Page 24 of When We Believed in Mermaids

“I can’t believe you’re going to be a doctor. I always brag about you.”

“Thanks.” They drop off the burgers, and all the salt and fat smells so good, I bend in and breathe it deep. “I’m freaking starving.”

“Not much time to eat there either. Do you get to surf?”

“Sometimes. Not a lot, but it’s okay. Eventually, this part will be done, and I’ll be like everybody else.”

She pointed a fry at me. “Except you will be Dr. Bianci.”

I grinned. “I do love the sound of that.” I arranged the pickles and tomatoes on top of the cheese, then added swirls of mustard. “What about you? Tell me about last week.”

She laughed, that low, raspy laugh that made everyone lean in close. “Good one.” She took a bite of her burger and nodded as she chewed, as if she were thinking about all the things she could tell me. She held her napkin in her lap primly, and in the action I saw my mother. “I bet you do more in a day than I do in a month.” She dabbed her lips politely, making sure they were ketchup- and grease-free. “But actually, last week was bitchin’ because we were chasing a hurricane up the coast, from Florida all the way to Long Island.”

“Wow.” I felt a ripple of envy. “Biggest waves?”

“Montauk. You’d love it there.”

“Okay, you got me. I’m jealous.”

“Yeah.” She grinned that impish, charming, encompassing smile. White teeth but not perfectly straight because she should have had braces and my parents never got around to it. Neither of us saw a dentist until we were in middle school, and only then because Josie had a very bad molar, and Dylan had insisted they get her in to see someone.

“Have you ever considered surfing professionally?” I asked.

She stirred her straw around in her ice, gave me a half-tilted smile. “Nah. I’m not that good.”

“Bullshit. You just have to focus, make that the center of everything.”

She gave me a slow one-shoulder shrug, her mouth twisting into a wry dismissal. “No fun. I don’t have your drive.”

I ate my burger for a time, focusing there, on the food that wasn’t from a box or bag.

“I’m so proud of you, Kit,” Josie said again.

“Thanks.”

“How’s Mom?”

“Fine. You should go see her.”

“Maybe.” Another dismissive lift of one shoulder. “I’m not here for long.”

Maybe I was jealous; maybe I missed her. Maybe it was a combination of both, but I said, “Are you just going to wander around your whole life?”

She met my gaze. “What would be wrong with that?”

“You need a job, a profession, something you can do to support yourself when—”

“When I’m old and ugly?”

“No.” I scowled.

“I don’t have your brains, Kit. I was a bad student, and no college is going to let me in, so basically I can suffer along at some pissant community college, or I can do odd jobs and surf and love my life.”

“Do you love it?”

A flicker over her eyes before she lowered them. “Of course.”

I didn’t want to fight. “Good. I’m proud of you too.”