and Dominic around made it easier And now my best friend from birth Zoe is coming home But Dominic is leaving I take a deep breath of salty air and let the late morning sun warm my face I feel the gravelly sand beneath my flip-flops Why can’t I pick and choose what happens And how it happens Why why why I ask you Ben jogs ahead of us then doubles back burning off energy I really need to run today he says Ella throws her arm around my neck and touches heads with me Q you need to try my newest nail color Blissful Blue Azure I laugh This girl She’s turned me into a sparkly toenail-polish wearer just like her And woo hoo when Zoe comes home tonight my two best friends will finally meet I’ve been telling them about each other for more than a year and soon they’ll be in the same place Sure they’re about as different as chocolate chocolate pudding and lemon pie Ella is a questioner like me A digger-into-problems And yes this gets us into some tricky situations Zoe on the other hand is super cautious When we were eight she wouldn’t even help me crawl across the beam in Ms Stillford’s carriage house so I could dangle from a rope like a trapeze artist I mean seriously 2
Still the thought of them meeting gives me goose bumps of excitement And Dominic is leaving in thirty days which has me tossing and turning at night wondering if I will ever see him again He is and I don’t say this out loud very often my boyfriend We’re copacetic one of Dominic’s favorite words So a tiny voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that if he’s leaving I need to start protecting my heart But I’m not going to think about that today And oh there’s this my dearest darling teacher Ms Stillford who tutored me for my first eight years of school has been bored out of her gourd since retiring retiring last year Now she’s taking her husband crusty lobsterman Owen Loney on a big see-America trip And since you can’t run a lobster pound while you’re seeing America he sold his lobster pound and put his trawler up for sale But following the sale he’s been a mopey coffee-drinking fixture at the end of Gusty’s café counter which I can see upsets Ms Stillford It’s piling on I’m like enough stress already Hey look Ella points to the café where Dad and Owen Loney are wrestling a ladder through the back door Ben takes off running toward them Chuppta He’s always ready to get involved in a project 3
especially one that might involve climbing on a roof Need help Dad and Owen Loney exchange raised eyebrows as if to say Do we look like two old guys who can’t set up a ladder Thanks Ben Dad tells him I think we got it What are you doing Ella asks Measuring how much sign space we’ve got Dad says For Quinnie’s mom He makes it sound like he’s humoring Mom But there’s a good reason he and Owen Loney are headed for the roof This is the craziest change of all The guy who bought Loney’s Lobster Pound is this chef from Boston with a famous temper He’s turned the place into a super-fancy restaurant named after him Restaurant Hubert has only been open a month since the middle of May but it’s the first real competition my dad’s café has ever had A gourmet restaurant reviewer called it coastal agri-modernism I think that’s supposed to be high praise Mom may be the Maiden Rock sheriff the real estate broker the postmaster and the mayor all of whom want the town to boom but like me she doesn’t want the café to suffer because of some restaurant up the street serving singed-carrot 4
vinaigrette and raw-beet foam Gusty’s is the heart of this little coastal village and a Maiden Rock institution Still the place could use some publicity We’ve all been trying to convince Dad of that After Restaurant Hubert opened I made T-shirts that say Gusty’s Café Home of the Gusty Burger and Lobster Fries Mom has been lobbying for a new sign Clooney Wickham the all-in-one cook summer server and assistant manager wants Dad to plant flower boxes in the front Even Ben’s uncle John Denby the director of the local nature center thinks patchin up the pah-kin lot might be a good thing We’re all on edge about this Hubert place But not Dad He isn’t afraid of what he calls an uptight place with hefty prices He belly-laughed when he heard Hubert’s signature dish would be lobster quenelle poached in seaweed broth and fin ished with a beam of light What respectable Mainah will pay for that he said Me I’m sticking with burgers and fries I’m not so sure Some people like fussy food once in a while I might even want to try some of it Like maybe the subzero chocolate pudding on a red bamboo stick But Dad says he’s not buying a three-thousand-dollar anti-griddle just to make a fudge pop 5
