Nantucket Blue

Twenty-nine





WHEN I PULLED INTO the Carmichaels’ driveway after an hour of driving around Nantucket with the radio blaring as I tried to get my head together, I saw Jules following Parker into the house. She was barefoot, wearing a yellow bikini, with a short white towel fastened around her hips. She was hopping on one foot and pounding the side of her head as she tried to get water out of her ear. I winced as I drove up. She looked up, squinting. Our eyes met. We both froze. I was going to have to get out of the car now. I couldn’t just sit there. I parked, trembling. I took a deep breath and stepped out of the car.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as I approached her. I saw her eyes darting over my body, taking in my business casuals.

“I have an internship,” I said. “With a journalist. And he’s here.”

“The guy who’s interviewing my dad?” Parker asked. She was dripping with pool water. She dabbed her face and stuck a towel-covered finger into her ear, grimacing as she screwed it in. Parker was so confident about her place in the world she could do that kind of thing in public. I looked at those rock-hard thighs. Parker looked like she could kick her Volvo over to Martha’s Vineyard.

“How’d you get an internship?” Jules asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“The book is about the whole American royalty thing, right?” Parker asked. I nodded, smiling. “What do you do for him?”

“Basically, I just help keep him organized; I get him whatever he needs. Sometimes I give him feedback,” I said. “You know, on the writing.” I figured on some level this was true. Just the other day he’d asked my opinion about an interview.

Jules was staring at a rock. With one pointed foot she traced an arc in the Carmichaels’ spongy green grass. It was bright, uniform grass, the kind that’s bought and then unfurled on the ground like bolts of fabric. “It’s your birthday in a few weeks,” she said, shielding the sun from her eyes, squinting at me.

I nodded. “My eighteenth.”

“Whoa, you’re old,” Parker said. “No wonder you have an internship. I feel better.” She snorted. “For a second there I was like, should I have an internship?” She picked at a bud on the branch of a tree and decimated it with her short fingernails. “But I’m only sixteen.”

“You’ll be seventeen in September,” Jules said, not even looking at her. Was she standing up for me?

“Bitch,” Parker said, like this was her little pet name for Jules. “C’mon, let’s get ready. I don’t want to be late meeting Jay.”

Jules and I had eighteen conversations with our eyes.

“There you guys are,” said Zack, who emerged from the backyard in his bathing suit. He must’ve seen me before I saw him, because he didn’t look surprised. He smiled as he jogged over. Now it was my turn to study rocks. Ever since Zack and I had started making out, my body had taken on a life of its own. My breath was unpredictable, my skin capable of burning up in an instant and searing my hairline, and there was this lightness that occasionally took me over, making me feel like I was made of balloons. He shook out his hair, spraying us all with little beads of water. Jules pushed him absentmindedly and he pushed her back. Why did he have to be her brother?

“Hello, Cricket. How are you?” he asked. He sounded stiff and formal.

“I’m fine,” I said. I thought you worked on Tuesdays. I could feel myself making a weird expression. He looked good in his trunks. God, did he look good. He was pale but strong. The sun was glistening off of his wet skin. I knew that body now. My heart was like a dog, hopping and pulling on the leash, like it wanted to jump up and lick his face.

“Is that your journalist?” Jules asked. I turned, relieved to see George come out of the front door, his satchel swinging awkwardly at his side.

“I gotta go,” I said, turning on my heels and jogging to meet George.

“Do you know those kids?” George asked as we climbed into the Jeep and I started the engine.

“Yeah,” I said. “Kinda.” I looked in the rearview mirror, expecting Zack to be the one watching us go. But he and Parker were gone. It was Jules who was watching me drive away. She looked frozen, standing on the edge of that perfect lawn in front of that perfect house. Her eyes were wide, mouth half open, like she was stopping herself from running after me.