“How do you know about that?” Theo says. “Don’t tell me you dated Ross, too?”
I laugh and shake my head. Sometimes my dad’s friends and business associates talked shop at the penthouse when I was there. They liked me to join in sometimes, even though I had nothing to add. They thought they were teaching me a thing or two about business and life. Mostly, they were bragging, and my dad always laughed about it after they left; how they liked talking about others’ failings as an excuse to tote their own successes.
Anastasia’s mouth drops open. “That’s what it was—I remember now.” She rewrites the headline. “His parents’ company was, like, killing people with asbestos, basically.”
“It was a really big deal.” One would assume.
She’s nodding. All friendships have a currency, and this is hers. Rumors and gossip, anything even borderline shocking—or anything ordinary that can be spun into something outrageous. Extra points if you can give her that thrill of being the first to know something.
“Hey, Collins, tell Theo my new nickname,” she says. She turns to Theo. “It’s totally funny.”
“The Red Scare.”
“Isn’t it perfect?” Anastasia says. “I’m like a regime.”
“That’s the regime you want your nickname associated with? Really?” He laughs.
She flips her hair so the strands hit him in the face. “Whatever. Eat my shorts.”
“I don’t even want to know what that means or why your mother was saying that over the summer,” Theo says.
Theo and Anastasia eventually go right where I go left, but before we part ways, I tell them I’ll see them later.
At dinner, I walk up to the table where Anastasia sits with Theo and Ariel, and while Ariel sizes me up, Anastasia slides over, starts talking at me a million miles a minute, telling me that she’s changed her mind about being called the Red Scare. And just like that, I’m eating dinner across from Theo Mahoney and only a table away from where Jasper gathers with his friends before he disappears for the evening.
Seven Months Later
There are some things that are too complicated to understand unless you know the whole of it. The entirety. What came before and what comes after. The broken-down parts, each piece making both the foundation and the destruction. A moment-by-moment recount until the abhorrent conclusion.
I can read my father’s face right now—sad and broken, but hopeful, even if slightly weathered. He’s thinking that what’s been done can never be undone. He’s wondering how he’ll explain it to himself. He’s running through all the possible ways this backfired on him so badly, counting the ways everything’s already been ruined.
He comes to the right conclusion, though.
After we cut over toward the other side of Cashmere, and start moving straight on toward the water, he wipes his hand over his face, taking extra care in rubbing his eyes. He rotates his shoulders. He looks out the window at the tall trees sliding past him under the sky full the of clouds. He clears his throat. And then he turns to me.
“What do you want to talk about, Collins?” he says.
I lean back, resting my head against the seat, finally relaxed.
Some things are very simple.
SEPTEMBER
Seven
“Slow down, Collins, jeez,” Anastasia calls to me as we walk the forest trail that leads to the beach down below.
“Keep up,” I say again for the millionth time. They don’t listen to me and make no effort to match my pace.
“Would you relax? We have plenty of time before the tide comes in,” Ariel says. Ariel’s personality is best described as wry. She has a low tolerance for, well, anything in large doses, really—too much laughter, too much emotion, too much nostalgia. She’s a third year from Hanalei. She’s on the swim team with Anastasia, which is how they became fast friends, as Theo calls them. I wonder how he describes my new but consistent friendship with Anastasia. Fast, sure. Calculated, definitely.
“Collins is so excited.” Theo laughs. “It’s like she’s never seen the ocean before.” They do this often, talk about me, not to me, when they’re right in front of me. They do it to each other, too, like it’s a way for them to do what Anastasia loves best—discussing people behind their backs—except out in the open, face-to-face, and under the safe umbrella of friendship.
“Excuse me, I’m not like the three of you. I’ve never lived on the West Coast before. I almost never get to see the Pacific Ocean.” The last time was when I went to Oahu with my dad. I was thirteen.
“It’s only the ocean,” Ariel says. Rich, coming from her.
The four of us trudge over the hard dirt path that cuts through the forest. It’s early enough that it’s still cool outside, especially under the shade of the towering pine and redwood trees surrounding us.
We’re not allowed to go to the beach by ourselves, and when we do get the opportunity to go, there’s a time limit. Once the tide comes up, the beach disappears almost entirely. The water creeps up all the way to the tree line, where the forest starts. We work hard during the week, between our classes and homework and required readings and clubs and sports; even the weekends are full. Today is a real live holiday—Labor Day—and the opportunity to see the beach excited me as much as sleeping until noon excited Elena.
Anastasia, Ariel, Theo, and I finally reach the part of the trail that turns steep, steering us down to the beach, but there are students in front of us who are taking their sweet time, and there’s not enough room on the path to pass them.
“You’re like that driver who goes way over the speed limit and weaves lanes to pass everyone and then gets stuck at the red light with everyone else, anyway,” Ariel tells me.
We emerge onto the beach and are hit immediately with a gust of wind and a chilly mist. I look out at the waves in the distance, the way the water is both dark and clear. This close, the waves are loud.
“Worth all the stress?” Theo asks. He laughs when I nod.
“Let’s sit over there,” Ariel says, pointing to the side of the beach opposite from where the chaperones have set up their canopy.
I scan the shore until I find him standing with his feet in the water. He’s wearing a backward hat and swim trunks, and he’s tossing a football with the two friends I’ve noticed him with the most. Stewart Laing and Daiki Nakamura. They’re both fourth years who play lacrosse with Jasper. Stewart is stocky with thick hair so blond it’s nearly white. Daiki is tall and lean like Jasper. He has dark hair and brown eyes and, to be blunt, he might be the most attractive person I’ve ever seen. I know from hearing others talk, because Daiki is definitely the kind of beautiful boy that everyone talks about, that he is not only super sweet but also has a very, very serious girlfriend back home in San Jose, who he somehow manages to see at least once a month. Daiki is forget-your-own-name-good-looking, and I’m grateful that Jasper Mahoney is not Daiki Nakamura; otherwise, this ploy would be entirely out of my control.
“Hello? Over here, Collins.” Anastasia calls to me from a few feet away, in the direction the three of them have started walking.