Island Girls (and Boys) by Rachel Hawthorne Page A

�Whatever needs to be done. Picking up trash, cleaning the showers. Whatever.�
    ï¿½A couple of hours a day, huh?�
    I nodded. �Yeah.�
    ï¿½Sounds fair enough. I�ll talk to him.� His lopsided grin grew and he touched my shoulder. �Thanks for looking out for me.�
    My heart did that trying-to-burst-through-my-chest thing. �Sure. No problem.�
    I watched him walk away. At least now I knew he was planning to stay through the weekend.

CHAPTER 9
    ï¿½W hen is Noah leaving?� I asked.
    It was Friday morning, the big Memorial Day weekend was upon us, and Amy and I were both a little stressed as we stood in the kitchen. We�d ended up taking the videos back last night without a chance to watch them, because Noah had taken permanent possession of the TV�s remote and parked his butt on the couch all week. Chelsea was using the last of our eggs to cook him an omelet.
    ï¿½Chelsea, when is Noah leaving?� I asked again, with a little more firmness in my voice.
    She shrugged. �He�s not.�
    ï¿½What do you mean he�s not?� Amy asked.
    ï¿½You�re smart,� Chelsea said. �What do you think it means?�
    ï¿½He can�t stay here forever,� I said.
    Chelsea looked at me as though I was nuts.
    ï¿½Chill. Of course not,� she said.
    For a second I felt relieved.
    ï¿½He�ll leave at the end of the summer, like all of us.�
    Then I felt like fireworks had gone off inside my head. �He can�t stay here! He wasn�t part of the arrangement we made with my grandparents.�
    A visible ripple went through her, from the top of her head to her bare feet. �I have a bedroom, I pay a third of the bills. I should be able to do whatever I want with that room. And I want to share it with Noah. He doesn�t want to go anywhere without me.�
    ï¿½You pay a third of the bills, but Noah is a fourth person in the house.�
    ï¿½You know, Jen, you�re going to do great majoring in business, because you have this counting thing down pat,� she said snidely.
    ï¿½Chelsea, he spends an hour in the shower. That�s a lot of water. Which we have to pay for. He eats our food like it�s free. He hogs the TV. He does no chores. He doesn�t help us out atall. He contributes nothing except sand on the floor.� Sand that I found myself sweeping up twice a day.
    ï¿½Were you practicing that little speech all night?�
    I looked to Amy for help, but all she did was nod and say, �It was good.�
    I sighed. She might not want Chelsea mad at her, but she was making me mad. I turned back to Chelsea. �He can�t stay.�
    ï¿½I love him.�
    She gave me a defiant glare, as though those three little words were all it took to make everything all right.
    ï¿½Don�t you want me to be happy?� she added.
    How could I argue with that? If I said I wanted her to be happy, then she�d say that she needed Noah�and if I said that I didn�t want her to be happy, then I�d be lying.
    She smiled triumphantly, picked up the plate of eggs, and walked out of the kitchen.
    Â 
    They were demons. Every one of them. Disguised as normal people going camping.
    Their trailers were too big for the campsites;the sites were too small for the trailers. They didn�t like their neighbor. They liked another site better and wanted to move. But in the meantime that site had been rented to someone else�.
    It was madness, mayhem, insanity.
    Instead of getting off at five, Amy, Chelsea, and I ended up working until eight, even though the next shift had arrived. We were simply bombarded with too many people trying to get registered, trying to buy things in the store, wanting snacks from the snack bar.
    By the time Mrs. P finally cut us loose, I was completely worn out. And still brooding over the Noah situation and my inability to come up with a response