The Last Present Page 8

  “Hey, kid,” the lifeguard calls out. It takes us a few seconds to realize he’s talking to Leo. “You might want to take off your sunglasses before you go in any farther. If a wave comes and smacks you in the face, it could hurt. I’ve seen it happen. I’ll hold ’em if you want.”

  “But I’m not wear … oh, right, got it. Thanks!”

  Leo lifts up his (to us, invisible) sunglasses and hands them out to the lifeguard. To my shock, a pair of actual sunglasses appears in the lifeguard’s hand. He tucks them in his bathing shorts and heads back to the lifeguard stand.

  “That was crazy,” Leo says.

  “So crazy.”

  Leo grabs my hand. “Ready?”

  I nod. We dive into the water. I stop caring about what I, or Amy, look like and just have fun with my best friend. We duck under waves and discover a sandbar to stand on where the water only comes to our waists. The only other people on it are a dad with his son riding piggyback. With his mass of black curls, the boy reminds me of a young Leo. The boy waves good-bye as they plunge back into the water. Over the noise of the waves and the people splashing in them, I cup my hands and say, “How weird is it that right now, back in Willow Falls, the current versions of ourselves are just going about their day?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, they — I mean, we — aren’t doing.”

  “What?”

  “Talking to each other.”

  He’s right! This is the Year of the Big Fight. It’s mid-July now, so that’s a little over a month since our birthday. I’m probably hiding down in my basement, banging my drums and feeling sorry for myself.

  He steps closer to me, the water swishing around us. “I wish I could call myself up and tell myself to march over to your house right now and beg for your forgiveness. I hate that I hurt your feelings. You’re the most important person in my life. I mean, you know, besides the people who gave me life in the first place. I was planning on writing you a poem about it — a better one than I wrote when we were eleven, but the summer has been so busy with Tara and everything that I never got the chance.”

  Leo’s apologized before, of course, but never like this. I don’t know what to say. A lone swimmer lands on our sandbar, then pushes right back off without giving us a second glance. “I forgave you a long time ago,” I finally come out with. “You know that. We were just kids.”

  The water pushes us even closer together and I shiver, but not because I’m cold. My toes dig into the soft sand in an effort to steady myself. Leo’s hand reaches out for my arm. Warm and strong, it keeps me from floating away. My eyes have to fight their way up his face until they meet his. How many times have I looked into those blue eyes? A thousand? A million? But it’s felt different these past few weeks. Seeing Rory with Jake, and the way Tara and David look at each other when they don’t think anyone’s watching. And then the hand holding on the way to the diner yesterday. I know things are changing but I’m not sure I want them to.

  A small wave pushes the water higher around us. Suddenly I realize that our math was wrong. We’re back in time only two years. We would have to go back one more year to be in the midst of our fight. The versions of ourselves that we’d find today would have made up already. I should tell Leo, but I don’t want to ruin this moment because it feels important.

  My eyes still locked with his, I’m suddenly hyperaware of everything. The blue sky, the tiny bubbles on the water, my hair wet against my shoulders, the dimple on Leo’s cheek that I’m so used to seeing I don’t even notice it anymore. But I see it now. I see all of him. I shiver again.

  “Are you cold?” Leo asks. “Do you want to get out?”

  I shake my head slightly. “I’m fine. I just realized that we —”

  And then his lips are on mine. The water and people and sky vanish. I’m not sure I remember how to breathe.

  One kiss. And just like that, everything — and nothing — changes between us.

  We return to our towels and wrap them around ourselves. My head is spinning. Leo kissed me. We kissed. I can’t believe it actually happened. I keep stealing glances to see if I can tell what he’s thinking. He looks completely at ease and happy. Not the slightest sign of head spinning. He spreads out his towel and we both plop down on it. I narrow my eyes at him. “You just kissed me.”

  He beams. “I know.”

  “You seem pretty pleased with yourself.”

  “Oh, I am,” he says. “I’ve wanted to do that my whole life.”

  “You wanted to kiss me when we were four?”

  “Yup.”

  “And when we were eight?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But you figured you’d wait until we were thirteen, out in the middle of the ocean, stuck two years in the past with nothing better to do?”

  “That’s right. You got a problem with that?”

  I shake my head. “But you know, I’m not sure it counts. We’re not really us, here. I mean, basically Amy and Leon just had their first kiss.”

  He laughs. “We’ll have to fix that.” He leans across the towel like he’s going to kiss me again.

  I hold up my hand. “Still Amy!”

  “Don’t care,” he says.

  But before he reaches me, I hear two girls giggle. One says, “They’re about to kiss!”

  I assume they’re girls from the birthday party, but then something about that voice makes me open my eyes. I didn’t even realize I had closed them! The two girls giggling behind their hands aren’t Grace’s friends. I jump up from the towel so fast that I get dizzy.

  “It’s okay,” Leo says, pulling me back down. “They won’t recognize us.”

  “C’mon, Stephanie,” the shorter girl in the red two-piece says, “let’s go practice.”

  Apparently no longer interested in us, the two girls walk to an empty patch of beach a few feet away and start doing cartwheels. A part of me wants to go running in the opposite direction, while another part wants to run up to Stephanie, pull her away from Ruby — who has still never really been nice to me — and tell her all about what happened on the sand dune. Next to Leo, she’s been my best friend my whole life. This past year was the first time we didn’t sit together at lunch. I miss her.

  “Are you okay?” Leo asks.

  I can’t help staring at them. I just saw Stephanie a few days ago when we did the play together. This version of her looks like a kid, not a teenager. Two years ago, they’d have just made the gymnastics team. Stephanie was so excited about it. Ruby moves on to back handsprings. She always was amazing at those. “Keep your hands straighter!” a woman yells from a beach chair nearby. Judging by their matching black ponytails, I’m going to guess that’s her mother.

  Ruby tries again. It looks perfect to me.

  “You can do better than that,” the woman scoffs. “You want to get cut from the team already?”

  Stephanie backs away, looking uncomfortable. “Um, I’ll be right back,” she says. Ruby barely notices. She’s too busy trying to please her mother. I actually feel a little sorry for her. Stephanie always said Ruby wasn’t as bad as I made her out to be. Maybe she feels sorry for her, too.

  I watch Stephanie dig into her beach bag and come up with her phone. I remember she got hers a few months before I did. She turns her back to Ruby and punches in a number.

  “Hi, Mrs. Ellerby,” she says. “Is Amanda there?”

  “It’s almost time to go,” Leo says, but I can’t turn away.

  “She’s calling me!” I whisper.

  “I know, but maybe it’s not right to listen.”

  Connor suddenly appears at our towel. Leo and I both whip our heads toward the party. Thankfully the balloons are still there.

  “My sister’s party is almost over,” Connor says. “My mom told me you have scissors? Can you cut the balloons off so I can fold up the chair?”

  “Sure,” Leo/Leon says. “I’ll bring them right over.”

  Connor nods and runs back to his family. While Leo digs through his
beach bag, I inch closer to Stephanie.

  “Okay,” she says to my mom. “Just tell her I called.” She tosses her phone back in her bag. Ruby sidles up to her. “She’s hanging out with Leo again, right?”

  Stephanie nods.

  “I’m not really sure why you stay friends with her.”

  My heart sinks. I’m the worst friend. Stephanie has a right to hate me.

  “Amanda’s great,” Stephanie says. “She had a really hard time last year after Leo said those things. I can’t blame her for wanting to make up for lost time. She was there for me when my parents weren’t getting along and things were really weird at my house. We’ll always be friends, even if it won’t be the same.”

  Ruby shrugs. “Whatever. Let’s keep working on your front handspring. Your feet aren’t lined up right.”

  My heart swells. I don’t even blame her anymore for not coming to the premiere Saturday night.

  Leo tugs at my arm and I finally turn away from eleven-year-old Stephanie for good, with a plan to be a better friend to the thirteen-year-old one. I pack up our bags while he collects the video games from Connor and cuts the balloons off the chair. I see him hand all but one of them to Grace to take home with her. He returns with a handful of wadded-up tape and a single red balloon. “For you, madam.”

  “The tape or the balloon?”

  “Your choice.”

  I reach for the balloon.

  “A wise decision.”

  We swing our bags over our shoulders and head to the spot where we’d first appeared two hours ago. The same guy is still there, but at least this time he’s lying on his belly. If anything, the beach is more crowded now, though. I have no idea how we’ll just suddenly disappear and expect no one to notice.

  “I got this,” Leo whispers. He cups his hands together and shouts, “Hey, is that Jake Harrison?” He points in the opposite direction, jumping up and down for emphasis. Two years ago Jake had just starred in his first movie and already everyone knew him. Well, everyone between ten and fourteen. At once, all the girls in earshot start running, which means their parents have to run after them.

  “Nice work.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “And it’s not even a lie, because right this minute Jake Harrison really IS at the beach! Only two years in the future.”

  “C’mon, let’s go meet that future.” Now that no one is even glancing in our direction, Leo and I turn around, take two steps, and land facedown, our mouths full of sand.

  Our limbs are tangled, my face is in the sand, and my balloon is underneath me, squashed flat as a pancake. I try to open my eyes but sand starts to leak in, so I quickly close them again. We must have done something wrong. Gone in the wrong direction, then tripped and fallen. “Did we miss our chance to get back?” I ask Leo, spitting out sand with each word. I can feel the panic rising in my chest.

  “We must have,” he says, his head somewhere close. “I think we might seriously be stuck here!”

  My heart starts pounding. Stuck in the past! “What do we do? Should we go home and try to explain to our parents why there are two of each of us?”

  “We can’t,” he says, his voice tight, like he’s holding in tears. “They’ll just see Amy and Leon. They’ll think we’re crazy.”

  “Oh, no, you’re right!”

  His hand finds mine. “Don’t worry, Amanda. We’ll get through this together.”

  I squeeze his hand and feel better, like always. I’m scared, but I’m not alone. “We’ll find Angelina. She’ll know what to do.”

  We lie still, not ready to face what’s ahead.

  “Okay, you guys are being seriously dramatic,” says a voice from above.

  I twist my head to the side and try to open my eyes again. All I see is a blurry face with brown hair, far away in the distance. “Rory? Is that you?” I rub at my eyes.

  “I’m here, too,” Tara calls out.

  Relief pours through me. “What happened?” I shout. “Where are we?”

  “You’re in a hole!” Rory says. “We spent the last two hours digging it.”

  Leo starts to laugh, then coughs as he chokes on more sand.

  “It was my idea,” Ray says. “We did it so no one would see you appear again. Totally brill, if you ask me.”

  “Ray has adjusted to all this very well,” Tara says. “All he did was shout, ‘holy dooly,’ when you disappeared, but that was it. Here, I’m lowering down a wet towel for your eyes.”

  Leo helps me sit up and we both grab for the towel. Once my eyes are relatively free of sand, I survey our surroundings. We are indeed in a deep hole. Not pool hole deep, but it’s definitely not your average hole in the sand at the beach.

  I feel a little silly for overreacting. Some advance notice might have been nice! Not that I can imagine how they could have warned us, but still.

  Ray leans over and helps Leo up, then both of them help me climb out. I’m disoriented when I reach the top. The air is much cooler in the present. And no one is running in search of a movie star. Speaking of movie stars …

  “Where’s Jake?” Leo asks, taking the words out of my mouth.

  Rory points to a beach chair with an umbrella attached to the back. Leo and I walk to the front of it.

  “How ya doing, Jake?” Leo asks.

  Jake, still in disguise, stares straight ahead and grunts. The others join us.

  “He’s away with the pixies, I’m afraid,” Ray says.

  I look to Tara for a translation. “He’s in some other world,” she explains. “He’s been like this since you guys disappeared into thin air.”

  Rory snaps her fingers in front of his face, then pats his arm. He doesn’t give any indication that he’s aware of anything around him.

  I turn to Leo. “He looks like Grace did. I mean, not his expression. But if seeing us made him freeze up like this, maybe Grace saw something, too.”

  “We were all at the bar mitzvah together, though,” Tara points out. “If Grace saw something that freaked her out, wouldn’t we all have seen it?”

  “I guess. Well, what are we going to do about Jake? We can’t leave him this way.”

  “I know what we do in Australia when someone zones out like this,” Ray says. He lifts Jake’s hat off his head and pours an entire bottle of water on him. Then he pushes the hat back on and stands back.

  Jake springs to life, sputtering and wiping water from his eyes. “Really, dude? You could have just nudged me awake.” Jake pulls his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and slips them back on.

  “You did it!” Rory shouts. Then she runs and throws her arms around Jake.

  “Wow, if I knew I’d get a greeting like that, I would have taken a nap in the sun a long time ago.” He looks over Rory’s head at us. “Hey, you guys are back. That was a long walk.”

  We all exchange uneasy glances. Is it really possible his brain has made up an excuse for our disappearance? “Um, yeah, long walk,” Leo agrees. “Took a swim. Had some lemonade.”

  Jake’s cell phone rings. He steps away to answer it and nearly trips over the huge mound of sand that came out of the hole. He gives a little yelp as he catches his balance and then calls out, “Hey, you can’t have a hole like that with Rory around. That’s just asking for trouble.”

  Rory sighs happily. “My hero. Always looking out for me.”

  “Nah,” Tara says. “He just doesn’t want you to steal all the scenes in his next movie, too.”

  “I don’t think he has to worry. Although I do still have that eye patch. Sawyer uses it when he plays pirate.”

  “So he really thinks we went on a walk?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder at him. He seems to be having a very animated phone conversation. “And that he was asleep for two hours?”

  “It sounds like it,” Rory says. “I think I’d know if he was making it up.”

  “But, Ray, you saw everything, right?”

  Ray nods. “One minute you guys were there, then, poof, gone.”

  “And it di
dn’t freak you out?” I ask.

  “Well, you guys had warned me. I just didn’t believe you. I believe you now, by the way.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Leo says.

  “Anytime, mate.”

  “Thanks for sticking around, Ray,” Tara says.

  “Couldn’t leave ya with Jake in that condition.” He flexes his arms. “Plus you needed my brute strength to dig that hole.”

  “We should fill that back in.” Leo reaches for the plastic shovels they must have borrowed to dig with.

  Jake rejoins us. “Rory, can I talk to you for a sec?”

  The two of them walk to the other side of the umbrella. The rest of us hurry to fill the hole back in while trying not to eavesdrop. Eventually we give up on the shovels and just push huge mounds in with our bodies. I am literally covered head to toe in sand now. The things I do for Angelina! I’m still confused, though. “If Ray saw us and he’s fine,” I whisper, “why did it make Jake go into shock like that?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Tara says. “I think some people just aren’t allowed to see anything that has to do with Angelina. Like David can’t see all the stuff inside her store, or smell the apples at Apple Grove. But Angelina gave Ray that money to drive us, so maybe that was her way of allowing him in.”

  Ray sniffs the air. “I don’t smell any apples. Just suntan lotion and wet sand.”

  Jake and Rory return. She looks sad but explains that Jake has to go straight from here to the airport.

  “No ride in the limo?” Leo asks, pouting.

  “Sorry, guys. Next time, okay?”

  The guys load up the chairs and towels, and then Jake returns the shovels to a family of four girls sitting a few blankets away. They have no idea that they just spoke with Jake Harrison the movie star.

  The rest of us say good-bye to Jake, then pile into Ray’s car. We leave the front seat open for Rory, who is still saying her own good-bye. I lean forward. “Ray, can you take us to Grace’s on the way home? We can bring some food or something.”