Local Girls

Chapter 1 I closed my eyes and inhaled just long enough to recognize the first sign of summer. Luckily, I opened them again in time to see the four-way stop ahead. But as I pressed my foot on the brake and came to a stop at the intersection, I inhaled again, leaning my head out the open window. I knew that scent even before I could see where it was coming from. The smell of summer. Skunk. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 8:49. Mona's ferry would be arriving in eleven minutes. Almost ten months of waiting and I had just eleven minutes to go. After looking both ways, I dropped my foot on the gas pedal and headed toward the ferry. Even without spotting the skunk, the slight burning in my nose told me I was getting closer, until there it was, pushed just off the road toward the bike path. Mona always complained when I lowered the car window at the first whiff of skunk. She'd crinkle up her nose and then pinch it shut, her index finger self-consciously rubbing the bridge of her nose and the invisible bump that wasn't noticed by anyone but her. Still, I always kept the window down and breathed deep, even knowing how much it bugged her, because eventually she'd always end up laughing, a nasally laugh that turned into a snort when she finally unpinched her nose. But now, I avoided looking at the black-and-white mound next to the bike path and instead looked straight ahead at the sign announcing I'd entered Vineyard Haven. It was near the end of June, and a Sunday, which meant there would be two types of cars at the ferry -- the tourists leaving the island after a week's vacation, and the tourists arriving. The thing is, if it weren't for the fact that they were facing different directions, you probably wouldn't be able to tell which was which. But as someone who has lived on the island her entire life, I could tell. It wasn't the stuff they packed in their cars, because coming or going, the SUVs and sedans were layered to the roof with duffel bags, pillows, beach chairs, and boogie boards. If they were really ambitious, and unwilling to trade their expensive ten-speeds with cushy leather seats and spindly rearview mirrors for an on-island rental, there were always the bike racks hanging off the backs of trunks, wheel spokes slowly turning as they caught the breeze off the harbor. And it wasn't their license plates, because just about every other car was clearly labeled "tourist" -- Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and even a few Pennsylvanias tossed in for good measure. No, it was the difference between the shiny, sparkling cars with their polished hubcaps, and the cars coated with dirt and sand, their once gleaming exteriors dusted on-island like powdered donuts. I made the left onto Water Street, following a BMW with wash me handwritten in block letters in the layer of dirt on the bumper. I patiently waited for the cars ahead of me to pull into the Steamship Authority parking lot and line up single file between the painted rows so they could board the ferry. Then I veered left and pulled Lexi's car into the row of spaces for people like me. My sister knew I'd wanted to meet Mona at the ferry, and since she was planning to be at the deli early to let in the last of the contractors, she'd offered me her car. Even though July Fourth was almost two weeks away, which meant the worst of the summer traffic hadn't even started, I left the house early. Not as early as my parents and Lexi and Bart, who just had to be at the deli by seven, but early by a seventeen-year-old's standards, and especially early for someone whose last day it was to sleep late. Mona's ferry wasn't in sight yet, so I walked to the edge of the water, where waiting families shared overpriced muffins from the Black Dog. They were all there, the Vineyard vacationers you saw in travel brochures and websites. There was the little boy who'd undoubtedly whined until his mom purchased the stuffed black lab puppy nowO'Connell, Jenny is the author of 'Local Girls' with ISBN 9781416563358 and ISBN 1416563350.