East Coast Girls (ARC)

by Kerry Kletter

  She couldn’t wait.

  She listened for the sound of Hannah’s breathing, noticed

  it had slowed. Then she got up and turned the bathroom light

  back on.

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  BLUE

  Blue woke with no idea where she was. She blinked into the

  disorienting tilt of an unrecognizable room—stained walls, an orange paisley bedspread, a television set circa 1971. She was supposed to be in beautiful Montauk, waking to salt air and the rustle of the ocean, birdsong at her window. Instead she was

  in a cheap motel off some random highway. She had to laugh.

  She let herself be convinced by Maya of all people—the used

  car salesman of friends—of the perfect dream vacation and this is where they’d ended up. It was so typical. It almost wouldn’t have been a real trip together if it had gone down as promised.

  And then, less amusing, she remembered Maya’s phone call

  to Renee. Also typical Maya. She rolled away from the spill of early sun through the blinds, yanked the sheet over her head.

  She knew it was childish to be upset about it, but the residue of betrayal lingered. Well, she wouldn’t let it ruin her trip. It was a quick call, nothing more. If Maya had any clue what

  Renee had done, it never would have been made.

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  The sounds of low talking wafted through the thin walls,

  and Blue tried to listen in case Hannah and Maya were talk-

  ing about her. But their voices were too muff led to make

  out. She’d forgotten how the invisible divide between her

  and them had always been there. Not that it was intentional.

  But sometimes, when they were all together, a vague loneli-

  ness slipped in like a fog, reminded her that Maya and Han-

  nah were always each other’s number one. She had lost the

  one person—Renee—who loved her best.

  Well, it was no loss, really. The loss was in believing Renee had actually cared.

  Her phone pinged with a text.

  We need to get out of here before Hannah goes into cardiac arrest!!!

  Always with the excessive punctuation. Maya herself was

  like a walking exclamation point. Blue got out of bed, washed up, grabbed her duffel bag and went next door.

  Maya, wet haired and smelling like cheap shampoo, let her

  in. “Good morning, sunshine!”

  Blue raised an eyebrow. “Is it though?”

  Maya laughed. “It will be soon enough!”

  In the background, Hannah was throwing her clothes into

  the trash bin.

  “Don’t ask,” Maya said.

  “Because it’s what I slept in,” Hannah explained, stricken.

  “Please, let’s get out of here!”

  Blue’s heart tugged with pity. She couldn’t imagine what

  it would be like to live inside Hannah’s terrified brain, to see the dark underbelly of life ever present, illuminated as if with East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 101

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  a black light. She didn’t know how to help, so she grabbed

  Hannah’s bag and carried it out.

  The day was gluey and overcast, the sun fuzzy and out of

  focus behind the clouds. In the parking lot, Blue stuffed their bags in the trunk and they all climbed into the car.

  “This place looks even worse in the light of day!” Hannah

  said, staring back at the motel like it might give chase.

  “Indeed, it does,” Maya said cheerfully. “But we survived

  it! Now if we could all just lighten up a tad—” she glanced

  at Hannah in the back seat dousing herself in Purell, at Blue probably looking world-weary beside her “—on our vacation…

  because hello, we’re on vacation…we might just have some

  fun.” She started the car, flipped on the radio, cranked the

  volume up. “Road trip dance party!” She swayed toward Blue,

  snapping her fingers to the music, flashing a big, cheesy grin.

  Blue stared back, unamused.

  Maya sighed, turned down the radio. “Probably for the

  best. No one needs to be traumatized by your dance moves

  this early in the morning.” She lowered the window, stuck

  her head out and yelled “Beach, here we come! Woo-hoo!”

  into the summer air. They peeled out of the lot.

  In truth, Blue was pretty excited. She simply wasn’t as emo-

  tive as her friends. But when she thought of the house, everything good she knew of life felt stored there. Funny to think that the first time her parents sent her there it had seemed

  like a punishment. She was being shipped off for the summer

  to another state and to a grandmother she’d never met. But

  something had shifted when she saw the house. It was rustic

  and square and as welcoming as an invitation, made of rich

  brown wood with a white second-floor porch that seemed to

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  to the dock—she could walk straight out of the house and

  down into the sea.

  Nana had run out to greet her in one of her bright-colored

  muumuus, her arms outstretched, her smile warm and genu-

  ine. “Little one!” she said, and just that, to be called an endearment for the first time in her life, dismantled Blue’s sullen defenses. In the kitchen there was iced tea and cookies set out for her and in her room a new boogie board still wrapped in

  its plastic, a teddy bear Blue was too old for waiting cheerfully for her on her bed. Blue was wanted here. She barely noticed

  when her parents left.

  That first summer, Nana had made a great companion.

  She loved the beach and sometimes even joined Blue in the

  waves, wearing the most ridiculous bathing cap with flowers

  on it and a suit so bright it could be seen from space, whooping gleefully at the cold water as the gentle waves struck her.

  But even Nana could tell that the days were too long for Blue without friends her own age. The following year she told

  Blue to bring anyone she wanted. Blue had brought Renee

  and Maya and Hannah.

  Had Blue understood back then what she was sharing? Prob-

  ably not consciously. But in retrospect she could see how much lighter they all seemed in that house—where Hannah didn’t

  have to tiptoe and Maya didn’t have to duck a blow and Renee

  didn’t have to exist where people wished she didn’t.

  Those first few years, Blue’s father drove them out in his big black Lincoln Town Car, listening to news radio and smoking

  his cigars like the girls weren’t even there, the four of them squeezed together in the back trying not to breathe too deep

  or die from boredom over the five-and-a-half-hour trip. But

  the minute they saw the sign for the Sunrise Highway, some-

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  thing about that magical name ignited their excitement. Even

  the road promised hope.

  Once Maya turned sixteen, they drove out in her old ratty

  Jeep—the “heap Jeep,” they called it—hair whipping, music

  loud, a whooping cheer every time they saw that favorite sign.

  Each summ
er Nana had given them a little more space, al-

  lowed them to develop their independence in a way that felt

  both safe and giddy. Once she even let Henry come and stay the night. He’d been a counselor at a tennis camp in New York that summer and took the Jitney out. They’d all gone to the beach, dutiful Henry loaded down with all their towels and chairs like their own personal Sherpa. He was always such a good sport

  about things like that. It had been a hot day and the ocean was refreshingly cold and sparkly and they’d body surfed the waves like a pod of dolphins for hours. Henry and Hannah kept pausing to kiss between the sets while Maya and Blue made gagging noises at them. When the sun mellowed and lowered, Henry

  and Hannah had gone for a walk, holding hands as they disap-

  peared into the distance, Hannah laughing into his shoulder. As Blue watched them, she’d pictured them strolling the same beach in middle age—a couple of kids and maybe a golden retriever

  trailing behind, then old age, Hannah gray and Henry balding, still holding hands, still making each other laugh. Back then it seemed like the only certainty she could count on.

  “Hey, Blue,” Maya said, interrupting her thoughts. “Re-

  member that time you got stuck in a riptide and it pulled

  you into the middle of a surfing competition?” She was al-

  ready laughing, had clearly envisioned it in her head before

  she spoke.

  “Oh yeah. Some surf bro called me a speed bump and al-

  most ran me over while I was drowning.”

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  “They thought you were out there on purpose!” Hannah said.

  “I know! I was waving for help and everyone on shore was

  waving back!”

  They were all laughing now.

  “We called you ‘speed bump’ for the rest of the summer,”

  Hannah said.

  “I remember,” Blue groaned.

  “Was it Renee who grabbed some random dude’s board

  and paddled out to you?” Maya asked.

  Blue knew the question was disingenuous. Maya was well

  aware of the answer. She could feel her blood pressure rise but refused to engage or be baited.

  “That was some quick thinking,” Maya added. “Probably

  saved your life.”

  Blue stared at her for an extra beat. Then looked away. “I

  would’ve been fine.”

  “Remember how you went and yelled at the lifeguard?”

  Hannah said to Maya. “Who you then proceeded to make

  out with like five hours later.”

  “Oh yeah, at the bonfire. He was cute.”

  “He was very bad at his job,” Blue said.

  “We had a lot in common.”

  An old Van Morrison song came on the radio and Maya

  said “Ooh!” and cranked it up and soon they were all swept

  up in it, singing along just like they used to. The wind was in Blue’s hair and the day was in full bloom as the miles moved

  them closer to the girls they once knew, the house they once

  loved. When they hit the Sunrise Highway, they cheered.

  Blue could’ve predicted with her eyes closed the minute

  they reached the Hamptons. The air changed, turned sweet

  and clean like it was filtered through sunshine and honey.

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  She inhaled deeply, the golden wash of afternoon sun glint-

  ing off windshields and dappling through the trees on the side of the road. They drove past vineyards and little farm stands with weathered wooden signs for corn and jam and fruit. Past

  the square, white shops of Bridgehampton, Water Mill, East

  Hampton, Amagansett. Then, unleashed from the traffic, they

  whipped across the natty Napeague stretch until at last they

  were up and over the hill and looking down into Montauk,

  the Atlantic a sparkly blue bowl below them, rippling sideways like a flag in wind, a perfect circle of sun standing above it.

  They stopped quickly in the old fishing village for snacks

  and the town paper and soft ice cream cones with sprinkles

  at John’s Drive-In. Then they drove out past the Montauk li-

  brary and onto a sand-dusted road toward the beach. Finally

  they turned onto the pebble driveway of Nana’s house.

  “Bring on the beach, bitches!” Maya screamed, leaping out

  of the car.

  On the porch next door an elderly couple glanced over,

  alarmed. Blue gave a small embarrassed wave.

  The wooden two-story looked almost exactly as it did in

  Blue’s memory—smaller, perhaps, and more worn—the fence

  around it knocked down, probably by a tropical storm. The

  hammock still swung between the trees, but the netting looked ratty and precarious. Blue could see them again as they once

  were—bright and bursting out of the car in their short shorts and halter tops, their f lesh so ripe and new, their laughter raucous and without edges, piercing the quiet. She remembered the last time they were there, how Hannah had run and

  jumped up on the front porch railing, walked it like a balance beam, did a little shuffle-hop-step, a cartwheel dismount. So fully present to the sunshine, to the smell of the ocean, to her East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 106

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  friends beside her. She remembered Maya dashing out to the

  hammock, diving gleefully onto it, only to be flipped out,

  dangling by one leg as the others laughed. A little help, assholes!

  Her and Renee darting past Hannah up to the second floor to

  claim the best bedroom, doing their secret victory handshake

  when they got to it before Hannah and Maya did.

  Now she extracted the spare key from the seashell key hider,

  left there for the property management and housekeeping ser-

  vices that came a few times a year to check the pipes, clean the house, mow the lawn and clear the gutters. The moment she

  unlocked the front door, Maya rushed past her into the foyer

  with its high ceiling and hardwood floor, its hollow echo. “I can’t believe we’re here!” Maya said as she threw her arms out and did a twirl. She took a big dramatic inhale. “Smell that—

  exactly the same.” She waved the air under her nose like she

  was a sommelier. “A wonderful bouquet…soap…sunshine…

  and a touch of…mold…or is it mildew? What’s the differ-

  ence anyway?”

  “Actually, they’re two different kinds of fungi,” Hannah

  said, “which grow on—”

  “Oh, sorry, that wasn’t a serious question,” Maya said.

  Blue took a deep breath filled with memory.

  “I am literally eighteen again!” Maya said. “If we just cover all the mirrors, boom, we’re all eighteen. Well, Blue’s actually a grouchy old lady but, whatever…”

  Blue tried to formulate a comeback, but Maya was already

  gone, running between the rooms on the first floor like a dog coming home. She returned breathless. “Everything looks the

  same. It’s like being in a time warp. Come look!”

  They moved into the kitchen, the cabinets now dated, the

  linoleum floor peeling at the edges. In the center, the round East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 107

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  dinner table where they’d once played drinking games while

  classic
rock played beneath their laughter—Skynyrd and Zep-

  pelin and Floyd—music that felt like a secret passed down

  from one generation of rebellious teenagers to the next, songs that carried the tang of nostalgia for their youth even as they were experiencing it.

  “Whatever shall we do first?” Blue said. Maya’s gleeful-

  ness was catching.

  “I need the bathroom and a shower,” Hannah said.

  “I was thinking we might—”

  The sound of pebbles kicking in the driveway made them

  all turn.

  “Who’s that?” Blue said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” She

  went to the front door where a shiny red-and-black Mini

  Cooper was now parked behind their rental.

  Maya followed, Hannah behind them.

  “That is…” Maya said. The car door opened and a slim

  woman emerged, slightly teetering on sandals with a heel an

  inch too high, a bottle of wine in one hand, flowers in the

  other. “Uh…surprise! Please don’t kill me.”

  Blue was pinned where she stood.

  “Renee!” Maya called, waving.

  “Hello!” Renee waved back with the airy cheer of some-

  one departing on a cruise ship. She made a few careful steps

  across the pebbles and then her eyes found Blue. Her smile

  wobbled and her wave turned tentative.

  Blue’s mouth hung open. A violent knock in her chest.

  Shock first. Then rage so hot and quick inside her, it could

  launch her head like a rocket. She looked at Maya, let her

  eyes speak for her: Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me. Right. Now?

  Maya stared back, defiant.

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  Blue spun around, marched back into the kitchen. She didn’t

  know what to do with herself. Where to go. How to man-

  age this.

  She heard Maya call, “Stay right there, Renee! I’ll be right

  back. Hannah, talk to Renee.”

  Blue dashed out the side door. Folded over. She was short of

  breath as if she’d been running. A sharp cramp across her chest.

  “Listen.” It was Maya coming toward her. “I know you’re

  pissed.”

  She was too angry to speak. Her fists were clenched so

  tightly she imprinted little crescents on her palms with her

  fingernails.

  “Okay, you’re really pissed. But come on…twelve years ago we made a vow that we’d all come back. All four of us. A sacred vow.”