Starlight (Book 1)

40: Adorable Little Supervillain

Standing on the floating dock outside the Comeau's back garden, I could see the calm surface of Opal Lake.

It was after supper, and the sky had turned cyan; Irène's light clothes were looking wistful, as though summer was hibernating inside her frilly sleeves. She was helping Halley reverse her truck—and with it, the trailer with the boat—down to the small section of sand and pebbles below my feet.

Ripples formed in the water as Halley disturbed the peace, backing the trailer into the lake.

"That's good, right there!" Chandler shouted. He was sitting at the helm and waited for Halley to pull to a stop before idling the boat's engine. Once everything was disconnected, Chandler slowly drove around to the dock.

I grabbed the cooler that Irène set out for me and passed it across to him. Written on the side was the name, Étoile de Mer. Halley and Riley joined us a few moments later, hopping onto the pontoon.

"Careful," Riley called as I stumbled in the effort to climb on, sliding into a seat underneath the Bimini top.

The boat glided across the lake, trailing froth in its wake. On the surface of the water, a reflection of the cloudy sky became a gradual smudge. A few islands dotted the vanishing point in the distance, the trees incandescent underneath a gradually setting sun.

"Would you like something to drink, Kacie?" Irène asked, opening the cooler. "I make my own flavoured water with strawberries and lemons. It's very refreshing on a day like today."

"You make it?" I asked, curiously taking a bottle. Shaking it, the slices of fruit floated about like a lava lamp.

Irène removed a plastic container holding a few extra slices of the vanilla cake we'd had for dinner, along with a few other treats, on the plastic table bolted to the pontoon's flat surface. It felt like we were about to have a picnic. "The retirement life makes you pick up a lot of hobbies. That's what I've found, at least." She laughed lightly. "But that's not anything you should be worried about right now. Do you have any plans for next year?"

The dreaded question. "Not really," I said. "But everyone always tells me I have a lot of time to decide."

"That's true. Some adults can be stereotypical sometimes. When I was deciding what I wanted to do, I thought about how I wanted to make a difference. I put my own values into perspective. I did everything it took to make my vision into reality." She glanced at the canvas painting that was the sky above us. "When you get to be my age, you don't want to have regrets. You want to look back on your life and remember how happy those times were."

"When you were seventeen, you already knew you wanted to become a teacher?" I said.

Irène shook her head. "At that age, being a teacher was the last thing on my mind. I thought I might be an artist."

"I can imagine that perfectly," I admitted. She was a creative person, the kind of teacher that made school memorable. "Teaching was a backup plan."

"In a sense, you could say that," she replied. "But it wasn't fit for me. I liked having a strict schedule to follow. If that was my full-time job, I don't think I would have been productive. That's why it was important to explore my options and see what works before deciding."

She'd taken the ultimate risk. Coming all the way to Astoria, leaving the past behind. I'd heard her tell the story many times, but it still seemed hard to believe. Irène wasn't afraid to break through the barriers that held her. I envied it.

I thought about her words. "It's hard to know for sure."

"You're overthinking it," she told me softly. "I know it's a hard decision, but you don't want to get stuck second-guessing everything. Nobody really knows what they're doing when they start college. What's important is that you figure out where the passion lies, and you chase it."