Local Girls : An Island Summer Novel (9781416564171)

by O'connell, Jenny

“Brian’s going to Stanford in the fall and all Chloe talked about since he got in was how she’s going to apply to Stanford, too.”

  I knew I should have told Mona about Stanford, about the catalog on my dresser and the manila envelope in my top drawer waiting to be filled with tips from the inn. But I didn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Mona would be happy for me, or think it was cool that I was applying to school so far away from home. Because whether she was standing on the sidelines of my field hockey games yelling for me to score a goal, or spending her afternoons helping me make posters when I ran for student council, Mona never doubted I could do anything I wanted to do. Even though I played defense and the odds of me ever scoring a goal were pretty slim. Still, it never stopped her from screaming my name whenever the ball rolled toward me, and it never stopped me from actually believing that one time, I just might actually make it all the way down the field, where I’d swing my stick and watch the ball sail past the goalie and into the net.

  No, I didn’t tell Mona about Stanford because I realized that, for the first time, Mona knew better. She knew that Chloe’s dad probably had some connection with an alumnus or someone on the board of trustees, or that she was a legacy who’d breeze through the admissions process without wondering how much financial aid she’d receive. Mona knew that, although my grades were good, it was the Chloes of the world who’d stand out while the starting sweeper on the Martha’s Vineyard High School varsity field hockey team was just another smart girl who thought maybe that was enough.

  “So what happened at the spring formal?” I asked Mona, if only so she’d keep talking.

  It was like this the entire time. Somebody would start to talk about a guy at school or something that happened in the past year, and Mona would turn to me and begin to explain, like a narrator in a movie. I knew she was trying to make me feel included, but all she managed to do was highlight the fact that I didn’t belong there, that when it came right down to it, even though we were all Mona’s friends, it was obvious we had nothing in common. Except Mona.

  I looked away from the girls, focusing down the beach, where actual bodies gave way to indiscernible dots on the sand. When the girls would laugh at something one of them said, I’d turn and smile as if I got it, as if I understood. There had to be a few hundred people along the entire stretch of South Beach, and yet, even as I laughed in the right places and nodded when I was sure it was the right thing to do, I felt completely and totally alone. I may as well have been on a deserted island.

  “Hungry?” Mona eventually asked, finally giving up on her role as my interpreter after Samantha started telling a story that even Mona couldn’t help me comprehend.

  “Sure.”

  Mona reached into her monogrammed canvas beach bag, fishing around for a few seconds before pulling out two sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil. I watched as she carefully unwrapped one of the sandwiches and peeled it apart. I didn’t even have to ask what she was doing.

  “Here, this is yours.” She handed me the unwrapped sandwich and I knew it was the one without mustard. I hate mustard, and Mona loves it, which is why she never had to worry about me asking for a bite of her lunch.

  I expected Mona to ask about the deli; I mean, she had the perfect lead-in. I’d e-mailed her about Lexi’s brilliant deli idea around Christmas, around the time we’d planned for her to come back to the island for a visit. Two weeks later, when I finally received an e-mail from Mona after New Year’s, she’d apologized for not responding to my e-mail sooner, adding that even though Malcolm’s ski house had wireless Internet, she’d forgotten to bring her laptop.

  But as Mona watched me take my sandwich, she didn’t bring up the deli and I didn’t mention it. Instead, we ate our roast beef sandwiches and I decided that if anyone should be opening a deli in Edgartown, it should be Zilda.

  After lunch I decided to stop trying to keep up with the girls’ conversations and just enjoy the beach. Playing the go-between had to be exhausting, and I think Mona was relieved when I finally lay back, rested on my elbows, and turned my face to the sun. She finally got to close her eyes and stop talking.

  Emily elbowed Jilly and nodded toward the water.

  “He looks even better on a surfboard,” Emily commented, pointing to the surfer making his way to shore. She rearranged her bikini top, spreading the white gathered triangles out until they were evenly spaced.

  “And wet,” Jilly added, and they laughed.

  The three of us continued watching the guy on the surfboard paddle his way in.

  “Nice, huh?” Jilly asked me. I was about to answer, but then I stopped.

  I figured it had to be my sunglasses, but when I slid them down my nose there was no denying I was seeing exactly what I thought I was seeing. It was Henry.

  Even though Mona and Henry are twins, I never thought of them that way, and I blame TV. First, because twins on TV always look alike, wearing matching outfits like the Doublemint twins, or like the Olsens when they played the same kid in that sitcom. And second, because of the Winter Olympics. Maybe not the entire Winter Olympics, but definitely the pairs figure skating. In middle school Mona and I were watching the Olympics at her house, which might not sound that thrilling, but there is nothing thrilling about being on the island in the middle of February no matter what your TV choices. Mona and I liked the ladies’ figure skating, less for the jumps and twirls and more for the sparkly outfits the girls got to wear. But that day it was the pairs skating and there was one pair, a brother and sister, who everybody had pegged to win. They also happened to be twins. We watched them skate in total unison. With every stroke of their blades, each arm movement, it was as if they were physically connected with invisible string. I had a difficult time picturing Mona and Henry doing that, and not just because Henry was a hockey player—which made it hard to picture him wearing the purple stretchy outfit with sequins and feathers around the ankles. It just didn’t feel like Mona and Henry were in sync like the brother and sister skating to the theme from some Italian movie. And it isn’t just that, with his dirty blond hair and dark brown eyes, Henry looks nothing like Mona. It was more that you always hear about how twins have some sort of extrasensory perception about each other, like a twin two thousand miles away feels a twinge in her knee when the other twin breaks his leg. I can honestly say that Mona probably couldn’t even tell what Henry ate for lunch a few tables away in the cafeteria, much less whether he’d just pulled an Achilles tendon.

  It’s not that Mona and Henry aren’t close, because they are. But they don’t really share much in common. Henry has always been sort of a loner, and Mona and I have been practically inseparable since third grade. You’d think the biggest thing they share, that they don’t know who their dad is, would make Henry understand Mona’s obsession with the anonymous guy Izzy met years ago. But Henry’s never been as curious about their father as Mona. In fact, every time she suggested they try to find him, Henry rolled his eyes and left the room. Still, I knew Mona felt Henry was the only one who understood, truly understood, why it was so important to her. Which is why, even if Henry couldn’t gracefully toss Mona across the ice, and she didn’t have the balance to land a trick like that even if he could, we both knew Henry and that guy in the purple stretchy sequin costume had something in common. Mona trusted Henry more than anyone, and she knew that he would never let her down. I always felt like that was something Henry and I shared, Mona’s trust. She knew we were the two people who would always be there for her no matter what. In a weird way it made me feel closer to Henry than I probably should have, like I trusted him, too. Maybe that’s why he always seemed different than the other guys at school, like we knew things about each other that nobody else knew, just by virtue of our relationship with Mona. And yet Henry and I stopped short of actually becoming real friends, as if crossing that line would somehow be taking something away from Mona.

  “That’s Henry,” I thought, and then realized I’d said it aloud.

  “Yep, that’s H
enry,” Emily answered, putting an inordinate amount of emphasis on his name.

  Jilly looked over at Mona, who was listening to her iPod and humming along, and then leaned in toward me, her voice low. “Emily’s got a thing for him.”

  Emily rolled her eyes at Jilly, but she didn’t deny it.

  “I didn’t know he could surf,” I told them. They seemed a little disappointed by my response, so I decided to add, “But he does look good doing it.”

  They nodded in unison, and for the first time all day I felt like we were on the same team, even if I had to pretend to share their opinions to join their side.

  Never, not once, had I thought of Henry in any way other than as Mona’s brother. I mean, he’d seen me in footy pajamas, and he once watched as I threw up an entire bowl of beef stew after I’d convinced my mom I wasn’t sick and was perfectly well enough to sleep over at Mona’s house. I’d seen him stumble to the bathroom in the morning, his hair in disarray and sand still in the corners of his eyes. Once he even walked in on me while I was peeing.

  But he looks good doing it? I’m surprised I could get the words out of my mouth.

  But if there was one thing that I did find appealing about Henry at that moment, it was the fact that he was Mona’s brother, that he had seen me in footy pajamas, that I’d known him practically forever (but not that he’d once walked in on me peeing). Henry was the opposite of the girls sitting next to me. He was someone familiar, someone who made me feel comfortable. And after sitting on the beach with Mona and her friends, that was exactly what I needed.

  “I’m hot.” I stood up and stretched my arms over my head, trying to get the blood flowing into my hands, which had fallen asleep. “I’ll be in the water if Mona’s looking for me.”

  I was sure Jilly and Emily were watching me as I wound my way around towels and beach chairs, avoided sand castles, and even stepped over a six-year-old buried up to his neck in sand on the way to the water. But for whatever reason, whether they didn’t want their fake tans to wash off or they didn’t think I was a threat in faded green paisley and early summer pallor, they didn’t follow me or suggest they come along, even though it was obvious where I was going.

  “Where’d you learn to surf?” I asked Henry, meeting him at the water’s edge.

  “Hawaii,” he answered, not even looking at me and instead shaking his head from side to side, spraying water out in all directions before letting his hair fall haphazardly around his face. Wet like that, the only way you could even tell he was blond were the golden highlights reflecting the sun.

  “Hawaii? When were you in Hawaii?”

  This time Henry looked up at me. “February, when Malcolm took us all there for my mom’s birthday.” He kept staring at me, and even though he didn’t say it out loud it was obvious what he was thinking— Didn’t Mona tell you?

  No, Mona did not tell me. I guess between the ski house in Vermont for Christmas and spring break in the Caribbean, Hawaii in February is no big deal.

  “I guess I forgot.” I pointed to Henry’s ankle. “You’re bleeding.”

  “It’s really rocky near the shore.”

  “You were out pretty far,” I observed. “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “You would have warned me if the sharks were circling, right?”

  “Only if they looked hungry.”

  Henry laughed and tipped his head toward Mona and her friends. “So what do you think?”

  I glanced back at the girls on their towels. “They seem nice enough.”

  “They’re not so bad.”

  “Mona seems to really like them.”

  He shrugged.

  “What about you,” I asked. “Any of your friends here for the summer?”

  “A few went to Europe or Nantucket, but most stayed home.”

  Home. For a minute I was confused, and then I realized Henry meant Boston. Home in Boston.

  “I saw Ryan Patten at the ferry this morning,” I told Henry. “He said to say hi.”

  Henry nodded and wiped the drops of water from his forehead.

  “He’s working at Island Wheels if you want to stop by and see him.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  Henry squinted at me, trying to keep the glare from the sand out of his eyes. Henry was already tan, another reason I never thought of Mona and Henry as twins. Mona’s fair skin practically burned under a sixty-watt lightbulb. But every summer, even as his hair got paler, Henry’s skin turned a deep, dark brown.

  As long as I can remember, Henry mowed lawns during the summer. He borrowed their grandfather’s mower and hauled it around town. Before Henry had his license, Poppy drove him, but last summer Henry borrowed Poppy’s old pickup and did it himself. There probably weren’t plans to cut any lawns this summer.

  Henry ran his hand through his hair, leaving rake marks behind. I could see the grains of sand stuck to his scalp, which was turning pink.

  “You have sunscreen on? I think your head is getting burned.”

  “You sound like Mona,” he told me, then turned his board toward the water and started to walk away. “Well, I’m going to head back out there. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck.”

  Henry ran a few steps into the waves before pushing the board out ahead of him, lying down and paddling farther out. I watched as the muscles in his back rippled with every stroke, and it was only then, as I stood there watching him, that I noticed something across his right shoulder blade, a lopsided shape. A tattoo.

  “Don’t forget, if you see any fins circling, make sure you tell me!” Henry called back over his shoulder.

  “I will,” I called back, then watched as Henry paddled away, the lopsided frog going along for the ride.

  “They all love him.”

  I turned around and found Mona standing behind me, watching me watch Henry. “Who?”

  Mona pointed toward a wave cresting in the distance beyond Henry. “Henry. I don’t get it, do you? Devon’s been after him for months but he wants nothing to do with her, thank God. The last thing I need is my friend dating my brother.”

  I figured it wasn’t the best time to tell Mona that Emily was after Henry as well.

  “You didn’t tell me you went to Hawaii.”

  “No?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “It wasn’t really a big deal. Malcolm surprised my mom with a trip and we sort of tagged along. Now she’s planning this big fortieth birthday party for him in August, tent on the back lawn, a band, the whole deal.”

  I remembered when my dad turned forty. My mom took him to Boston for the weekend and they went to a Red Sox game. I was sure my dad would rather spend his birthday at Fenway Park than dancing to a band under a large white tent any day.

  “How are things going with Malcolm and Izzy?”

  Mona pressed her fingertip against her forearm and waited to see if she left a white fingerprint behind. It was her standard sunburn test. “Fine.”

  I watched for some sign she wasn’t telling me the whole story, but that seemed to be the whole story. Malcolm was fine. Life in Boston was fine. And, according to Mona, her friends thought Henry was pretty fine, too.

  I must have fallen asleep on my towel because when I woke up Mona and I were alone. “Where’d everyone go?” I asked.

  “For a walk down the beach.”

  I tipped my head to read the watch hooked around the handle of Mona’s beach bag. Four o’clock. I watched the second hand to see if it effortlessly swept around the face or stopped at every hatch mark. It swept. Which meant it was a real Rolex.

  I dusted the sand off my stomach and stood up. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow, so I think I’m going to take off.”

  Mona seemed like she was about to protest but then stopped. “Okay, I’ll walk you to the car,” she offered.

  The beach crowd had thinned out, leaving only die-hard sunbathers and families with kids who refused to give up their sand castles without a fight. I looked out towa
rd the horizon, but the waves had died down and there were no surfers in sight.

  “Your friends seem nice,” I told her, stepping over a castle that was about three waves from being washed away.

  “Thanks. They thought you were nice, too.”

  I didn’t know if that was true, but I wanted to believe her. “Thanks for lunch.”

  Mona stopped suddenly, grabbing my arm. “Hey, how are things going with the deli?” she asked.

  “Okay, I guess. At least it’s finally going to open. Now we just have to wait and see what happens.” We started walking again, past the white board propped against a rock, the day’s water temperature and weather forecast written alongside the beach rules in dry marker.

  “I’m sure it will do great. As a matter of fact, I’m going to go there and get a sandwich the very first day. When’s it open?”

  “Next Thursday, unless something else goes wrong.”

  “Then next Thursday it is.”

  I stopped in front of the wood slat walls separating the changing rooms and Port-A-Potties. “You don’t have to walk me the whole way, I had to park way down the road.” I pointed toward Atlantic Drive, where Malcolm’s house rose up in the background.

  “Well, make sure you call me as soon as you get out of work to let me know how it went, okay?”

  We both watched as a little boy came out of the Port-A-Potty, his mom hurrying to help him pull up the bathing suit still wrapped around his ankles.

  “Sure.” This is what it had come to. Me and Mona sharing polite conversation and parting ways in front of portable toilets.

  She reached out to hug me, her skin smelling like coconut oil and sweat. And even though we were both sticky from the sand and saltwater air, I hugged her back.

  “Don’t forget, I want to know everything about your job,” she whispered in my ear, and it reminded me of that day ten months earlier when we’d said good-bye at the ferry dock. Only back then I’d believed what she’d said, and this time I knew better.

  “Talk to you later.” I turned to walk away, leaving Mona alone by the Port-A-Potties.

  When we’d said good-bye at the ferry dock, I’d stayed there long after the last car was loaded, long after the ramp raised up into the air, freeing the boat to leave the island. I stood there and waited for Mona to make it from the belly of the ferry to the deck, where she waved to me from the railing until her hand, her face, her body faded into the distance and I couldn’t see her anymore.