She laughed.
“You think that’s funny?” She heard a smile in his voice.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She was nervous.
“You better hope I’m no Sleeping Beauty.”
The moon was only a quarter full. She heard the paper unfolding before she saw the white square—her list—in his hand.
“This is really cool,” he said.
“It’s dumb.” She meant it. Everything felt dumb now. She was dumb. An outsider to whatever dangerous game was being played. Someone she knew, maybe a bunch of someones, had tagged up the island for weeks while she partied alongside him (or her), clueless.
She wanted to listen to Brooks read her made-up words—she’d worked hard on them, chewed the erasers off two pencils—but the words looping across the ballroom wall were still there burned on the back of her eyelids like the flash of the strobe. Could it be Gerritt or Spencer? But they both had a stake in the island—their fathers were Grudder higher-ups. And it couldn’t be her cousins—their families relied on the money they made working extra summer shifts at the factory, especially since Uncle Carmine got sick.
“‘Wishwatcher,’” he read. “‘Someone always looking for a sign.’” He sighed. “Damn, that’s a good one.”
“Thanks.”
“‘Doomdreamer.’” He hummed thoughtfully. “You seem more like a glass-half-full kind of girl.”
She laughed, as if he’d gotten her all wrong. Praying he was correct because right now, she felt hopeless.
“I guess things could always be worse,” she said.
“Things can always be worse,” he said. “Next word. ‘Skinseeker’? Sounds kind of dirty.”
She slapped him playfully. Let her hand linger on his arm, giggled when she felt him flex. Just like a boy.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I don’t want to be me. I want a different skin.’
He was quiet.
Maybe, she thought, she’d offended him talking about skin. She was about to apologize, explain that’s not what she meant.
“I like your skin.”
She knew she should say thank you, but he was back to reading the list.
“What’s this one? ‘Second-balcony scream.’”
“It’s dorky.” She grabbed at the paper and the corner tore.
He pulled back. “No,” he said, like he was annoyed. “I don’t like it when you’re mean to yourself.”
She tried to forget the faceless vandal who might be sitting next to her. Or, she hoped, moshing to Metallica in the ballroom.
“Now,” he said, sweeter, “explain this ‘second-balcony scream’ to me. Please.”
“Have you ever seen a play in a big theater?”
“Yeah,” he said. “My mom used to take me. In the city.”
“And you know how, when you’re up in the balcony, and it’s like a really dramatic moment, and the audience is super quiet. The hero or heroine is onstage delivering their lines. And it’s like you’re scared to breathe, ’cause you might break the spell.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s magic.”
His fingers crawled into her palm, tracing little circles, and she remembered the childhood game. Round and Round the Garden. She didn’t want him to stop.
“And you get that crazy urge,” she said, “to stand up and scream. Scream so loud that every head turns away from the stage. To look at you. It’s not like you want to. But like you need to.”
“It’s the last thing you want,” he said. “It’d be so fucking embarrassing. Like walking into school naked. But still, you’ve got to.”
“Yeah.” She laughed, amazed he understood.
He turned to face her. So close. If she lifted his shirt, she could stroke whatever was underneath. She wondered if he was hairy like a man, like his father, who she’d seen working shirtless in the garden. Or if his stomach was smooth like a boy’s.
“I get that feeling,” he said, glancing at the ballroom windows, vibrating with a new song. The thrashing bass guitar just as dark and angry. “Standing on the balcony in there. Sometimes, I lean as far over the edge as I can. The same balcony,” he laughed, “where that jerkoff almost killed himself.”
“Hey,” she said, touching his chest, feeling hard muscle under soft cotton.
“It’s not like I want to die,” he said. His warm hand was covering hers. He trembled. “You know…”
She was sure he was about to admit something. It couldn’t be him. Not Brooks. Sweet, gentle Brooks.
“This island,” he said. “It’s making people sick.”
Was that a confession? He couldn’t be the criminal every east islander feared, searched for, dreamt of locking up?
“Like Penny,” she said.
“And lots of other people. My mom … The doctors told her she couldn’t have kids. Because the island made her sick.”
“But she had you. And Eva.”
He was silent and she wanted to fill the humming space between them and a story came to mind.
“You know that lake behind the factory?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s got some weird-ass Indian name.”
She laughed. “Lake Makamah.”
“Yeah, it was on the tip of my tongue.”
“It’s supposed to be haunted. By the Lady of the Lake.”
He was listening. She felt his eyes on her lips.
“She was in love with a Dutch settler and they’d meet in the middle of the lake. Each of them rowing out. But then her parents found out. Her dad was like some big-deal chief.”
“I don’t like where this is going.”
“He forbade her to see her lover. And so…”
He finished the story. “She threw herself in the lake.”
“How did you know?”
“Star-crossed lovers,” he said. “It’s an old story.”
He jerked his head toward the woods. “You hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” she said. “Except the caterpillars.…”
“Listen.” His breath brushed the back of her neck as he looped his long arms around her, under her breasts. She let herself soften.
“I thought I heard one of those fairy-tale owls,” he said.
She looked into his face. There was soft fur on his upper lip. The spatter of freckles on his nose she’d first seen on their walk home—that first night of her new life—looked like a constellation.
He said, “I get other urges too.”
“Oh yeah, like what?” She knew this was the right thing to say.
“Like right now.” He drew his fingers down her neck, chest, over the space between her breasts so she had to suck in a breath. “There’s something I need to do.”
He showed her his fingers, the tips gold from the pollen of the lilies she’d bobby-pinned in her hair.
“Your dress is covered in it,” he said.
He brushed a powdery line under each of her eyes—left and then right.
“Now,” he said, “you are Princess Makamah.”
He kissed her. Or maybe she kissed him, she’d wonder later, and understand it didn’t matter. All that did was how beautiful she felt. I am beautiful. It is true. She almost said the thing she knew a girl should never say after a first kiss. I love you.