This Is What Happy Looks Like(54)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Hey,” he said, twisting around and pointing toward the shore. “Do you know what town this is?”

Ellie turned to look, then shook her head. “How come?”

“It just looks nice is all.”

“Look it up,” she suggested, and he felt for his phone in his pocket before remembering that he’d left it back at the hotel. He hadn’t done it intentionally, and he’d only realized this as they were gliding out of the harbor, but it wasn’t the worst day to lose his tether to the rest of the world. There was nobody he wanted to hear from at the moment, not Harry or Rachel or Mick or anyone else. Without it, he’d thought he might feel unhinged, but all he felt was free.

“I don’t have mine, remember?” he said. “Can I borrow yours?”

It was balanced on the dashboard in front of her, and she nudged it in his direction. He pulled up the map feature, waiting for the radar to register, a slow dance of pixels arranging themselves across the screen. The wind lifted the hair from his forehead, and he squinted out at the church steeple that rose from the trees along the coast, the idea of his future home growing more solid in his mind.

He was about to tell Ellie what he was thinking when they cut across the wake of another boat, their own vessel popping up like a skipped rock, and the phone went flying out of his hands in slow motion, pinwheeling end over end until it landed soundlessly in the water. The surface was too busy with foam to see even a ripple, and in seconds they were past it, the little square of metal probably halfway to the sandy bottom.

“Uh,” he said, his back still to Ellie.

“What?” she asked from behind him.

“Your phone…”

“Don’t tell me.”

“I’m afraid it’s swimming with the fishes,” he said, stepping over to her with what he hoped was a sufficiently apologetic look. “I’m really sorry. It just slipped.”

She groaned.

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“That’s not very helpful at the moment,” she told him. “I was using that to navigate.”

He looked out the front of the boat. There were a few sailboats in the distance, and a motorboat toting a water-skier, and to the left, nearer to the shore, the harbors were speckled by buoys, each one capped by a resting seagull. The town he’d so desperately wanted to move to only a moment ago had slipped behind them, lost for now.

“We’ll be able to see it from here, though, right?”

Ellie shrugged. “It’s not like a train stop,” she said. “The towns aren’t labeled. I’m not sure how we’re gonna figure out which one it is.”

“I’m sure it’ll have a bunch of big houses.”

“I guess so,” she said, but the corners of her mouth were turned down, and her eyes gave away her worry.

“We can always ask someone.”

“How?” she asked. “By smoke signal?”

“We’ll wave them down.”

She glanced at her watch with a sigh. “It’s only eleven,” she said. “It’ll probably still be a while, anyway.”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll just keep an eye out, then.”

“Okay,” she repeated, and above their heads, a seagull let out a long cry. Graham tipped his head back to watch, wondering what they must look like from the sky, dozens of boats spread far along the water, a mirror image of the birds fanned out across the sky. And in the middle of it all, the Go Fish, moving steadfastly past a series of identical towns as it carried them farther and farther up the coast, leaving only a trail of foam in its wake, like bread crumbs meant to guide them home again.

–Know any good sailing jokes?

–I’ve got one about seagulls.

–Okay.

–Why do seagulls fly over the sea?

–Why?

–Because if they flew over the bay, they’d be bagels.

Chapter 21

The sun followed them like a spotlight, making everything shimmer under the intensity of its glare. Ellie could feel the warmth across her shoulders and on the back of her neck, the tip of her nose, and the pale line of scalp that was visible against her red hair. It had been more than two hours now, and still they were drifting.

Graham scratched at his forehead, which was already starting to burn. He’d forgotten to pick up sunblock earlier, and they were now out of water too. Every so often, they shifted to a lower gear, slowing enough to wave at a passing boat and then shouting their question across the blue space between them. Sometimes, an answer was lobbed back at them—probably another half hour at most, or four more towns, tops—but other times, they were met with only blank stares or helpless shrugs.

Ellie tried to tamp down the anxiety that rose and fell like a parachute inside her. She wanted to be back in Henley, drinking pink lemonade out of star-spangled plastic cups. But if she was going to do this at all—and she had to, not just for the money, but for other reasons too, for all the things that had been left unsaid all these years—then she wanted to do it now.

Behind her, she heard a tapping sound, and she turned to see Graham with one hand on the wheel. He was frowning down at the little dials that dotted the dashboard, and as she watched, he lifted a finger to drum at one of them again. Beneath her feet, Ellie could feel something deep within the boat groan in resistance as they slowed down.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, walking over to join him. She put a hand on the throttle and tipped it forward, but rather than the expected surge, there was a soft sputtering, an alarming rattle, and then the engine cut out entirely, and the needle that Graham had been studying so intently—which Ellie now realized, too late, was the gas gauge—fell onto the E with a stiff-armed finality.

Graham looked over at her, his mouth forming a little o of surprise, and for a brief and fragile moment, Ellie felt a lump rise in her throat. Her eyes stung from the salt and she could feel a sunburn setting in, so hot it made her shiver. Here they were, floating up the coast with not a drop of gas left in their stolen boat. Behind them, there were reporters and photographers and consequences. There was Ellie’s mom and Graham’s manager and the awful memory of last night. But what lay ahead of them wasn’t much better, and now they were stuck somewhere in between, and her eyes burned with tears at the helplessness of the situation.

Beside her, she could feel Graham waiting for her reaction, holding himself perfectly still, like a deer caught between crosshairs. But when she finally gathered herself enough to look back at him, she was astonished to discover that he was trying not to laugh.