“Two iced teas, and two bagels please.”
The register dings and our eyes tear with relief and gratitude. Four dollars and twenty-nine cents. We can afford it by a quarter. We sit by the window and sip as if it is champagne at the Ritz Carlton. I see the sweat at my sister’s temples start to evaporate and my heart is pumping the tea as if it is blood.
Grace leans against the glass window and breathes on it, making a little face with her finger. The curved parabola stays there, translucent, and slowly fades from view. I see her frown, and I know why.
“We have to be here.”
“Do we, really?”
I sigh at my sister and stir the remaining thin tea and globulous ice cubes around with a straw. How does she still not see?
“Grace,” I say, pausing to think. “It relaxes Mom and Dad, to think we’re enjoying it.”
She clicks her tongue, throws up her hands.
“I still don’t see why that means I need to carry around everything I own, each weekend, like some beggar.”
“You are not a beggar.”
“Why can’t Mom just get along with Auntie?”
I shrug, wondering the same thing myself.
“It isn’t worth thinking about.”
But still, we both sit quietly for a moment, thinking. The sprawling house on Elm Court with guest rooms and fresh-smelling sheets swims like an uncatchable fish in our memories. Auntie’s family occupies that house and its many rooms each summer. We cannot stay there, no matter how much she invites us. Mother and she are no longer on speaking terms; it is out of the question.
“But I still wish…”
I slurp loudly through the straw to drown out the unfinished thought.
There is frying sausage and raw coffee, and familiar bright pink table tops as in any other Dunkin’ Donuts. I wonder why I had never noticed it in this seaside town before. We’ve been coming here each summer with everybody we knew for years, and, yet, there is not a soul that I recognize in the place. I catch Grace squinting at the sunlight.
A silver convertible flashes by the window; the girls are laughing. We shift uncomfortably in our seats, wondering if they saw us.
“We’ll get to the beach soon,” I say quickly. “Don’t worry.”
“That’s all you care about.”
“What is?”
“Just being there, right? Just so long as they know you’re here.”
We are dressed in handed-down designer denim and cheap, expensive-looking jewelry. We wore it especially to arrive on the little beach where only our community goes. They will all be there. I want to be there too.
“Don’t you want to go?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
It’s my turn to squint. My sister’s eyes are dull, as if staring into a snow globe full of sand. Somehow, at that moment, I know she is thinking of other places, ready to be done with what has seemingly blocked us out forever.
“We might get the money back, one day.” I whisper it.
She laughs, and it’s like she is shouting.
“What for?” she says. “What is the use of pretending?”
Her leg goes up on the window sill and she lounges her arm over the back of the chair. This Dunkin’ Donuts is her home.
“Here,” I say, “is not where we belong.”
She flares her nostrils and puts up her hand, waving it up and down.
“Little Miss High-and-Mighty,” she says, “Here, is where we are.”
Sally Choueka is a master’s student in Humanities at Penn State Harrisburg.
