The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach by Pam Jenoff

contrast was just right.
    I stood on the stairs, snapping shots of the boys as they tackled one another, their hair and skin golden in the late-day sun.
    “Hey!” Liam scowled at the clicking sound. “No pictures.”
    I lowered the camera and walked down the steps. “Why not?” I challenged.
    “You gotta be careful with that. Someone might think you’re an Axis spy.”
    “Liam!” Jack cautioned.
    “I didn’t mean anything by it.” His face flushed. But there was some truth to what he’d said: people looked at me differently since the war began. Even though I was an American citizen now and my accent had faded with time, my past meant I would never truly be one of them. I was an outsider, foreign once more.
    “I doubt the Germans would want a photo of you anyway,” Jack chided his twin, trying to break the tension. Liam did not answer but stormed off around the side of the house.
    “But, Liam, we’re going to the boardwalk!” Robbie could not imagine anyone passing up on that. His voice was drowned out by the choky rev of Liam’s dirt-bike engine, then tires squealing. Seeing Robbie’s face fall, I walked over and squeezed his hand, which was still a bit slick with bacon grease. Jack looked at me helplessly. Liam was so much moodier and more distant than a year ago. We had hoped that the summer away from the city, where trouble was so easy to find, would have done something to calm Liam’s wild ways. There were moments when he seemed his old self, playing with his brothers in the surf. But his darkness always returned.
    Mrs. Connally stepped from the house, shielding her eyes as she scanned the side yard. “Where’s Liam?”
    “Gone—on his bike. He said something earlier about meeting some friends at the beach.”
    Mrs. Connally’s face fell. “I hate that thing,” she said bluntly. The bike had been a reward—Liam was allowed to buy it with the allowance he’d saved in exchange for finishing the semester with no Fs. But it had backfired, allowing him to roam farther and longer than ever before. “He’s having such a hard time.” She seemed to be pleading with me to do something, though what I did not know.
    Before I could ask, Jack came to my side with Robbie in tow. “Ready?”
    “What about the others?” I asked, purposefully vague.
    But the point of my question could not have been more obvious. “Charlie’s got plans.”
    “A date,” Robbie piped up cheerfully.
    “Robbie, don’t.” Jack shifted uncomfortably. He had been trying to spare my feelings. A foot seemed to kick me in the stomach. I had seen Charlie talking to the girl who worked the concession stand by the beach a couple of times, a strawberry blonde a year or two older than me. But I had not actually thought he would go out with her tonight of all nights. It was our last night at the shore, for goodness’ sake. How could he waste it with someone he hardly knew?
    A few minutes later, the jitney came and we paid a nickel each to board. Our nights had changed since last summer when the whole Connally family had made the trek to the boardwalk on Saturday nights to ride the Ferris wheel and watch the lights twinkle along the hazy coastline below. On the Fourth of July, we’d crowded together on a blanket, sharing caramel corn as fireworks exploded above and an orchestra played on the pier.
    Now everything was different. Liam was off getting into trouble and Charlie was with that red-haired girl. My mind was flooded with images. Where was he taking her tonight? So those moments I’d glimpsed between me and Charlie had just been my imagination. How foolish of me! I had no right to stop him from dating, but it still felt like a betrayal—and it hurt worse than I could have imagined.
    “We’re here.” Robbie tugged at my arm and we climbed off, then walked the last few steps to the wide promenade of the boardwalk. The shops and arcades stood in a row beneath brightly colored awnings. The heady aroma of taffy and funnel