consequence,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of making you do that anyway.”

Graham couldn’t help grinning. He found himself doing a mental tally of all the girls he’d dated over the past few years, the ones who sat by their phones waiting for him, the ones who pouted when he didn’t call. Even the girls who seemed normal when he first met them at the gym or the grocery store always ended up wearing too much makeup or impossibly high heels when they finally went out; they agreed with everything he said and laughed when he wasn’t being funny, and not one of them—not a single one—would have ever made so confident a declaration as Ellie just had.

For the first time in a while, he felt like himself again.