Her eyes squinted me in, as if she had special powers to detect me to my core, truthful self. “Jutht ath well. The patht hath no bearing on today.” Her lisp made this proclamation sound weirdly ominous. If Maggie had been with me, we’d have laughed.
With no Mags, the moment was unsettling.
I was glad when Connie moved to go. “Our water’th from a cold-thpring well, tho be careful with it; it’th not bottomleth. Try to limit yourthelf to three flutheth per day. With training, it thouldn’t be difficult. And it might get chilly early morning, tho cover your feet when you walk on the bare floor. Be back with Itha by theven, for dinner. It’th thpaghetti tonight.”
I wanted to ask more about Jessie—like why hadn’t she wanted her old job back this summer?—but I’d save my questions for Isa. The less time spent with Connie, the better. So I stood there, unwilling to yield any pleasantries (“Thpaghetti, yum!”). Waiting for her to leave me so that I could unpack, and use up one of my precious toilet flushes.
THREE
After I’d traded my panth for jeans, hid my pills behind my books in the bottom bookshelf and texted my parents a quick hi im here all ok, I had over an hour to kill before dinner. Connie hadn’t pushed too hard for me to find Isa, as long as I got back before the all-important “theven” dinner hour, so I decided not to make it a priority just yet. Besides, I wanted to spend some time adjusting to Skylark.
As I brushed my hair in the mottled mirror over the fireplace, I wished there were more of me to ground the space. I was tall, not thin by any stretch; “strong-boned” was what Dr. Gamba said—which always sounded like a euphemism for something crueler, though nobody could call me fat and be right. But in the rigid grandeur of this room, I felt formless and misplaced. Like I could float to the ceiling and bob around the amber-globe chandelier.
Or maybe it was just the effects of the pill.
Once, Mr. Ryan had said I was beautiful. That I reminded him of a cat. His imagination transformed my round eyes, flattish nose and mini-bite mouth into something playful and feline. He was just out of college, he’d confessed during one of our chicken-nachos afternoons in the way-back booth of Ruby Tuesday. Not only was he hardly earning any salary, but his student loans were killing him. He’d wanted to quit every single day, he said. He felt like he’d sold his soul to the “collective critique of suburban high school entitlement.” Except for me, he’d said.
“Again and again, I looked to your gentle face as a beacon.”
I had a feeling he’d practiced these poetic phrases beforehand, though Sean Ryan was a chemist at heart, the way he knew how to ignite my imagination and dissolve my willpower … no, I wasn’t going there.
I was months and miles past all that.
Halfway down the corridor, I doubled back for another pill. Whatever I’d taken on the train, it was waning.
A late-afternoon mist had drifted over the sea, hiding the sun and weighting the air. I’d kicked off my flats, and my feet felt the sting of unfamiliar objects, shards of mussels’ shell and nips of rock, as I picked my path to the lighthouse. At first it had seemed like a no-brainer. Down the hill, bisect the inlet; find the uphill path and billy-goat up, up, up.
But the water between the bluffs was rougher than I’d anticipated, waves smashing in and out of the gullies. Black eelgrass noosed tight around my ankles as my jeans soaked to a watermark just past my knee, then climbed darkly higher.
At the roar overhead, I looked up to see a private jet wing past, so low and close that while there was plenty of space between us, I instinctively ducked, wetting my upper half to match my lower. The airport must be on this side of the island. It wasn’t hard to picture all the fabulous Little Blyers coasting in from the city on their propjets, right on time for lobster thermidor. Capital M Money lived here. I could see it in the peaked roofs along the coast, the lush gardens and hedgerows bordering properties spread out so far that not a decibel of someone else’s noise polluted the ears of his neighbor.
I didn’t know much about the Very Rich. The most glamorous kid in my class was Dex Benten, whose parents once attended the Academy Awards because they’d composed the sound tracks for the Bourne Identity franchise. Dex’s house had an eternity pool and he drove a used BMW, but that wasn’t much to throw around. That wasn’t private planes and homes with names, and for a sea-soaked moment, I felt completely manipulated onto this island. Who was I, some Victorian waif suffering from a Mystery Lung Disease, where the only cure was exile and isolation? This wasn’t my scene at all. And I didn’t know a soul.
When it had been an abstraction, Little Bly had sounded almost exhilarating. Here, in the tidal, crashing reality, I was struck by how desperately lonely I might be for the next six weeks.
What. The hell. Was I doing here?
Jerking myself from my thoughts, I began to move fast, wading out with long strides into the ocean, but I still couldn’t crack how to approach the hard profile of rock surrounded by its moat of sucking shoals. Eventually, I gave up, retracing my steps until I was back on land below Skylark again. The only other way in was to return to the house, then head down the hill on its opposite side and skirt around to the back of the lighthouse. Eating up another twenty minutes, minimum.
I measured it. Even an unsuccessful attempt was better than returning to Connie, who’d no doubt find me some mind-numbing, pre-dinner kitchen tasks. She was just that type.
Anywhere but back. I’d keep going.
And as it turned out, once I’d scaled the hill, I found a wooden walk secured on its ocean side by a rail. I took it and became instantly engrossed with watching my feet; my pedicure was so chipped it showed more toenail than polish. So when I finally did look up, I stopped cold, my heart jumping in surprise.
Either I was going deaf, or the kids hadn’t made a sound.
There were two of them, standing a dozen yards ahead where the rail ended, at the edge of a jut of overhang. I shaded my eyes. One painkiller’s side effect was occasionally a fuzzy double image, but this was no trick of the eye.
Two same-sized girls in shorts and T-shirts. Or maybe a girl and a skinny, shortish guy?
The longer I looked, the more I was sure, yes, definitely a guy, but not so shrimpy as the girl was tall. And they were sharing a private moment. There was a leaning-in-ness and face-to-face-ness about them. They must not have seen me yet, either, and so I started self-consciously clearing my throat—though neither of them reacted. Maybe they were neighbors—part of the “kick-back bunch” of Little Blyers that Miles McRae talked about. If I could make a couple of friends right from day one, then I wouldn’t have to