Page 34 of Songs of Summer

Stay

Maggie

Maggie woke upwith swollen eyes, an empty belly, and a feeling of marked confusion until she noticed a Post-it stuck to the bunk bed frame.

Picking up Dylan at the ferry, sleepyhead. Will sneak you out when I get home.

—Matt

As she sat up, she unintentionally hit her head on the top bunk, muttering curses as she grabbed her cell phone. She was eager to see if Jason had called. It was dead. Ugh. Jason was surely looking for her after that message she’d left, and this house looked like it belonged to Apple users, not Android. She would figure out a way to escape unnoticed and head back to the “Inn” asap.

The book,On Fire Island, sat on the dresser next to a melaminePowerpuff Girlsbowl with the leftover mac and cheese, an old boom box, and a retro vinyl briefcase-style cassetteholder. Maggie had had the same one as a kid. She popped it open and ran her finger over the titles: David Bowie,Golden Years;The Best of Talking Heads;Steely Dan,Aja; Peter Gabriel,So.She popped the last one in the boom box and played “In Your Eyes,” at the volume of a whisper, while she studied a framed picture of Matt with Dylan, she assumed. They looked to be about ten. The girl in the photo was a few inches taller than Matt at the time, and quite beautiful. They both had eyes filled with mischief, huge grins on their faces, long messy hair, sun-kissed skin, and multipleRugratsBand-Aids haphazardly stuck to each of their knees.

She put down the frame and picked up the bowl of cold mac and cheese. Although the food had been sitting out all night, she contemplated eating it anyway. While she heard that the people at Kraft had swapped the bright orange artificial coloring for natural things like paprika and turmeric, she was pretty sure it still contained enough preservatives to survive the apocalypse. It wouldn’t have been the first time she had eaten cold mac and cheese for breakfast.

She went for it, standing in front of the window, looking out, thinking of nothing more than the fact that Matt had served it to her with a spoon when she greatly preferred a fork. She remembered sick days as a kid. Her mom would roll a TV into her room, and she would sit in bed looping the straight little macaronis onto the tines of her fork before sliding them off in one bite with her teeth.

Through the window, she saw Matt walking up the block, pulling a wagon with the ferry captain’s daughter trailing behind. She looked different than Maggie had imagined. Athletic and beachy, yes, but her long hair in the photo was now cut into an edgy pixie, like a blond Audrey Hepburn. Next toher was a man—tall, also blond, handsome, even from the distance. Maybe Dylan had a boyfriend after all, and Matt would have no need for any hard conversations. Matt looked up toward the window and they briefly caught eyes. He didn’t look happy. She wasn’t sure why that was. Clearly, the boyfriend’s appearance had eradicated Matt’s concerns.

When she heard them enter, she turned off the boom box and opened the bedroom door a crack, hoping to catch the introductions. Their excitement upon seeing each other echoed up the stairs.

“Dylan!” Jake shouted upon seeing his baby girl. From the squeal that followed, Maggie guessed there was a lift and a spin involved. “Love the new hair!” a woman’s voice, probably Matt’s mom, rang out. Maggie inched out of the room and took a step down the staircase to hear better. Just then, Dylan introduced the guy.

“This is Steve,” she said, rephrasing it awkwardly, “my boyfriend, Steve.”

Itisher boyfriend. I knew it, Maggie thought. She took one more step to get a bit closer, when the loudest creak she may have ever heard groaned from below her feet. Ugh, the dreaded second step that Matt had warned of—it was just as he had said.

“Did you hear that?” Renee proclaimed.

Maggie stood still, frozen in place, not knowing whether to remain where she was or run back to the cover of Matt’s room. She chose the latter. The creak was even louder on the flip side, and she froze again but it was too late. Jake, Renee, Matt, Dylan, and Dylan’s boyfriend, Steve, were all staring up at her from below. Renee spoke first.

“Matty! You picked up a girl and brought her home on the weekend of my wedding?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom,” he answered, offering no further explanation.

She wasn’t having it.

“Then who is she?”

“Hi, I’m Maggie May Wheeler,” Maggie offered, casually following the trail of her voice down the stairs.

All eyes turned to Matt.

“Yes, this is Maggie. Maggie is my…girlfriend. She, um, surprised me last night, made the last ferry.”

The silence was deafening. Particularly from Renee, who looked completely shocked and more than a bit annoyed by yet another surprise guest to her wedding. At least that was how Maggie interpreted it.

“Don’t worry, I can sit anywhere, Mrs….”

“You can call her Renee,” Matt jumped in, saving her from the fact that she didn’t remember her “boyfriend’s” last name. Four sets of eyes stared her down with the fifth, Matt’s, desperately avoiding hers. She did her best to redirect their attention.

“So, are you as excited to be brother and sister as Matt is?” Maggie asked Dylan.

“I think we might be a bit too old to adopt that title. Don’t you, Matty?”

In a state of disbelief, all he could do was nod.

“Dylan, I put you upstairs, but do you want to take the guest house? It’s bigger,” Renee offered.

---