She’d bleed any day now and blamed her tears on that. After all those failed pregnancies, three before her beautiful boy was born, and two before sweet little Eva, all those months spent charting her temperature, counting days between cycles, hoping, wishing, and even silently reciting the prayers she’d memorized as a girl in the pews of St. John’s, she never forgot when her body was scheduled to bleed.
She knew she had lost Julius. Named for a dictator who, like the Grudder men, seemed benevolent on the surface but who was cruel and conniving, who kept hidden any truths that didn’t fit his agenda. But Jules was a man whose only ambitions were to make the world a greener and more beautiful place. Who designed community gardens for the poor. Who taught children how to feed themselves with a packet of seeds and a bag of soil. He was a magician. Not like her father, the admiral, whose magic had wrought destruction. Jules’s magic created life. She hoped he would never understand how she’d become more like her father than she’d ever imagined—obsessed, in love with her plans for destruction.
July 11, 1992
Dear Diary,
Hi, it’s me, the dumbest girl on Avalon Island. I thought about going back and ripping out my last entry. Tearing it to SHREDS and letting the pieces float over the cliffs of Singing Beach. But it seemed like a total drama queen thing to do. Like something Brenda Walsh would do on 90210 (gag me!) and you know how I feel about her.
The 4th of July party at the club was a total bust. It was so bad that I spent days worrying about B breaking up with me. Plus, my dad had a total freakout and if it wasn’t for Nicky, sweet sweet Nicky, who knows where I’d be now. I’m living at the big house. Even staying in Mom’s old room and sleeping under the same strawberry-print bedspread she used before she met my asshole dad.
But the BIG NEWS is that Nicky and me we’re cooking up a plan for me and B to … in B’s words “make like the roadrunner.”
Nicky has been AMAZING in helping us plan and in a few weeks we’ll be out of here. Far from the island. Far from my parents. Far from the Colonel who’s gone nuts and spends all day yelling at the TV set. Far from all the crap this island tries to cram down kids’ throats.
I’ll miss Dom but he can visit anytime he wants! He can come and live with us even!
Sometimes, when I think about all me and B have to look forward to, my head spins and I have to pinch myself (hard) to convince myself I’m not tripping. We can hold hands and it won’t matter who sees us. We can stand in the middle of the city and scream I LOVE YOU and no one will want to hurt us for just telling the truth.
I’m making a list of things I want to do when we’re off the island. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
-a weekend in a quaint bed and breakfast (the kind that serves hot biscuits with breakfast) where me and B can lie in bed all day and watch the snow fall outside
-a kiss with B at the top of the Empire State Building (so unoriginal I know but still!)
-a MAJOR haircut, like chopped off
More coming soon! This is just the beginning …
Love,
Maddie Pencott LaRosa
38.
Dom
He found her diary between her mattress and box spring. It was so obvious. Like she’d wanted him to read it. Wanted him to stop her from leaving the island. Leaving him.
He’d brought the diary up into his favorite climbing tree but his hands were gooey with sap and now the pages of her last entry were stuck together. He couldn’t put the book back. She’d know he’d read it.
A yelp sounded from the front yard. The Colonel stood on the lawn in his slippers and palm-tree-print robe that made Dom think of that weirdo on M*A*S*H who dressed in ladies’ clothes. The robe hung open so Dom saw his sagging briefs and the dog tags glinting against his white undershirt. There was something in his hands and he brought it down on Champ, who yelped with each blow. It was the bamboo back scratcher he kept next to his recliner.
Dom knew he should climb down and protect Champ. But instead he squirreled into the crook of the tree. The branches were nearly leafless from the caterpillars and the Colonel would only have to look up to spot him.
“That’ll teach you to shit on the carpet!”
Thwack. The dog cried out. A human-sounding pain.
Why wasn’t Champ running away? Then Dom heard the rattle of the chain. He’s trapped, poor dumb dog. Dumb for loving the Colonel, who can’t love anyone or anything but his planes.
The chain rattled again and Dom saw a brown-and-black blur run to the big house. The Colonel waddled after, yelling, “You’re gonna eat that shit. Gobble it up. Or you’ll get another beating.”
The screen door clicked shut, the yowls muffled. Then there was silence. The dog must have surrendered. Swallowed his own stinking shit. The thought made Dom hurl and the Chef Boyardee ravioli he’d eaten for dinner came up with the Budweisers he’d snagged from his grandparents’ fridge, the whole mess splashing down the trunk of the tree. Dripping so it sounded like rain.
He thought about how everyone deserves to be shot at one point in their life. Some more than once. He deserved it as much as his dad. Yeah, his dad had been the one to hit Maddie, but it had been Dom who had ratted on her at the party, when his dad asked, “Where’s your sister?” and Dom had pointed him in the direction of the caddy shacks. His father had stomped off, the arms of his pastel sweater swinging, not noticing Dom was so drunk he was swaying like a sailboat in a storm.
He’d wanted his dad to catch them. To put an end to Maddie and Brooks. Up in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. That night in the woods, when they’d played the last game of Gods versus Mortals, he’d seen the way Maddie and Brooks looked at each other, like they were the true Orpheus and Eurydice meeting in fiery Hades, full of joy and love despite being surrounded by the dead. Dom had been invisible to them that night. What if he was one of those soulless dead?
39.
Maddie
They were in the secret garden. Lying side by side as the night breeze dried the sweat from their naked bodies. Shouting swelled from the ballroom. The parties had grown so crazy that the noise reached them there every night. Reached them in the one spot where Maddie had felt unreachable. Safe.
“It’s some wild rumpus shit going on in there tonight,” Brooks said.
“It scares me,” she said, “a little.”
“It scares me a lot,” Brooks said. “Every time Rolo swings off that balcony, I want to shout, ‘Motherfuckin’ timber!’”
His head was in her lap and she leaned over and kissed him. Her hair fell over their faces like a curtain and, for a minute, the noise of the ballroom, the hum of the crickets, the whole world it seemed, was shut out.
“I wish I had a word for how much I love you, Maddalena Pencott LaRosa.”
“How much do you love me?”
“From the moon and back?”
“Um, I think it’s to the moon and back.”
“No,” he said, “I’ve heard that one before. But from the moon and back—that’s just for you and me.”
“Try again,” she said.
“How about…” he began, and she could hear him thinking, his wonder-seeking brain buzzing. “I love you so much … that I even love your flaws.”
“My flaws?” She slapped his forehead and he gave out a fake cry of pain. “Is this how you woo the woman you love?”