East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  “Or what, tough guy?” he said. He shoved Henry so violently that his feet left the ground and he fell into the couch, and then Large Man who still had Hannah by one arm grabbed her other one and held them behind her back.

  Their eyes met, hers and Henry’s.

  “Let go of her!” Henry screamed again.

  “Or what? Or what, bitch?” the scratchy one said, turning to laugh with his friend at their fear. His eyes were unsteady, dangerous. He was the one to worry about.

  “The police are on their way,” Hannah lied, trying to steady the tremor in her voice. “We already called them.”

  “Oh yeah?” the scratchy one said without concern. “We better hurry up, then.”

  In a flash, he had a gun to Henry’s forehead.

  The scream that came out of Hannah was disembodied, unearthly. It haunted her, that scream, the piercing shriek of her own helplessness. She could still feel it in her sleep, the way it tore through her body and smashed against the air, trying desperately to shatter the moment, stop it from happening.

  “No!”

  It was all she had. That scream. She tried to wrestle her hands free, but Large Man’s grip only tightened.

  Henry pressed himself into the back of the couch as if he could disappear into its cushions. His eyes were haunted as he stared, quivering, into the barrel of the revolver. He had never looked so young, so unbearably, frailly human.

  “I’ll give you whatever you want!” Hannah cried. “I know where all the good stuff is.” It wasn’t true, she didn’t know what Henry’s parents had or where it was or if it would even make a difference, sate evil. But she had to say something, stand in the way of the nightmare, change the direction of its inevitable unimaginable end. And maybe, she thought, maybe that was all they wanted, just to rob them. And then they would leave. They would leave. Please, God, they would leave.

  “Talk.” The man turned to her, his gun still pointed in Henry’s face.

  She made quick calculations. Could Henry grab the gun? Where were the others? Could she make a run for it and distract them? But she saw that there was no other move to make. She was trapped. “I’ll show you. Please.”

  He moved toward her, away from Henry, sidling up to her like a hiss. She refused to look at Henry, only at the man, willing him to put the gun away. He’s going to rape me, she thought. Something in his face made her think that. His eyes hate-black and dead. She started to whimper, but still she was grateful he was moving away from Henry, glad for that gun to be out of his face. “I’ll show you,” she heard herself say, so much braver than she felt. “Anything you want.”

  “Hannah,” Henry said, and she knew by the desperate clutch of her name in his voice that he understood the sacrifice she was making, that he wanted to save her as much as she wanted to save him. There was so much in that one word, all their love, all their despair locked together in this unbearable moment. She wouldn’t look at him. To look at love in a room so suffocated with evil would break her. And then the man turned, she didn’t know why, and the shot was so loud, mixed with a scream that was at once coming from her and outside her, the sound of her scream and the shot mixed as one, slashing open the night, her whole world, and then Henry slumped on the couch and they pushed her up the staircase as if there was still life left in her, as if the bullet hadn’t ripped straight through everything that mattered.

  “Henry!” she screamed, her voice annihilating all but its own sound, clawing at the air to make the nightmare stop. She saw the red stain spreading across the tan couch like an ink spill, and everything was warped, happening in some alternate universe, unreal because it had to be unreal, because she had just been at a party and now love was gone and she had failed to stop it.

  The train shrieked to a stop in Amagansett. Jerked her back into the moment. She found her breath. Deep, deep. It never worked. She didn’t even mind, in a weird way, the piercing pain, the way her heart pounded. Sometimes it was purging to relive the horror, like she was sick with memory and had momentarily expelled it. Well, she was, really. Sick with it. And to look at it head-on reminded her—this is why I am the way I am. She could be gentler with herself, forgive herself her neurosis, her inability to live. Of course, of course, how could it be otherwise? Unless she had listened to the psychic. Gone the other way at the fork. It would have been otherwise then. They wouldn’t have even been at Henry’s that night if only she’d done that. Or was that magical thinking? She didn’t know, she didn’t know.

  She thought of that flashback—Blue in a ripped and bloody sweatshirt...where did that fit in? Blue wasn’t in the room when Henry was shot. Unless she was remembering it wrong...

  She leaned her head back. A man in tennis clothes climbed on, took the seat across from her. Why did people do this when there were other open seats on the train? He pulled out a copy of Dan’s Papers, flipped it open, made her invisible. Good. Just the way she liked it.

  She wished she had something to read—remembered she left her paperback in the rental car.

  She shouldn’t even be on this train. It was rash and stupid. She was missing everything. But the constant haunt of what if had forced her hand. If something happened to Henry, she would be responsible. She already was. On one side of the fork will be a boy who makes you feel safe. The other side is uncertain and unknown. Take the harder road or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Hannah had taken the safe road. And the psychic was right: she’d regretted it ever since. Oh God, so much regret.

  The train restarted its loud, lulling chug.

  The man across from her wetted his index finger and thumb and flipped the page. She shuddered. She braced for him to do it again, put his fingers to his mouth after touching the dirty newspaper. But something caught her eye. A jolt in her chest like her heart had been hooked and yanked upward. She leaned forward. The man lowered the page and eyed her with irritation.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, sitting back. She was surprised by how steady her voice sounded. “Would you mind if... Can I see that for one quick sec?”

  He raised an eyebrow, reluctantly handed her the paper. She looked closer at the picture in the ad, checked the date. She felt her face animate with shock. It couldn’t be her. Could it? But it was. She was almost certain. She was definitely certain. It had to be a sign. Right? That she should see this now, when she was once again at a fork, uncertain if she was going in the right direction. It was the most perfectly obvious sign imaginable, really. No room for doubt. She sat with this, her body vibrating. It was energy coursing through her, unfamiliar, long lost. She recognized it now—hope. The train pulled in to East Hampton. She got up, paper clutched in one hand, bag in the other, and ran for the door.

  “Hey, you can’t just take that,” the man shouted after her.

  She stepped out into sunlight, warm and welcoming. Instantly she felt relief. For once she was not exhausted. She was exhilarated. She was free from worry. Because finally, finally a certainty. A sign. A direction.

  She called the girls but no one was picking up—they were probably at the beach, their phones in their bags. She couldn’t bear to wait for a train. She flagged a waiting cab, threw her bag in the back seat, gave the driver the address. It was so strange to be going back the way she’d just come, like the world was a movie on rewind, only more vivid, everything sharp and immediate. What if she was being foolish? Well, of course she was! And yet. Despite the irrationality of it all—a psychic, my God—she had that rare, too-rare feeling, that gut instinct of rightness. And wasn’t it true that life sometimes did that? Just put something in front of you that was too uncanny, too coincidental, too perfect to deny. The whole way back she kept looking at the newspaper page in her hand, energy thrumming inside her as she played back the random circumstances that led her to see it just when she needed it most. These were the kinds of moments that could almost make her believe in God. Or in something anyway.
/>   The cab pulled up to the house and she handed cash to the driver and climbed out. The girls weren’t there, just as she expected. She changed into her suit, slathered on a thick application of sunscreen, a cover-up over that, then ran to the beach, clutching her giant hat, her flip-flops nipping at her heels. She couldn’t wait to surprise her friends.

  She dodged cars going in and out of the parking lot, then reached the edge of the sand. She scanned the beach, body after body; so many bodies that they became indistinguishable from one another, just masses of pink and bronze skin and bright-colored bathing suits merging into a mosaic. She turned and turned, shielded her eyes against the glare. A clench in her gut. It was hot in a violent way, like being stalked by the sun, no refuge anywhere. She wobbled toward the water, checking every face. Two teenage girls eyed her hat as they passed.

  “I wonder if she gets Netflix with that thing,” she heard one of them say before they both burst out laughing.

  Oh whatever! she thought. Enjoy your premature aging!

  She tried Maya’s cell phone. Listened for her ringtone among the chattering throngs. Nothing. She’d been so stupid to think she’d be able to find them on such a crowded beach. Now what was she going to do? This was a mistake. Maybe that ad for the psychic hadn’t been a sign after all. The clench in her gut deepened.

  She was about to give up when she heard “Hannah?!”

  She turned and there was Renee holding a half-eaten ice cream bar. Her whole body loosened. “Renee? What are you doing here? I thought you were going home.”

  “I thought the same of you.”

  Blue and Maya came up behind Renee, looking slightly shocked.

  “There you are,” Hannah said. “I thought I’d never find you guys!”

  “You’re kind of hard to miss,” Maya said. “Only person on the beach in a lamp shade.”

  “Is everything okay?” Blue said. “Did you come back for your book?”

  “She didn’t come back for her stupid book,” Maya said. “She couldn’t stand being away from me!”

  “Exactly,” Hannah said cheerfully.

  “But seriously...” Renee said. “What happened? Didn’t you get on the train?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said, “I got all the way to East Hampton, but, well, this guy who got on in Amagansett...”

  “Ooh, a guy?” Maya said.

  The girls were rapt with attention.

  As Hannah looked into their faces, she was suddenly unsure that her explanation would be received in the way she hoped. Her friends were not exactly open-minded about such things. They’d think she was unhinged. Well, they already did. But they would laugh at her, make a joke of it, unwittingly rob her of that feeling of rightness. They didn’t know how the oracle’s words had haunted her all these years, wouldn’t understand how much she needed to see her again, assess whether she was real or a fraud who had made a lucky guess. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t risk her hope being punctured. “I just changed my mind, that’s all. I was on the train and I realized this is what I want...to be with you guys.” As soon as she said it, she had a sickening thought. “It’s okay, right?”

  “No, we already rented out your bed,” Maya said. “Of course it’s okay, dork! I mean, it would’ve saved us a morning of moping around if you hadn’t left in the first place, but it hasn’t seemed right since.”

  Hannah grinned and they led her back to their umbrella. “Oh, and guess what?” She tried to sound super casual. “That fair is in town again. That one we went to last time, remember? I saw an ad in the paper. We should totally go...”

  “That dinky little kids’ fair in Bridgehampton?” Maya said.

  “Remember how fun it was? We can get another photo booth pic. Pet the llama?”

  “That freaking llama spit on me, thanks for reminding me,” Maya said.

  “I’d go back just on the off chance that happens again,” Blue said.

  Hannah bit her lip. Worry seeped in. What if they refused to go? She couldn’t go alone! “We’re supposed to be re-creating the trip, right?” she tried. “That’s the whole idea. Unless you’re too old.”

  “I am not old,” Maya said.

  “Okay, good, because the thing is...tonight’s the last night.”

  Her friends looked at one another dubiously. Clearly none of them wanted to go.

  Hannah’s spirits crashed. She had not anticipated this. Her eyes welled behind her sunglasses. She caught Maya looking at her.

  “You know what?” Maya said. “You’re right. Of course we should go! I literally can’t imagine anything more fun.”

  “Really?” Blue said. “Not one thing?”

  “It’ll be great,” Maya said. She widened her eyes and nodded slightly in Hannah’s direction as if to suggest they were dealing with an unstable person and should play along.

  For once Hannah didn’t mind the characterization.

  “Blue can’t go,” Renee said. “She has her date.”

  “Date?” Hannah said. “What date?”

  “See what you miss when you leave,” Maya said. “Okay, so Blue will tragically have to forego the face painting and the ring toss for a raging party and a hot man.”

  “I’ll just come with you guys,” Blue said.

  “What?” Renee said. “Why?”

  Blue shrugged and smiled but her eyes looked sad. Something unspoken passed between her and Renee.

  Renee frowned, seemed to pause carefully before speaking. “If you want... I could stay. Go with you to the Surf Lodge. Just so you don’t have to go alone, I mean. Maya and Hannah could meet us after. If it would make you more comfortable...”

  Blue folded her arms, shrugged like an angsty teenager. “That would be fine, I guess.”

  Even Hannah could see that Blue was relieved. She glanced back and forth between them. “I have questions,” she said.

  MAYA

  Back from the beach and freshly showered, Maya grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter and stepped into her flip-flops. Blue was upstairs. Renee in the hammock. Hannah pacing the driveway.

  Early evening had arrived in its slow summer way, the sun powering down to a small fading glow, the sky settling soft and gray and melancholy as old age. Maya pushed out the screen door, singing “Scarborough Fair” but cleverly, she thought, changing the lyrics to “Bridgehampton Fair.” She sang with real zest and, as far as she was concerned, raw, undeniable talent, trying to work herself into excitement for their carnival adventure. It wasn’t as promising as a night at Surf Lodge, but what did it matter? Hannah was back! Renee was staying and she and Blue were going out together, just the two of them! Her plan was finally working. She sang louder.

  Hannah shot her a pained look, covered her ears.

  “Jealous,” Maya said.

  They got in the car and Maya started the engine. “So...give me the real deal on why you came back. And why you want to go to the fair. This is about the cotton candy, isn’t it?”

  Hannah laughed.

  Maya eyed her. “Spill,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t buy that you just changed your mind on the train out of nowhere. I know you.” She backed the car out of the driveway.

  Hannah bit her lip, looked out the window. “You’ll make fun of me.”

  “Probably. But tell me anyway.”

  Hannah shifted to face her. “Remember last time? That psychic we went to?”

  Maya thought. “Vaguely. Called herself Oracle something?”

  “Oracle Lauren. She’s there. Tonight. I want to see her.”

  “You came back to see a carnival psychic? I don’t get it.”

  “Because she predicted everything...that night. The fork in the road. The decision to go to Henry’s. Everything.” Hannah looked at her earnestly.

  “Hmm,” Maya said. She’d though
t that Hannah’s return was a positive sign, one of growth, but now she was a bit worried that psychics might be a new manifestation of Hannah’s neurosis. She’d seen that kind of thing happen before. A perfectly normal girl she’d once worked with had moved to Los Angeles and returned with a suitcase full of crystals, a self-diagnosed gluten allergy and a boyfriend who channeled fairies. It had all started with a tarot card reading on the Venice Beach Boardwalk. “Okay. Well, can I ask you something?”

  “That depends,” Hannah said. “Is it a real question or just a setup for you to give me unsolicited advice?”

  Maya considered this. “Maybe both?”

  Hannah sighed. “Go.”

  “What are you hoping to get out of this? Would you rather find out what happened was inevitable? Or...”

  “I’d rather it never happened.”

  “But she can’t give you that.”

  “I know,” Hannah snapped. She sat back and leaned her head against the side window. “I know that,” she said again, quietly. “I just need to know if she’s for real. And I know she probably isn’t... I just need to know for sure because of the things she said...if it was just a lucky guess...or if there was something I could have done to change it. And if somehow she is real—”

  “Then she can tell you if Henry will ever wake up.”

  Their eyes met.

  “Yes,” Hannah said.

  Maya felt a small ache, almost like a bruise, in her solar plexus. She wanted to say “I can answer that.” She wanted to say “No, he won’t wake up,” because she was certain that he wouldn’t. But then, what made her so sure? Miracles happened. Medicine really was advancing every day—she’d seen that firsthand at work. It was just that to wait for either of those things meant sitting every day for twelve years in failed hope with no end in sight. Maya preferred to cut her losses. Snip, snip, just like her relationships. Get ahead of the letdowns and inevitable goodbyes. Now she considered that maybe false hope and no hope were two sides of the same coin—a way to avoid the uncomfortable ambiguity of uncertainty.