East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

“Clearly you assumed someone did,” Blue said dryly.

  “Hey,” Renee said, “isn’t that...”

  Blue followed Renee’s gaze to a guy tying an old-school wooden long board to the rack of a classic VW van. He was shaggy haired from the sea, a little round about the middle but nicely built...

  For a moment Blue could only stare, her heart racing. “No,” she said, turning away. “It’s not.” And it probably wasn’t. Likely it was just someone who resembled him. Although it was a small town. And Ditch Plains his favorite beach. And the waves were up. So. It wouldn’t be totally improbable...

  Blue didn’t want to peek again to find out.

  She did and she didn’t.

  “I think it is him.” Renee cupped her hands. “Jack! Jaaack!”

  “Oh my God, shut up!” Blue hissed.

  As if in slow motion, he turned.

  Oh God.

  “I knew it!” Renee said, waving him over. “I never forget a face.”

  Blue grabbed her arm. “Stop!”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I...I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  Too late. Jack stepped down from his truck and headed toward them.

  Renee grimaced. “Sorry.” She wiped a spot of sunscreen from Blue’s cheek. “You look great. Don’t worry.”

  Blue was detaching from her body. The noise around her fading into the background, the sun a cruel spotlight. Forget how she looked. Which was hideous, but still. What if Renee mentioned the date? If only a sinkhole would open up beneath her. Or a tsunami would strike. Either one.

  She considered her options. Or tried to. But her mind sputtered and stalled.

  Jack squinted as he neared. A small thrill briefly disrupted her horror. Jack, her Jack! Right here, in front of her! And from what she could tell, the years had been kind to him.

  But no, this was not good. Very, very bad. She pulled her hat lower.

  “Blue?” he said. “No way!”

  “Hey there,” she managed. Her voice sounded dumb and weirdly pitched. Her brain kept looping it, beating her with it.

  “Wow.” He shook his head. “I almost didn’t recognize you in the...” He gestured at her hat and sunglasses, and she was so acutely, unbearably self-conscious, shriveling under his gaze.

  They exchanged a clumsy hug, followed by an awkward pause. She could feel Renee looking at her strangely. Surely she was catching on that something was amiss. Blue’s tongue seemed to be swelling, blocking words from exiting her mouth.

  Renee stepped forward. “Good to see you, Jack. It’s Renee, in case you forgot.”

  “Right, Renee!” Jack said. “I remember. Great to see you too.”

  He wore faded board shorts and scruff on his chin—a good sign, Blue noted peripherally; she hated vanity in men. And maybe it meant there was no girl in the picture.

  “Blue,” Maya called obliviously from the front of the line. “I need your credit card.”

  Blue chucked her wallet without looking, heard a kid go “ouch.”

  “We were literally just talking about you,” Renee was saying.

  Oh no.

  “You were?” He looked at Blue.

  “Uh...yep,” Blue scrambled. “We were reminiscing about...um, summers. All the summers. Good times and whatnot.”

  Renee frowned. “No, we—” She stopped herself when she saw the look on Blue’s face.

  Jack blinked.

  Blue was dissolving into the pavement. “I can’t believe the Ditch Witch is still here!” she said quickly. “Who knew food trucks would become all the rage?”

  A kid with a boogie board ran between them. Blue and Jack smiled shyly at each other as they dodged him. Renee kept looking between them with a puzzled expression.

  Maya returned with three ice cream bars and a tray of sodas. “Oh, hello there, handsome.”

  Jack laughed.

  Renee nudged her.

  Maya did a double take. “Wait. Is that...Jack?”

  “Hey there,” he said.

  Maya glanced gleefully back and forth between Jack and Blue.

  Blue shot her a murderous look.

  Maya handed her an ice cream, cheerfully bit into her own. “This is so great! The two of you after all these years.”

  “We really should get back to our towels,” Blue said.

  “What? Why?” Maya said. “Unless you want to come sit with us, Jack? I have booze in the cooler.”

  “I’d love to,” he said, running a hand through his drying hair, “but I actually gotta head to work.”

  “Oh, totally,” Blue said, trying not to sound relieved. “Of course. Well, have fun.”

  “Work, shmirk,” Maya said. “Maybe we’ll see you later?”

  “We won’t,” Renee said. “But Blue will, right?”

  Blue froze. Horror zoomed in, circled her in a panoramic close-up. A buzzing sound in her head, like she’d poked a nest of bees.

  Jack raised his eyebrows, glanced between them.

  “I’m confused,” Maya said.

  Renee looked at Blue, who was going to die on the spot. She was sure of it. She hoped for it. The sun beat down relentlessly, melting her ice cream bar in her hand. Say something, she thought. But what could she say?

  “Oh, wait! You mean at Surf Lodge?” Jack said finally. “You’re going?”

  “No,” Blue said, then looked at Renee. “I mean, uh—”

  Everything happened in that quick glance, the wordless language of lifelong friends resurrected. Blue confessed she’d lied, conveyed her humiliation. Renee absorbed the information, made a quick decision.

  “Yes,” Renee jumped in, coming to her rescue. Just like she would have when they were younger. “She is going. You’ll be there, right, Jack?”

  “Wait, why is only Blue going? I want to go to Surf Lodge,” Maya said, still oblivious to all of it.

  Renee elbowed her.

  “Ow!” Maya said. “Why do you keep hitting me?”

  “Definitely,” Jack said. “You guys should all come. It’s reggae night. Super fun. Everyone goes.” He stole a look at Blue.

  She could tell he was trying to see past her hat and sunglasses, and she was grateful for how much they hid.

  “Well, I’m heading back to Connecticut and Maya has...uh...a thing to do,” Renee said. “But you’ll look out for Blue for us, right?”

  “Of course,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “I gotta run. But, hey, great to see you guys, and I’ll see you later, Blue.”

  “Not if I see you first,” Blue said, then wanted to throw herself over a cliff.

  He started back toward his car and Blue turned back to the beach. She was having so many feelings at once, her thoughts speeding and colliding, becoming a high white noise. She was at once humiliated about the lie she’d told Renee and relieved that Renee hadn’t exposed her. She had to reluctantly admit that was really nice of her. And somehow Renee had even managed to get her, if not a date, then at least a chance. And Blue wanted this. To see him tonight. It was more than she could’ve hoped. And she did not want this at all. For him to see her.

  “I still don’t understand what ‘thing’ I have to do or why Blue gets to go and we don’t,” Maya complained.

  “You’re not joining them on their date, silly,” Renee said. “I’m going home and you’re staying at the house.”

  “Whose date?” Maya said. “Blue and Jack have a date?”

  Renee shot Blue a knowing look. “They do now.”

  “It’s not really,” Blue said. “You can totally come, Maya.”

  Renee frowned. “But don’t you want to be alone with him?”

  “Oh, right,” Maya said. “Wacka wacka.”

  Blue rolled her eyes but inwardly felt an awful slither. She was already exposed a
nd full of shame and now Maya had to throw sex into the equation. Just the thought of it made her mind unhook from her body, hover above it. Her friends didn’t know she’d never done it. They just assumed she had. Because everybody had sex—it was, at some level, the main function of existence. Only a freak wouldn’t want it or be able to get it. Society let her know that every single day. So what if women had been conditioned their whole lives to equate sex with violence—from bra snaps in middle school, to keys turned into weapons against rape, to an endless stream of TV shows and movies about women being victimized, tortured, murdered by men. You were still supposed to want sex and do it and not be afraid. And if you didn’t, you were a sad, desperate old maid and you should hate yourself. It was so messed up, and still Blue felt the shame of it, the stigma. And also the longing. To want to want it. And now it was too late. She didn’t know how to do it. And how would she ever be able to explain that to a man? Thirty years old and she couldn’t even remember how to kiss, much less how to move her hips.

  One wrong turn, so many years ago. That’s what it all came down to. Was it possible to alter the course now? Sometimes she thought yes. Other times it just seemed hopeless.

  She reached into the ice chest, grabbed a wine cooler, took a swig.

  “You guys,” Renee said. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”

  They all turned to follow Renee’s gaze.

  HANNAH

  Hannah hadn’t been on a long-distance train since she was a little kid. There was something bleak about it. Her childhood memories of them were romantic and exciting but now she saw they were dirty and hard-seated like a subway. At least it had been easy to navigate her travel. She was always expecting everything to be difficult—though maybe it was just the drag of fear that made life seem tedious and exhausting. Or maybe the anticipation of problems was merely an instrument to avoid doing anything at all. Probably both. But as it turned out, there’d been a quaint and obvious ticketing station and a map of all the stops and a conductor whom she could pepper with questions. And since they were at the end of an island, there was no chance of going in the wrong direction. Or if they did, getting lost was the least of her problems. If only everything could be like that—so clear-cut and defined.

  The doors closed, the next stop was announced and the train started up with a low moan and a whistle. Hannah watched the scenery chug by, her face staring back at her in the dirty, water-spotted window glass. A slant of sun knifed across her lap, turned her pale legs ghostly. Suddenly she was trapped and unsure. And alone—this most of all. Her friends were probably heading to the beach right now, decked out in sunglasses and hats with their big beach bags, their big laughter. They’d spend all day there under a broad blue sky, trading gossip magazines and memories, taking a midday stroll along the ocean as the white water sprayed upward like a young girl’s hair in wind. Simple togetherness, simple joys.

  The train pulled forward, then picked up speed, greenery and desertlike shrubs rushing past as she was bumped and rattled along toward the city. She shouldn’t be on it. In retrospect it had been nice to be with her friends. Even though all they’d done was fight and aggravate and worry her, she had been in the presence of people who really knew and loved her and there was such comfort in that. It was only now, returning to her aloneness, that she’d noticed the difference. Worse, she’d left just as it seemed the trip might finally get fun. In fact they’d probably have more fun now that she was gone. Realize she was just a drag on their good times. Stop even bothering to invite her anywhere.

  The long trek home loomed. She would have to take a second train to DC and then hail a cab to her apartment and then hot wash all her clothes, scrub her body. Then back to Henry at the long-term care facility where there was nothing left to fear, but nothing left to be excited about either. Just days that blended into each other and passed and made her older and only that. It was safe. It was comfortable. It was known. And—it was not enough. Oh, if only being aware of a problem actually fixed it. She was making the wrong decision. She was sure of that now. And equally powerless to stop it. Once the momentum got too far in the direction of fear, she couldn’t rein it in; she had to oblige it like a menacing boss.

  She adjusted in her seat, pulled her bag closer, reminded herself that she would have equally regretted staying. How were you supposed to know which way was right?

  Well, that fortune-teller at the Bridgehampton fair had told her once, and she had failed to listen.

  To think of how much she and her friends had laughed at the oracle’s eerie prophecy!

  Never for a moment had she taken it seriously when the woman had said, “You will come to a fork in the road and darkness beyond it...”

  And yet there had been exactly that.

  So much the psychic had been right about...

  “On the one side of the fork, a boy who makes you feel safe. On the other...”

  Hannah shivered at the memory.

  And a few days after, after their return from Montauk, there she was at a fork in the road, just as the woman had warned her.

  There she was shouting to her friends, “Which way? Which way!”

  There she was saying, “We’re running out of gas...”

  And the men were closing in.

  And a decision had to be made.

  Right or left?

  Right or left?

  She had gone right.

  Some instinct drove her, a faint recollection that she’d come upon this road before with Henry. That they’d gone right at the fork.

  Almost instantly she’d recognized familiar landmarks. They were nearer to home than she thought. They probably even had enough gas to make it. Her cell service came into range. She called Henry. Told him about the men. He knew exactly where they were. Guided them to his house.

  “Stay on the line with me,” he’d said, and so she had, glancing nervously in the rearview mirror until the sleazebags disappeared from view. What relief when they finally turned onto Henry’s well-lit street, pulled in to the driveway, no one behind them!

  He was waiting at the door for them, her handsome Henry looking so huggable in his sweatshirt and boxers, his brown hair lopsided from sleep, matted on one side, sticking up on the other. The others leaped out and raced toward him, clamoring about the scary chase, giddy with release. She watched him tilt his head and furrow his brow as he listened in that charmingly befuddled way he always seemed to have around her loud, squealing friends, looking, to her mind, like a new dad, adoring and sleepy and confused. She remembered thinking as she observed him that Henry was her home, the truest home she’d ever known, and how lucky she was to have found him so young, when their whole lives were only beginning, when their love was a springboard launching them both into a shared and promising future.

  She stepped out of the car feeling like a surprise gift the way he smiled when he took her in. She smiled back, wanting nothing more than to press herself to him, to feel his heart beat steady and strong and soothing against hers. To walk toward the shelter of a hug.

  But then he turned his head, just slightly, his gaze sweeping past her to something beyond. She turned too. Saw the blinding headlights careening up the driveway. For a split second she thought it was Henry’s parents back early, a trick of the brain.

  Then Blue and Renee were screaming at her from the doorway.

  “Run, Hannah!”

  “Hurry!”

  The piercing yip in their voices went through her like a shiver, stopped her heart in that animal way, trilling the biological alarm of nearby danger. She looked back at the car. It felt like slow motion, that head turn. The men were climbing out, rising like shadows in a child’s darkened room, and all at once her mind exploded, her thoughts disorganized, scrambling to catch up to what was happening. She needed to run. But her legs refused to work. They came toward her, slow moving and d
angerous, a dark current of menace approaching from three sides. She turned back to her friends. To Henry. Their mouths were open but their words traveled over her as if she were underwater.

  “Run, Hannah!” Henry shouted then, his voice so loud it splintered her shock. It was as if a switch went off. Her legs came to life and she ran for him, ran toward love, toward the safety of Henry. He reached her, grabbed her hand, pulled her to the house, shouting to the others to get his father’s gun from the closet. She tripped on the front steps, fell to her knees and the men were just behind them, so close she braced for them to grab her. Henry pulled her to her feet and they plowed through the door, and she couldn’t make out the words of her friends over the sound of her own terror, could only join the screams, the chaotic squawk of birds and beating wings in the presence of a hunter.

  They slammed the door shut just in time, but as soon as it was closed, it crashed open again, evil men spilling through, smashing into Hannah’s safe world with their demented smiles, their greasy, sweaty faces and unwashed clothes. Their smell of booze and rot. There was so much movement then. Everything happening too quickly and too slowly all at once. Time warped and the volume was turned up on faces, bodies, sound, everything so immediate, hyperreal. She remembered Blue and Renee splitting away, running toward the kitchen, chased by one of the men. And then a crack and a stunned stillness as her head hit the wall, a sudden eerie quiet, one quick pause and then everything was in motion again. A large man with dull eyes stood over her where she’d fallen or been knocked down, and another one—the scratchy-looking one who had started it all back at the convenience store—laughed at her, his spit flying from his mouth, landing sour on her face. The large man pulled her to her feet and she had this strange moment of hope when she thought that maybe they wouldn’t hurt them, that they were just trying to scare them. It was a hope she would never allow herself again. About anyone. About anything.

  “Leave her alone!” Henry shouted.

  “Leave her alone,” the scratchy one mocked in a high, squeaky voice.

  She could see him only in profile, light hair slick with grease, face meth pocked, body skinny and slithering. He laughed again and then his voice turned low as a prowl.