“They’re making us watch some dopey chick thing!” Oliver called.
“Marcy said it was Love Story,” Julia called back. “A classic.”
“Classic means speeches and somebody bites it at the end,” said Oliver. Some other guys were also grumbling about why did it always have to be a tampon movie, but mostly everyone was ducking inside to watch it.
Gil wheeled up soaked. “Happy July Fourth, baby.”
Today was the day. Tonight was the night. The perfection of this moment, as he kissed me, was all about the promise of more.
“Barbecue starts after the movie,” he whispered. “Maybe hang out in the afternoon, and take off around sundown?”
“Cool.”
“Let me go help Coach Hutch store his equipment.”
I looked over to Coach, who was skidding along the wet courts, dealing with ball hoppers and carts. Nobody else was bothering to help. “Meetcha inside.”
“Right on.”
In the casino’s main room, lights had been dimmed and the Love Story soundtrack roared murkily from the speakers. Julia and Oliver already had tucked themselves up into a private back corner.
As I scouted for a place, I saw Jean, Sara, and Rosamund a few rows up—ugh, no, thanks. Not there. Junior Burke and his regatta crew were all sprawled along the back seats—not there, either. Some of Gil’s buddies, including Tiger, were scattered in twos and threes—nope; and some of the Ocean Beach girls, Marissa and Kath and Donna—nope, nope, nope.
I stood trapped in the middle of the aisle like a worried giraffe. Just then, Jean Custis turned all the way around in her seat and launched me with her thousand-mile stare.
Whoa.
It was like a flashback to last summer. Jean across the court. Her face burnt with sun and strain. Her hounding, opponent’s eyes. Was her expression also strangely, smugly knowing? Like maybe she even knew what Gil and I were planning for tonight?
No. That was ridiculous.
But it put some starch in my spine that Jean believed she could look at me that way. As if she had the right. She certainly had the nerve.
Well, I had some nerve of my own. I took her challenge, forcing myself to hold her stare across the room until she caved first, ducking her head and whispering something to Rosamund, who flipped around to look at me, before she whispered something back to Jean. Lordy, it was so eighth-grade cafeteria here.
When Gil reappeared, shaking off water like a dog, I felt rescued. He hardly gave a thought to choosing where we should sit—which was plop in front of Julia and Oliver and on a back-diagonal from Jean and her girls. Once he picked it, the choice seemed exactly right, and I couldn’t believe I’d put myself through all the stupid doubt.
“What’d I miss?” Gil hissed. He folded his fingers through mine as he checked in with the screen. “Hey, is this an ice-hockey flick? Ice Hockey: A Love Story?”
“No dice. Doomed love between a nerd and a jock who happens to play ice hockey.”
“Aw, a nerd and a jock.” Gil nudged against me. “Like me and you.”
I stifled a laugh, then got comfy to watch the film, even though I’d seen it half a dozen times already.
When I knocked my knee against his, Gil leaned over and quick-kissed me in that joke way, palming my head, with a stamp of his lips over each of my closed eyelids. Like he was performing some kind of miracle for the blind. It wasn’t till after I’d resettled that I saw Jean turn away.
Wow times two. She’d been watching us.
But now she must have sensed I had my eye on her.
My heart was pounding, but she didn’t turn around.
At the movie’s ending hospital scene, my idea popped me off my folding chair. I’d give Jean Custis something to watch, if she wanted to stare. “Come find me, after,” I whispered to Gil, before I crept off to the back of the room, where Junior was still slouched, his legs stretched and his hands cradled behind his head.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“O’Neill.” His bored expression didn’t fool me. I knew how much Junior was loving my coming over to speak with him. “What gives?”
“I know how this flick ends. Want to hit a few around?”
“Why not?” In the next second, he was out of his seat and leading the way.
My first summers here, Coach Hutch had teamed me up against Junior, who’d always been torn between enjoying time with me and resenting that I could crush him. But now Junior was psyched that I’d picked him all on my own. On our way out, he grabbed a fresh can of balls from the supply shelf.
Then we slipped though the archway that led to the casino’s indoor court. Junior and I weren’t in regulation whites, and we hadn’t signed up for a time. But that didn’t matter—nobody was around to stop us. As I took a ball and squeezed another into my back pocket, my muscle memory primed me for my serve.
My serve was one of my strengths. I set my weight heavy on my back foot and let the random racquet I’d picked up off the shelf fall loose over my shoulder. It was a longer fallback than Coach liked. My toss was higher than most, too. But I knew my spans, my lengths and widths, and when I slammed the ball in a roar across the court, Junior had to lunge to neutralize my topspin.
Lessons are one thing. But nobody can instruct that killer groove of tennis, the gut and soul of how to chase that ball all over the court, how to let your body free itself to take its chances.
And that’s the piece I knew best.
Junior and I were all warmed up and at it hard, by the time the movie ended. Yawning kids, drawn by the sound of the game, drifted in and stayed. A few dropped into the small section of bleachers. Eventually Jean came in. I caught her eye in my periphery. She was sandwiched between Rosamund and Sara, all of them in courtside chairs, everyone looking faintly bored, like they had better things to do. But wild horses wouldn’t have dragged them away. Sunken Haven was tennis crazy, and I was looking good.
Next inside was Gil. I had to hold my focus, playing a classic Chris Evert two-handed backhand with more power than I’d had last summer. Probably I’d gotten stronger from carrying all those heavy yacht-club waitressing trays. I felt fierce, charging that ball, making Junior work for it by slamming it or popping it so it died right over the net.
Jean hadn’t seen me on the courts yet this year. I’d taken to playing night games with Oliver, over on the Olmsteads’ private court, while Julia watched. Oliver was a solid player. He was the one who’d told me that he’d heard people speculating, since last year’s victory, that I’d publicly dropped the game cold. I’d never even attended a single clinic, group lesson, or weekend mixed doubles.
But the truth was this: I wasn’t planning to sign up to compete for the cup until the last minute. And I was doing it because I wanted to give Jean ants in her pants. I’d been practicing enough with Oliver; come next month, I’d smack her backward. And after a stare-down like she’d just given me, I didn’t see the harm in letting Jean Custis—and everyone else—know that I was still number one.
Junior always slammed his returns. I was faster and more nimble. Over and over, I drove him to the net. Our volleys heated up. When I won the next point, I knew I had the room hooked. I won a game, Junior took the next, and then I squeaked the third in a nail-biting double advantage. When I took the set, the bleachers were a crash of applause.
Junior grinned and bowed, a signal that he was done. He was okay with stopping in the white-hot bang of the middle, if it meant he could save face. As I twirled my racquet and swept off court, Gil was right there, lunging for my waist and lifting me into a spin. He was still rain damp and I was slick with sweat, and we came together like we’d choreographed it.
“Stone fox!” he whispered, then he kissed me long and hard on the lips. “I’ve never even seen you play, do you realize? You are some absolute magic, baby.”
I didn’t even bother to look at Jean. Not till after we’d all spilled out the doors. The rain had stopped and an afternoon breeze was sucking up the muggy air wi
th a promise of sun blazing behind the clouds.
When I did glance over at her, my insides twisted. Jean’s face was still, like a statue. Only her eyes betrayed her fury. Maybe it was partly because of the tennis. Maybe it was partly because of Gil. But I knew that all of her despised me.
I saw it and there was no unseeing it.
JEAN
“If you were mine, I’d never let you go!”
I pretended I wanted a shower, but what I really needed was a little time. Just to collect myself.
To anyone watching me, I must have seemed just fine. I sat as still as a doll in my white folding chair. Where I watched Fritz play a more powerful, agile, and surefooted set of tennis than I could ever hope to land. She hadn’t even practiced since she’d been here. She knew I knew that. She played to spite me. Even if there was no way I could prove that, I was sure it was true.
I heard the crowd go wild. I watched Junior look across the net at her as if he wanted to lick her up like an ice-cream cone. And then, worst of all, I watched Gil cross the court and lift her and kiss her with a passion that was completely different from the way he’d ever touched me. I’d been like a glass figurine to him. A china girl. Fritz was something else. I watched him hold her in his arms. I watched him say something in her ear.
They fit together like a pair of athletes, but with the grace of dancers. Gelsey and Misha, my mother would have called them. For a moment, I fell into a kind of horrified, baffled love with both of them. His tanned hand pressed to her flat, freckled back. His passionate, movie-star kiss. Her hair spinning out like parade streamers as he spun her. His secret in her ear.
We all were watching them, frozen in the moment. We were all licking them up. But when the moment passed, all I wanted to do was to escape. I made some excuses to the others and told them I’d catch up with them later, on the beach.
Coming into the house, I saw my mother on the phone, in the position she took by our living room window when she’d caught sight of Baryshnikov—her feet planted, one hand on her hip, her smile unhinging her face, her fixed stare slightly popeyed with delight.
“Well, for Pete’s sake, I didn’t think anyone was noticing,” she was saying, but she sounded very pleased that someone had noticed—whatever it was. “Oh, of course. I’d be happy to. It’s really nothing, I learned it at Friday Evenings, this little dance class Mother—Daphne’s grandmother—forced me to attend.” Flirty, I realized. Mom’s voice was flirty.
“Who is that?”
Mom put a hand on the receiver. “The Burke boy.”
My heart gave a little shudder. “The Burke boy” was Gil. Funny how Gil had so quickly replaced Junior as the Burke boy. Funny—yet unsurprising.
Why was he calling me?
Mom wasn’t relinquishing the phone in a hurry. She laughed at something else Gil said. Waited. Said, “Oh, stop!” and laughed again. And then, finally, she remembered herself. “Now, I don’t want to keep you another moment from Daphne, because she’s just walked in. See you later! Bye-bye!”
“You mean Jean,” I whispered. My mother blinked. “You said Daphne. Twice.”
“I did? Oh! Sorry, darling.” She passed me the receiver, with the gleam still lighting her face. “Something about that boy must remind me of your sister.”
This was already an embarrassing call, and I hadn’t spoken a word to him yet. I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Your mom says she’ll teach me to foxtrot next time there’s a dinner dance at the club. She’s great.”
“She’s something.” I watched her skim out the doors into the garden for lunch with Dad. “Happy Fourth.” I took a breath. “I saw you, earlier.” Kissing your girlfriend, in front of me.
“Yeah, I saw you leave, and I’m real glad I caught you.” Gil’s words were rapid. “I don’t mean to come at you, but I’ve got some free time before we all hit the beach. Could we meet in half an hour or so? Same place? Just us, and not long?”
I was silent. No, I wanted to say. What I wanted was our Monday, and I didn’t want it rushed. Something was off with Gil’s tone and his request, something misshapen, and I didn’t know how to push it back into form.
“I mean, I know it’s a crazy day, if you’ve already got plans—”
“Half an hour is fine.”
“Cool, see you then.”
“Yes.” I hung up and stared unhappily at the phone.
Why did he need to see me so urgently?
I found Mrs. Otis, asked her to pack a quick lunch for two, then ran upstairs, showered, and rummaged like a thief through my closet until I chose a teal, arrowhead-pattern sundress that Bertie said brought out my eyes. I was walking briskly down Looking Glass Lane with minutes to spare.
“Hey, there! Thanks for coming on short notice!” Gil stood up from the bench.
“I was just glad to get the phone out of Mom’s hands.”
Gil laughed. He looked awfully relaxed. I tried to relax, too. Maybe he’d needed to see me simply because he’d wanted to see me! Did everything have to be so complicated? Maybe he’d felt as terrible as I did that he’d kissed Fritz in public, and he wanted to make sure everything was all right between us.
Looking Glass Lane was the one path on Sunken Haven where the trees sprang tall, their cathedral canopies shutting out so much sunshine it felt like twilight all day long. The von Cott house was visible over the footbridge.
“Did you know that pond below is freshwater?” My nerves made me chatty, as I ran my fingers over the bumpy wooden rail, still damp from the morning downpour. “People always assume it’s salt, but it’s not. It’s made by rain. Freshwater trees and plants aren’t the same as what can grow in a salt marsh, that’s why all the vegetation along here is different.”
Gil stopped to heave the burden of my knapsack from my shoulder over to his. Then he smiled at me, that hero’s smile that thrilled me to my toes. “You sound like a troop leader for the Girl Scouts.”
“I like these trees,” I said. “I like all the history of Sunken Haven.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Gil said as we continued walking. “Do you know the real ghost story? The legend of Hairy Hand? Tiger and Junior were being pricks the other day, not telling me. They said I gotta be here ten summers to hear it.”
“I know it from my grandfather, who swore his version is the most authentic.” I was happy to show off a story I didn’t remember not knowing. “It used to scare me to death as a child.”
Gil snorted. “Try me.”
“Okay, so about a hundred years ago, after a storm took their boats off course, a traveling circus found lodging right here on Sunken Haven. An ape and his trainer were put up for the night, and everyone went to see a ‘moving picture show’ on another part of the island. The ape was chained up in a house, but he got scared in the storm, and he knocked over a nearby oil lamp.
“When everyone returned, there was nothing left of the house but smoke and charred wood and—” My voice sounded strange in my ears, chattering on and on like a squirrel in the woods. None of the words I was saying had anything to do with what I really wanted to talk about. I cleared my throat. “—the ape’s hand, still chained, smoldering in its water dish. Some say on a dark October night, you can hear it scuttling along Looking Glass Lane. Searching for its body.”
Gil burst out laughing. “That’s it?”
“It’s scarier when you’re an eight-year-old.”
Even if Gil didn’t like the story, he enjoyed knowing it. Sunkie lore was another way he enjoyed belonging to Sunken Haven. And as rigid as Carpie and Weeze could be with him, it was obvious that Gil also enjoyed being a Burke. No doubt he had to downplay it with Fritz, who lived on the outskirts and was ignorant of the codes, in spite of all her years as a guest. The Tullivers were a perfectly acceptable Sunken Haven family, but they certainly didn’t wield any power here.
Years ago, Mrs. Otis had worked for the von Cotts. She was still paid to mind their home; to dust and polish, to w
ater the hanging planters, to check that recluse spiders hadn’t built nests under the porch. I’d come along with her as a little girl, back when she babysat me, so I knew her habit of entering through the storm doors and unhooking the kitchen key from the nail at the top of the cellar steps.
Gil kept close at my heels, as always. “Let’s hit the library, just quick.”
“Of course.”
I led him, sliding open the pocket door. We passed into a hush of walnut-paneled bookcases, studded club chairs, and a mantelpiece that was taller than my head. With anxious fingers, I pulled some new curiosities from Mrs. von Cott’s writing desk as Gil slid into a chair at the games table.
“Hey, I saw you on the court yesterday,” he said, as I began handing over trinkets: Japanese fighter figures, a carved wooden fan, a lacquered box of dried corals and sea glass and seashells.
“Then you know Coach Hutch is still riding my backhand.”
“You held your own.” Gil picked up a Samurai figurine and ran its needle-fine sword along his jawline. “These things could be in a museum.”
“Would you like to see the guest books?”
“Yeah, show me.”
I flew to where they were stacked on the bottom of a far bookshelf. Which one of us was procrastinating? I watched as Gil leafed through pages as brittle as dried leaves. He studied the yellowed photographs of ladies with parasols and men in boater hats, glue-framed above faded violet-inked notes of thanks for weekends of tennis and sailing and sundowners.
Next I passed him Mr. von Cott’s pack of Edwardian playing cards featuring half-dressed ladies with rosy nipples and dimpled rear ends. I’d been planning to save the cards for a future lunch.
Today, I had to show Gil every trick I had.
He flipped through the cards and set them aside.
Inwardly, I wilted. So far my dress, the guest books, the naked ladies, none of it made a difference. I could catch Gil’s attention, but with Fritz blocking us, there was no moving forward. And this meeting, I knew to my core, was about Fritz.
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