A Glimpse of the Dream, Page 3

  “That smells delicious, Mrs. T. You seem to have outdone yourself,” Mrs. Marks said. And then she winked, so she knew about the joke we were playing on Kane. It was not surprising, because she knew everything. Mrs. T looked as if she had just sucked on a lemon, and Mr. Clancy was careful to keep his focus away from Kane.

  “God, I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry, Kane. It’s amazing you’re not the size of a barn with the amount of food you eat,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed at me and I just knew he was plotting again. “Jealous.”

  I was, of course, since I didn’t eat like that and yet I was a little round. Didn’t seem fair. Instead of answering him, I just stuck out my tongue. I couldn’t wait to see his expression when he saw all those worms squirming around in his dinner.

  Mrs. T placed Kane’s pie in front of him. It was like a ritual, the way Kane ate a potpie. He always pulled the top crust off to eat the insides before eating the crust with melted butter. Trying not to grin was hard as I watched Kane dig in and saw the anticipation on his face. It took a minute, once he removed the top crust, to understand. His eyes grew wide and he jumped back from the table.

  “You better run, dear,” Mrs. Marks said as Kane’s gaze met mine. I ran right out of the kitchen, down the hall, and through the front door. I didn’t get far before I felt his arms around me. He pulled me to the ground, wrestling me until he was on top. I tried to knock him off, but he was stronger and bigger.

  “Good one, Teagan.” I didn’t even get to gloat before he smashed a fist full of mud in my face. “That’s a good look for you.”

  After our showers, Kane and I walked down to the docks. He loved looking at the boats and I loved looking at the water.

  “I can’t wait to build my own boat one day,” he said as we sat side by side on the pier, our feet dangling.

  “Do you see it in your head—the boat you want?”

  “Yeah. And I’d like to do it in teak. I’ll drive it all over, from here down the coast.” Peering at me from the corner of his eyes he said, “You can come with me if you want.”

  “I want.”

  He seemed to like that answer. His lips turned up at the sides.

  “What are you going to call your boat?”

  “I don’t know, but the name of a boat is very important. It has to be meaningful, special, because the boat is like a part of you. I’ll figure it out.”

  In the next second, Kane jumped up and started jogging down to the end of the pier where an older man was trying to carry too much at once.

  “Let me help you with that, Mr. Miller.”

  “Thank you, Kane. You’re a good boy.”

  Kane flashed him a smile in reply. He did that a lot, offering a hand when someone needed it. He didn’t even need to be asked. Mrs. Marks said he had a big heart. They loved him, Mrs. Marks and the others. I envied the closeness they had with each other. They would do anything for him, and he would do anything for them. He had a family again and, even though I felt like an outsider sometimes, I didn’t begrudge him what he had found.

  I had been searching for Kane for almost an hour, retracing my steps because I couldn’t find him. When I circled back around to the beach, he was there, but he wasn’t alone. Camille Bowen had joined him. Had they just been to the island? Kane and I often spoke of that island and how we would explore it together. Had he forgotten that promise because his interest in Camille was stronger than his friendship with me?

  She was trying to hold his hand, and the fact that she was even reaching for it made it seem like they had held hands before. Were they dating? Had they dated? Remembering my first day of school, seeing the two of them talking, I couldn’t deny they had looked good together: friendly and comfortable. Maybe they were an item, and I had misunderstood him that day. Maybe it wasn’t disinterest in taking her for ice cream in general, just that day in particular, since he had already made plans with me.

  I hadn’t made a sound, and I was quite a distance from them, but Kane’s head snapped in my direction and his gaze seared me. Embarrassed for getting caught, I hurried back up the path to the house. He didn’t need his privacy invaded by me, especially since he had given so much of his time already to help me fit into my new life.

  “Teagan, where are you going?” I heard from behind me.

  Turning to Kane, I knew my cheeks were flushed because I felt awkward. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company.”

  “Yeah, that.” He sounded disgruntled. “Camille and I—”

  “Kane, you don’t owe me an explanation. It’s none of my business.”

  “I know I don’t owe you one, but I’d like to give you one just the same. Camille sees us as a couple, but I’m not sure I want to go there with her.”

  “Why not? She’s very pretty.”

  “Yeah, she is—there doesn’t seem to be much more to her than that.”

  The question was out of my mouth before I truly knew I was planning to ask it. “Did you go out to the island together?”

  He looked hurt at that. “No. I promised to take you.”

  Relief, waves of it, washed over me. “I couldn’t find you, and then there you were on the beach, so I just assumed I couldn’t find you because you were over there.”

  “That island is ours, Teagan. We explore it first.”

  “I feel the same. I just wasn’t so sure you still did.”

  “Because of Camille?” he asked, his eyes bugging out in disbelief.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s just stupid. You’re you and Camille is just a girl.”

  I couldn’t stop from smiling. “Where is Camille now?”

  “On her way home. She had a minor temper tantrum over having our ‘moment’ interrupted, as she puts it.”

  I felt the heat creeping into my cheeks again. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’d much rather be hanging out with you. You said you were looking for me. What’s up?”

  “Oh, right, I almost forgot. Mrs. T is baking peanut butter cookies.”

  He grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the house. “I’d definitely rather be hanging out with you.”

  Had someone told me when I’d first arrived at Raven’s Peak that I would find contentment, happiness even, I would have thought they were crazy. I had, though, and I owed that mostly to Kane. I’d never had a best friend, but I had one now. We understood each other, almost as if he were an extension of me and me of him. My eyes drifted to my nightstand. A small smile touched my lips. Every morning, for the year that I’d been there, I had awoken to find a glass of chocolate milk with whipped cream waiting for me. That first morning, Kane had brought it hoping to help ease the pain he knew I was feeling. I loved that he still did it—it was such a small gesture, but one that meant a lot to me.

  I wasn’t as happy as I usually was, because it was exactly a year ago that Raven’s Peak had become my home, which brought my parents’ deaths front and center in my thoughts. I reached for the picture of them and felt my heart twist in my chest. It was my favorite photo, taken during their university years. Dad was smiling down at Mom as she lovingly looked up at him. She was wearing her Boston University sweatshirt, one she wore often, one that I now owned. I missed them, but I had learned to live without them, and I owed that to Kane. Without him, I would never have survived that first night, let alone the 364 that followed. I climbed out of bed, as I did every morning, before I walked to my door and held it open for him. He was usually leaning up against the wall waiting for me so we could start our day.

  “Morning, Tea.” That was what he called me, because he thought Teagan didn’t fit my personality. I liked that he’d given me a nickname—one that was only his.

  His bedhead indicated he’d only just gotten up, time enough to bring me the milk.

  “Morning.”

  Taking the milk to the balcony off my room, we sat together on the little sofa with the blanket from my bed wrapped around both of us. I han
ded the milk to him after I took a sip. The sun breeched the horizon, the large sphere casting an orange hue to the sky. A lightness filled my chest, from the view and from feeling Kane next to me. We did this every morning. Sometimes we just sat there in silence, sometimes we talked about anything and everything.

  I had started contemplating what I would be when I got older. The one clear goal I had was that I wanted to attend Boston University, wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps. Outside of that, I didn’t have a clue. Kane, two years older than me, must have figured it out already. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Kane?”

  He shrugged, which was his usual response until he thought about a question. “I don’t know, but whatever I do, I want it to be here. I can’t imagine any place on Earth better than this.”

  I followed his stare. He wasn’t wrong. We could hear the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff of Raven’s Peak. Mrs. Marks spoke of her house as a bird sitting on the topmost branch of a tree, and she was right, it really was.

  “Sometimes I think it would be neat if Mrs. Marks would turn this place into one of those family-run inns. There are so many rooms that I don’t think even we’ve discovered them all, and we’ve really looked. It seems like a waste that so much of the house goes unused. We could run it, you and me.”

  I thought of the conversation I’d had with Mr. Clancy over tea a few months back. To know there had been a time when the house was filled with family was as comforting as it was sad.

  “Would you really want to be around strangers all the time?” I asked.

  His head turned to me, those clear blue eyes looking into my green ones. “No, we would live on our island in a little house.”

  I sighed. “I like that idea. A little blue house.”

  “No, green.”

  “Blue, with window boxes just like my dad made for my mom.”

  His hand found mine under the blanket. “Window boxes, but a green house.”

  “Fine, if I get the window boxes, you can paint the house green.”

  “What about you, what do you want to be?” He looked very grown-up all of a sudden.

  “I don’t know. I do know that I want to go to BU, want to find a connection to my parents by experiencing something they had.”

  He squeezed my hand in understanding. “Sounds like a good plan.”

  “And after college, I think I’d like to travel, so maybe I’ll get a job where I can travel a little, but what I really want is to be near you.” And it was true. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do for a career, but I did know that I always wanted to be close to Kane.

  His shoulders relaxed and the biggest smile covered his face. “We can travel, since I’d like to see places with you, but we would come home here.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  He jumped up from his spot and took the glass from me. “Come.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He pulled me through the house until we ended up in the library. My feet just stopped in the doorway, my focus on the Christmas tree, the biggest one I’d ever seen, all lit with white lights. Mrs. Marks and the staff were in the room, all of them smiling at me.

  “We know this time of year, this day in particular, is very difficult for you, Teagan, but the day doesn’t have to be a reminder of your parents’ deaths. We can celebrate the memory of their lives.” Mrs. Marks was wearing one of her lacy dresses, this one green, and she held two porcelain angels. “One for each of your parents,” she said. “We thought you’d like to hang them on the tree.”

  My throat hurt, my stomach felt all funny, and my hands were shaking. Before I reached for them, she added, “It was Kane’s idea.”

  Kane watched me with a sad little smile, and in that moment my young heart was no longer my own.

  “It’s not that hard, Tea. Just relax.”

  Three years after Kane and I had discussed swimming out to our island, I was finally ready to learn how to swim, but I wasn’t having much luck. “I’m trying, but I’m scared.”

  “We’re in three feet of water. I won’t let you drown.”

  “Okay.” Resting on my back, I tried to float like he’d showed me, but I kept sinking.

  “Too many cakes, Tea. You’re dropping like a rock.”

  “Are you calling me fat, Kane Doyle?”

  “Round, not fat. Come on, you want to swim with me out to the island, but to do that, you need to know how to swim.”

  “Okay. Let’s try it again.” I forced myself to relax, took a couple deep breaths, and almost felt lighter. For the first time all morning, I really thought I could do it. “You can let go.”

  “I did already.” My eyes flew open and he was grinning at me. “Way to go, Tea.”

  For the next hour I did float, for some of the time anyway. Though Kane was as eager as me to swim out together to our island, he never got angry or frustrated. Later, we did go to our island, taking the boat that was docked on the beach of Raven’s Peak.

  We pulled the boat up on the sand, something we had done countless times. Kane fell silent, unusual for him. We started walking along the beach, but instead of engaging me in conversation as he always did, he just stared off at the horizon.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I was just thinking about my mom.”

  As much as I knew about Kane, he rarely talked about her. “Why don’t you ever mention her?”

  “This is going to sound strange, but I don’t really remember much about her. What I have are impressions more than memories. She could be so happy sometimes, wanting to bake two hundred cookies, and we’d laugh and throw flour at each other, and she’d hug me and tell me how much she loved me. And then she’d be so sad, she wouldn’t climb out of bed for days. Mrs. Marks tried to explain to me that my mom was manic-depressive or something.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She just left one day. I was in the hospital. I had tripped down the stairs and broken my leg. She never came to see me, and then the social worker came with Mrs. Marks, who adopted me.”

  I couldn’t imagine my parents just leaving me without a word, being in the hospital scared and alone and having the one you needed to see the most not showing up. “I’m sorry, Kane.”

  His next words were so softly spoken I almost didn’t hear him. “Don’t ever leave, Tea. You and me. Promise?”

  Linking my fingers with his, I made the promise. It was an easy one to make, since I never wanted to leave him. “Promise.”

  We returned to the house just before dinner, but Mrs. Marks didn’t join us. In the four years that I’d lived there, every year on the same day Mrs. Marks didn’t leave her room. Whenever I asked Mr. Clancy why, he only ever replied that she just needed a day to herself.

  Kane and I were in the bathroom washing up for supper. I asked, “Why do you think she stays in her room?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve asked her about it, but she never answers, but you know that tomorrow she’ll be her normal self. I heard her crying through the door last year. She sounded so sad that I was going to walk in and check on her, but Mr. Clancy stopped me. He told me that she just needed the day.”

  “That’s so sad. I wish she’d talk with us about it, especially since she’s seen us through our own heartbreaks.”

  “I know, but the best thing we can do for her is exactly what Mr. Clancy asked: give her space.” He started from the room. “Race you to the table, winner gets the other’s dessert.”

  “Cheater!” I screamed after him, but later I watched as he devoured my pudding too.

  I sat on the front steps of Raven’s Peak, my attention on Kane as he walked to his car with his friends. He was seventeen now and had worked a bunch of odd jobs so he could afford the car. It wasn’t much to look at, but he was convinced the heart of a panther lived in his dilapidated blue Camaro. I wanted to go with them to the movies, but I was only fifteen and felt uncomfortable.

  His bl
ack hair was messy, even though I knew he had just been to the barber and it had grown out almost overnight. He used to be only a few inches taller than me, but now he was at least a head taller. He had a bar in his room where he did chin-ups. It mesmerized me, watching his muscles move under his skin; he had a lot of them. I couldn’t do it. I’d tried but couldn’t even get my chin to the bar.

  The leather jacket he was wearing had been a gift from me. Mrs. Marks had helped me buy it; it suited him and his collection of faded jeans. And even with all the changes he’d been through the past year, his crystal-blue eyes were still my favorite; I saw my Kane in them. But at the moment, those eyes were staring down at Camille.

  Camille had started coming around the house a lot asking for him the past year. I had thought she’d gotten over her crush on him but apparently not. She walked around the place like she owned it. You could see her thoughts: She was imagining living with Kane in the house that overlooked the town. Her family came from money, lots of it, and they had the fanciest house in town. Actually, it was the second fanciest house after Raven’s Peak, and that burned her ass. She wanted Raven’s Peak as much as she wanted Kane. I didn’t like that he was going to the movies with her. He claimed they were just friends, but the way she looked at him was anything but friendly. Regardless, he was my Kane. But I looked like a boy with my flat chest and nonexistent hips, and she looked like a woman. I hated Camille.

  “Want me to bring you back an ice cream?” Kane called. I knew he was trying to be nice, but it only made me feel more like a kid.

  “No.” I jumped from my spot at the door and ran to my room. I didn’t stop running until I reached my bed, threw myself on it, and cried. I didn’t even really understand why I was crying, only that seeing him go off without me really hurt.

  Later that night, Kane came to my room. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I rolled to face him, my hands under my cheek.

  He brushed my hair from my eyes. “Are you still mad?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t mad, I was upset.”

  “Okay. Are you still upset?”