by Nancy Thayer
“Hello, Mrs. Porter,” Maggie politely responds. She doesn’t smile or gush; she knows what Emily’s mother thinks of year-rounders.
“Look at you,” Cara Porter says. “You’ve become a stunning beauty. My God, you’re Angelina Jolie all over again.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Porter.” Maggie feels the impulse to curtsy, then chokes back a snort of laughter at herself. “Would you like to come in?”
Cara steps backward. “Thank you, dear, that’s sweet of you, but I’ve got to hurry along to the club for my tennis game. Perhaps another time.” She slips gracefully back into her Saab convertible. “Have fun, Emily.”
Maggie takes Emily’s hand, and just like that, they’re best friends again. “Come say hello to Mom.”
Emily follows Maggie inside. The air smells of flowers and baking.
“Emily! Sweetheart!” Frances hugs Emily. “How lovely you’ve become,” she says, brushing a hand lightly over Emily’s long blond hair. “The first batch of cookies will be out in a minute.”
“Great.” Maggie leads Emily up the stairs and through the hall, ending up in Maggie’s room, where they throw themselves on her bed and stare at the ceiling.
“Your mom looks fantastic,” Emily says.
“I know. She’s really happy.”
They’re getting to know one another again, their friendship is like a tapestry tucked away in a drawer. Today is the iron passing over the cloth, smoothing out the wrinkles, bringing out the pattern that makes it unique and beautiful.
“What about you? How’s Thaddeus?”
“He’s really nice. Mom’s happy, and Thaddeus continues to teach Ben all the manly skills.”
“The manly skills?” Emily arches her eyebrows suggestively.
“That’s not what I mean!” Maggie pokes Emily’s arm. “I mean about wrenches and hammers, not how to seduce women.”
Emily widens her eyes innocently. “Why, Maggie, that’s what I meant, too,” she teases.
Maggie slumps. “I hate growing up.”
“Oh, get over yourself. Enjoy it.” Emily leans back on her arms in a sensual pose.
“You’ve had sex!”
“Not yet,” Emily confesses smugly. “But almost. Karl? This dreamy foreign exchange student from Germany? We had a few dates …” Emily’s eyes glaze with memory. “But everybody was having sex with him and I didn’t want to be everybody. Still, we came close. And I’m glad.”
Maggie feels her mouth primp like her mother’s when Frances is miffed. “I suppose you just want to hang out at the yacht club this summer, playing tennis and sailing with guys.”
“Maggie, you brat, is that what I did last summer, or any of the past twelve, shall I count them, twelve summers?” Emily demands. Maggie grins, abashed, and Emily answers her own question. “I was here almost every day. Perhaps not for the entire day, but most of it. Right? Right?”
“Right,” Maggie concedes. “Want to go to Shipwreck House?” She holds her breath. Any day now, any moment, Emily will think she’s too old for such childish stuff.
Emily jumps off the bed. “Let’s go!”
The grasses are a sweet lush green. The harbor water winks blue and turquoise as a summer breeze sweeps over it. Shipwreck House looks slightly the worse for the winter, more paint missing from the door and window frames, a few shingles hanging sideways, but Maggie has already opened the door to let the sunshine warm the room.
“Ahhh,” Emily sighs, dropping onto an old sofa. “I’ve missed this.” She scans the room. “I know I didn’t email much, Mags, but senior year was a killer. My parents had me taking so many APs I barely slept. And now I’ve got to get ready for Smith.”
“I know,” Maggie agrees. “I was worried all year about getting the grades I needed for those scholarships. Plus I babysat five days a week for George and Mimi West. I’ll be babysitting for them this summer, too. Their kids are cute, but I don’t know when I’ll have time to work on Siren Song …” She keeps her back to Emily as she fusses with an old curtain, tying it back to let in more sun. The novel they’ve worked on for the past six years seems really good when she reads it by herself, but she’s worried about Emily’s more sophisticated New Yorker’s opinion.
“I don’t know when I’ll have time, either,” Emily says. Lifting a leg, she scratches a bug bite. “I’ve been talking to Jascin about volunteering at the Maria Mitchell aquarium.”
“You have? I know how you love that place. What do they say?”
“They’ve been checking their schedules, and they need someone in the afternoon at the Touch Tank, showing things to the tourists. So I think I’m going to do it.”
“Awesome! But what about sailing and tennis?”
“I’ll have time in the late afternoon for sailing. I don’t care much about tennis. You babysit in the afternoons, right? We’ll still have the mornings to write.”
Five mornings a week, while the day turns from cool blue to a sultry gold, they write Siren Song, really Maggie’s book, with Emily’s advice and recommendations. Emily is learning so much by volunteering at the aquarium that she has all sorts of cool information about sea creatures to add.
When the heat invades the shed, they run out to the dock and fly into the water for a long swim. Later, they head up to the house, gobble the lunch Frances has made for them, and speed off on their bikes to their different destinations. At night they phone each other to discuss new plotlines and details.
In some ways, it’s like it’s always been, the two of them together, Nantucket sisters, so attuned to one another they scarcely need words to communicate. Sometimes they collapse into laughing fits that last until they’re gasping for breath. Sometimes they discuss sad movies and dissolve into tears.
Sometimes they don’t go to Shipwreck House but stay up in Maggie’s room, experimenting with eye shadow and blush, painting each other’s toenails, singing love songs along to Sirius Internet Radio.
That summer, Emily realizes how much of a fantasy world Shipwreck House provides for her. Maggie wants to ignore all signs of impending adulthood, sex, and the difficult life choices streaming toward them in an unstoppable tide, but Emily can’t. As the golden season nears the end, each day with Maggie becomes more poignant, more bittersweet. Emily feels as if she’s playing games with a friend who’s stranded in a world Emily’s about to abandon.
Maggie would absolutely scream if she had any idea how much Emily thinks of Ben. Emily seldom sees him—he’s always working or off with his friends, but when she does catch a look at him, she’s nearly paralyzed with a mixture of terror, awe, and, in the pit of her stomach, a melting sensation that she thinks might be love.
More and more, Emily accepts Frances’s invitations to stay to dinner so she can get a glimpse of Ben. The Ramsdales don’t really sit down to dinner in the summer—Maggie’s always rushing off to babysit, or Thaddeus is gone till late bluefishing, or Frances and Thaddeus go off to someone’s house for a cookout—but somehow there’s always plenty of good food, fresh berry pies, a pot of chili, cold salmon covered with chives from the garden, and delicious fresh sliced tomatoes. Emily and Maggie pile plates high and carry them in to eat while they watch a video. Sometimes Ben passes through, sending a squall of testosterone through the air as he shouts hello, stomps up the stairs in his work boots to shower and change clothes, and rushes back out through the house to slam into his Jeep and roar off into the summer night.
One day, toward the end of the summer, Maggie tells Emily, “I’ve got a treat in store for you. If you’re up for it.”
They’re lying on the wood dock after a cooling swim in the harbor. The sun picks off, one by one, drops of water from their skin.
Emily turns to look at Maggie, whose nose is peeling. “I’m up for anything.”
Maggie’s dark eyes glitter with mischief. “Want to see Ben’s hideout?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Ben could come home anytime, to fetch something he forgot or something for Thaddeus, and what wo
uld happen then, Emily can’t even imagine. As much as she wants Ben to notice her, she doesn’t want him to hate her.
“Thaddeus and Ben went off island today to pick up some supplies. They’re taking the late boat back.”
“What are we waiting for?” Emily cries.
The girls spring up. Without stopping to pull on dry clothes or shoes, they race along the dirt path through the heathland back toward the house and barns. Small thorns scratch Emily’s ankles as she runs, and she couldn’t care less. She’s like a bullet, focused, aimed.
Ben’s retreat is in the loft of the newest barn. No one’s in the house and all the cars are gone, so they slip through the barn door and stand for a moment, catching their breath. The air smells of straw and metal. An assortment of shovels, rakes, gas cans, buckets, and bags of fertilizer for the garden make a maze the girls slide through on their way to the ladder at the shadowy back of the barn.
“You go first.” Maggie giggles.
Eagerly Emily grabs a rung and starts up the ladder. The wood is warm and firm on her feet and hands, and the ladder gives slightly under her weight.
She looks over her shoulder down at Maggie. “You’re sure this is safe?”
“If you’re scared, don’t do it,” taunts Maggie.
“I guess Ben does it all the time,” Emily decides. She climbs.
The ladder ends a few feet above the loft floor, making it easy to drop off onto the old wide boards. Maggie scrambles up behind her and they stand for a moment, looking around.
It’s a perfect guy’s den, drifting with dust motes, populated by spiders spinning in glittery, elaborate webs. Yet another of Thaddeus’s barely dependable wooden chairs leans in front of a desk fabricated from crates. A globe and a knife and a pair of pliers lie on the desk. On the wall a large map of Nantucket is tacked by its four corners. Makeshift bookshelves hold Call of the Wild, The Great Gatsby, and the Silent Spring, plus stacks of comic books and magazines. A bucket on a pulley is rigged to lift heavy items from the ground floor up.
Several bales of hay are stacked in a rectangle, sleeping bags spread over it, and a pillow without a case. The girls approach this warily. They both know what this is, because next to the bed is an empty six-pack of Budweiser and a small cardboard box which, when opened, displays an assortment of condoms.
“Ben’s,” Maggie whispers.
Emily picks the box up, loving and hating the queasy sensation in her stomach as she peers into it. “Your brother brings girls here,” she whispers.
“Well, duh. He’s had girls after him for years.” Maggie squats, lifting up the sleeping bag to see if anything’s hidden beneath it.
Emily quickly pockets one of the foil-wrapped condoms, shiny as a foreign coin, and quickly shuts the box. This doesn’t count as stealing, she thinks. Anyone would understand that this is love, or infatuation, or lust. Sliding it into her pocket, she shivers, thinking of Ben.
CHAPTER SIX
Two evenings later, Maggie pedals steadily along the dirt path toward Altar Rock. Clear golden light from the slowly descending sun burnishes the deserted moorland. Only birdcalls break the silence. It’s nice on the moors at this hour, everyone else is home eating or heading out to the beach for a party. Maggie won’t go to beach parties; she’s not into the whole drunken scene, and Tyler won’t go because he’d be ostracized there like he is in school. Maggie’s tired after her afternoon of babysitting, but she hasn’t seen Tyler all summer, and he was so insistent on the phone—
She walks her bike up the steep, rutted, rock-strewn road to the summit of the hill. From here they can see the ocean and the long sweep of moors.
“Hey,” Tyler says. His braces sparkle, his glasses gleam. He’s skinny and gawky and clumsy as a giraffe on roller skates.
“Hey.” Maggie knocks her kickstand down.
“I brought goodies.” Tyler settles in front of the small boulder called Altar Rock and sets out two Cokes and a bag of his mother’s homemade caramel chip cookies. He’s wearing a tee shirt and shorts. His attenuated arms and legs, covered with brown hair, make him look like a giant spider.
“Great. So, how’s your summer been?” she asks, settling on the grass across from him.
“Okay. Yours?”
“Okay. I’m doing lots of babysitting. Piling up some cash. And the kids are great. Did you have fun at your dad’s?” She knows he has to go off island most of the summer to live with his dad. It was part of the divorce decree. She waits for the same old argument: he hates leaving the island in the summer; Maggie says he’s lucky, at least he’s got a dad who wants to see him.
“Not really,” Tyler says.
Maggie senses something. She narrows her eyes at him. “What?”
“I’m leaving the island.”
Maggie snorts lightly. “We’re all leaving the island. I’m going to Wheaton and you’re going to Stanford.”
“More than that, Maggie. I’m not coming back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m gonna go live with my dad. I’ll go there for holidays and summer vacation.”
“In California?” Maggie gawks at Tyler as if he’s just said he’s moving to the moon.
Tyler shrugs. “My dad thinks I need to be near a hospital so we can really fix this eye thing. My mom’s dating Clarence Able, you probably know that, and I think she’d like a little time with me out of the house. Anyway, Mom and Dad decided, then told me.”
“Didn’t they ask you first?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“This sucks,” Maggie says, discovering she means it. “Life’s going to be so boring without you. Who’s going to make me laugh?”
“Yeah, well.” He looks away from her, finds a pebble, throws it down the hill.
“I meant because you say such funny things,” Maggie clarifies, sorry to have hurt him.
“I know what you mean.” His voice cracks.
She hates him for being pitiful. “For God’s sake, we all get insulted.”
Tyler clutches his backpack and digs around in it. “I want to give you something.” He pulls out his scrapbook: Official Register of Secrets.
“Wow, I’d forgotten all about this.” Maggie scoots closer to him, watching as he turns the pages. “You know,” Maggie says, tracing a sketch of a pond with one fingertip, “these drawings are really good.”
“Nah.”
“Yeah, they are. Oh, man.” She sighs, leaning back, looking up at the impartial blue sky. “It was a lot of fun being little, wasn’t it? I loved all those fantasy games.”
“You were the only one I knew who liked to play that kind of stuff,” Tyler admits. “That’s why I want you to have this book.”
“Oh, I can’t have that! Why not take it with you?”
“Because it belongs here on the island.”
“Then leave it with your mom.”
“If she marries Clarence, they’ll move into his house. She’ll pack up my stuff while I’m living off island.”
“But—”
“Look!” Tyler jumps up, pacing angrily away, then turning back. “This doesn’t come with any kind of obligation. I won’t bother you, Maggie. I won’t be phoning you or writing you or expecting anything from you. It’s just, my whole life is changing, I won’t have any one place to call my own. You’re the only person in the universe who knows about this stupid book, and the only one I can trust not to destroy it.”
“Okay, geez, take a chill pill,” she snaps. “I’ll keep it. You can come take it whenever you want.”
“I won’t be back next summer. I don’t know if I’ll ever be back.”
“Oh, Tyler.” Maggie clutches his book against her chest. In a way she’s hugging him, and in a way she’s using the book as a shield. “This is terrible.”
Tyler starts to say something, then changes his mind.
“I’ve got to go.”
“Oh. Okay.” Standing, she brushes sand off her jeans.
“Can yo
u bike home, holding that?” he asks.
“I think I’m probably just about that coordinated.”
Tyler approaches her. “Good-bye, then.” He holds out his hand.
Maggie feels absolutely freaking weird. She wants to kiss him, and at the same time, she knows if he tries to kiss her, she’ll hurl. She loves him, or maybe she finds him repulsive, she doesn’t want him to leave, she’ll die if he kisses her. “I’ll take good care of your book.”
“Thanks.” Turning, he picks up his dirt bike, jumps on it, and pedals away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Emily’s parents are at some yacht club dance. Maggie’s babysitting. Emily’s so bored she’s actually considering walking all the way home to ’Sconset. It’s not even seven o’clock on an early August evening.
She’s dawdling along Orange Street, headed out of town, when a Jeep slides up next to her.
“Want a ride?”
Emily rolls her eyes as she turns to say something dismissive—but it’s Ben. Her breath catches in her throat.
“Where are you going?” she manages to say.
Ben shrugs. “Where do you want to go?” He’s wearing a navy blazer that sets off his glossy black hair and flashing blue eyes.
He’s looking at her as if she’s a girl, not his little sister’s friend.
“I don’t know,” Emily says casually. “I’m kind of bored.”
“Climb in,” Ben tells her. “We’ll go to Surfside.”
Her heart thumps. “I’d like that.”
He steers the Jeep away from the lights of town, past the high school and the Muse, and down the long road to the south beach. Here they can hear the island’s sounds: the breeze through the wildflowers bordering the road, and then the long exhalation of the ocean against the shore.
They park in the lot, half-filled with cars. The concession stand is closed until tomorrow morning but all along the beach four-wheelers are parked. Far out in the ocean, a fishing boat’s lights wink.
Ben steps out of the Jeep, removes his blazer, yanks his tie off, unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt. Bending down, he removes his loafers and tosses them into the back of the Jeep. He rolls up his sleeves and the cuffs of his pants.
