“The guy said he thought she was twenty-four. But get this: turns out the dad was there on a Tinder date. Which Alycia knew because she saw the chick swiping on her phone before he got there. Alycia’s all, Mom wouldn’t like that much, would she? So let’s just both keep our mouths shut. Essentially, blackmail.”
“Blackmail,” said Val. “Essentially.”
I didn’t appreciate Alycia’s attitude toward Jack, but man. She was no shrinking violet.
AN INVITATION CAME down from the yacht: aboard the Cobra, for her last evening anchored in our cove, there would be a party. We were invited.
My bet was, it was Alycia’s presence that had inspired the invite.
The girls all wanted to attend, except for Val. The boys didn’t, at first, except for Rafe, who liked anything expensive.
We had words.
“You guys are fraternizing with the enemy,” said Low.
I sympathized, though these days whenever I felt a kinship with Low it was followed by minor but nagging disgust, remembering the banana. Also an irritation that was close to regret, because Low, without banana breath, and if you changed out his wardrobe for one less hideous, could pass for attractive.
It made me think of how thin the border was between attractive and not, and yet—if it was there, you didn’t want to cross it.
But he was right: the yacht was teeming with parents, as bad as ours and probably worse.
“What are you so afraid of?” said Sukey. “Are you gutless? Or just spineless?”
A yacht, a model, and a last night with the Oracle. Passing those up was worse than fraternizing with the enemy, said Sukey. It was a form of self-injury.
Jack wasn’t much for parties unless they had a bounce house and birthday cake. He wanted to spend some time with his Frog and Toad Treasury, but after that, he said, he had to read another book.
“One of the mothers gave it to me,” he said. “Like an assignment. She said I needed to read it.”
Plus Jen was determined to go to the party, which meant Shel needed watching, too. So I wouldn’t be attending.
I was disappointed.
Sailors broke down the creamy high-end tents, packed them into neat small bundles and loaded them and the yacht kids into the powerboat.
“Goodbye,” said James to me before he boarded. We shook hands on it. “I fear we will not meet again. From here to eternity.”
“OK,” I said.
“But what’s your Snapchat?”
“I’m not allowed Snapchat.”
“Instagram, then.”
When the sun was sinking to the horizon the boat came back to ferry us out. I watched from the shore as Alycia stood at the bow in her thin, rippling dress and bare feet, a figurehead. Her black hair flew out behind her as the boat picked up speed.
She wasn’t even wearing a lifejacket. The pilot had made the rest of them sit down, awkward and suffocated in their orange vests. But he hadn’t uttered a peep to her, it seemed. Maybe intimidated.
The yacht kids had left us their bag of marshmallows. Pastel colors but full-sized, a rare combo. Jack was delighted. He roasted six at a time, his fingers getting so gooey I had to wash them for him in the lapping tidewater when he was done eating. We sat between our fire and the tall tower from Low’s vision—me, Jack, Shel, Val, and Low. Low and I drank warm cans of beer.
Across the water we heard the beat of dance music, and then we saw fireworks. They blossomed in the sky over the yacht, red, blue, and white flowers. Like it was Independence Day.
And it was, we realized. It was the Fourth.
We played our own music from a boombox, but all we had was a CD of Low’s: folk songs. True to his tie-dyes and sandals, Low liked sixties music. “And still somehow, it’s cloud illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds . . . at all.”
The batteries ran down.
After the music ended, someone suggested ghost stories. We told the one about the one-handed murderer stalking the teen couple who were making out in their parked pickup. They heard some scratching sounds but ignored them. And when they got out of the truck, they found a hook-hand hanging from the door handle.
Jack squealed.
Then there was a clever one about pale eyes at the bottom of a little girl’s bed. Suspense, suspense, reveal: they were her own big toenails, shining in the moonlight.
Meanwhile, Low was edging closer to me. One of his legs touched one of mine. Acting like it was a regular movement, I shifted mine away.
And decided to speak. Maybe the time had come. Not for Shel, necessarily—he couldn’t lip-read in the dark—but for my brother.
“Hey, Jack? I have to tell you a new story now. But a real one. A story of the future, Jack.”
Jack gazed at me sleepily.
“Evie. Is it about the polar bears? And penguins?”
“Yes, Jack,” I said. “The polar bears and the penguins. And us.”
LATER HE WIPED his eyes and squared his thin little shoulders. My Jack was a brave boy.
I SLEPT LATE the next morning because I’d woken up every time Jack tossed or turned, worried I’d given him nightmares. When I got up, the Cobra had weighed anchor. As far as I could see, there was the flatness of the ocean.
Around me the partygoers slept on, silent lumps in their sleeping bags. Except for Rafe, sprawled on the sand beside the embers of our fire in what appeared to be a toga.
And Jack, who showed me the book he was reading. A mother had given it to him, he repeated.
“Which mother?” I asked.
Because it was called A Child’s Bible: Stories from the Old and New Testaments.
“It was the lady who . . . she wears the flowery dresses?”
The peasant mother. Who fell onto plants.
“That lady gave you a Bible?”
For our parents religious education wasn’t a priority. Driving out of the city for the summer—taking a break from Minecraft on his tablet—Jack had gazed out the car window, pointed at the top of Bethany Baptist Church, and asked my mother what the long plus sign meant.
“It’s a bunch of stories with pictures. There are people and animals, but not as nice as George and Martha,” he said.
“Well,” I said. “I mean. Who is?”
The first story, Jack told me, had a talking snake in it and a lady who really liked fruit. She had my name!
“I don’t like how the snake’s a bad guy in it, though. That’s mean. Did you know snakes smell with their tongues?”
“What’s the story about?” I asked.
“It’s like, if you have a nice garden to live in, then you should never leave it.”
AROUND NOON, WHEN the others were stirring and rising, David yawned for way too long. I could practically see his tonsils. Then he asked: “Hey. Where’s Alycia?”
“Um, she stayed on the boat,” said Dee. “Sailed with them to Rhode Island.”
“What? Oh. Oh, no,” said David.
“Her dad’s going to be seriously ticked off,” said Terry. “And by the way, Rafe ID’d him. Slam dunk. They drove up to the house in the vintage Beamer? Then she jumped out and he followed her. He’s the one with the weak chin, covered by a goatee.”
“Still don’t know which mother it is, though,” said Low.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Terry.