“I get it.” She didn’t hear any sarcasm. He wasn’t mocking her like another boy would’ve. “Shit can be complicated.” He sounded sad. She imagined how very complicated his life must be on the island.
“Here.” He handed her his black hoodie. His white tee soaked up the moonlight and she could see his face now. His smile. His fringed lashes.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “You’ll freeze.”
“Not taking no for an answer.”
“Thanks.” She slipped her arms into the soft sweatshirt. It smelled of him, like cinnamon and something smoky she couldn’t name. “Oh, that’s good.”
He stepped forward, his board tucked under an arm. Was he going to kiss her? Did she unknowingly enter into an agreement by accepting his sweatshirt? She didn’t want that. She’d been touched enough for one night. His hands moved over her crotch and then the sweatshirt zipped with a hiss. He flipped the hood over her head and pulled the drawstring tight.
“There,” he said.
He’d been close. She’d felt his warmth. Then he was on his board, rolling away. “Catch you later.”
“Wait!” She jogged into the dark night, the asphalt still warm from the day.
The board scraped as he braked.
“I’m your neighbor.” She was out of breath. “We live next door. To the Castle.” She corrected herself, “Your castle.”
“You call it that too, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, feeling shy, not ready to confess how the mysterious Marshall castle had been a fixture in all the childhood games she and Dom had played in the woods. “Can I walk with you?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I have a better idea.”
He held her hand as he helped her onto the skateboard. He spread her feet apart, his fingers tickling the tops of her toes.
“Make sure you grip with your toes, ’kay?”
He kept her hand in his and pulled her forward on the dark road.
He towed her down Horseshoe Lane and onto East Neck Road, the artery that looped the eastern tip of the island. The back of his tee darkened with sweat, and she tried to give him a break, begged to walk for a bit—plus, he was carrying something heavy in his backpack, which hung low, bumping against his back—but he insisted on pulling her all the way up steep Snake Hill Road. When their hands grew slick with sweat, he switched. They laughed—at him grunting up the hills, her squealing as the skateboard raced down the other side, at the caterpillars dropping on them from the low branches arched over the road. Her cheeks ached from smiling. She hadn’t laughed like this maybe since ever.
She taught him about the island as they made their slow journey, pointing out the Oyster Cove Country Club, and the dirt parking lot by the docked boats where kids went to smoke up. His curiosity tickled her. He asked her to name every bloom they passed—the heart-shaped nocturnal moonvine on the cement walls around the Gundersens’ estate and the twining trumpet creeper’s orange blooms drooping over the gates of Penny’s house.
“I thought your dad was, like, a plant expert.”
“I’m more like my mom. People over plants. I do know that one over there.” He pointed to the airy white wisteria cascading over the stone walls of Mrs. Whiteside’s house. “My dad calls it the grande dame of vines. It’s kind of like a waterfall made of flowers.”
“Or flower fireworks?”
“Totally. Damn, this island smells like the perfume counter at a department store!” He gulped air like a fish out of water.
She liked how he could be a clown, then straighten up and get serious, like when she explained military rank as they passed gate after gate of Grudder executives’ estates, some retired navy.
“Wait,” he said, “it goes lieutenant, major, captain…?”
“No! It’s captain and then major. Look, just don’t go calling a colonel a captain, okay?” She smiled to show she was teasing.
“So I’ll be cool if I call every dude on the island Admiral yessir, yeah?” He stood tall and saluted.
“They won’t complain,” she said. “But how can you not know this stuff when your own grandpa was an admiral?”
“It’s complicated,” he said. She wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
They stopped for a break at the wrought-iron gates of St. John’s. The steeple glowed a heavenly white under the almost-full moon. The gates were wrapped with overgrown honeysuckle vines, and he made her laugh by falling back against the golden, syrupy spread like he was falling into a bed plump with goose down.
She plucked a pair of the two-tone flowers, deep pink inside with a yellow lip, and held one out to him. He stared.
“This doesn’t look like any honeysuckle I ever seen,” he said.
“It’s special. They call it Goldflame.”
“Ooh, I like that.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not poisonous.”
“You better not be messing.” That wide grin was back in his voice.
“Now, use your front teeth to snip off the end. Ready?”
“Not sure I’ll ever be ready to eat a flower.”
“Trust me,” she said. “Now, spit it out.”
“Shit! I swallowed it. Tell me I’m not gonna die.”
She laughed deep from her belly so it felt like something loosened inside her and when she stopped, he was watching her, a look of—what was it?—on his face. It was how she’d wanted Spencer to look at her.
“Okay,” she said, wiping tears away, not caring if her mascara smudged. “Now, take a sip. Suck the end.”
Her face burned when the image of her sucking not on the flower, but on his lower lip popped into her head.
“Mmm,” he said. “They named this one right-on. Honey. Suckle.”
“Yeah,” she said. How had she never thought of that?
“There’s a ton of good plant names. My dad taught me some stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Well, nightshade for one. Belladonna. Lady’s slipper.”
“Those are beautiful.”
She reached forward and touched his fingers. They were splattered with black paint.
“Are you an artist or something?”
He laughed. “Or something.”
Maybe it was the city in him, but he knew different ways of saying the same thing, more than awesome, cool, killer, the words she’d heard Avalon boys use day after day. She wanted him to teach her to talk like that.
“Yeah,” she said. “There’s not enough words. Somebody should make more.” She looked away and sighed. “Sorry, that’s a dumb thing to say.”
“No.” He reached for her, found her arm in the darkness. “That’s a dope idea. Let’s do it. Make our own language.”
She didn’t pull away, despite the way it made her feel—like she might explode, like everything she worked day in and day out to keep hidden (her mom reminding her not to talk about her dad’s fits of anger at school) might stream out and strike her dead.
“Shut up,” she said. “You fucking with me?”
“You ever read Cat’s Cradle? By Kurt Vonnegut. They make up their own language. And then they make religion. And propaganda. And all these wild things happen because words are the start of every revolution.”