Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Saturday, July 17Position: Corner table at Jump, Java, and Wail!Cover: Reading Beautiful Creatures with my headphones on (no music, natch).Observations:12:59 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon walks in. Uniform: wrinkled cargo shorts, black T-shirt, battered sneakers. (Assessment: He looks more disheveled at work than anywhere else.) He sees me and stops dead in his tracks. Looks like he’s going to say something . (Personal Note: I’m kind of dying to know what it is.) Then he ducks his head and goes to the back room. (Personal Note: Damn.)1:01 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon is behind the counter, ready to work. I’m the only one here other than that weird old dude on his laptop who’s apparently writing either a slasher film or a heated political blog, considering how intense he is.1:05 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon looks in my direction, looks away.1:06 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon looks in my direction, looks away.1:08 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon looks in my direction, looks away.1:09 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon looks in my direction, looks away.(Personal Note: I’m trying really hard to keep a straight face at this point.)1:10 p.m.: Subject Jake Graydon looks in my direction. I briefly consider flashing him just to see what he does. I don’t. He looks away.(Assessment: Somebody wants to know what Ally Ryan is up to.)

“Pretty dead around here, for a Saturday.”Mr. Ryan leaned in to the counter next to where I was already leaning. I stood up straight, feeling like I’d been caught snoozing. One of his favorite things to say was that there was always something to be done, even when it looked like there was nothing to be done. I looked around. There were exactly two people in the store. One was the gray-haired dude who was always here during the day, pounding on his laptop keys like they’d offended him somehow. The other was Ally’s friend Annie. She sat in the far corner reading some book with a black cover and drinking her coffee. I kept waiting for her to come over and talk to me. Tell me something about how Ally was doing, or whether she’d said anything about me. Maybe I should go talk to her. But I didn’t want to look desperate. And besides, I was pretty sure that wasn’t something I should be doing, even when it looked like there was nothing to be done.Mr. Ryan was looking at me and I realized I hadn’t said anything.“Yeah.” I pushed one hand into my back pocket. Lifted my shoulder. “Everyone’s down the shore.”Also, it was, like, one hundred degrees outside. Who wants coffee in that weather? Even iced? Mr. Ryan nodded absently and looked into space. Guess he wasn’t in much of a do something mood either.“Including my family,” he said.Uncomfortable.“Did you see them? When you were down there.”I went over to the cappuccino maker and hit some buttons. “Um . . . yeah.”“I figured. She said you didn’t, but . . .”He paused and shook his head. My hands froze on the steam lever. Wait. Ally and her dad had talked about me? When? Why? What had she said?“How’d they . . . I mean, how was Ally?” he asked.Like always, I immediately saw Ally on top of that beach bum jackass. This was so not right. Was this guy really grilling me, a kid, for details about his wife and his daughter? I hit another button, and steam shot out the side of the machine. Mr. Ryan jumped forward and made it stop. I took a shaky step back.“She was good.” I paused. “I think she has a boyfriend down there.”As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Because why? Why did I feel the need to tell him that? From the corner of my eye, I saw Annie shift. There was no way she could hear me from all the way over there, right? She had her earbuds in.“Really? She hasn’t mentioned anyone.”Which I guess was good. But then she hadn’t mentioned me to him either, which made me and beach bum jackass kind of even. Which didn’t sit well. I leaned back against the counter.“Do you talk to her a lot?” I asked, fishing for info. Blatantly.“Yeah, of course.” He looked at me sideways, then shook his head and leaned in to the counter again. “No. Not really.” He took off his visor and ran a hand over his hair. He stared out the front window, where Orchard Avenue was deader than the campus of Orchard Hill High right now. “She’s angry. They both are. And they have every right to be.”He had no idea how much right. Or did he? Had Ally or her mom told him what happened at Shannen’s party?“You like her, don’t you?” he asked suddenly. “My daughter.”I looked at Annie. She was staring right at me, but looked away. I turned sideways so she couldn’t read my lips or something. “Yeah. Yes, sir. I do.”“So what’s the deal?” he asked. “She doesn’t like you?”“Um . . . no. Not at the moment,” I said.“Oh. Why?”I shoved both hands into my back pockets. “It’s a long story. Kind of a misunderstanding, I guess.”He nodded. “I’ve got a lot of experience with those. Especially when it comes to women.”“Yeah? So what do you do about them?” I said. “The misunderstandings? I mean, if you have so much experience.”Mr. Ryan shook his head slowly, his eyes sort of unfocused and staring. “If I knew that, believe me kid, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now.”

Daily Field Journal of Annie Johnston Monday, July 19Position: Across the street from Shannen Moore’s house.Cover: Tying my “walking shoes.” I’m pretending to be a power walker, although every old lady with a Pomeranian has lapped me.Observations:12:05 p.m.: There’s a moving truck in the driveway. Subject Mr. Moore is arguing with two guys wheeling a standing piano through the front door. All I can make out is “told you jerk-offs” and “back inside!”12:07 p.m.: The movers wheel the piano back inside. They take out a big chunk of the door frame in the process.12:08 p.m.: Subject Mr. Moore turns a color of purple formerly unknown in this quadrant of the universe. The screaming that ensues is frightening in pitch and chock-full of tasty expletives.12:15 p.m.: The movers have unloaded a whole mess of furniture onto the front lawn.12:17 p.m.: The moving truck speeds off.12:28 p.m.: Subject Mr. Moore slams the front door, sits down on the front step, and hangs his head between his knees.(Assessment One: Mr. Moore is moving out. Assessment Two: Not today, though.)

“So, where’s Cooper?”I looked at Jenny, who sat behind the wheel of her and Cooper’s pickup. We were parked on a random side street off the Boulevard and the engine was on. She kept glancing in the side-view mirror like she was nervous about something.“He said he’d meet us here,” Jenny said, her hands on the steering wheel. “He’s just getting out of work.”“So why don’t we just drive around and park in front of the store?”Cooper worked at Faria’s, one of the surf shops on the main Boulevard in Beach Haven. I’d been there to visit him a couple of times and kind of loved seeing him in his element, advising people about surfboards and body suits and whatnot. Plus, every girl who walked in there drooled over him, so it was always fun when he kissed me hello in front of them. I wouldn’t have minded catching him at the end of his shift today.“Because we can’t,” Jenny said through her teeth. “Just—” She sat forward suddenly. “Here they come.”“They?”I turned around to find Cooper and Dex barreling toward the car toting two huge cases of beer. They were both laughing as they tumbled into the open bed in back, even though Dex’s head collided with the wall.“Go! Go! Go!” Cooper shouted, slamming the back door.Jenny yanked the wheel and the truck lurched onto the road, then into a wide, screeching turn. My heart hit my throat as we almost hit an icecream truck head-on.“What happened?” Jenny shouted through the open cab window. “I thought you had it all set.”“We did. There were . . . complications,” Cooper said. He and Dex laughed and slapped hands. “But we’re all good now. I don’t think anyone saw us.”There was this awful, hard rock of fear settling in the center of my chest. I clutched the bottom of the open window and turned to look at Cooper.“Did you guys just steal that beer?” I asked.“Steal is such an ugly word,” Dex said with a straight face as we bounced over a speed bump.“What’s the big deal?” Cooper asked. “Where did you think we got it?”I swallowed hard. I was basically an accessory to a theft. I was riding in a getaway car. “I don’t know. I . . . I figured you got an older friend to buy it for you or something.”“Occasionally we do. When we have the money,” Cooper said with a nod. “But we don’t always have the money.”“It’s no big thing,” Dex said, lifting a palm. “My dad’s in the restaurant biz and I happen to know they budget for unexpected loss of product.”“Besides, they overcharge you bennies for everything down here, so they can afford to give back to the local community,” Cooper said with a laugh.I rolled my eyes. Like their twisted logic made it okay. Suddenly I felt jittery and tense. I had to get out of this car. Like, now.“Come on, Crestie Girl,” Cooper said, putting his head through the little square window like a puppy dog. “If we didn’t do this every once in a while, we wouldn’t be able to throw all those parties you’ve been enjoying so much.”“Yeah. I never heard you offer to pay for anything,” Dex groused.My face was on fire. Were they really trying to make me feel guilty for this?“Jen?” I said, staring straight ahead through the windshield. “Can you drop me at the next corner?”“What?” Jenny said, her blond braid grazing her thigh as she looked at me. “Why? Are you, like, mad at us or something?”“No. She’s just a goody-goody who’s never had to worry about money in her life,” Cooper said with a laugh, dropping back into the bed of the truck again.My face flushed red. He was my boyfriend, kind of. Shouldn’t he be defending me rather than mocking me?“I worry about money all the time,” I snapped back at him. “But I’ve never stolen anything.”Cooper raised his hands in surrender and widened his eyes like I was overreacting. “Fine. Whatever. Bail if you want to.”“Here’s fine,” I told Jenny as we came to a stop sign.She eased to a stop and I jumped out of the truck, slamming the door as hard as I could.“Call us later when you unclench!” Dex shouted at me.Jenny gave me an apologetic look and seemed like she was about to say something, but then the car behind her honked and they were gone. I looked Cooper in the eye as they slowly rolled past and he held my gaze the whole time, his expression unreadable.And now, I was stranded. No bike, no car, and miles from Gray’s house. I turned around and looked at the light pink cottage I’d been left in front of. Clearly, I was going to have to call someone to come pick me up. But who? My mom? Gray? Asking either of them for help right now didn’t appeal. But neither did the alternatives of Hammond, Shannen, or Faith.I took a deep breath, blew it out, and started walking back toward the Boulevard. Maybe I would do some window-shopping before swallowing my pride.The sun beat down on the back of my neck as I made my way along the pebble driveways and around the cars parked along the side of the road. What had just happened? I’d thought I was meeting up with my boyfriend and his sister for chowder and skee ball, and instead I’d witnessed a beer theft, been dissed by my maybe-boyfriend, and ended up alone.As I reached the Boulevard I stopped and stared across the street at the red stop hand telling me not to cross. Cars full of beachgoers, shoppers, boaters, and nature-seekers zoomed by, heading merrily to their destinations, and suddenly I felt completely exhausted. And not just because of the sun. Or the hustle and bustle, which was steadily climbing toward that midsummer crescendo. I felt exhausted by all the thinking. All the feeling. All the everything.Maybe Dex and Cooper did kind of have a point. I hadn’t ever asked where the beer came from, and I’d never offered to help pay. Was it possible that I’d kind of known in the back of my mind that there was something not quite right about the whole thing? Had I just been so wrapped up in my own crap lately that I chose not to think about it?The light turned green. I crossed the street and headed up the wood plank steps into Schooner’s Wharf, arguably the “downtown” area of LBI with its many shops and restaurants. My stomach grumbled as the scent of grilled burgers hit my nostrils, and I turned my steps toward the Gazebo. If I wasn’t going to be getting chowder with my friends, I might as well drown my sorrows in a burger and a milk shake.I was just about to walk into the restaurant when Shannen and Faith came out of the T-shirt shop nearby. Faith had a small shopping bag—the kind that comes with jewelry—and Shannen was texting on her phone. Faith and I both stopped walking, but Shannen bumped right into me.“Hey! Watch where you’re—”She saw it was me and tucked the phone into the pocket of her short plaid shorts. “Oh. Hey. Sorry.”“It’s okay,” I said automatically.For a long moment, we all just stood there. Faith pointedly looked away from me. Shannen struck a kind of defiant pose, one knee cocked, fingers hooked into the waistband of her shorts.These people used to be my best friends. We’d told each other everything. Now I couldn’t even look them in the eye.“What’re you up to?” Shannen asked finally.Breaking the law, I thought, but didn’t say.“I was just going to get some food,” I said, gesturing over my shoulder at the open-air tables outside the restaurant.“We were going to the candy store,” Faith said, looking past me.Shannen squinted as the screen door to the candy shop squealed open and banged shut. “Remember those swirled lollipop things we used to be addicted to?”Faith looked at her shoes. “You guys liked those. They made me sick.”I smirked. “Remember when you barfed on Mrs. Appleby’s life-size carousel horse?”“That thing deserved to be barfed on,” Shannen joked.“I had actual nightmares about that horse,” Faith said. “Remember its—”“Red eyes!” Shannen and I said at the same time.And we all laughed.I sighed and looked down at the uneven bricks beneath my feet. My heart felt like it was pushing against cling wrap, tugging it, twisting it, trying to break free.You hate these people, my brain said. But that stupid heart again . . . it was telling me I didn’t.“I guess one lollipop couldn’t hurt,” I said.“Believe me, it could,” Faith replied, sticking her tongue out.“So we’ll get you a pretzel,” Shannen said, grabbing her arm and dragging her toward the store. “Let’s go.”I followed them slowly, part of me still wanting to bolt, still screaming that it was a bad idea to hang out with them—to trust them. But then, who in my life could I really trust right now? And besides, I was going to need a ride home at some point. As Shannen pushed open the swinging screen door and the familiar, sugary scent hit me full force, I decided not to think about anything for the next fifteen minutes. It was just one lollipop, after all. I could worry about what it meant later.