disaster of her senior year and having fled East Beach for the city, Mia had forgotten how truly beautiful Lake Haven could be. She had forgotten how this vista had often inspired her to want to create stunning art. She felt the draw of that desire to create now. This very minute. Give her some paper, a pencil— something.
This was what she needed. Wasn’t it?
She decided to take Dalton’s suggestion and walk down to Eckland’s Hardware and see if the general store had anything even remotely organic.
She was surprised to discover that the store hadn’t changed one bit in all the time she’d been gone. Mr. Eckland, who had been ancient when she was sixteen, was still here, only more ancient. His ears looked as if they might have grown another inch or two, and the shock of white hair on top of his head was noticeably thinner, but still sprung up, untended.
“Hello, Mr. Eckland,” she said.
“Huh?” He looked up from his spot near a window where the spring sun was streaming in. He was seated in an old wicker lawn chair, his feet propped on a pile of boxes, reading the paper. He squinted at her from over the top of it.
“I said, hello ,” Mia said louder.
He waved at her as he turned his attention back to his paper, clearly uninterested. “Lemme know if you need anything.”
There was no one else in the store, so Mia wandered around its aisles of hammers and canned goods, weed whackers and frozen pizzas. This was not a Home Depot–type hardware store—this was the hardware store of the idle wealthy. That didn’t mean there weren’t serious bits of machinery, but there were more colorful watering cans and hammer sets for junk drawers and old-fashioned, gasless crank lawn mowers for the environmentally conscious than one might find in a big box store.
Memories of this store and her childhood began to surface as Mia moved through the aisles. Snatches of her and her cousins riding their bikes up the beach and leaving them in tumbled piles of handlebars and banana seats at the end of the footpath to run up to this store and its candy aisle. Of buying snow shovels with her father one year when the winter was particularly bad.
And, of course, the night of her ultimate humiliation, when she and Skylar had stopped here for lighter fluid.
Images of that night suddenly overwhelmed her, coming in a flurry of memories so quickly that Mia had to grab onto a stack of cheap lawn furniture to steady herself. There had been a bonfire on the north end of the beach, just below the Ross house. It was secluded there, out of sight of the three East Beach cops that patrolled the streets.
Mia hadn’t wanted to go. Her boyfriend, Aiden Bowers, had broken up with her the night before graduation, and she’d been moping around for weeks, not knowing what to do with herself. It was supposed to have been a glorious summer—she was out of high school, bound for college in Brooklyn, and those should have been her last few weeks of pure freedom. But Aiden had ruined that and Mia didn’t know how to bounce back.
She hadn’t had many friends to rely on because Mia had always struggled to fit in. She’d always been different. She saw the world around her in shapes and angles, in shading and light. She noticed the motion in some things, the stillness in others. She loved colors beyond reason and even claimed them as her own as girls will do—chartreuse, magenta, azure.
The world of color and light had been a wonderful one to inhabit as a girl. But then Mia had started school, and her view of the world had already been set apart from the other kids. As she’d grown up, teasing turned to mocking. In high school, she’d worn her difference like a crown, and some of the mocking had turned downright derisive.
The more some kids pushed, the more determined Mia was to be different. She sought the company of other kids on the fringe, experimented with drugs and sex. She’d had a hard time maintaining friendships when it seemed like
This was what she needed. Wasn’t it?
She decided to take Dalton’s suggestion and walk down to Eckland’s Hardware and see if the general store had anything even remotely organic.
She was surprised to discover that the store hadn’t changed one bit in all the time she’d been gone. Mr. Eckland, who had been ancient when she was sixteen, was still here, only more ancient. His ears looked as if they might have grown another inch or two, and the shock of white hair on top of his head was noticeably thinner, but still sprung up, untended.
“Hello, Mr. Eckland,” she said.
“Huh?” He looked up from his spot near a window where the spring sun was streaming in. He was seated in an old wicker lawn chair, his feet propped on a pile of boxes, reading the paper. He squinted at her from over the top of it.
“I said, hello ,” Mia said louder.
He waved at her as he turned his attention back to his paper, clearly uninterested. “Lemme know if you need anything.”
There was no one else in the store, so Mia wandered around its aisles of hammers and canned goods, weed whackers and frozen pizzas. This was not a Home Depot–type hardware store—this was the hardware store of the idle wealthy. That didn’t mean there weren’t serious bits of machinery, but there were more colorful watering cans and hammer sets for junk drawers and old-fashioned, gasless crank lawn mowers for the environmentally conscious than one might find in a big box store.
Memories of this store and her childhood began to surface as Mia moved through the aisles. Snatches of her and her cousins riding their bikes up the beach and leaving them in tumbled piles of handlebars and banana seats at the end of the footpath to run up to this store and its candy aisle. Of buying snow shovels with her father one year when the winter was particularly bad.
And, of course, the night of her ultimate humiliation, when she and Skylar had stopped here for lighter fluid.
Images of that night suddenly overwhelmed her, coming in a flurry of memories so quickly that Mia had to grab onto a stack of cheap lawn furniture to steady herself. There had been a bonfire on the north end of the beach, just below the Ross house. It was secluded there, out of sight of the three East Beach cops that patrolled the streets.
Mia hadn’t wanted to go. Her boyfriend, Aiden Bowers, had broken up with her the night before graduation, and she’d been moping around for weeks, not knowing what to do with herself. It was supposed to have been a glorious summer—she was out of high school, bound for college in Brooklyn, and those should have been her last few weeks of pure freedom. But Aiden had ruined that and Mia didn’t know how to bounce back.
She hadn’t had many friends to rely on because Mia had always struggled to fit in. She’d always been different. She saw the world around her in shapes and angles, in shading and light. She noticed the motion in some things, the stillness in others. She loved colors beyond reason and even claimed them as her own as girls will do—chartreuse, magenta, azure.
The world of color and light had been a wonderful one to inhabit as a girl. But then Mia had started school, and her view of the world had already been set apart from the other kids. As she’d grown up, teasing turned to mocking. In high school, she’d worn her difference like a crown, and some of the mocking had turned downright derisive.
The more some kids pushed, the more determined Mia was to be different. She sought the company of other kids on the fringe, experimented with drugs and sex. She’d had a hard time maintaining friendships when it seemed like
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