“They’ll be the ones getting divorced,” said Rafe.
He’d taken off his toga—underneath he wore swim trunks I recognized as James’s—and was flicking the sand off. It was a sheet. “I wonder what the thread count is on this thing.”
“I scored three parent IDs last night,” said Jen, yawning. “Anyone want to hear ’em?”
“Three?” I asked, incredulous.
“I did better than that. I scored James,” said Sukey.
“Seriously?” said Rafe. He stopped flicking the sheet, shaking his head. “Me too.”
They stared at each other.
Juicy laughed loudly.
The toga sheet had come off James’s own berth, said Rafe (like it was proof).
Sukey said she and James had done it in the cockpit. Was that what you called it, on a ship?
Then Dee claimed she and James had fooled around in the yacht’s rec room, on top of a pool table. Mostly just kissing. He wanted to do more, but she wouldn’t let him.
The three of them tested each other’s accounts by referring to a birthmark, then went on to further details of James’s buff physique.
“Hey! There are little guys around,” I said. “Dial it back, sluts.”
Inside a fort of blankets, Jack was reading George and Martha One Fine Day.
Jen changed the subject, clearly miffed she’d been left out of the James sex club. Especially since—if you believed Dee, and I wasn’t sure I did, for she had been known to lie—even an uptight mouth virgin had made the cut.
Terry looked smug.
“So the game’s practically over,” said Jen. “And why? Because there are ass-kissers in our midst.”
One of us, cozying up to the model, had bragged his father was a director. Just said his name outright. Rhymed off some titles of movies he’d done. All to impress.
It was Juicy. We should have known.
“For shame,” said Rafe. “Shame, double shame.”
Juice hung his head and spat. Kicked at some glowing embers.
Another, trying to get into James’s good graces via a conversation about chaos compounds, had claimed an architect for a mother. Which Jen connected with some talk she’d heard from said mother of renovating a penthouse on Fifth Avenue for a Saudi prince. This was Dee.
And then—the worst, because the most surprising—Terry had been heard making graphic remarks to Tess about the location of female G-spots. How did he know so much? Tess had asked, according to Jen. Said Terry: Because he had a gynecologist in his family.
We all knew who the doctor was. She’d tried to lecture us collectively, over a not-good dinner of tofu dogs, about the risks of human papillomavirus.
Terry groaned and reached for a beer. “It was the Oracle, man!”
“You’re blaming it on weed?” said Sukey. “Pathetic.”
I felt deflated.
“You don’t win till you’re the last kid standing,” pointed out Low. “A lot of us still have a chance.”
“There’s still what, four of you left?” said Jen. “If Evie and Jack count as one?”
“Yeah, I’m still in,” said Sukey.
“And me,” said Rafe.
“And me,” said Low.
Still, the wind was out of our sails. The currency of the game had been devalued.
“But listen, guys,” said Low, “for reals. Up at the great house, when we got food, they said some weather’s on the way.”
“What kind of weather?” asked Dee, startled. She startled easily.
“What kind of weather is there?” said Low. “A big storm. They said if we weren’t back by this morning, they’d come down and get us.”
We argued about compliance a bit, whether the parents were making up the weather as a pretext for our return—it was hurricane season, sure, but the storms didn’t usually get bad till late August or September.
Our resistance was halfhearted, though. In the distance, over the water, we saw a low bank of clouds. A chill wind was blowing, and the surface of the ocean was flat gray.
Grudgingly we packed up, tore down the peeling tarps and ski poles, and bundled it all into our vessels.
Jen, next to me in the rowboat, was still sulking over James. David was preoccupied, jiggling a leg anxiously, and Jack was melancholy, drawing macaroni penguins in his notebook.
I pushed off and began to row, since the others didn’t offer.
Glancing back, I saw no obvious signs of our stay except some pockmarks and footsteps, charred wood and ashes. A few sticks out of place, maybe. And the tall tower, collapsing as the tide came in. We knew the drill: leave no trace.
Of course, there would always be traces. The trick was to hide them.
We’d left some molecules behind for sure, I thought as I pulled and pushed. But nothing that said who we were. Just skin and nails and hair, cast far and wide into the sea.
3
WE WERE TIRED and dirty, rowing upriver. Everyone wanted showers, and the partyers wanted hangover cures. I was yearning for a few minutes alone.
So when the great house hove into view across the lake I felt like it was home. I could imagine my whole life had been lived there, instead of a drab building in Greenpoint.
I saw myself swimming in the lake every summer, lying on my back in a grassy field naming the constellations. Running full tilt down the dirt road, where the two rows of trees joined in a long arch overhead, my arms flung wide.
Roaming wild in the tumbling woods.
BUT THE PARENTS were in panic mode.
A few cars were still parked in the crescent drive, but most had been driven inland on a supply run. Some fathers were headed outside to nail plywood onto the windows. They stopped us in the foyer and asked Rafe and Terry to help them with the nailing.
Sexist pigs, muttered Sukey. She followed them outside, demanding a hammer.
Jack and Shel took off into the woods.
In the bathrooms mothers were filling buckets from the tubs. In the kitchen they were sorting and counting batteries, lining up flashlights and headlamps on counters. The coolers we’d taken to the beach were commandeered.
Someone was messing with a radio, and phones were charging in every spare outlet.
There was a prickle in the air.
I helped them scoop ice cubes from the freezers into deli bags. My fingers went numb. A TV on the wall showed swirling formations. Forecasters were talking about categories and wind speeds, paths and cones and bands. We’d heard the terms before. There were mandatory evacuations and stubborn folks “riding it out.” Some who would die of sheer stupidity.
Some who would die because they loved their homes. Some who were frail and old. Some others trying to rescue them.
A couple of us took advantage of the newly relaxed rules: carrying an ice bucket for a mother, I passed an open bedroom door. Saw Low fully relaxing on a parental bed. Flipping channels with a remote, trolling for entertainment.
“Shirker!” I said, pointing my finger.
Someone came up beside me. A short father. With a paunch.
He stood there, hands on his hips in a womanish fashion, glaring in.
It was a self-righteous glare. Low took in the situation instantly. His face fell.
“Lorenzo, get up off that bed,” said the father.
Low complied. Lethargically. Defeated.