Nantucket Blue

Twenty-one





Zack: Happy 4th!

Me: You too.

Zack: Where r u?

Me: I don’t know!!! Not Nobadeer. Some other beach. Cops at Nobadeer.

Zack: 40th Pole?

Me: Let me ask.

Me: Tom Nevers.

Zack: K. Want me to come get u?

Me: OMG. Yes pls.

Zack: See you in 20. Meet me at shuttle stop.


“I think I’m going to leave,” I said to Liz, who was downing her fourth beer in less than an hour. My first beer was still almost full and had grown warm in my hand. We hadn’t even tried to go to Nobadeer, because the cops had found out about that one. This was supposedly the secret, small, underground one. And yet, it was the biggest party I’d ever been to, even though Shane said it was lame compared to 2010, where there were almost three thousand partiers.

I couldn’t tell how many were here now, but there were at least a hundred Jeeps parked on the beach, all of them filled with people in their bathing suits, all of the people getting shitfaced, blasting loud music, and peeing in plain sight. Shit, I thought when I accidentally turned my head and saw a gross, chinless guy whip it out to take a leak in the dunes.

“But you can’t leave yet,” Liz said. “I haven’t introduced you to Colin! Where is that wanker? He said he’d be here by now.” She checked her phone for messages. “You shouldn’t go yet. You should stay and experience this bacchanalia. This is just the type of atmosphere you need to loosen you up—literally!” She laughed.

“Ha-ha,” I said. Nearby, a guy in stars-and-stripes swimming trunks threw up in the dunes, and he looked like a real adult, with a bald spot and everything. He wiped strings of vomit from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I really have to go, Liz.”

“Suit yourself,” she said under her breath. “But you need to relax if you ever want to—” She made a circle with one hand and drove her index finger through it with the other.

“That’s gross,” I said.

“Wimp,” she said as I walked away.

“Tart,” I called back, laughing.

“I take that as a compliment!”

I hadn’t seen Zack since our meeting at Steps. I closed my eyes as I waited for him at the shuttle stop, remembering how good it had felt to float around with him in the shallow water, how funny it was when he pretended to be the lifeguard, how strong he was when he picked me up and then flipped me in the deeper water, how it had finally, finally started to feel like summer.

When I saw Zack coming toward me in the land yacht, I felt a happy relief at feeling known, recognized, understood, familiar, the same feeling I used to get at the sight of Jules in the cafeteria when we hadn’t seen each other all morning. He pulled up next to me, pretended that he didn’t know me, and asked me if I needed a ride. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The feeling changed. It transitioned, spinning into a warm glow that spread up to my cheeks and to the last knob of my spine. I tipped back on my heels. Maybe the quarter of a beer I’d had in the sun had been too much. My heart picked up, but my pulse slowed down. Then the feeling changed again, into something brighter, something alive and jumping, like a sparkler in my chest, when I slid into the front seat next to him and our thighs touched.

What is wrong with me? I wondered as the engine hummed under the hot vinyl seat. I flipped down the sun visor to see if my cheeks were as red as they felt. They were. And my eyes and lips were shining. Was I coming down with something? It didn’t feel like it. This was different. What was this feeling anyway? This need to move? This need to get a little more air, cross my legs, squeeze something? Had someone put something in my beer?

“You okay?” Zack asked, touching my knee. I jumped a little.

“Yeah,” I said, shifting in my seat as we took off. “I’m just a little…” I was searching for the right word when an image came to me. Mrs. Levander holding the folded-up piece of paper that I’d dropped in the Difficult Questions box. My eyes went wide. Here, years later in the Claytons’ land yacht, was the answer to my question. I reached for a bottle of water in the cup holder, opened it, and downed the three swallows that were left. “Thirsty,” I said. “I’m really thirsty.”

“I guess so. What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, sliding away from him. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling this way about Zack. “Um, can we stop somewhere for water?”

“Sure,” he said, and turned up the radio.

A few miles down the road, we spotted a water fountain along the bike path, and Zack pulled over. I hopped out and filled the water bottle up, trying to remember if Mrs. Levander had given us any information on how long this feeling lasted and what might make it pass. Besides the obvious.

“Hey, do you feel anything?” Zack asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There are a bunch of kids who say that there’s a ghost here.” I noticed a white cross, the kind they put up when someone gets killed on the road. “And they say if you drive by at night, you suddenly get cold when you hit this spot. I guess there was a girl who was killed out here in the ’70s or something.”

“What is it with Nantucket and ghosts?” I asked.

“There’s just a lot of ghosts here,” he said. I gave him a look of doubt. “You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Do you?”

“I think there’s something out there, I guess.”

“Do you think that your mom’s a ghost?” Zack took a deep breath, and for a second I wondered if I’d just asked the worst question in the world.

“You mean, do I think she’s hanging around, lifting up the chair in that hotel room? Or juggling candlesticks in our dining room?” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. He smiled, and I could tell he was imagining something. “Like, when the lights go out at Bloomingdale’s, she’s thumbing through the racks, making herself a cappuccino in the home goods department?”

“Or lifting almond croissants off the trays at Seven Stars Bakery?” I asked.

“Taking the Mini Cooper for a spin?”

“So it looks like it’s driving itself?”

“Really fast, right in the middle of the street?” We both laughed. Nina was a terrible driver. She thought stop signs were suggestions, but would stop in the intersection, surrendering her right of way, confusing everyone involved. Zack crossed his arms and shook his head. “No, Mom’s not a ghost.” His smile faded and he was quiet, staring at a patch of grass, his eyes still and brimming, like a water glass filled to the very top.

“But she’s here,” I said, focusing on my own patch of grass. “I feel it.”

“Me too,” he said, and took several deep breaths. The sun was low. A few distant fireworks went off. The insects were singing. Zack took my hand, weaving his fingers with mine. “Come on, I want to show you something.”