Flight Season Read online

  The bird, I mouth. Then I whisper, “It’s a swallow-tailed kite.”

  He smiles, a gorgeous, crooked smile, which has the strange effect of really pissing me off. Then he loud-whispers, “Oh okay. Sure. Let’s make me late for work so you can sit out here in the middle of the swamp and watch a bird fly in circles.”

  The kite is circling around and around like he’s riding the edge of a corkscrew, that distinctive forked tail and pure white breast clearly visible. I ignore TJ (I’m getting good at that) and start taking notes in my journal.

  He lets out a long sigh and leans into the hood.

  Klee-klee-klee. Klee-klee-klee.

  “Listen,” I hiss. “That’s his warning call.”

  And he should consider this mine. I don’t care what TJ thinks. I’m going to spend a few minutes observing this incredible creature’s extraordinary flight pattern, even if it means enduring the scorn of my passenger.

  Yes, it’s come to this. My beautiful Tesla now serves as a vehicle for hire. And my paying customer? None other than TJ Carvalho.

  His text came in last Sunday morning:

  It’s TJ from the hospital. Need ride. Will pay for gas or electricity or whatever.

  How much? I shot back immediately. I happened to be three hours into an all-day marathon of working through our dismal financials. Let’s just say he caught me in a very weak moment.

  Thirty a week.

  It only took me a second to do the math. That would be $120 a month. That would, at least, ensure that Florida Power & Light would keep the electricity going.

  Text me your address.

  101 Fletcher—near San Marco & Castillo.

  Next to Fountain of Youth?

  Yeah—between that and Ripley’s.

  Be ready at 6:05.

  Okay.

  If you make me late even once, we’re done.

  Okay.

  That last line might seem cold, but it’s not. It’s self-preservation. If I’ve learned anything about TJ, it’s that he’s notorious for being late. And if I know anything about Prashanti, it’s that she has a very low tolerance for tardiness.

  So far, TJ has managed to be ready on time every day for a week, which is about the only good thing I can say about this arrangement. With each passing day he becomes both more dismissive of me and—it pains me to say—better looking. I keep waiting for the terrible attitude to ruin his looks for me. I mean, that’s a thing. You think someone is beautiful until you realize that it’s just on the surface, and the ugliness inside begins to reconfigure the exterior.

  But here I am, having endured a full week of driving back and forth through swamps with a mostly silent and brooding TJ Carvalho, and I still can’t look directly at him without having to swallow hard and turn away.

  Why won’t this boy turn ugly?

  On the upside, it’s become abundantly clear to me that I was imagining all of the drama last Friday. TJ probably got the job at that Brazilian restaurant a month ago. Considering his track record with being late to the hospital (until he started riding with me), I can’t imagine that he keeps a job for more than three or four months at a stretch. So I’ve stopped worrying about it. He doesn’t know anything about that night. I’m sure of it.

  It doesn’t really matter, anyway. That’s in the past, and I’ve got plenty of things to worry about in the here and now.

  I’m going to need to find work—a paying job. And the job will have to be nights or weekends, since I also have to keep my internship. I’ve been searching desperately all week, and I haven’t found anything yet.

  The situation is getting dire. I need a paycheck before the end of the month. If I can earn enough to pay off the water bill in Winter Park, or at least to pay something toward it as a sign of good faith, we should be okay until the end of July. And even though Mom can’t seem to wrap her head around the future right now, I’m beginning to worry obsessively about the fact that she may not have a house when I go back to Yale.

  If I go back to Yale?

  On Monday I snuck away from Ángel duty for thirty minutes and called the office of financial aid. It only took a few words out of my mouth, and they were bending over backward to give me my own personal aide counselor. I’m quickly learning that “My father died” tends to be an effective way to garner the attention of bureaucrats. My counselor, a lovely woman named Alice Thistlethwaite, assured me that Yale would do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition into my sophomore year. Then she directed me to two websites where I would find—and eventually need to fill out—two incredibly complicated forms. For one form, alone, I have to pull together about forty documents, most of which I have never heard of. She told me that my mom would be able to help. I couldn’t find the words to explain that—unless the documents needed to be dipped in vats of dye and hung from a clothesline, Mom’s not likely to be of much assistance right now.

  I’m on my own.

  Klee-klee-klee. Klee-klee-klee.

  I watch the swallow-tail kite pump its wings twice and fly away.

  “Can we go now?” TJ asks, standing up and heading toward the passenger seat.

  I nod, a little surprised that he was even paying enough attention to notice that the kite had moved on.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, we’re pulling into St. Augustine.

  TJ looks up from his phone. “You can drop me at the Alligator Farm,” he says.

  “The Alligator Farm?”

  “Yeah. You live out there, right?”

  I nod. Okay, I’ll drop him at the Alligator Farm. I’m not about to ask questions.

  I turn off A1A and pull in front of the building, a Spanish Colonial with a red tile roof and a tall tower in the center. The Alligator Farm is one of St. Augustine’s oldest tourist attractions, and—from what I can gather—one of the city’s lamest, too. The parking lot bears some evidence of this: a camo-painted military-style truck with enormous wheels is a permanent fixture here. The flatbed has an enormous plastic gator in it, its arms wrapped in rope, its jaw wide to reveal row upon row of gleaming sharp teeth.

  If this lovely little sculpture offers any evidence of what’s inside, I’d prefer not to go in.

  A girl emerges from the entrance, waving. Long, lean body. Wavy dark hair cascading halfway down her back. Clear sun-kissed skin and deep brown eyes.

  Oh God. That’s probably his girlfriend. They look like they were made for each other.

  TJ mutters, “Thanks,” and starts to get out of the car, but before he can close the car door, the girl has reached out to hold it open.

  “Hey!” she says to me. “Thanks for putting up with my stupid cousin every day.”

  Cousin. Okay, so I jumped to conclusions.

  I nod and shrug. “It pays pretty well.”

  TJ heads across the parking lot, as if we’re not even there. The girl glances at him, puzzled, and then back at me.

  “Does he always act like that?” she asks, squinting a little.

  “Like what?”

  “Like, rude.”

  “Oh,” I say. “No, he’s a perfectly charming gentleman most of the time. I think maybe the gator scared him away.” I gesture toward the gaping mouth to my right.

  “Hmmm,” she says. “Weird.”

  “I’m Vivi,” I say.

  “Let’s go, Sabrina!” TJ calls out, clearly annoyed. “It’s a thousand degrees out here.”

  “Well, somebody’s hot and bothered,” she says. She looks me over one more time. “He doesn’t usually act like this. Sorry.”

  “No big deal,” I say. “I’m used to it.”

  She waves and smiles a gorgeous smile—one that somehow also manages to be kind and approachable. I wave back and start to pull away. She’s standing in front of TJ, and it looks like she’s teasing him or giving him a hard time about something. He has his arms crossed over his chest (which I now identify as his signature stance) and he’s shaking his head, frowning. He must sense me watching him, because he glanc
es up as I drive by, and he looks right at me.

  It’s utterly pointless for my body to react like this, but still, my breath catches.

  Trying hard to ignore the acceleration of my heart rate, I turn to look away. That’s when I see the sign across the street in front of the lighthouse entrance.

  HELP WANTED (NIGHT SHIFT)

  Twenty minutes later I’m standing in the gift shop of the St. Augustine Lighthouse, pretending to inspect the extensive collection of Christmas tree ornaments. Darren, who runs the Darkest of the Moon paranormal tour, is reading my job application, which stresses me out immensely.

  I need this job. The hours are perfect, the pay is decent, and I am so incredibly desperate.

  “How old did you say you were?” he asks, looking me up and down, but not in a creepy way.

  “Nineteen.”

  “And you’ve never worked a day in your life?”

  Okay, Darren. That’s what I want to say, but I keep my mouth shut. I’ve worked my butt off for almost as long as I can remember. A 4.9 GPA doesn’t just materialize out of thin air. But I have a feeling that telling him I took four SAT prep classes my junior year of high school won’t be the answer he’s looking for.

  “I was a professional dog walker,” I say. “See, on the application?”

  “You mean Pumpkin?” he asks, looking up from the application.

  “Yes, the labradoodle. Mrs. Tipton paid me to feed and walk him. I’m sure she’d be willing to give a recommendation. And I had other clients in the neighborhood—”

  “Right,” he says. “In addition to Pumpkin. When you were thirteen.”

  When I was thirteen. That was the moment before everything started to matter so much—grades and clubs and activities and sports I didn’t even care about playing. It all felt so important. Every class, every yearbook or newspaper I edited, every varsity letter in fencing and squash and field hockey—they all were bringing me one step closer to my goal: the Ivy League.

  Now it’s all in danger of slipping away. And I’m begging for a job on the ghost tour. Because if that’s what it takes to hold this all together, then that’s what I’m gonna do.

  “Anybody else I can call for a reference?” he asks.

  I don’t tell him about the internship, because (a) it’s not a paying job and (b) I don’t want him to call Prashanti. She doesn’t need to know I’m trying to moonlight. My situation at the hospital is precarious enough.

  “Ever been on a ghost tour?” he asks.

  “No,” I reply. Honesty is the best policy, right? “But I know a ton of history, and I have a great memory for details.”

  “Like, what kind of details?” he asks.

  “Well, I know that the current lighthouse was built in 1874, and that it’s the oldest brick structure in St. Augustine.” I stand up a little straighter. “And I believe I once learned that the first female lighthouse keeper in the US worked here. Her husband died, and she took over, maybe?” I look at Darren, whose jaw is hanging open. “It was right before the Civil War, before the current structure was built, right? What was her name? Uh, Delia? No, no. I remember now. Dolores. And the last name, it starts with an A.”

  “Dolores Andreu,” he says.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Dolores Andreu, keeper of the lighthouse from 1859 to 1862. But she’s probably not one of your ghosts, since—as I recall—she was buried in Georgia.”

  Darren nods. “You’re good,” he says. “I’ll admit it.”

  “Should I tell you more?” I ask. “Maybe about some of the shipwrecks? The most interesting, of course, were during the post-Revolutionary era—”

  He stands up and throws his hands into the air, as if in surrender. “Oh no,” he says. “I think you’ve made your case. Can you start tomorrow?”

  It’s everything I can do to keep from throwing my arms around Darren. Instead I clear my throat and don my most professional voice. “Absolutely,” I say.

  “Lord knows we need some new stories—tourists are grumbling on TripAdvisor about the same old, tired ghosts. Think you could drum some up?”

  “You mean, like, historical research?” I ask—I know my voice sounds a little too nerded-out and excited.

  “Something like that,” he replies, shrugging. “Just dig around the archives and find me a few stories, some dead folks we haven’t thought to resurrect yet.”

  “Will do! What time do you need me?”

  “Night shift starts at seven thirty P.M.”

  “Perfect!” I exclaim, feeling really glad that I spent that ten minutes in the car before I came into this place, reading up on the St. Augustine Lighthouse’s very informative website.

  I always come prepared.

  * * *

  There’s no one here, since the museum closes at six and doesn’t reopen for the ghost tour until eight thirty. I’m in no hurry to get back to the A-frame and that stack of incomprehensible financial aid paperwork, so instead of getting in my car, I head down a gravel path toward the lighthouse keeper’s residence.

  It’s that perfect time of evening when the light is starting to soften and the wind picks up off the ocean to push away the damp heat. The path is lined with low oak trees, their narrow trunks twisting and curving, their branches dripping with Spanish moss. It ends at the edge of a broad lawn. From the back of the lawn, the lighthouse rises, impossibly tall. I crane my neck to follow the twirl of black-and-white stripes painted around it, to the red-roofed structure where the huge lens spins, constant and slow, still lighting the way for ships on the ocean. I think about that light, and it makes me feel calm somehow—to know it’s been throwing its beam across the water for almost 150 years.

  I don’t walk toward the lighthouse, though. I head to the top of the lawn, where the keeper’s house stands. I pause and listen for a while to the songbirds in the trees around me. The low, throaty jeer of the blue jay; the repetitive birdie, birdie, birdie of the cardinal; the Carolina wren’s lovely, sweet teakettle.

  The keeper’s house is a two-story redbrick structure, with a big, wooden wraparound porch painted white. I guess it’s supposed to be haunted, but to me it looks warm and inviting—like a place that’s been filled with life. I stand on the grassy field behind it, and I imagine the families who lived here, the lighthouse keeper resting on the back porch after a long day of trudging up and down those stairs, kids chasing one another other across the lawn, calling out to each other, their high voices piercing the island’s quiet.

  This was a home. It must have been a lovely place to grow up.

  All those families, long gone now. And tourists clamoring to this place to try to find them again—to catch a glimpse of how they lived, to try to convince themselves that, somehow, they’re all still wandering around here, desperate to communicate with the living.

  Why is it that we don’t want to let the dead be gone?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ÁNGEL

  “OKAY, ÁNGEL, I NEED for you to work with me today. When TJ gets here, we’re going to make this goal thing fast and painless.…”

  Ah, Vivi. She’s always so nice. Honestly, between you and me, I don’t know how she stays so cheerful all the time. What with TJ being so strange and grumpy around her.

  “I can’t handle him today, Ángel. I just don’t have the emotional energy for it. We need to get him in and out of here as quickly as we can.”

  What, and ruin the only fun I get to have today?

  “I worked all weekend. A real job.” She’s walking around my bed, picking up empty ice cups and throwing them away. “Yeah, I had to get a paying job—nights and weekends. My first one ever.”

  Girl’s never had a job? That’s kind of weird. I think I’ve been working since I could walk. Maybe that’s why I’m losing my mind in here. I need something to do.

  “My mom’s suffering some sort of mourning-induced psychosis, which entails dipping sheets into dye all day, and in the meantime, our entire financial situation is in massive disarray. We’r
e about to lose our house in Winter Park, and she hasn’t paid any of the utility bills for months.” She crushes a paper cup in her fist. “And I spent all day yesterday looking for insurance policies, bank statements, W-2 forms. I still can’t figure that one out—I mean, it does not exist. Honest to God, if I have to call one more person and sound like a total idiot, asking what all these forms are…”

  She pauses and looks right at me. I smile all innocent. You know the smile I’m talking about—the poor-clueless-sick-boy smile.

  “I sort of forget that you don’t understand what I’m saying.”

  Oh, she’s wrong there. I don’t know about all those forms, and I’m not sure what exactly her mom is suffering from … something about not liking the mornings, I think. But the rest of it? Crystal clear. You might think it’s mean for me not to let her in on the fact that I’m crazy smart when it comes to picking up languages. A certifiable genius, I’m pretty sure.

  I’ve decided that Vivi needs this. Girl’s under a ton of pressure. I feel kinda sorry for her. So, every morning when she gets here, I pretend to be half asleep and I let her wander around, tidying up the room, and unload it all. I’ve got nothing better to do than listen to her problems.

  I gotta tell you, though, I’m really tired today. She’s talking and talking and my eyelids are feeling like they’ve got rocks in them. They’re closing down on me, and also pushing in, so my eyes ache. Like the rest of my stupid body. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been in this bed for, like, a month, or what, but I want to sleep all the time. And you know what really sucks? I can’t, because everything hurts, and because when I finally do relax a little, somebody comes in here and makes me take a pill or wants to change my sheets … or asks me what my goddamned goal for the day is.

  Right on cue, TJ walks into the room and grabs that stupid blue marker from the whiteboard.

  “Buenos días, Ángel. ¿Cuál es su meta para el día?” Then he sighs.

  Okay, first, this guy speaks Spanish like he can’t feel his tongue. It’s like all thick and floppy in there, and it sends these weird slurs out. Second, what the hell is up with that deep sigh? Like, he’s all, My life is so hard. I don’t mean to be too self-absorbed, but he’s not the one who can’t get out of bed! And, third, how about some manners, Mr. Carvalho? He hasn’t even acknowledged that Vivi exists. Not so much as a sideways glance in her direction.