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The grating scream of buzz saws greeted me as I turned onto my street. As if I wasn’t already tense enough. There were four separate trucks and a Jaguar parked outside Chloe’s house. A plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, and an air-conditioning specialist. I didn’t know who the Jaguar belonged to, but I’d bet money it was an interior decorator.Looked like Mrs. Appleby was bored again.I pulled into my driveway, and Sha
By the time we got down to LBI, I was tired, cranky, and guilt-ridden. As I watched the familiar scenery fly by—the chowder stands and fudge shops, the random businesses selling boogie boards and sunscreen and plastic shovels—all I kept seeing was Jake’s forlorn expression as we pulled away from Orchard Hill. Why did I have to be so mean? Now he was never going to try to apologize, which meant I’d never get the chance to forgive him. But did I even want to forgive him? Maybe I should just move on. That’s what healthy people supposedly do—put the people who hurt them behind them. Besides, being with him meant being with his friends, and that was not a place I wanted to be. Especially not after everything they’d put me through over the past year. But still . . . every time I thought about him, my heart caught. Didn’t it realize what he’d done?Stupid heart.I banged my head lightly against the car window as the view outside shifted. We were headed north on the island, away from the hustle and bustle near the causeway and onto the tree-lined stretch of the Boulevard. A woman rode along on a cruising bike, her wide-brimmed straw hat tugged back by the breeze, a tiny black dog sitting in the wicker basket on her handlebars. A far-too-tan guy in a BMW convertible pulled out of a driveway with a huge private beach—no trespassing sign tacked to a pole. Up here, where the biggest of the beach houses lived, there were more of those signs than there were people. A few seagulls cawed overhead, and I found myself hoping one would poop on the guy’s fresh wax job. Finally, Gray pulled into the winding, white pebble driveway that led to his house.I was so tired of not knowing how I felt. Whether I was mad at my father or relieved he was back. Where I wanted to live for the summer. Whether or not I should be with Jake. I pulled out my cell phone and considered a text, but what would I say? Sorry? Call me? Miss you? It all seemed way too pathetic and not quite right. Then the SUV emerged from the evergreen trees and I forgot all about my phone.“This is your house?”“This is it,” Gray said.I couldn’t believe it. This was the house. My single favorite house on LBI. It was shaped like a long, shallow triangle and set up on stilts, like many of the houses on the island, to protect it from flooding and storm water. From the beach, this house looked like a huge, hovering alien craft—all windows from top to bottom, with three levels of decking and several sets of stairs to the beach. When I was little and we’d go for strolls in the sand, I had always wanted to walk by the spaceship house.My mother and Gray got out of the car. Qui