His voice has deepened, mockingly, on the last sentence.
Clearly a lecture he’s heard often.
And I do—I know the drill. I know it exactly. Realizing I do, that I get it, is like cold, hard ocean spray in the face—a shock, but then sort of soothing. Sure, no one’s imagining me winding up at some Ivy—but it’s that same sense of what’s next. I look at Cass now, at his hair blowing all those shades of blond, at his eyes, focused, determined, the stubborn set of his mouth. And this is the hardest, weirdest part of not being that barefoot girl and that towheaded boy running down the sand to the water, all legs and elbows and unself-conscious.
Suddenly, you edge your way to the end of your second ten years and BOOM. Your choices matter. Not chocolate or vanilla, bridge or pier, Sandy Claw or Abenaki. It’s your whole life.
We’re suddenly this close, like Nic said, to the wrong move. Or the right one. It matters now.
His blue eyes are grim. I slip my hand over his now fisted one again. He turns his head sharply, closer to mine.
Then the Boston Whaler full of bikini-clad girls sweeps a wide horseshoe, zooms past us one more time. One of the girls is waving the top of a bright orange bikini in the air, sun gleaming on her wet skin. No sweatshirt for her. Or life jacket.
The waves slosh into the boat, surf slapping us in the face and we rock back and forth crazily.
“Friends of yours, Cass?”
I have this sudden awful fear that they are. Former class-mates, fellow Bath and Tennis Club buddies, whatever. The peo-ple he really belongs with. To.
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“Nope. Yours?”
“Despite the island girl rep, no. We usually save our topless antics for land.”
“We’d better head in, then,” Cass deadpans. I whack him on the shoulder as though he’s Nic, and he grins back at me with an expression that is . . . definitely not my cousin’s way of looking at me. And a slow smile that builds. I feel that race of electricity slip-slide over my skin again, and meet his eyes full on, the way we did in Mrs. Ellington’s kitchen. And that March night.
He tightens the line on the mainsail without looking away from me, waiting for my eyes to fall. But I keep watching him, noticing, in the small confines of the sailboat and the strange stillness of this moment, things I hadn’t seen before. A tiny white scar that cuts through the left corner of his dark left eyebrow. Faint flecks of green in the deep blue of his eyes. The little pulse beating at the base of his throat. I don’t know how long it is that we just look. When I finally turn away, everything on the water seems just the same. Except my sense that something has shifted.
Shutting my eyes, I tip my face up to the sun and the wind, then open it to find that we’ve lost the gust and the boat is still, except for rocking a bit in the wake of some huge powerboat that just sped by, full of guys wearing aviator sunglasses.
“So, this island girl thing. What’s that?”
“C’mon, Cass. Don’t play dumb.”
“I’m the one needing remedial English help, Gwen, I am dumb.”
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seem to see all the way into me, and pull something else out.
“The last thing you are is dumb, Cass. I mean . . . here on island . . . we’re the . . . well, you know how there are townies and non-townies in Stony Bay?”
“I guess,” he says vaguely, as if he really doesn’t know.
“Well, island kids are the townies and then some. Especially if we’re girls. We’re like summer amenities.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cass jerks up on one elbow, eyebrows lowered.
“That we’re picnic baskets. Useful, even kind of nice to have when it’s hot and you’re hungry. But who wants a picnic when summer’s over?”
Cass clearly doesn’t know what to say to that. Or there’s actually some sort of wind and water crisis that involves intense concentration and not looking at me at all. Lots of rope hauling and a few orders barked at me in some sort of sailor lingo I don’t understand, which he translates after a beat or two of my silent incomprehension.
“So you are a Boat Bully after all,” I say.
“Huh? Can you take the tiller for a sec—yeah, like that.” His warm hand steadies mine, heat settling in, then lets go.
“You’re one of those guys who gets all nautical and bossy on the water.”
“I am not. I just know what I’m doing here. Just keep hold-ing that steady. I’ll get the wind back soon.”
Since I don’t know sailing, I have no idea whether he actually needs to pull and loosen and adjust all these things or if it’s just a way to tune out. But then he looks at me, smiles, and the sparkle of the water is reflected from his eyes. “Don’t worry.”
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I find myself answering, “I’m not worried.”
And I’m not. I’m not worried. I’m not awkward. I’m not self-conscious. I’m not anything except here. It feels like forever since I’ve been “here” without being “there” and “there too” and “what about there.” But none of those exist. Just me, Cass, and the blue ocean.
He starts to say something, but whatever it is gets drowned out by the roar of an enormous Chris-Craft surging by, leaving a tidal wave of foaming wake behind it.
We toss back and forth against the sides for a second before Cass decides it’s probably a life-saving decision to get out of the line of oddly thick traffic on the high seas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many sails and spinnakers and wakes. Is there a race? Or is everyone as reluctant to have their time on the water end as I am?
We sail in silence until the sunset turns the sky streaky Ital-ian ice colors: raspberry, lemon, tangerine—all against blue cotton candy. Then we head home and dock the boat. I climb out, hand him my life jacket.
“I’d walk you home, but I’d better get this back out to the mooring before dark.”
I say I understand. Though I actually want him to walk me home. In the dark.
“Tomorrow night at six,” Cass says.
“Is?”
“Tutoring. You can’t put it off forever, Gwen.” He holds out one hand, its back facing me, and ticks things off on his fingers. “You told me how Old Mrs. P. Likes Things Done. I boiled your lobsters—”
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“I thought we’d agreed not to bring that up again.”
“I’m making a point,” Cass says. “You helped me with the hedge. I took you sailing.” He’s ticked off four fingers now.
“You gave Emory a lesson . . .”
“That’s not in the equation. We’re even now. I know you like to be one up, Guinevere Castle. So time for you to tutor me and find out just how stupid I am.”
“I’ve never thought you were—”
He holds up one finger. “I really do have to go,” he says.
“Tomorrow. At six. Your house.”
“Why not the Field House?” Why am I now wanting to be alone with him?
“Besides the fact that it’s messy, disgusting, and smells like dog piss?” Cass asks. “Your grandfather told me all about the job he had as a teenager sharpening knives. I don’t know Por-tuguese, so I can’t be totally sure what he said next . . . but I got the idea he’d be dropping by with some sharp ones if we were alone in my apartment. Six. Your house.”
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Chapter Twenty-three
My brother can not stop talking about the swimming lessons. As Grandpa is putting him to bed he tells and retells the story: “I was brave. Went in the water. Superman helped, but I was brav-est.” The next morning he wakes me up, shoving his suit at me, bending down to remove his PJ bottoms. “More lesson today.”
I groan. “No, bunny rabbit.”
He fixes me with an exasperated stare. Then nudges Hideout at my stomach, saying fiercely, “Hideout bite you.”
When I roll over, pull the pillow over my head, he moves on to Mom, then Nic, then Grandpa Ben. When none of us agree that it’s a lesson day he just puts on the suit and sits by the door, legs folded, Hideout in his lap.
I worry about it to Vivien. “This was not such a hot idea.
He’s like obsessed with Cass.”
“Must run in the family.” She tips her head to scrutinize the daisy she’s just painted on my big toe.
“You’re hilarious. I’m being serious, this could be bad. What happens when Cass gets bored and moves on? Where does that leave Em? Waiting for Superman.”
She snorts. “Give me your other foot. God, Gwen, what do 241
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you do to your soles? They’re like leather, and the summer’s barely begun. It’s too soon to have summer feet.”
“Mine are permanent. I’m scared for Emory, Vivie. Pay atten-tion.”
She scrabbles in her big aluminum folding nail case for a pumice stone, frowns over two, selects the rougher. “I know you are. I hear you. You’re afraid Cassidy Somers is going to show up for Emory. Dazzle him. Then let him down. Hmm. I wonder where that fear comes from.” She drops the pumice, setting her palms together, tapping her fingers, movie-therapist style.
“Thank you, Dr. Freud. Ouch. Don’t take all the skin off, Viv.
Jesus. It’s not farfetched. He let me down. Why won’t he do the same to Emory? Maybe letting people down is what Cassidy Somers does.”
“Maybe expecting good to end badly is what Gwen Castle does. Sweetie, it’s different. You guys are nearly adults. You had sex without knowing each other. That never ends well—” She holds up a hand to forestall my inevitable comment. “I know, I know, what would I know? But I do. Things may be solid with me and Nico, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind and deaf to high school drama. I know about Ben Montoya and his never-ending soap opera with Katie Clark, who won’t put out, so he sleeps with girls who do, then ditches them for Katie, making everyone, including himself, miserable. I know about Thorpe, who’s in love with Chris Fosse, who is straight and never going to love him back, so he had that fling with the college boy from White Bay, who fell for him, and now Thorpe is all guilty and conflicted.”
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“Wow, I totally missed out on that scandal.”
“Oh, very dramatic. Supposedly the college kid like sere-naded Thorpe outside his window, and then Thorpe had to come out to his parents, who apparently were the last people on the planet to know where Thorpe stood.”
“Where was I when this happened?”
“Pining over Cassidy Somers. Or maybe Spence Channing,”
Vivien says, reaching for the foot lotion, eyes cast down into her box.
“God. Never Spence.” I groan.
She gives me a sharp look over her glasses. (Vivien is really farsighted and has to wear these little granny glasses to do her intricate toe designs.) In the silence that follows, I realize exactly what I’ve revealed by what I left out. I rub my forehead.
“The thing is, Viv—”
“What I’m saying,” she continues smoothly, “is that you are in a sex situation with Cass. That gets cloudy. There’s none of that with Emory. No hormones, no drama. He’s just a kid who needs help. Cass knows how. Why would he screw that up?”
“Was. I was in a sex situation with Cass. Not now.”
“Uh-huh,” Vivien says. “Of course not. Because we all choose who we choose. With our brains and nothing else.
You’re right, Gwen.”
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