Old Orchard

Annabelle

I drag Frasier along with me to pick up pizza, and I swear as I close the door, I can hear my sister tsking at me. I knew people believed in soul mates, but maybe there was such a thing as pet mates, and if there were such a thing, then Frasier for sure was my pet mate.

Since it is May and the regular season does not start till June, it is pretty dead for many places down by the pier. Instead of rushing, I take my time walking to Rocky's. It is pleasant without people bristling by me.

Grabbing the pizza from the worker, I let her know that I crave their pizza a lot.

My stomach is grumbling when a guy in a hat bends down and starts petting Frasier. "Hey Fras, how's it going?" the guy asks.

I cough, clearing my throat. I had taken Frasier for plenty of walks in my neighborhood at home, but most people would ask before they bent down and petted him. Frasier never bit or acted like he would bite anyone, but with him being so skittish and hiding from a lot of noises, I am scared that he will get too nervous and nip at someone one of these times. Before looking up at me, the guy slides a dog treat out of his pocket and gives it to Frasier again.

"Hi," he says, taking his hand, wiping it on his jeans, and extending it forward to shake my hand. "You must be one of the twins."

"Hi," I say, not knowing if I should tell him yes that I am one of the twins; this is until he takes his baseball cap off... and I see that it is Luke. He has shaggy brown hair that has specks of blonde in it from being outside; I am guessing with the tan he has. I look into his green eyes, and he is looking at me with amusement, and I remember I am supposed to be talking.

"Yes, one of the twins," I sputter. "You are Luke, right?"

"Yes," he smiles at me, and I think my knees are going to buckle. "You are?" he asks.

"Annabelle," I say, realizing I am still holding his hand and removing mine from his. And also remembering we had never exchanged names the last three times we had met.

"Ah," he says with a smile that looks like he is in on an inside joke with someone. "Well, I will see you around, Annabelle." On my name, he says it slower than all the other words he just spoke, and that grin comes back again to his face. He stoops down, saying bye to Frasier, and gives him another treat before he walks off down toward the pier. I am standing and watching him walk away. Once again, he did not give away if he remembered I was the psycho girl from the Market. Frasier starts pulling me in the direction Luke just walked off in. I snap out of whatever I was just feeling and head off toward the cottage.

The rest of the walk back to the cottage, I am going through everything that had just happened and trying to decipher if Luke knows it was me in the Market that day. Maybe the speech that I had made up over the year would come in handy. That is if I run into him ever again. I wonder if he is still working at the Market or at the humane society.

"About time," Carla gripes at me when I get back with the pizza. No thank you or anything like she used to say. I wait till she bites into a piece of pizza when I start in on her again.

"What was last night about?" I am not asking but demanding to know. She can tell from my voice that I am very upset. Setting her pizza down, she starts taking a drink out of her cup. I am sure she is doing this to give her time to come up with a response.

"I don't even know where to begin, Annabelle. Everything just got so complicated this year, and then Grams died, and now we are here in Maine for the summer, and I think things are going to get better." She says, thinking this is all she will have to say, to get me off her back. I frown – she should know me better than that.

"Carla, I need to know. We used to talk about everything, and I thought I knew you, and here you are with a fake ID and then making out with a total stranger. Can you see how bizarre this could be for me?" I get up and start to walk around the kitchen.

"I wasn't tutoring Logan," she says.

"I saw the picture you were holding."

"I thought so. We were dating," she says, and she is watching, waiting for my reaction. I had already assumed they had been dating, but she could still see the look of surprise flitter through my eyes. She continues, "he didn't even need a tutor; he is really smart, but he wanted to get to know me but was too shy. I guess he had liked me since the end of junior year or had been interested in me but was too nervous to talk to me. Anyways so, he acted like he needed help in a few of his classes even though a few tutoring sessions in, I knew something was up. Even when I called him on it, he did not admit it. Then one day, we are sitting there out by the lake, and he asked me to a movie" she finishes looking up at me. The look on her face makes it seem like it was a feat to tell me anything about her and Logan.

"So," I say, "Where does the crying and kissing some random shallow guy come in at?" she cringes when I say the shallow part, so I add, "And the fake ID? If the reason that you did all this stuff was because of him, he must not have been a very good influence for you, Carla."