Driftwood Point by Mariah Stewart

tonight would be uncomfortable. The humidity already was rising along with the temperature.
    She picked at the little sludge of ice cream that Ruby had noticed, and she smiled. Damn, but that woman really didn’t miss a thing. If Lis had to put money on it, she’d bet that Ruby knew where she’d been and whom she’d been talking to.
    Alec Jansen. She hated to admit it, but as her mother would say, he’d grown up real nice, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. He’d been all too hot for his own good back in high school. Nice to see that some things never change. She’d never let on to anyone, not even to her best friends, that she thought he was the best-looking guy in their class. She’d been grateful that he’d always sat behind her; otherwise, it would have been all too apparent to everyone else that she had a crush on him. She’d be staring at him all day long, and her secret would be out.
    Her mind wandered back to those days, when she and Judy Compton and Margaret Townsend were inseparable, mostly because they’d started kindergarten together and because the only other two girls in their class from Cannonball Island were the Doran twins and they only spoke to each other. The school on the island went up through fourth grade, and more often than not, grades intermingled because there might only be one or two students. Lis’s year there were eleven—five girls and six boys—who eventually were sent across the bridge every day to the elementary school in St. Dennis.
    Lis would have loved to have been friends with some of the girls she met there, girls who didn’t live on the island but who were smart and seemed like they’d be fun to know, but her father wouldn’t hear of it. Lis often wondered what those friendships might have been like. Jack Parker’s dislike of all things St. Dennis had been the source of most of Lis’s teenaged angst. She wouldn’t dare defy him—he had a well-earned reputation as a hothead—but there were times when she came this close to going behind his back.
    Lis would have given anything— any thing—to have accepted Alec’s invitation to the junior-senior prom, would have been the happiest girl on the planet if she could have said yes when he’d asked her. But the situation was more complicated than she’d been able to express that day. Maybe if he’d approached her in private, she’d have been able to explain. But he’d done it very publicly, and she couldn’t find the words to talk about her father’s deep-rooted prejudicein front of everyone in the lounge. So she’d just said no, and left it at that. She spent prom night in her room, staring out the window, pretending to be in the garishly decorated but dimly lit gym, dancing in a beautiful dress with the best-looking guy in the junior class. Of course, she was wearing a blue satin gown, à la Cinderella at the ball.
    She was certain that Alec had forgotten the incident, especially since everyone knew he’d taken Courtney Davison, and from all reports, had himself one heck of a good time in the backseat of Ben McLemore’s car. But Lis remembered the way her heart had first leapt with joy, then crumbled with pain and disappointment, and the look on Alec’s face when she turned him down. Whenever she looked back on that day, she felt her heart fill with anger all over again. Anger toward her father, anger toward her mother, who wouldn’t—or couldn’t—stand up to him, anger toward the people in St. Dennis who drove her ancestors onto the island and gave her father an excuse to be a mean SOB.
    â€œYou don’t be worrying about what you can’t change, what’s past or what’s to come,” Ruby had said, and she was right, of course. Lis couldn’t go back in time, but if she could . . . well, what might she have done in the backseat of that car on prom