Nantucket Blue

Twenty-seven





THAT NIGHT, I picked up Mom’s diary again, skipping over her make-out sessions with “Lover Boy,” which she described in way too much detail for me to handle. There are certain words one just doesn’t ever want to associate with one’s mom and her activities. Words like “hard-on.” It was especially gross now that I had a picture of Paul Morgan, Esquire, in my head. Instead, I started looking for romantic clues, places, and things I could mention that might dust off some shiny magnetic piece of her and pull her back out to this island. Once she was here, I’d arrange a meeting with Paul in one of their favorite places, and their old love would bring Mom fully back to life. I’d have to be subtle. I’d have to make it seem like it was her idea. I found an entry that looked relatively innocent and, pencil in hand, searched for key words.


Dear Emily D.,

Lover Boy and I dared to meet in public today. It was hard to get away. Aunt Betty took me to the yacht club for tennis (Aunt Betty’s athletic, for a seventy-three-year-old biddy) and she insisted on us having lunch with her friends afterward. But finally (after Aunt Betty’s second martini), I was able to sneak off. I met Lover Boy at Cisco and we spent the whole afternoon kissing in the surf like the cover of the Against All Odds album. Then we went back to his place, where we ate lobsters and drank beer and made out some more. Aunt Betty would kill me if she knew, but this is what being seventeen is all about. What is life, if not for living?


Cisco Beach, I wrote in my notebook. Lobsters and beer.


I know I write a lot about how hot he gets me, but the truth is that I could spend all day with him every day. He’s a cocky bastard, but he makes me laugh. There’s this weird part of me that’s like, Be careful. I can practically see the red flag warnings each time I close my eyes and we kiss. But I honestly don’t give a shit. He’s like a drug! And I’m addicted! Sometimes, I feel like we’re that Air Supply song, and that we’re making love out of nothing at all.


I had to laugh. Oh my god! That song is so cheesy!

There was a tap on my window, and I sat up quickly, my body contracting in a flash of tension. But I smiled when I saw it was Zack. He laughed at my scared reaction, and my heart raced for a different reason. I opened the window. It had finally stopped raining, but the air was misty, full of secrets.

“I couldn’t wait anymore,” he said.

“Shh,” I said, putting the book and notebook on the dresser and gesturing for him to come inside. Zack crawled in the window. He looked around.

“Nice room.” He reached up and touched the slanted ceiling. “I like these old places.”

“This one is haunted,” I said, gathering the sheet around me. I was only wearing a T-shirt and underwear. “By a sea captain.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Oh, hey. Fitzy saw that ghost again. The seventies girl.”

“How does he know she’s from the seventies?” I asked.

“Her clothes.”

“Is she wearing bell-bottoms?”

“I don’t know. But ghosts wear clothes. I mean, when people see ghosts they’re always dressed, which is really weird when you think about it. Whatever you die in is the outfit you’re stuck with for eternity.”

“I guess it’d be creepy if they were all naked,” I said.

“Good point. You love poetry, huh?” Zack asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“I saw you. Your eyes were glued to that book.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

“You were watching me?”

“For like a second.” He reached for the book on my dresser.

“Don’t touch that!”

“Whoa,” he said, searching my eyes. “What’s in that book?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“I want to see,” he said, picking it up.

“It’s private.” I leaped up, letting the sheet fall in order to grab the book from him. He smiled, staring at me, as I shoved it under the bed.

“Underwear is just like a bathing suit,” I said as I climbed back under the sheet, blushing like a fever.

“No,” he said. “It’s different. We’ve been through this before. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, recalling the conversation we’d had at the Claytons’ house when he’d seen Jules in her bra.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. I was thinking about that night. It was the night Nina died, but Zack hadn’t put it together, and I didn’t want to remind him.

“Jules misses you, you know. I saw her looking at one of those books you guys make, with all the letters and magazine clippings. What do you guys do with those things anyway? Are they like scrapbooks?”

“No. They’re collage books. Jules brought one of our books with her?” Zack nodded. Jules and I bought hardcover sketch pads from the RISD art store and made collages in them. We saved all the notes we passed to each other in class and used rubber cement to glue them into the book. Then we made collages based on the notes. The collages and notes could be on any subject, from Jay Logan, to a book, to a certain style of jeans, to the way a movie made us feel. The fact that she even brought one to Nantucket was a good sign. We traded it back and forth every week, each of us adding a new entry. That was our book, our thing. She couldn’t just add to it without thinking of me. “Maybe I should call her.”

“I don’t know,” Zack said as he leaned against the wall. We held each other’s gaze. Part of the reason he was climbing in my window was because Jules and I weren’t talking. “It’s like there’s this wall around her right now. And no one is allowed in. No one.”

“Parker is,” I said.

“Parker can’t even see the wall. That’s the whole point.”

“Oooh,” I said. I hadn’t thought about it like that before. It made me feel stupid and better at the same time. Zack put his hand on my sheet-covered foot and started to massage it.

I inhaled sharply. “Zack, we promised. No touching.”

“It’s just a foot,” he said. “A foot under a sheet.”

“Have you done this before?” His hands were strong, seemed to know what they were doing.

“Rubbed a girl’s feet? No,” he said. He looked older than sixteen. It was something about the way his jaw flexed. “This is pure instinct.”

“You might have a future in it.” I wiggled my other foot out from under the sheet. He covered it with his hands, went to work, barely touching my toes.

“Stop,” I said, laughing. But he was grazing my toes even more lightly now, and I tried to kick my feet free. “Stop.” I twisted free, sat up, and grabbed his hands. “Stop.” Our eyes locked, and we sat there staring at each other. He slid the sheet up to my knees, drew little circles on my kneecaps, maintaining eye contact. I watched him register the smile I was fighting. He leaned in and kissed me.

“Zack,” I said, trying to be calm. “We can’t do this. We promised.”

“Just one more time,” he said, smiling. “We won’t tell anyone.”

“But this is it,” I said.

“This is it,” he said, his hand sliding up my thigh.

“And no one can know. Ever.”

“Would you be embarrassed to go out with me?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Of course not.” But I knew a part of me was lying. I was going to be a senior, and Zack was only going to be a sophomore. “It’s just Jules. She’d be mad.”

“Okay, no one will know,” he said, lying back on the bed.

“We’ll be secret lovers,” I said. I wasn’t thinking.

He grinned. “I didn’t know we were going that far.”

I shook my head, realizing that lovers meant sex. “We’re not. That’s not what I meant.”

“Are you sure?” he asked as he pulled me down next to him.

“I’m sure,” I said as he took off his glasses and his lips found mine. I closed my eyes and saw flecks of red.

Were they the little warning flags Mom had written about?