The Islanders (10 page)

“
'CAUSE I KNEW YOU WERE
trouble when you walked i-i-i-n . . .”

“Oh, shut up, Taylor.” Zoey slapped the music alarm and threw back her covers. She stood up, feeling pins and needles in the soles of her feet as they hit the floor. She twisted her Boston Bruins shirt around and groaned.

The light coming in through the dormered window was watery and gray. A light that signaled it was too early in the day for people to be up and walking around and scratching themselves. She glanced at the clock. Six twenty-one.

Then she remembered. School.

The day before, Labor Day, had passed in a whirl of work. One of the waitresses at the restaurant had quit, and another had fallen off a bike and bruised her hip. Zoey had been stuck working a double shift, which left hardly any time to think about the fact that in the morning . . .
this
morning . . . she'd be going to school.

At six twenty-one in the morning.

It seemed like a million years since she had gotten up this early to go to school. She had to make the seven-forty ferry. Get to Weymouth at five after eight. Make it up to the school by eight thirty. Catch the four o'clock coming home, arriving four twenty-five.

The times of her life. The rigid schedule of her days. Freedom a thing of the past. Sleep also a thing of the past. Homework.

Still, she realized with a slow, building excitement, she was a senior.

How did a senior dress? Should she do her hair differently? Would she no longer get zits now that she was a senior? Would her hair be easier to manage? Would she acquire great wisdom?

She felt a little clenching in her throat. It would be the same old school, yes, but
she
would be different.

And that could change everything.

“Can we go back, this is the moment . . .”

“No, no, please say it isn't so,” Nina groaned, pulling her pillow over her head and reaching for the button to silence Macklemore. “How can summer be over?” she demanded of her pillow. “How?”

She peeked from under the pillow at her clock. “Six twenty-five? Why? Why can't they start school at noon? No,
after noon. Then we wouldn't have to eat the food.”

She sat up and stared across the room. “Notebooks,” she cried, glaring hatefully at the pile of school supplies. “Number-two pencils! Oh, and three-ring binders! It's not right, it's not fair, why me, O Lord, why?”

She kicked at her tangled covers, and continued to kick after they had all fallen off the bed. Then she swung her feet onto the floor and fumbled in her bedside table for her pack of cigarettes. She popped one in her mouth and sucked on it.

School. School. The horror. The loathing. The bad food.

The crush of bodies in the halls between classes. Bells going off. Lockers that jammed. Other girls who all had great hair. Teachers who droned on and on and on till your head started nodding and your eyes grew heavy, heavy, and . . .

Nina snapped herself awake. She had drifted back onto her pillow. No, missing the ferry would not be a smart way to start eleventh grade.

Eleventh grade. A junior. Big deal.

Of course, now with school starting up again, she'd have to spend even more time reading to Benjamin. And maybe Claire would find some new guy. And Lucas was back.

No. No point in trying to work up any enthusiasm. It might be occasionally amusing, but it was still school.

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, the melancholy, majestic second movement, woke Benjamin from his sleep. He had set up his iPhone with this wake-up music, chosen from his eclectic collection of songs.

He let it play on as he rose from his bed. Right from the front corner of his bed, one, two, three to his bathroom door. The music played in there, too, pumped through two waterproof speakers.

He turned on the shower, waiting till it reached the right temperature, and climbed in. He dropped the soap and had to feel around the bottom of the shower stall for several seconds before he located it, sweeping his hands methodically over the tiles.

He toweled off in front of the sink, facing the mirror that he knew would be steamed and opaque. He wondered, not for the first time, what it would show. Here he was, first day of school, new people to meet, new teachers to deal with, and he had no idea what he looked like.

People told him he was very good-looking, but then, people tended to be kind. Besides, even if he were, what
kind
of good-looking? Good-looking effeminate? Good-looking rugged? Good-looking cute?

“I could be a simp. I could be a toad,” he said philosophically. Beethoven swelled toward a stately crescendo, and Benjamin
grinned at the darkness where his reflection would be. “Still, at least if I am, I'm a senior toad.”

Claire woke through gauzy layers of dream, surfacing, breathing deeply as if she'd been submerged. The alarm was buzzing, and she silenced it and listened for the sounds of the house. The radio on Nina's alarm was playing rock and roll, a faint but unmistakable sound. Her father's shower was running. Outside, a light breeze turned the twin brick chimneys into flutes, playing a tuneless melody.

She slid out of her satin sheets and wrapped her nude body in a brocaded silk robe. Then she climbed up the ladder to the widow's walk as she did every morning, throwing back the hatch to emerge in low, bright sunlight.

The sky was almost clear except for some low cumulus building to the north, but with the breeze out of the southwest, the sky would soon be perfectly clear, a rare phenomenon for this part of Maine.

First day of school. Her first encounter with Lucas, no doubt. The first chance to observe how Zoey and the others would react. Had she and Jake succeeded in isolating Lucas?

“Is that really so important?” she asked herself. A fragment of dream nagged at her consciousness, but when she tried to recall it, it slipped away.

“Why is it so important?”

She tried to remember Lucas, the way she had known him. She tried to imagine the ways he might have changed in two years' time. And how she would feel when she saw him.

Was that it? Was it that she was afraid she might still care for him? Was that the reason she felt so compelled to push him away?

Maybe. Yes, maybe that was part of it.

And what was the rest of it? Claire asked herself. That was the question. In the meantime, she would follow her instincts.

And eventually things would work out the way she wanted. They almost always did.

“What, what?” Aisha woke up startled, eyes wide.

Her little brother, Kalif, was smirking down at her. “Mom said to wake you up.”

“So you scream
the house is on fire
?”

“I tried whispering
wake up
, but it didn't work,” Kalif said, heading out the door.

Aisha looked at the clock. The alarm must not be working. No, she'd forgotten to set it. But good old Mom had remembered. Thanks a lot, good old Mom.

She stumbled to her closet, found her robe, and put it on over the new bottle-green pajamas she'd worn to bed.

“Shower first or eat first?” she asked herself, pausing in the foyer. From the kitchen came the smell of coffee and her mother's fresh-baked muffins.

Well, if she ran late, would she rather show up at school hungry or dirty?

The first day of school was always such a fashion show, everyone trying to establish themselves. No one would know if she was starving. Everyone would notice if her hair was sticking out on one side of her head.

She sighed. Shower it was; food could wait.

“Can we go back, this is the moment . . .”

“Good start to the day.” Jake's covers were already off, lying in a twisted pile by the foot of the bed, as usual.

He did a sit-up, stretching down to touch his toes, then rolled out of bed. He stretched, right arm arcing up over his head to a count of forty, then did the other arm. Then, bending at the waist, pulled his forehead against his left knee, counted to twenty-five, and the same on the right side.

He did twenty-five push-ups, fifty stomach crunches, and several more stretches.

Then he stood up and took a look at himself in the full-length mirror on his closet door. He flexed a bicep, looking at the result critically. Then he slapped his ridged, flat stomach,
satisfied with the muscle tone.

Yes, he'd have no trouble making the football team again this year. He hadn't let himself go over the summer, like a lot of guys.

He glanced at the clock. The stretches and exercises had taken nearly ten minutes. It was six thirty-four. No time for a run this morning. He'd have to work on getting up half an hour earlier.

Lucas had been up since six. Six
A.M.
had been wake-up at the youth authority. Five minutes to get your act together, grab your soap and towel before they marched you down to the showers, where you confronted the unappetizing sight of several dozen naked guys. And if that didn't ruin your appetite, the food, usually runny scrambled eggs and fatty ham, would.

He leaned against the railing of his deck, a cup of delicious coffee in his hand, steam curling up, the aroma intoxicating. The air was fresh scrubbed, salty and clear, just some low clouds to the north, nowhere near obscuring the sun as it rose from behind the ridge.

The town below was all sharp morning shadows and gold-drenched brick and clapboard. The sun turned the church spire into a brilliant gold needle. Through the trees and building clutter he could just see a slice of the harbor, his father's trawler chugging around the point, heading for the patch of water
where he set his lobster traps.

Closer at hand, he could see Mrs. Passmore at the sink in her kitchen, dumping the seeds from a cantaloupe. He longed to see Zoey wander in wearing that nightshirt of hers. It would be nice to go down for another breakfast with her, but school started today. She'd have enough on her mind.

He certainly had enough on his.

“You know, Nina, you're not going to be able to do that in class,” Zoey said, indicating the unlit cigarette in Nina's mouth.

“Why not? It's only against the rules to
smoke
cigarettes.”

“That's like saying it's only against the rules if you
shoot
heroin, Ninny,” Jake said.

“Or
fire
a gun,” Zoey added.

“Or
spend
money after you steal it,” Aisha offered.

Nina shook her head glumly. “Here it is. Officially our first pointless discussion on the way to school of the season.”

They gathered on the right side of the ferry, back toward the stern where they had always gathered last school year, and the year before that. It was the place. From there they could watch all the other passengers on the upper deck, stay out of the line of sight of Skipper Too and the bridge, and get the best view of Weymouth as they came in, right down to the flagpole in front of their school at the end of Mainsail Street.

Mr. Gray, Aisha's father, and Mr. Geiger, Claire and Nina's father, were down below, where, by custom, they stayed out of the way of their kids, reading their papers and drinking coffee from steel thermos bottles.

Claire leaned against the stern rail, gazing off toward the bank of clouds to the north. Zoey knew she'd long had a fixation of sorts for weather phenomena. Not that Claire ever really spoke of it. She just spent a lot of her time gazing at clouds, referring to them not just as clouds but as
cirrus
or
cumulonimbus.
Nina said she often sat up on her widow's walk in the middle of storms. It was a strange fascination, but then, Claire was a strange girl. She was a friend, Zoey supposed, and yet there was always something a little withdrawn, a little preoccupied about Claire. Especially lately.

“Damn. There he is,” Jake said, gritting his teeth.

Zoey didn't have to ask whom he was talking about. Lucas had come up the stairs to the upper deck. He looked in the direction of the group, turned away, and sat down toward the front, out of earshot but impossible not to see.

Had his gaze focused on her? Zoey wondered. Certainly not so anyone would notice.

Jake put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her to him. “I wasn't sure he'd have the nerve,” he said.

“He has to go to school,” Nina said. “How else is he going to get there?”

“He can swim,” Jake said.

“Aren't you going to rush right up and beat the hell out of him?” Benjamin asked from the bench behind them.

Jake scowled. “I get into a fight and I could screw up my eligibility for the team.”

Benjamin laughed. “Isn't that the reason the Swiss are always giving for staying out of wars? They don't want to screw up their chances of making the team.”

“Come on, babe,” Jake said, standing up and pulling Zoey to her feet.

“Where?”

“I want to stretch my legs,” Jake said.

Zoey glanced nervously in Lucas's direction, but his back was turned to them. Reluctantly she fell in beside Jake as he walked slowly down the aisle toward the front of the boat.

“Jake, don't start anything. You know Benjamin was just trying to goad you.”

“I'm not starting anything,” Jake said. “I'm just taking a little walk around the deck.”

Jake kept his arm around her shoulders and she could feel the tension in his muscles. Unfortunately, they were already so
near Lucas that he would be sure to overhear if she argued with Jake anymore.

Nevertheless, she whispered through her teeth, “Jake, this is stupid.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Jake said in a bad parody of innocence.

He turned and crossed in front of Lucas, Zoey still almost a prisoner in his strong grasp. Lucas's long legs were stretched out in front of him, and he slouched into the collar of his jacket, staring fixedly down toward the bow of the boat as it sliced through the water.

“You want to move your feet?” Jake said, his voice deadened.