The Six Rules of Maybe

register at Quill while Mom helped customers. I was glad to be there, away from that hole in the glass. It disturbed me. At Quill, I was inside four undamaged walls andlarge unbroken windows. Joe Nevins from the ferry dock picked out a birthday card for his mother in Florida. Then an hour later, his brother, Jim, came in and did the same, but forgot his wallet. A bunch of tourists came and wandered around but didn’t buy anything. Bonnie Randall from the bookstore next door came and bought a fountain pen, and my teacher, Ms. Cassaday, chose a beautiful leather notebook stamped with shells and scrolls.
    Mom let me go a little early; it was a quiet day in the store in spite of the hordes of summer tourists. I headed out with my purse over my shoulder, wondering what I should do with myself, when I heard bells jangle and bash hard against the door of Randall and Stein Booksellers next door. There was Jesse Waters—he rushed out with one of their green bags in his hand.
    “Wait!” he called.
    I stopped. “Jesse. Hey.” I was both surprised and suddenly guilty. I was sure he was only thinking about what I was: how I’d shoved him away in that strange, unclear way the last time I’d seen him. I was sure what I had done sat between us like a huge animal, and that it would always sit between us, gigantic and unforgivable. “What about all the drowning children?” I said.
    “Four until close today. I was actually coming to see you. I saw that you were working… . I saw you here a couple of times… .” He sounded friendly, happy even. He didn’t seem to even remember the large, terrible thing I had last done, and so the beast wandered off. It was a relief to be so easily forgiven. “Anyway, I thought I’d bring you something.”
    “Me?” He handed me the bag. There was a little flurry as he grabbed it back and snatched out the receipt. He was giving me a present? I’m not sure anyone had ever done that before. Family, sure, and maybe friends. But a boy, and for no reason? Never.
    “It’s a book,” he said. “Well, of course. Bookstore …”
    “I can’t believe you got this for me,” I said.
    “Maybe you better wait until you see it,” he said. “Before you get excited. I don’t know.”
    I took out the book. There was no mistaking the bearded guy on the cover with the serious eyes. “ The Interpretations of Dreams ,” I read.
    His words rushed forward. “I’ve always seen you with a psychology book. So I thought … I didn’t really know what to get. I figured, Freud, psychology. Too … stupid? Obvious?”
    I was stunned. “This is so nice of you.”
    “It’s okay?”
    “Yeah! Great. I’m not exactly used to people doing nice things like this for me.”
    “You’re kidding,” he said. He laughed. He looked relieved. He had his jacket on, and I noticed Mr. Martinelli’s cuff link still pinned there.
    I just stood there on the sidewalk. Bonnie Randall’s dog was looking at us out of the window. “I can’t believe you even noticed my books.”
    “No one else reads stuff like that, if they even read at all,” he said.
    “This looks really good,” I said. I looked at the back cover, although the words there did not reach my actual brain.
    “I’d have thought people did nice things for you all the time. They should.” He looked at me from under his bangs. It seemed like he really meant it.
    “Thanks, Jesse, really. It means a lot.”
    “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got to run. I’m glad I caught you before you left.”
    “Me too,” I said.
    He picked up his bike, set down on its side by the front of the store. He got on, and I watched him cruise down the street, one arm waving good-bye just as he rounded the corner.
    I felt some high, zapping energy buzz, a mix of pleasure and confusion. It was the mental equivalent of what your body does after one of the lattes at Java Java.
    I couldn’t go home yet. I decided to take Mom’s car to Point Perpetua, not exactly where you went for calm and quiet during the summer months, but better than nothing. Tourists were everywhere in the summer months. People who lived near the beaches would steal the park entrance signs and hide them, just to have a little peace. You’d see some couple in matching T-shirts by the roadside, holding one of the island maps and looking perplexed, and you knew just what had happened. Someone like Otto Perkins had snitched the sign and put it in his backyard with the ten or twelve others he’d stolen