Caroline studied a wooden ship’s figurehead of a woman’s bare-breasted torso. “And is that Justine?”

He blushed so hard, his freckles disappeared. “Whatever. Give me a hand with this bike. I don’t think anyone’s used it since I was here last summer.”

They extricated the bike from the clutter and wheeled it outside. She helped him pump up the tires, glad her dad had taught her how to do it so she didn’t look like a klutz. He found a can of WD-40 and sprayed the chain, and everything seemed to work well enough.

“Better make sure there aren’t any spiders in that helmet,” she cautioned him.

He held it up to the sky to inspect it. She was grossed out, but not surprised, to see a shaggy-legged wolf spider clinging to the underside. She was surprised when he calmly picked it up and sent it on its way, then brushed off the cobwebs. Maybe after the snakes of Guam, he wasn’t afraid of a mere spider. He clipped on the helmet. “Ready?”

She jumped on her bike and led the way down the main road. She went fast, showing off a little, raising both arms and calling out, “I love summer!” She was no match for the boy, though. He easily glided past her and took the lead. It was a long fast ride down the road to the south end of the peninsula. They passed the poky little golf course, where big-bellied men were drinking beer and hacking away with their clubs. The main town of Long Beach was crammed with traffic and people browsing through the shops. She and Will didn’t talk much, although she pointed out some of the places visitors loved to explore—Marsh’s Museum of Oddities, the go-kart track, the saltwater taffy factory, the shooting arcade.

“Let’s ride the boardwalk,” she said, turning toward the archway that framed a magnificent view of the beach, endlessly flat and dotted with people. They followed a scenic path through the dunes at the edge of the beach.

“That’s our restaurant—Star of the Sea,” she said, pointing out the big weathered building with its shaded decks and umbrella tables.

“Hey, we went there for razor clams the other night. I like that place.”

“Almost everybody likes it,” she said. “It’s real busy in the summer, especially since there were some articles about it in the New York Times and Condé Nast Traveler. Oh, and a crew from the Travel Channel came out one time and filmed for a whole day just to make a half-hour show.”

“Really? That sounds cool.”

“I wanted to be on TV so bad. I even made a new outfit to wear and talked about it on camera, but that part all got cut out. They showed my parents because they’re the owners, and then my sister Virginia on account of she’s drop-dead gorgeous and she pretended to be a customer on the deck.”

He was looking at her funny. She flushed. “I talk a lot, I know. Mom says it’s because I’m the middle child, and when you’re in the middle, you learn to speak up, or people forget about you.”

“I doubt anybody’d forget about you,” he said.

“Huh. You haven’t seen my sisters and brothers. I got two of each. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Nope. Just me.”

“Lucky you.”

Dodging sun seekers and people with fishing gear and kites, they rode all the way to the fishing village of Ilwaco, its marina filled with charter boats and commercial vessels. “Ever been up to the lighthouses?” she asked. “There are two of them.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

The twisty, hilly climb nearly did her in, but she didn’t let on that her legs were about to give out. The ride took them up to a rocky headland with damp pathways leading through the dense forest to the lighthouses, North Head and Cape Disappointment.

At a viewpoint overlooking the place where the Columbia River surged into the Pacific Ocean, they stopped to rest near the first lighthouse—North Head. They peeled off their helmets and each took a long drink of water at the park fountain. Then they climbed out past the safety fence to the promontory, a rock-strewn perch with a view of the coastline as far as the eye could see.

“Awesome,” said Will, staring down at the dizzying sight of waves crashing against the cliffs and rocks. Some of the breakers exploded hundreds of feet in the air.

“In the spring and fall, you can see the gray whales migrating,” she said. “You should see it in a storm. The surf gets huge and there are giant thunderheads. Wind and fog like you wouldn’t believe. It’s super dangerous for boats around here. Does your dad work on a ship?”

“Sure. Next January we’re moving from Guam to Coronado. That’s in Southern California.”

“Oh, California sounds nice.”

They stood on a rocky outcropping, feeling the salt spray on their faces. “This is my spot,” Caroline told him, gazing out at the seam where the ocean met the sky. “I mean, it doesn’t personally belong to me, but I come here to think sometimes.”

“It’s a good one.” He stared out at the blue horizon. Then he picked up a loose stone and hurled it far. She tracked it until it disappeared. He started walking along a trail that wound around the towering cliffs. She followed, trying to picture the place called Coronado. Whenever she thought of California, she envisioned the world of Beverly Hills, 90210, a boring show her sisters were obsessed with.

“California will be okay, I guess,” he said. “I’ll go to a regular school, not a DoD school.”

“What’s a DoD school?”

“Stands for Department of Defense. They have ’em on all the bases. Once we’re stateside, I’ll go to public school.”

“Will your dad work on a different ship then?”

He shook his head. “Shore duty. He’ll be working on base because it’s just him and me now, so he can’t go on deployment.”

“Oh. Did your folks split up?” That’s what happened to some of her friends. One or the other parent left, an idea that gave Caroline chills all through her body. The kids usually stayed with the mother, though.

“My mom’s dead.”

Caroline stumbled and nearly lurched into him. “That’s terrible. That’s . . .” Her mind was so crowded with questions, she didn’t know where to begin. “What happened?”

“It was something called pulmonary edema. She had an undiagnosed heart defect.” His voice was quiet and flat, which somehow made it sound worse than if he’d fallen apart crying.

“That’s the worst thing I ever heard. When?”

“Just after New Year’s last year. Dad was on shift, and I thought she overslept. She died in the night.”

Caroline tried to picture what that must have been like, finding your mom dead one morning. “I don’t . . . Gosh. That’s horrible. I can’t think of anything else to say.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Her chest felt tight and a shiver went through her. “Oh, man,” she said. “I feel really bad for you. Even just the thought of losing my mom scares the bejesus out of me. Without my mom, I’d be a total goner. I’d be like that fishing trawler that broke loose last winter and got sucked out by the tide and then smashed against the rocks right down there where the Columbia River flows into the ocean.” She pointed, and they stopped to look down at the exploding waves.