Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord Page A

that first lobstering trip, I didn’t think Aaron would ever want to leave land again, but I think he likes to be with Dad. Maybe it’s because Dad doesn’t talk as much as Mom and Libby and me. Or maybe it’s that Aaron’s a boy, and he hasn’t had a dad before. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but Mom’s noticed it, too. She even asked me to switch my seat at the supper table next to Dad, so Aaron can sit there.
    I know I’m not the reason Aaron’s coming on the boat. He hardly says a word to me. In the fourteen days he’s been with us, I’ve suggested all kinds of fun things to Aaron. He’s not a reader. He only likes to swim in a lake . He’s not excited to meet the other kidson the island and doesn’t want to play Monopoly with Libby and me. He said, “No, thanks,” when I asked him if he wanted to try jumping off the ferry float into the ocean, and when I ask him what he wants to do, he says, “Nothing.”
    Nothing with me , he means.
    So it’s a surprise one afternoon to look up from scraping old paint off my skiff and see him walking toward me. I thought he was supposed to be having a meeting in our kitchen with Natalie, but he asks, “Want some help?”
    I pause a few seconds in case he says, “Just kidding.” But he looks serious, and anybody’d be a fool to turn down help scraping paint.
    “Okay. There’s another scraper in the shed. You’ll see it in a box of stuff on the shelf inside the door.”
    The replacement wood Dad and I put on the skiff stands out new and raw-looking beside the ragged white paint of the old boards. Underneath the white’s a layer of red paint and one of gray.
    Aaron comes back with another scraper.
    Paint flakes fall to my sneakers and onto the grass. “It’s just an old wooden skiff,” I say. “It’s heavy as heck on land, but it won’t feel that way in the water.”
    He nods. “Where’d you get it?”
    Watching him start scraping, his hair swinging with each stroke, I feel a grin sneaking up on me. “It used to be my cousin Tom’s. He got a new one, so I bought this one with some of my lobstering money from last year. It’s not much to look at right now, but it’s gonna be beautiful when it’s done. I’m gonna paint it white, or maybe light gray like the fog. Dad makes me save most of my lobstering money for college, but I’m also saving up for an outboard motor so I won’t have to row everywhere.”
    I’m talking way too much. I bite my bottom lip to keep it from saying anything else.
    “Cool.”
    I think he really means it. There’s no stopping that grin now. But I keep the “Yay!” to myself. “One of Dad’s rules about kids and boats is Never go on the deep water alone. So maybe we can go together after it’s launched and I can afford a motor for it.”
    He doesn’t answer, just keeps scraping.
    “I’m lucky Tom never named her, because now I get to. Sometimes I think it’d be good to have a funny name for it: Pier Pressure , Go Fish , or Shore Thing . Other days, I think it’d be fun to give it a pretty name, like Wanderer . I just have to make sure the name doesn’t have thirteen letters, because that’s bad luck for a boat.”
    The sound of our scrapers falls into rhythm together. I bite back the urge to keep chattering. The moment feels as fragile as a bubble — one prod too many and it’s likely to break.
    “Ouch!” Drawing his hand back, Aaron scratches at a tiny paint needle in his finger. Putting his finger across his mouth, he bites the sliver out.
    “You want to hold the scraper like this.” But before I can show him, he turns his head.
    “I know how to do it.”
    He’s still holding it wrong, but I don’t say so. I wish I could ask him about his life before he came here and what else his mother’s letter says. I want to ask if he likes us yet. Or if not, is there any chance he ever will?
    But in “Your First Days at Home with Your Foster Child,” it says, “Keep your questions to easy ones at first,