It was a testament to the dimness of the room, and the dark blue couch I was on, that Jacky hadn’t even seen me until she said this. He looked surprised as he lifted a hand. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I said. “It’s Emma, actually.”
“Oh, sorry,” Mimi told me, her eyes on the TV, where I saw someone was now carrying a sledgehammer. “I keep forgetting you changed it.”
But I didn’t, I wanted to say. I’d always introduced myself as Emma, even as a kid: my mom was the only one who called me Saylor. Could you literally be a different person to different people? I was pretty sure I was going to find out.
“I’m going out to the raft,” Jacky told Mimi. “Back for dinner.”
“We’re having burgers,” she replied. “I made the patties already.”
“All right,” he said, then started toward the door again, drawing his phone from his pocket.
“Jacky.”
He stopped, exhaling visibly. “Yes?”
Mimi shifted in her seat. “Why don’t you take her with you?”
“What?” he said.
“Saylor,” she replied, nodding at me. “I mean, Emma. She’s just got here, doesn’t know anyone. You can introduce her around.”
“Oh,” I said quickly, mortified, “he doesn’t have to—”
“They’re all out at the raft this time of day,” she explained, cutting me off. “Figuring out what kind of trouble to get into later.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I had no sense of the rules here, but I did know enough to not want to be someone’s burden. “I’m fine.”
The TV went back to 3 Flip Sisters. “Demo,” Mimi said, nodding at the screen. “You can tell, because everyone’s in goggles.”
“Right,” I said.
Jacky hesitated a moment more in the non-arch hallway opening, then started out the door. “Be back to grill,” he called over his shoulder.
“Okay,” Mimi said, taking a sip of her drink.
The door slammed, and I turned my attention back to the Flip Sisters. A moment later, though, he was back.
“Hey,” he said to me. “You really want to watch that?”
I looked back at Mimi. It wasn’t clear she’d heard him, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, even if this had all been her idea.
But Jacky didn’t seem worried. Instead, he just pushed the door back open, holding it for me. “Emma,” he said. “Come on.”
Five
The girl in the yellow bikini I’d seen from the window spotted me as we approached the raft. By the time I looked her way, she was already scowling.
I’d been preoccupied, smarting from various ways I had almost died of shame since leaving Mimi’s house. The first involved the awkward silence as I followed Jacky across the grass and down the nearby dock to a white motorboat with red seats that was tied up to a row of cleats.
“Thanks for bringing me along, Jacky,” I said finally.
He glanced up, then began loosening rope knots. “It’s Jack, actually. Only Mimi calls me Jacky.”
“Oh. Sorry,” I said. “I understand. She’s actually the only person who has called me—”
But this was lost as he turned his back again, jumping onto the boat and behind the wheel. The seats were aged and cracked, the floor covered with a few beat-up-looking life jackets. He turned a key and the engine rumbled, coming to life.
I was still standing on the dock, not sure what I was supposed to do, when he looked up at me and said, “You getting in?”
Right, I thought, my face reddening. I took a step onto the boat, but because the ropes were loose, it drifted out into the water, taking my leg with it. This led to a frantic effort not to fall in myself accompanied by, I hated to admit, a shriek. I ended up back on the dock, but just barely.
Jack observed all of this with a flat expression. Then he pulled the boat up to the dock so I could climb in. Once inside, I started to the back bench by the motor, but hit a slippery spot halfway there that resulted in me tumbling down onto the life jackets, arms flailing.
“Whoa,” he said, in that same monotone. “Careful.”
As we picked up speed and my embarrassment subsided—slightly—I was able to begin to appreciate the view of the lake. It was one thing to look at it from land, like a picture in a frame, another to be within it, wide and blue all around you. It’s pretty here, I thought, and turned in my seat, looking back at Mimi’s house to find the window to my mom’s bedroom, which was growing smaller behind us.
The raft, in contrast, was larger than it had looked from shore. By the time we got there, about seven boats were tied up, either to the raft or each other, with people on them in groups, laughing and talking. As we got closer, a tall, skinny guy with white-blond hair, shirtless and in swim trunks, walked out to the back of a blue motorboat with white trim to meet us. When Jack slowed the motor and walked to the bow, throwing him a line, I saw the girl staring at me.
Short, and stout, with strong-looking arms and legs, she had a deep tan, all the better to set off her yellow bikini top, which she wore with cutoff shorts. Her hair was black and long, flowing down her back, a pair of sunglasses holding it back from her face. When our eyes met, she slowly crossed her arms over her chest, squaring her shoulders.
“This is Emma,” Jack said, cutting the engine. “Help her out.”
The boy with the white-blond hair—it stuck up in the back, a cowlick I somehow knew he was probably always messing with—extended a hand. Cautious after how I’d boarded, and feeling awkward grabbing ahold of someone I knew not at all, I nonetheless got to my feet and gripped his fingers, stepping onto the blue boat, then the raft.
“I’m Roo,” the blond boy said. He had a small gap between his two front teeth, which took the smile he gave me to another level. Gesturing to the group behind him, he added, “This is . . . everyone.”
No one said hello, or even acknowledged this introduction, too caught up in their own conversations. Except, of course, Yellow Bikini, who was now glaring at Jack as he finished tying up.
“Jack Blackwood,” she said in a voice that was just sharp and loud enough to make everyone else pause their interactions before stopping talking entirely, “I know we’re fighting, but did you seriously bring another girl out here right in front of me?”
“Uh-oh. Here we go,” a tall, slim black girl with short braids in an East U Volleyball T-shirt said under her breath.
“I’d stay out of it if I were you, April,” another guy with a fauxhawk and tattoos covering his arms said to her.
“Yeah, because that will end well,” April replied.
The next thing I knew, Yellow Bikini had crossed the short distance between us to stand right in front of me. Meeting my eyes, her own narrowed, she said, “Look, this is a basic lake rule. You don’t just show up with someone else’s boyfriend, okay?”
“Taylor,” April said. “Remember your calming meditations? Breathe in, then—”
“I’m breathing,” Taylor told her. “I just want answers.”
“I didn’t—” I said, trying to sound as assertive as she did. Unfortunately, my voice was shaking. Meanwhile, I could hear footsteps approaching, the new arrivals now also an audience to this.