“No thanks,” I say.
“Good for you,” she says.
Tami would remove her legs from Ash’s lap and he would immediately pick up his guitar from behind the couch and start playing again, his black hair guarding his eyes.
“Ash writes these little songs,” Tami would say. “It’s cute.” And he would act like he didn’t hear her.
“Your house is beautiful,” I say now. I know I’ve been here before, but after a while, all rich people’s houses start looking the same. Daddy always says if you can’t figure out what to say, give someone a compliment. Everyone loves compliments.
“I heard yours is pretty cool too,” she says, folding her long legs under her. “It’s on the west side of the island, right? Off Olympic?”
I nod. Why would Tami care anything about my house?
“Who are you hanging out with these days?”
“No one in particular. Mostly just Lily.” Lily, who moved here a year ago. My only real friend since Ash.
“Who’s Lily? You should bring her sometime.”
“She’s always going to Taiwan.”
“Ugh, I hate Taiwan. I hate anywhere you have to wear a mask. It messes up my face.”
Ash would look up from his guitar for a moment and emit a laugh like a puff of air and Tami wouldn’t even notice.
The beauty of the view is interrupted by a decrepit boat puttering by, in such bad shape, it looks like it shouldn’t even be floating. Laundry hangs off a line on the back next to a few bicycles chained together, surrounded by stacks of various crates and boxes secured by bungees. I see a skinny man and a smudgy little girl. Then a little boy, even younger. I wonder how long they’ve been sailing from place to place, hauling anchor as soon as they become unwelcome. Boats like these in Puget Sound—they’re not so different from the people living in cars or tents on land, except these people can fish for their food, and they can sink.
An island security boat motors up behind it, lights flashing, a voice announcing over a loudspeaker: “You’re too close to shore. Move away from the shore or you will be issued a citation.” A few nearby birds squawk at the interruption and fly away.
“Island security really needs to step up their game,” Tami says. “Did you hear they found a whole family living in the nature preserve? They’d been there for weeks and nobody noticed. We pay good money to not have to deal with that kind of thing.”
The two sunburned children look out the grimy windows of the boat’s cabin as it turns away.
“This island is so boring. How can you stand it?” Tami says.
“I kind of like it here. It’s beautiful. The air’s still breathable.” I almost add, “People are nice,” but that’s not true. People here are not nice.
“I guess,” she says. “But no offense, Commodore Island isn’t exactly the cultural capital of the world.”
Tami’s one of those people who says “no offense” before she says something offensive.
“God, I am so bored,” she moans. “I just got back, and I am already so bored.” She smiles, and something opens, a crack in her façade. “But now Ivy Avila’s here.”
My chest seizes. Has she met her already too? Has Ivy called her and not me?
“We’re going to have a good time this summer,” Tami says, looking at me, and her face is different—not so sharp and intimidating. “You and me.”
“Okay,” I say. You and me. There has never been a Tami and me.
“I don’t have a lot of friends,” she says. “I know a million people, but none of them are real friends, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say, because in some strange way, I do.
“I think we could be friends,” she says.
“Me too,” I say, but I feel something heavy in my stomach.
She laughs. “You want to hear this thing my mom always says? She’s been saying it ever since I was a kid. She always tells me, ‘It’s lonely at the top.’ I mean, it sounds so conceited, right? But it’s true. You know what I mean.”
Tami is lonely at the top. That’s what this is about. She wants to see what it’s like to have a friend who’s beneath her.
“When you get down to it,” she says, “most people aren’t really friends. Mostly we’re all just using each other.”
She forces a smile and sits up tall. She tilts her head and just like that, all her cold perfection clicks back into place. “Are you hungry?” She types something into her phone. “Where is that goddamned maid?”
I am not hungry. I want to leave here. I want to see Ash.
Maybe the reason Ash can stand to be with her is because of his talent for closing himself off, his strange knack for acting like he’s alone even when surrounded by people.
“We should have a party,” Tami says.
We both have this talent, Ash and me. We have our own worlds nobody even knows about.
“That’s all there is to do on this island,” she says. “Party. Get wasted and have sex.”
Maybe now is when I would look at Ash and he’d be staring right at me, and our eyes would meet, and Tami would fade away. And maybe she would go inside to check on the housekeeper, because no one ever does anything fast enough for her or the right way. And as soon as she disappeared into the house, I’d feel myself unchained, and Ash would tuck his hair behind his ear and say, “You just took a deep breath.”
“What?”
“As soon as Tami was gone, you took a deep breath,” he says. “Like all of a sudden you could breathe again.” He smiles. “I feel like that too sometimes.”
“Then why—”
“How’ve you been, Fern?” he says, with those eyes that make this feel like an incredibly important question. Like I am an incredibly important question.
I have been fine. There has never been much else besides fine. My existence is defined by fine.
“How are your dads?”
“Good. Papa’s working a lot, as usual. Dad’s thinking about writing a cookbook.”
“Isn’t he supposed to be an architect?”
“The only house he ever managed to actually build was ours.”
Ash laughs, and for a brief moment, I don’t feel so hopeless.
“How’s your dad?” I say. I’ve heard the rumors about him being back in rehab again.