I’m trying to play it cool, but my curiosity about West has been eating at me for literally years. His name sounds so foreign on my tongue now. The truth is, I don’t even know what West Hendricks looks like anymore. After I moved away from Caldwell Beach, I followed everyone who wasn’t already on my list on Instagram, and almost everyone accepted. Miles’s older brother didn’t. He picked up his phone, with its request from Olivia Cathart, and clearly ignored it. Years later, he’s still never accepted the request.
After he didn’t say goodbye to me, it wasn’t surprising, but God, it still stings. It really, really stings. Because West was the strongest person I knew, and I’d thought our friendship—on at least one level—meant something to him, even with our problems. Not accepting my stupid request was the final nail in the coffin.
“West is . . . actually, my parents kind of disowned West,” Miles says. “I haven’t spoken to him in a while. But I’m sure he’ll say hi if you see him.”
Miles obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t press, but disowned is such a strong word. I have no idea what happened with West and his parents, but it doesn’t take much to fill in the blanks of what went wrong with him and Miles—mostly because their relationship was never “right” to begin with.
Somewhere down the shoreline, in an inlet where the rapids are calm, there’s a floating dock off the beach where we used to play Pirates and Mermaids as kids. Miles, West, and I always went out on days when the sun glistened like crystals off the ocean and the sky was clear and blue. I would be the mermaid in the water; West the evil pirate king on the dock, and Miles the prince I needed to save. The battle always ended up between me and West. If Miles was on the dock, West was winning. If Miles was in the water, I was winning. It was more Pirates of the Caribbean than Peter Pan.
But one day, after West had grabbed him, Miles threw a tantrum on the dock. I climbed on, my limbs constricted by my life jacket and floaty wings. Other kids were involved, too, so when Miles started screaming, the dock quickly filled up, mostly with boys in West’s grade. Miles and I were eight, so West would have been ten.
“It’s not fair,” Miles sputtered, boogers dripping from his nose, his big blue-green eyes filled with tears. “You guys always decide everything. I’m going to be the pirate king this time! This game is stupid.”
“No way, you little freak,” West spat, his black hair spiked in wet blades over his forehead. “I’m the pirate king and you’re the wimp. That’s just how it is.”
“I’m telling Dad you said that!”
“If you do, I’ll ruin your life!”
“You already do!”
Then Miles directed his anger at me—maybe knowing he couldn’t take his big brother—and shoved me into the water, making me cry. West gave him a wedgie and booted him in after me. Miles screamed that he hated both of us, then cried and paddled to the beach, where the parents had already gathered as they noticed the conflict on the water. Then, because of Miles’s crying, they called everyone back to shore. I crawled out of the water, West at my side. Miles and Faye were attached to their mom’s hip.
“It’s Olivia’s fault!” Faye exclaimed and pointed at me. “She did it, she made Miles cry!”
“What? I didn’t do anything!”
“That’s right,” West agreed. “Miles is being a baby. If he can’t play by the rules, then he can’t play with us.”
“Exactly!” I said. “West is right!”
I was angry at Miles for pushing me in the water. I stood my ground, but the sight of Miles whimpering behind his mom’s leg was enough to make me question whose side I should be on. He was my best friend, after all. West was just his older brother. Yet whenever West was around, I felt this unearthly need to impress him.
Faye kicked sand at me with her pink flip-flop. “If you love West so much, why don’t you marry him? Come on, Miles, you don’t need those jerks.”
But Miles ignored her. “It was all West, Mom,” he said.
“It was not!” West shouted.
“That’s enough,” Beatrice snapped, and we all fell silent. She had that effect on every kid, even West. So when she snatched West’s forearm and dug her nails into his skin, I said nothing, despite the warning bells that clanged in my head. My mom had never grabbed me like that.
“Your father will deal with you, Weston,” Beatrice said and pulled him away.
“Stop!” West’s feet dragged through the white sand. “You’re hurting me!”
She tugged harder until his legs went limp, and I wondered if this was all my fault—that if I wasn’t there, Miles wouldn’t have pushed me in, and then maybe West wouldn’t have pushed him, and he wouldn’t have ever gotten in trouble.
My parents soon found me through the crowd, but I was already crying. That was probably one of the last times we ever played like that together. It didn’t take long for West to think of us both as “little kids” and stop hanging around with us in favor of the boys from Scouts. He left me in the past.
But the older I get, the more that day bothers me. I never told my parents about the way Beatrice grabbed West because somehow, in my childish mind, I thought I’d get in trouble.
Still, even with their dysfunctions, I imagined Miles and West would grow older and figure out their relationship. Maybe it’s not my place to feel sad that they don’t talk anymore; maybe I never understood their family at all.
“Hey, don’t worry about West, Liv.” Miles nods toward the window. “He’s not dead or anything. He’s working right over there.”
The sun blares over downtown. At the auto body shop across the street, a guy with dark hair wipes his blackened hands on a rag as he ducks from under the hood of a rusty pickup truck. I don’t recognize him at all.
3
By the time night falls, murky clouds stripe the sky like undulating seaweed. We’ve been walking the path to the beach for five minutes, and the waves lap against the shore. Brine and salt fill my nose as a pit forms in my gut.
Earlier, Keely picked up a few bottles of soda, dumped half of each one out, and filled them with the vodka from her backpack. She sips hers like water. I can’t find the courage to tell her I don’t drink due to my prescription of sertraline, the new antidepressant Dr. Levy has me on, so I nurse the bottle of vodka and cream soda I have no intention of drinking. I wish I could.
Cool, damp sand seeps into my shoes at the shore. A row of docked boats extends into the sea—some houseboats, some with tall masts and shrouded sails that flap in the wind. Silhouettes of bodies dance behind the white-curtained windows of what must be our destination. Bass-heavy music reverberates through the night. The Rebirth is written in cursive along the white, glossy exterior. It isn’t a cruise ship or anything, but it’s bigger than I thought it would be. Maybe that’s a good thing—I might feel more leveled in a sturdy vessel like that. Still, part of me wished the walk here would last forever.