Dying Breath. Wendy Corsi Staub

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      “So what do you think, Messy Tessy?”

      Seated beside her father in the front seat of his silver-blue Saab as he pulls into the driveway, she can’t help but smile at the affectionate nickname. It doesn’t fit her—it never really did—but she’s always liked it anyway.

      “What do I think about what?”

      “About the Fourth.”

      Oh. Right. He was just telling her about all the things they could do for the Independence Day holiday in a few weeks.

      And she was thinking about other things. Nice things, for a change—like Heath Pickering.

      And not-so-nice things, like whether she should feel as guilty as she has been about letting Morrow cheat off of her in the English final the other day.

      The thing is, who does it really hurt? No one. Tess is great at English. Morrow, who says she really thinks she might be dyslexic, is not. Tess has been trying to help her with the Shakespeare stuff for the past month, but there’s so much Morrow just isn’t getting.

      When Morrow finally asked Tess if she could copy her answers since they sit right next to each other alphabetically, Tess had to say yes.

      Well, she didn’t have to.

      But she feels sorry for Morrow because of her disability, and anyway, if Tess hadn’t agreed, Morrow probably wouldn’t be doing her this huge favor in return: having her new boyfriend, Chad, a junior and a friend of Heath’s, talk to him about Tess.

      Bold move, but Tess had little choice. It was either that, or leave town in a few days for the entire summer without Heath knowing she’s alive.

      She heard he got a lifeguard job for the summer, at an ocean beach. She wonders where. Remembering his L.B.I. T-shirt, she wonders if it’s somewhere down near Long Beach Island. That would totally be fate. Maybe he’ll turn up right in Beach Haven itself. Wouldn’t that be a dream come true? Spending a summer at the shore with Heath?

      That can’t exactly happen unless she meets him, which is why she told Morrow to tell Chad to tell Heath about her.

      At Lily’s pool party tomorrow, she’s supposed to find out what he said. Heath might even show up there, according to Morrow, who invited, like, everyone in the school. It’s not even her party, but Lily doesn’t care. Her mother won’t even be home.

      “What are my choices again?” she asks her father, reaching out to turn down the radio, which is broadcasting tonight’s Yankees game.

      He could have been there. Someone he knows through work got last-minute box seats.

      Dad loves the Yankees.

      “But I love you more,” is what he told Tess.

      She believes it, most days.

      “We can go to Cape Cod to visit the Nortons at their beach house”—he begins ticking off on his fingers—“or we can have a barbecue at Grandma and Grandpa’s, or we can watch the fireworks over the East River from my roof in the city…”

      “What about Long Beach Island?”

      “What about it?”

      “We always watch the fireworks there.”

      They always have, even back before they got the beach house on Dolphin Avenue. As a kid, Mom always spent her summers on the shore—mostly Long Beach Island—with Granddad, and she’s nostalgic about it. She wants Tess to have that same tradition.

      Dad hesitates, either straining to hear the radio announcer, who’s shouting about some Yankee who just got a hit and loaded the bases, or trying to figure out what to say.

      Tess stares out the window at the red-brick, white-shuttered Colonial that hasn’t really felt much like home since Dad left.

      Yellow light spills from the black wrought iron fixtures beside the door and along the curved path bordered by long flowerbeds. Normally by June there are pastel-colored annuals planted there.

      Not this year—the beds have only dirt and mulch, waiting for blossoms Tess suspects will never be planted.

      Mom usually goes to the garden center around Mother’s Day to fill the Volvo station wagon with plastic cell packs of blooming geraniums and impatiens. Dad would tell her they can get the landscape service to do it, but Mom never wants that. She says she loves kneeling in the sunshine, working the earth with her trowel, making things grow.

      But this year, she doesn’t seem to care. About a lot of things—not just the flowers. And Tess, who never paid much attention, is surprised at just how much it bothers her to see plain old dirt in the beds every time she steps into the yard.

      “Would you rather just spend the Fourth at the shore with your mother?” Dad finally asks, interrupting her bleak thoughts.

      Your mother.

      She hates how he’s taken to saying it that way. Before the separation, he used to just refer to her as Mom.

      Your mother—ugh. It’s so distant. As if that’s his only connection to Mom—that she’s Tess’s mother, and not his wife.

      “Do you want to spend it at the shore?” Tess asks her father in return.

      “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”

      Ignoring that, she repeats, “Well, do you?”

      “Do I what?”

      “Want to spend the Fourth at the shore?”

      Dad frowns. “With your mother?”

      Your mother.

      “You know what? Never mind,” Tess snaps, and opens the car door.

      “But—”