Once the cobblestones ended and the pavement began again, Sebastian finally spoke: “Mind if I put the top down?” His shoulders, which had been raised near his ears since we had driven off the ferry, were now dropped, but his arms were stiff in front of him. He was pressing against the wheel as much as he was turning it.
I relaxed my grip on the door handle. “I’ve never ridden in a convertible.”
“Really?”
I glanced at him to see if he was making fun of me, but he looked genuinely surprised.
“That is something I’m going to have to rectify.” He slowed the car to a stop, pulled a switch near his door, and hopped out. “Ow. Shit. That hurt.”
“Can I help?”
“No, I got it.” He wrestled the top down and then climbed back into the driver’s seat. There was a fresh cut across the back of his hand.
“You’re really accident prone, aren’t you?” I asked as he jerked the car back onto the road. His eyes were so intensely focused on the pavement, I couldn’t help adding, “Do you want me to drive? I’m a really good driver . . . I’ve been doing it since I was thirteen.”
His lips became a straight line, and he started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He finally replied, “We grew up driving, too . . . thanks though.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me.
“K,” I whispered. I rolled down my window and pretended to be watching the bikers and joggers on the path next to the road. I was really more interested in stealing glances at him out of the corner of my eye.
In profile, I could see that his nose had a slight bump in the middle, as if he had broken it once and then broken it again with little time in between to let it heal.
I let the wind fill my ears, and tried to figure out what to do with my hands. Gripping the door meant his driving was bad. Crossed arms might make him think I was angry. I had settled on holding them in my lap when Sebastian leaned over me and reached toward my feet, taking the steering wheel and the car with him.
“Sorry.” He sat back up, steering the car to the left. “I had a drink down there. Do you see it?”
I bent down and ran my hand across the floor, grateful for the distraction from how close his face had just been to mine. I closed my fingers around a glass bottle under the seat and pulled it out. “This?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” He took it from me, opening the top and handing me the cap without ever taking his eyes off the road.
“What’s the fact of the day?”
“Fact?”
“What’s it say on the inside of the cap? These guys that make them, they’re from the island and they put these great factoids inside the caps.” He took a gulp so large I could see his throat working.
I flipped it over and read aloud, “Love produces the same physiological reactions as fear: pupil dilation, sweaty palms, and increased heart rate.” I clicked the center of the cap back and forth between my fingers. Fear and love. Love and fear. One and the same.
“Huh. Pupil dilation, really? Want a sip?” He held the bottle toward me.
And even though I hadn’t had lemonade since I was a kid when my dad would make giant pitchers of it with tap water and a powder mix, I took the bottle from him and sipped from where his lips had been. It was too sweet, too warm, and the bottle was too moist and dirty from rolling around on the car floor. It was delicious. I handed it back just to touch his fingers one more time, but I kept the cap, shoving it into my pocket.
“What are you studying?” I liked that I had to shout to be heard and then lean in to get his answer.
“What else? Government and economics. I’m being groomed to take over the family business.” He had a wrinkle between his eyebrows that hadn’t been there before.
“Politics?”
He fiddled with a knob near his window. “I didn’t even have to worry about finding a freshman advisor this year. My guy’s been coming to my parents’ parties since I was in diapers—a fact that he unfortunately made clear at a meeting first semester.” He hummed and drummed his fingertips against the wheel. “What about you? Julia says you’re the greatest artist since Picasso.”
“Hardly. Julia needs to get to a lot more galleries and museums, if that’s what she thinks.” I pressed a hand against the cap in my pocket. “It’s more that art’s the only thing I can picture myself doing all the time. I’ve tried. Teacher? Nope. Chef? Disaster.”
“Actor in a haunted house?”
“Not scary enough.”
“Interpreter for the United Nations?”
“I take Latin.”
“Phone psychic?”
“I can’t even predict what I’ll have for breakfast tomorrow.”
Sebastian laughed. “Guess you better stick with art then. That’s great . . . that you know what you want to do.”
I shrugged, forgetting that he couldn’t see me because he was looking at the road. “Most of the time I feel like I’m muddling my way through.” I wove my right hand through the wind, catching and falling, spreading my fingers to feel every bit of it. “I mean I might know, but that doesn’t mean I’m certain. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said, his hands still grasping the wheel like he was afraid it would try to escape from him. “That actually makes a ton of sense.”
“You’re lucky, too. That you know what you want to do,” I replied.
“Maybe . . .” He glanced at me, then quickly put his eyes back on the road. “I had it handed to me. You figured it out all on your own, though. That’s pretty cool.”
I kept weaving my hand through the wind. “Until I fall on my face and become another starving artist with a useless degree and live out the rest of my existence as a cliché.”
Sebastian rewarded my sarcasm with a smile. “You’re different from anyone else Julia has invited to Arcadia. That’s a good thing, Charlie.”
I let his words soak in like sunscreen through my skin. “Different” never sounded so good.
Sebastian slowed the car to a crawl before we turned through a wrought iron gate that was surrounded on both sides by dense hedges.
The main house was a sprawling, white, colonial-style fortress. Three porticoes held up the face, and green shutters at every window seemed placed more to break up the ethereal whiteness of it all than to actually shut out the sun. A large porch stretched around half of the front and disappeared into the back. A green lawn rolled out from the porch steps, stretching down and down and down, right to the edge of a thin beach. A small red sailboat bobbed next to a dark dock and boathouse that leaned in the back, like a dog settling on its haunches.
The sign above the front door could have been ripped from the back of a boat: “Arcadia.” It was crooked.
Sebastian pushed open his door and reached for the bag at my feet. He walked behind the car, opening and shutting the trunk, fumbling for a bit, and then continuing around to my side. I was still staring at the house when he started pulling on my door. He got it open before I even had a chance to undo my seat belt. I grabbed the battered box of chocolates from the floor and stretched out of the car with all the grace of a corpse coming to life. As I stumbled up, I came nose to nose with Sebastian. I forgot to exhale.
“Full confession.” Sebastian took one step away from me and looked down as he kicked at some broken shells in the driveway. “The way I drove took twice as long as the one I should have taken.” He glanced at me through those thick lashes. “Don’t tell Pip. She’ll tar and feather me.”
I made a zipper motion across my lips. I felt a rush as unsettling and sweet as sugary coffee on an empty stomach.
“Here you go.” He handed me my bag, my fingers meeting his for longer than necessary.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, shifting the straps onto one shoulder.
“Well.” He clapped his hands together and then rubbed them as if trying to keep them warm. He looked down at his feet again, then up at me, then down. “I have to go. People to see. Things to do and whatnot.”
<
br /> “You’re leaving?” I hoped that I didn’t sound as disappointed to him as I did to my own ears.
“Summer classes. Little too much time at Grendel’s Pub and a little too little time showing up to English class to actually discuss Beowulf.” He laughed. “Plus, Boom wants the car back on the mainland. I kind of volunteered to chauffeur when I heard you were coming to rescue Pip.”
“Throw a penny for me on the way back then.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, tilting his head and shielding his eyes with one hand. “I’ll throw two.” He climbed into the Aston Martin over the driver’s-side door instead of bothering with trying to open it and backed slowly out of the drive, honking three times once he reached the road. The gravel was still settling when Julia called to me from the porch.
“You survived being in a car with Sebastian. He drives like an old man with a stick up his arrière-train.” She slid down the banister and landed with a thump on two feet.
“I thought you were on your deathbed,” I shouted.
“I got better. What are those? It looks like the box survived a trip from Fiji.”
“Chocolates. I brought them for your parents.”
“Well they’re not here yet, so we’ll just have to eat them ourselves. Come on. I’ve been waiting forever for you to get here. We’ll share them with Nanny. She loves chocolates.”
I held up the battered box: the ribbon was nearly shredded on one side, it was dented, and the top corner had a footprint on it—mine. Julia started up the porch stairs. I tucked the box under one arm and moved across the lawn to join her.
She paused when she got to the top step. “He has a girlfriend, you know.”
I was grateful her back was to me, so she couldn’t see the heat creeping across my face. “Who?” I asked lamely.
“My brother who could charm the underwear off a nun.” She turned around at the door, one hand on the knob. “Come to think of it, he probably has charmed the granny panties off a nun. He did go to a Catholic high school. Come on.” She disappeared inside.
I reached in my pocket and wrapped one hand around the bottle cap. I did not trust myself to say anything in response.
A HANDFUL OF WISHES
I found the pennies when I was alone and unpacking in my guest room that first night. There were sixty-four of them; I counted.
A pile of copper underneath my jeans and pajama bottoms.
He must have thrown them in when he went around the back of the car.
I took one for my memory box. The rest I put in a clear glass and set on my bedside table, so I could look at them before I fell asleep.
ELEVEN
“WHY DO THEY CALL IT a widow’s walk?”
“Because a sailor’s wife would come up here and pace and look for her husband’s ship to come in,” Julia called over her shoulder as she continued up the ladder to the roof. “If it never did, she was a widow, watching for a someone who wouldn’t ever be coming home. Here, take this.” She lowered the bottle of champagne she had been holding down to me on the floor and began pounding at the ceiling with her two fists.
“What are you doing?”
“The only way to get up is through the trapdoor, but no one goes up here, so it’s stuck,” she huffed.
As Julia pounded, I looked around the attic. Like the rest of the house, it was elegant but shabby, like a wedding dress slowly turning yellow in a storage box. Downstairs, the carpets had worn patches, the sofas sagged in the middle, and the antique vases all looked like they could use a polish.
Upstairs, the attic looked like a playroom that time had forgotten. The floor was scuffed in places so badly it appeared as though someone had run across it wearing ice skates. Drooping dolls hung out of a red toy box. Plastic truck parts and board game pieces were scattered around the room like confetti. The only thing that seemed to be intact was a child-size wooden sailboat with a sun-faded blue sail. I did not have to ask Julia whose toy that had been or guess why time had held it together so well.
“Enfin!” A square of light suddenly flooded down from above Julia’s head as the door swung back on its hinges, landing on the roof with a crack. “Come on then,” she called over her shoulder. “Bring the champagne.” She disappeared through the hatch.
I followed her, holding the bottle and cups under one arm and clinging to the ladder with the other. When my head was above the opening, I stopped. The sky was so densely blue it looked like you could push against it. On one side I could see the outline of the roofs of downtown, including the spire of the church that I’d noticed when driving with Sebastian. On the other sides, I saw miles and miles of scrubby trees broken up by squares of lawn and gray houses, some of them even larger than Arcadia. “Holy merde!” I whispered.
“See, you do speak French. Now get off the ladder so we can close the door.”
“Julia, this is amazing,” I said as I finished climbing.
Julia shut the hatch and took the bottle from my arms. “I thought you’d like it. Un. Deux. Trois.” She popped the bottle, sending a shower of champagne into the wind. “Welcome to the home of the Great Buchanans!”
“Thanks.” I wiped at the spray on my face with my sleeve. “The Great Buchanans? You make your family sound like a bunch of circus performers.”
Julia put the cups on the railing and started pouring, letting foam run over the sides and drip down the roof. “Oh, if nothing else, the Great Buchanans are performers. Don’t you know? We’re all acrobats and lion tamers. We make caramel popcorn good enough to tempt dentists, and our trapeze act has brought royalty to their knees with awe.” She took a deep drink of the cup she had poured herself. “Oh, not bad.” She filled the second and handed it to me. “Yes, Mummy is the master of ceremonies, Boom is the businessman counting the cash in some poorly lit tent, my oldest brother, Bradley, is the lion tamer, Cordelia is the elephant trainer, and Sebastian is the juggler. God forbid he drop a ball or else the world might stop spinning.”
She threw back her head and drained her cup. “These things are stupid,” she said. “All the froth goes everywhere. Au revoir!” She flung her cup off the roof, giggling when some champagne drops flew back and hit her. “Just the bottle for us.”
I settled into a sitting position with my feet planted flat against the roof so I could shoot up and grab Julia at the first hint of her swaying. “And what about you? What do you do in the circus?”
Julia looked at me, her head tilted to her left shoulder. She tapped a finger against her lips. “Moi? I’m the resident clown. I can ride a unicycle, or I’m sure I could if I wanted to. I can stuff myself in a car, take a pie in the face, and disappear and reappear when you least expect me—or maybe that makes me the resident magician? I’d never pull a rabbit out of my hat, though. Too cruel. I’m more of a saw-women-in-half kind of girl.” Julia raised the bottle, splashing champagne near her feet. The bubbles sizzled and then disappeared. “What would your family’s act look like?”
“It wouldn’t look like an act at all.”
“Oh?” Julia said, raising an eyebrow. “Do tell.”
“There’s not much to tell. My real mom is in New Mexico. Santa Fe. She moved out there after the divorce to be with my grandma Eve. Grandma Eve was great. She used to take me to museums, these crazy modern dance shows, and weird hole-in-the-wall galleries every time she came to Boston. My mom stayed out there even after she died.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Grandma Eve? All the time.”
“No, your mother.”
“This January, I threw her week-late Christmas card in a bonfire at the skating pond. It was, as Dr. Blanche would say in English, a cathartic ritual.”
“You really don’t miss her then?”
I shrugged. “If anything, I miss the idea of her, but maybe not her her.”
Julia sat down across from me and gestured for me to continue, a hand pressed against her forehead to shade her eyes from the sun.
“I have a stepmom. She’s grea
t. Two Animal Planet–obsessed stepbrothers. My dad. I love them, but it’s wicked crowded when I’m home. I don’t even have a bedroom anymore.” I laughed, thinking how ridiculous I must sound to someone who had two houses. “I sleep on a futon in the den over breaks. It’s all really boring. Not like here.” I took the champagne from her and gulped, letting the bubbles trip along my tongue. “Your turn.” I pointed the bottle at her.
“Fine,” Julia said, swiping the bottle back. She sipped, handed it to me, and then spoke. “I can’t come here on my own anymore, even if Nanny’s here, too. There always needs to be two other people besides me. Nanny’s cousin stayed three extra days until you could get here.” She turned her head to look at me, one cheek resting on her knees. “There was an incident, and after that Mummy won’t let me be alone.” She reached for the bottle again, gulped, and held on to it this time. “Part of the deal with me being allowed to go to St. Anne’s was that I had to find a friend who could come with me to Arcadia.”
Now I hugged my knees to my chest and looked out at the ocean. Not wanting to watch her watching me. “So that’s why you texted me? Why didn’t you just ask Piper or Eun Sun or one of those girls you used to eat lunch with?”
“Oh no, I didn’t mean it like that. That came out all wrong. Don’t be upset with me. I want you here because you’re Charlie and you get it. I would rather be with you than any of those filles aussi stupides que leurs pieds at school. You’re so, so, so much more interesting.” Julia scooted closer to me and put her head on my shoulder. “And you’re fantastic on the eyes and that’s always a plus,” she said, winking.
Even in Paradise Page 7
