The boys were also in uniform—khaki shorts and striped rugby tees; sun-lightened hair buzzed military short like their fathers and grandfathers, many retired navy men turned factory suits. Soccer star/weed dealer Ricky Bell; smooth-talking Austin Drake; chubby, Grateful Dead–obsessed Cameron Rollins (Rolo); and John Anderson, who was tall and thick, a die-hard Beastie Boys fan Maddie had seen eat a live earthworm in a middle school dare a few years back.
Spencer Fox, Gerritt’s second in command, nodded at Maddie before tossing his head back to clear feathered bangs. She made herself return the smile. They were supposed to be going together, although she had no clue how that had come about. Only that he’d slipped her a note in third-period social studies during a pop quiz on the Magna Carta, asking her to be his date to the Fourth of July Oyster Cove Country Club party, now less than a month away. The note said he wanted to ditch the dance and sneak out to the tennis courts behind the pool cabanas, where I’m going to finger you till you cum. The words in sloppy boy-scrawl had made her stomach flip, but Bitsy only laughed and said, “What are you bugging about? Chill, Virgin Mary. You’ll be totally dope together. Unicorns and rainbows and all that shit.”
Spencer walked toward her in that bowlegged saunter all the soccer-team guys had. She knew he was going to touch her and that she’d let him. She knew all the cues by now and smiled when she was supposed to; laughed along; spoke up when it was her turn, shut up when it wasn’t; took a drag, a swig; let Spencer feel her up even though it made her gut clench like she was getting her period.
“Hey, Mads.”
His hand was on her back, his fingers low. When they slipped under her skirt waistband, she let them stay. She counted one, two, three. She’d wait until ten to shift away, not wanting to look like a prude.
“You’re looking superfly,” he said.
“What up, Spence?” Maddie said. “You’re looking pretty fine yourself.”
She knew she didn’t sound like herself. Feared she was trying too hard. A prickly heat spread across her chest and she prayed it wouldn’t rise above her collar.
Four, five, six.
Spencer spat a stream of brown tobacco juice into the grass.
“We’re chilling at Gerritt’s later,” he said. “Pulling bong hits. He scored some choice nugs. Believe me, you want to be there.”
His pupils were two black marbles. He was already stoned. Or rolling on E. Or maybe he’d eaten some of the shrooms Gerritt and his boys had been taste-testing all week—according to Gabrielle, who was anxious to get her hands on some.
As “Pop Goes the Weasel” warbled over the carousel speakers, Spencer’s damp fingers slipped under her underwear elastic—seven, eight—
The caterpillar inched across the top of her hand. It wore a coat of fine black bristles. She’d seen a few on the silvery birch trees edging the woods around her family’s cottage, and that spring, everyone had been obsessed with the hatching of the gypsy moth eggs that had lain in wait all winter long in the woods—from Mr. Skolnick, her science teacher (Repeat after me, he’d said, Lymantria dispar dispar) to the newscasters on Channel 12 Island News, and even her younger brother, Dominic. They used words like “plague” and “infestation,” and soon the kids talked about the caterpillars as if it were an impending war. Or, Maddie thought, a horror film scheduled to roll at the Avalon Cinema. The caterpillars are coming. They’re coming. As they passed a blunt rolled with marijuana shake around the bonfire, filled plastic cups with beer from a keg in the back of John Anderson’s Bronco, snuck cigarettes at the red doors that led to the make-out woods behind school. As they waited on line at the cafeteria for pizza and Tater Tots, warmed up during choral practice, and changed for gym in the locker room. Until Maddie felt something titanic rushing toward the island, gathering steam like a nor’easter barreling toward shore, and the waiting filled with a tingling urgency she knew they all felt. She felt it. Car engines revved harder, highs soared higher, buzzes and crushes burned brighter.
“Look.” She lifted her palm as the insect inched across. The two lines of blue and red dots on its back glimmered like spots of blood rising after a pinprick. “They’re here.”
Spencer moved closer, his hand sliding up so it rested over the plastic latch of her bra.
“Killer,” he said. She smelled the minty tobacco packed so thick his lower lip bulged, slurring his words. “The motherfucking caterpillar apocalypse is upon us.”
“So cute!” Penny gushed.
Spencer looked at Penny with glassy-eyed disgust and Maddie knew he’d punish her enthusiasm.
“Fuck cute.” He blew into Maddie’s palm.
“No.” She stopped, knowing she was being a baby, feeling a beat of despair for a bug.
As it floated away on an invisible thread (She got away, Maddie thought defiantly) and up into the oak branches stretched black against the plum sky, she heard Bitsy, a flame edging her voice, “Those west-side scumbags are over there.”
Vanessa bounced on her toes like she did when there were fights at school, and like the time she hid a pair of panties, the crotch coated in ketchup, in Karen Lipschultz’s school locker.
Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “So not cool, them showing up at our fair.”
There were Maddie’s cousins, Vinny and Enzo, trying to look all gangster in cowboy hats on the photo stage, a platform set up next to the bouncy house where Ms. Murphy, the mustachioed East High gym teacher, squatted, snapping Polaroid shots.
The West girls were draped two at a time on her cousins’ laps and wrapped in feather boas and fringed shawls like old-fashioned saloon whores. If not for the tense silence around her, Maddie would’ve laughed. Vinny and Enzo were obsessed with keeping it cool, and here they were playing dress-up.
She slipped an arm around Spencer’s waist. Tickled the fuzz of his earlobe with her lips, hoping it would convince him to take her faraway, fast.
“Can we go now? To Gerritt’s?”
If she and Bitsy and the rest of the East crew were girls, Maddie thought, then the West girls were grown women. In padded bras and tight jeans—the cuffs pegged to show off every curve. She saw how they’d cropped their neon-orange and -pink tees, knotting the cotton above their navels. To show off their piercings. The cubic zirconia gems dangling from their belly buttons glimmered each time the camera flashed. She wondered if they’d done the piercing themselves. She’d heard all you needed was an ice cube, a safety pin, and a lighter, but had been too much of a wimp to try.