Five

That stay at Ocean House, where we’d gotten the little bottles of shampoo, swirled with sorcery. It was as if I was under a spell, but not one cast by a sea witch: It was cast by me, for the secret reason we were there.

On the drive over, my emotions made me feel I was flying, or at least floating on air. Neither Eloise nor my grandmother knew why I had suggested we stay there. I had steered us to that hotel for a reason known only to me and one other person.

Gram was already fading, forgetting words, but she was still healthy enough to drive, to have fun with us. Eloise and I had been at our best—wildest. Meaning that Gram saw us at our polite-granddaughter best, and we saw us as our true selves.

We stayed in a suite. It had two bedrooms and a large terrace. Everything felt so cozy—the sofa was soft rose-red, there was a fireplace, the bookcases were full. Gram napped in an armchair, a book open on her lap, but I grabbed Eloise’s hand and pulled her onto the wraparound terrace.

Waves crashed on the long, white sand beach down below, just past the lawn and a thick border of cream-colored hydrangeas. Hydrangeas had been my mother’s favorite flower. I had seen them on the Ocean House website, and as soon as I showed the photo to Gram, she was sold on this destination.

She liked that the hotel put out yellow chaises and blue-and-white-striped umbrellas on the beach—it reminded her of a vacation she’d taken at Juan-les-Pins in the South of France. You could get lemonade, or iced tea, or anything off the menu. Down the beach, to the right, was the lighthouse. Perched above it all was a big white house where everyone knew Taylor Swift lived—or at least spent the Fourth of July most years. We could see the house from the terrace.

Gram had thought the proximity of Taylor’s house would be a big draw for me and Eloise. But even though we loved her music, we figured there were enough fangirls gawking at her house, and besides, we weren’t into celebrities. There were other wonders for us to be in awe of.

“Look,” I said, pointing up.

“What?” Eloise asked.

A magnificent tower rose above the top story of the yellow hotel. What looked like a filigreed wrought iron railing rimmed the very top, and I could see that a raptor was perched on the railing, silhouetted against the blue sky. Even though I had never seen one before, its shape was unmistakable: a merlin. And I must confess: I had known it would be there. I’d been told it hunted from its perch at the top of the hotel.

A merlin is a small, swift falcon. Even its name carries magic, with echoes of Merlin, the wizard. This bird, for me, also connected to something like love. There was no question that I had to go up there. And of course I wasn’t going to leave Eloise—she would want to be there, too, and not just because of the raptor. I couldn’t wait to surprise her.

“Come on,” I said.

“Up to the tower?” she said, following my gaze. “Are we allowed?”

“I know someone,” I said mysteriously.

She didn’t answer. I hurried her through the suite, past dozing Gram, into the hotel’s hallway. This was a very grand place where adults spoke in hushed tones. That suited me fine. I liked slipping through spaces, almost as if I was invisible. That was one of my superpowers—disappearing into thin air. I was quiet, and I never wore anything fancy, and if I didn’t want to be seen, I could just walk through a crowd and no one would notice me.

All I had to do was find the way up to the tower. I was intent on seeing that merlin, but there was another reason—it felt like a romantic destination. If I could get up there, I’d find some kind of enchantment, maybe like Merlin’s cave where spells could be cast, where sadness and worry drifted away.

Eloise and I climbed the stairs until we got to the top floor and found a door with an oval plaque marked TOWER SUITE . I leaned against the heavy door with my shoulder and it opened right away.

“Should we really go in?” Eloise asked.

“We should,” I said, smiling. Although I sounded confident, I had butterflies in my stomach.

We walked into the suite, and it was every bit as astonishing as I’d been told, with walls of gleaming wood, like the inside of a ship. I glanced around—I didn’t see anyone’s luggage or belongings. No one was in sight. But my heart skipped because I knew who had left the door unlocked for us.

There were bookcases flanking the fireplace, with cozy chairs gathered around. A table with an antique chess set nestled between two arched windows that overlooked the town and harbor. Windows on the other walls looked onto the sparkling blue ocean and out toward the lighthouse. The sound of waves hitting the beach matched the crashing feeling in my heart.

We went upward to a balcony—the Crow’s Nest—a secret nook with books, a ship’s log, and a wide daybed with big, comfy pillows. Every step felt like an adventure. From there, a steep spiral staircase with finely tooled balusters—they reminded me of the precise woodworking my boat-building father had done—led up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. I knew that it opened to where the merlin was perched—and much more. I’d been told how private this was, how very few guests climbed through the door. Only someone with a special key could open it.

I knew who had that key.

Eloise followed me up the tall spiral staircase. My heart pounded again, and it wasn’t from the effort of climbing: It came from the excitement sizzling all through my body. I didn’t even think about this trapdoor being locked. I just knew the enchanted tower had been left open for us.

And it was, and we stepped out into the bright sunshine, onto a widow’s walk. Many old New England houses had them—a place up on the roof where, long ago, wives would stand with a telescope, watching the horizon for their husbands’ ships to return. Some never would, and the wives became widows.

A flagpole rose in the middle, an American flag rippling in the summer breeze. My gaze went straight to the merlin. The fierce little raptor was about twenty feet away from us, peering intently at some prey down below. It had blue-gray wings, a blue back, and a speckled white breast.

“It’s not afraid of us,” Eloise whispered.

I nodded, full of anticipation.

“Oli?” It was a boy’s voice, and my heart sped up.

I looked over my shoulder, and there he was: Matt Grinnell.

Matt, with his blue eyes and brown hair, who made me blush just to look at him, who made my heart race just to hear his voice. I felt my cheeks get hot, and I saw that his were flushed, too. We grinned at each other.

“You came,” Matt said. “You convinced your grandmother?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t hard,” I said. “She liked the hydrangeas.”

“What are you doing here?” Eloise asked. Matt was in my grade but he, Eloise, and I were all part of the same nature club.

“My family comes here every summer,” Matt said.

“And he knows everyone who works at this hotel,” Chris Nicholson said, turning around. He was smiling at all of us, but his gaze was focused on Eloise. Chris and Matt were best friends, and Chris was in the nature club with us.

“Hi, Chris,” Eloise said, and her blushing cheeks gave everything away. She’d had a crush on Chris since the spring. The way he smiled back made me wonder if he felt the same about her.

Chris was very cute, with perfect teeth and short blond hair. Girls mooned over him, but not me. He was too professionally handsome for my taste. He talked about going to Harvard as an undergrad and also for medical school. I didn’t doubt that he could make those dreams come true. His grades put him near the top of our class, and he could afford to go anywhere he wanted: His parents were both executives at Denzer—a major pharmaceutical company.

“The hotel gives guests tours, including the tower when the suite’s not occupied,” Matt said. “So I always take the tour, because it’s so cool up here. Devon, one of the managers, brought us up to the tower. He knows we’re birders.”

“Tell them the rest,” Chris said.

“I might be able to get a job here this summer,” Matt said. “There’s a naturalist who takes guests out on a boat, and into a salt pond near Weekapaug, and Devon says I’ll be able to help with bird identification.”

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“That would mean he wouldn’t be at Hubbard’s Point,” Chris said with a teasing tone. “You wouldn’t like that, would you, Oli?”

It was my turn to blush again.

“So you two planned to meet here?” Eloise asked, glancing from me to Matt. She knew how I felt about Matt, of course, from our sister talks. But she’d be able to guess anyway, from the fact I always seemed to drive past his house on our way home, pretending it was random.

And it was obvious that Chris could tell I liked Matt, too. Maybe I wasn’t as good at hiding my feelings as I thought I was.

I would explain to Eloise later that Matt had told me all about his family vacations at Ocean House, how the manager had taken him to this tower before. And how the look in his eyes had been an invitation, a dare, to meet him there.

“He was just sharing a bird-watching spot,” I said to Eloise as we stood on the roof.

“Yeah, I wanted to show you the merlin,” Matt said.

I listened to see if there was anything in his voice to let me know it was more than that, but it sounded as if it was just what he said: sharing a birding opportunity with friends.

“The merlin’s cool, right?” another voice asked.

I turned to see Fitch Martin, another boy from our nature club, climbing up from the staircase below.

“Hi, Fitch,” I said, and Eloise waved.

Fitch was cute, too: tall and skinny, with unruly dark hair and black-rimmed glasses. Sometimes I thought he wore those glasses because they made him look even smarter than he was—which was very smart. His shirt was always untucked, sometimes buttoned wrong. He was intense about academics, and proud of his membership in the Agassiz Foundation, a scientific organization funded by his family. Both he and Chris were officers of the Future Doctors Club. Matt, Eloise, and I were happy to just be in the nature club, along with my close friend, Adalyn Banda. I was sorry that Adalyn couldn’t be there that day.

Fitch came to stand beside me and Matt, looking up at the sky. Eloise and Chris had moved off to the side, standing so close to each other their shoulders were touching. They were talking quietly. Between the two of us, Eloise was the one whom boys liked the most. She had a bouncier personality, flirty eyes, a sweet way of laughing that made boys lean in and want more.

With all the activity, the merlin had flown from the railing and was perched on top of the flagpole. I felt a slight pang that Matt wasn’t standing close to me, the way Chris was to my sister.

“Hey, check this out,” Matt said. He had set up a large scope, pointing it toward the lighthouse. The tide was out, and a narrow strip of sand ran along the seawall. “Look at the sanderlings. There have to be at least fifty.”

I looked through the scope, and he was right—many of the little brown shorebirds darted along the frilled edge of the waves, teasing the foam and pecking the sand for food. When I stepped back, Eloise took her turn.

As Eloise, Chris, and Fitch discussed the sanderlings, Matt and I watched the merlin again. And as if Matt had read my mind, saw my wish, he leaned slightly against me. Shoulders touching.

It felt as if something between us was starting to unlock.

My reddish-blonde hair was long, in a braid. He tugged it lightly and I turned and saw him grinning. One of his bottom teeth was crooked, and I thought it gave him the cutest smile I’d ever seen. He was still holding my braid, but then he let go and traced my shoulder with one finger. In spite of the summer heat, his touch gave me goose bumps all over.

“You could get sunburned if you stay up here too long,” he said.

I felt embarrassed. Some girls tanned, but I stayed pale. Every single freckle showed, and it made me feel self-conscious. The sun would turn me crimson if I didn’t spread gallons of sunscreen all over.

“I’ll go in soon,” I said, looking into his eyes. They were blue, like mine, but they had gold flecks around the pupils. But I don’t want to go. I just want to stay here , I thought. My breathlessness kept the words trapped inside. We stood there, not saying anything. It was almost as if my silence had made him turn quiet, too. I wished he would lean even closer to me, and then he did.

Our foreheads touched. I closed my eyes. I could almost feel his kiss, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the merlin flew away, and we broke apart.

Eloise called us to the scope to look at the sanderlings again, and we joined her, Chris, and Fitch. My heart was pounding as I replayed the moment Matt had leaned his forehead against mine. The almost-kiss that was so close, my lips still tingled.

***

Back in my kitchen, almost a year later, I shook off that summer memory and stood up. I took my phone out of my pocket. I had Matt’s number, and I thought about calling him. But it was already late. I wondered again if I should call the police, but then I remembered my promise to the girl upstairs. So I put the Ziploc bags into my backpack, said good night to Noreen, and went to my room to try to sleep.