Free The Story of Us by Deb Caletti

old days, too cheerful on the phone with the gas company, bill past due, or watching Janssen trying to change that tire when I got a flat one time, his face red and puzzled and the jack and hub cap and three of the four bolts lying on the street in the mocking way objects have after two hours of frustration.
    Of course, now I needed to go out there. Goddamn it. I had always preferred the peace that came with doing the right thing, like it or not. My attitude had been bad, and probably needed changing. Hailey and Amy were the ones who lived away from their father, and I saw more of him than they did. Maybe that’s what made them seem clinging and unhappy. They were thrown together with us too, and my old T-shirt and jeans were as foreign to them as their pink, tight clotheswere to me. I hadn’t done much to help them feel welcome either, had I? Likely they were good people trying to adjust to something they didn’t ask for. The attitude I was feeling from them—well, what about mine? It could get complicated, maybe, to figure out who was rejecting who.
    I trotted down the boardwalk. “Hey, guys!” I shouted.
    “Cricket!” Dan’s face lit up. “We’re trying—”
    Hailey’s hands were stuck deep inside her sweatshirt. “ He’s trying.”
    “No wind?”
    “Too much, not enough,” he said.
    Amy was throwing sticks down the beach for Cruiser, but when she saw me, she came running. She came up behind her father, stuck her fingers in his belt loops. “Dad!” she said, breathless. O-kay, I got the idea. He was hers. Might have been simpler to just urinate in a circle around him, same as the dogs. Her legs had sand on them, which she brushed off. She swatted at her ankles. “Something’s biting me.”
    Cruiser ran up from behind us, full speed. He was dragging a rope of seaweed in his teeth.
    “Eyuw, gross!” Hailey screamed, and dodged him.
    “Drop it, Cruiser,” Dan said. His voice was husky. He sounded exhausted.
    Cruiser dropped it. Then he started to roll in it. Dogs, they love their stinky stuff. We’d want to roll around in a summer day or new love or clover. But they want to roll around in glorious, smelly dead things.
    “Sick,” Hailey said.
    “You guys want to go to town or something? They’ve got the required beach town taffy shop,” I said.
    “That’s a great idea!” Dan said. He patted me on the back. “You can take my car!” He was suddenly talking in exclamation points. Dan wasn’t usually an exclamation point kind of guy, but now he was throwing them like spears at the approaching enemy. He was someone who always tried hard. You got the feeling he was always trying to make a kite fly in no wind if it made other people happy. It made you wish he’d wake up one day, open his window, and see a hundred kites flying all on their own.
    “We want to stay here,” Amy said.
    “My phone’s about to die,” Hailey said.
    “I can show you guys this rock cave I found yesterday,” I said. “Up the way from here. Very Hardy Boys. Totally cool.”
    Nothing. I tried a different approach.
    “A long walk in the sand is great for leg toning.”
    “All I’ve been doing is sitting around, eating,” Hailey said.
    “Great!” Dan said. “I can see how your mom and Rebecca are coming along.” He clapped his hands for Cruiser. “Come on, boy!” Cruiser ran full speed forward, had a little trouble stopping. Man, he looked happy. He loved it out there.
    “We’ll be fine.” Hailey sighed.
    Amy carefully brushed sand from her legs but didn’t say a word. “Come on!” I said. Awkward silences could bring out my inner camp counselor. It was Mom’s optimism coming downthe genetic line, taking a left turn and becoming some twisted belief that you could cover up most shit with enthusiastic effort. Or maybe I’d learned this from Jupiter. She did the same thing every morning in the front yard.
    I watched Dan Jax walk up the boardwalk to the big white house. His head was down. His shoulders