You're Invited by Jen Malone

say what now?
    â€œ Daaaaddy! That’s so not fair. You can’t do that!”
    â€œWell, Rebecca, if you can feel free to take liberties with agreements we’ve made in the past”—he pauses and points his eyes directly at my beach cruiser behind the counter—“then I think it’s perfectly fair for me to back down on my word as well.”
    Then he shrugs and smiles as if he doesn’t have a care in the whole wide world. Can you imagine? Myhands go to my hips and I open my mouth to argue back, but he slides out from behind the counter and approaches a woman studying a brochure for the fudge shop up the street.
    â€œThey offer free samples and a live fudge-making demonstration on the half hour,” Daddy tells her, motioning behind his back for me to go to the storeroom where the Dread Pirate Roberts costume lives. Sadie named it that when she was in her Princess Bride obsession stage. Ha! The dread part is definitely spot-on. As in, I dread the thought of putting this costume on.
    I consider mutiny, but who even knows what punishment Daddy would cook up for me then. He might actually make me walk the plank on the sunset cruise or something. And I don’t want to think about what salt water would do to my hair.
    Sighing as loudly as I possibly can, I trudge off to the storage closet and grab the musty costume and stuffed Polly Want a Cracker. Five minutes later, I step out of the bathroom behind the Visitor’s Center, fully costumed. I tug at the pleather pants. Even though they’re, like, approximately one hundred and twenty-two sizes too big for me, they’re already glued by sweat to my thighs. The fact that they’re tucked into even stickierpleather boots does not help. It should be against the law to wear fake leather in North Carolina in June. (Or anywhere ever, actually.)
    Ugh.
    It’s not even a semicool pirate costume with a hook or a peg leg or anything. Instead of Captain Hook, I look more like Smee with my red-and-white-striped shirt and the bandanna around my head. I’m so getting back at my dad for this. Just wait until he wants me to play a guitar duet with him at our next beach bonfire.
    â€œYou look darling, my darling,” Mama calls, balancing two iced coffees in a carryout tray on her hip and heading toward me from across the square. “It’s not like you to be early. If I’d known, I would have grabbed you a sweet tea on my drink run. Let me drop this coffee with your dad and I’ll be right back.”
    A minute later, while I contemplate cutting air pockets into my pants, she’s in front of me again. “How was your morning?”
    â€œFine.” I can’t help it if I grumble when I say it. Mama and Daddy had date night on the mainland last night, so I didn’t get to see them, and ordinarily I would be telling Mama all about RSVP, including the gazillion ideas I thought of for drumming up business. Or theflyers I designed last night. I just know she’ll let us use the center’s copy machine for them. But I’m too sticky and pirate-y to get excited about anything .
    Mama sets her drink down on a bench and adjusts Polly on my shoulder. “There. She was crooked.”
    Le sigh.
    â€œYour tour is meeting over by Merlin in five. Want me to walk with you?” Mama asks.
    â€œNooooo.” I drag out the word and droop my head. Why doesn’t anyone care that I’m positively melting in this costume? I manage a halfhearted wave good-bye before shuffling across the square to the brass statue of Merlin, the biggest Atlantic marlin ever recorded, weighing an astounding 1,576 pounds. Caught in 1942 by the great-great-plus-a-zillion-more-greats-grandson of town founder Jebediah Bodington. Just another uberfascinating statistic, courtesy of Lauren’s fact-checking. (Seriously, her favorite thing to do is take the tour and correct my dad when he says there were 120 settlers aboard the