The Islanders (26 page)

“IT'S KIND OF EERIE BEING
out this late, or early, or whatever it is,” Nina said. “I'll bet the four of us are the only people awake on this entire island.”

“Actually, I think
you're
the only one really awake,” Aisha grumbled.

“That's because I'm a creature of the night,” Nina said. Aisha pulled the car into a U-turn to pull away from the front of Nina's house and head toward the dock. A light rain was falling, making the streets glisten and blanking out what little moonlight filtered down through the clouds. Zoey was breathing heavily in the backseat. Not exactly snoring, but the stage just before snoring. She was lying against Lucas, who had never been entirely awake to begin with. “You got a stereo, Aisha?”

Aisha pointed at the dashboard. “It gets only one station. Country.”

“Pass,” Nina said.

Zoey woke up with a snort. “I'm awake, I'm awake.”

“We know you are,” Aisha said, grinning at Nina.

Zoey rubbed her eyes. “I do hope Christopher gets better soon. I don't know how he does this every night. He's like the Energizer Bunny.”

“Was Benjamin awake when you left?” Nina asked Zoey.

“Are you going to be like this?” Zoey asked grumpily. “I mean, if you and Benjamin are going to be seeing each other, then you have to leave me out of it.”

“I was just curious,” Nina said with a nonchalant shrug. She dug out a cigarette and popped it into the corner of her mouth.

“You know, if you're going to
not
smoke something, Nina, why don't you
not
smoke cigars?” Aisha suggested. “Then you could look really weird.”

Nina puffed contentedly.

“So. Not that I'm getting into this,” Zoey began, “but how did everything seem with Benjamin tonight?”

“Not that you're getting into it, it was no biggie. I mean, it was like all of us together doing something. We've all done stuff together lots of times.”

“I guess tomorrow night's the big test, huh?” Aisha said. “Dancing, holding hands, screaming little bits of conversation at each other over the music.” She wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully. “The big
K
.”

Nina sat up. “The big kitty? The big kelp? The big karma?”

Aisha tucked her thumb into her fist, making a little mouth, and kissed it noisily.

“I'm not thinking about that,” Nina said. “I'm only going to deal with things as they come up. Scratch that,” she added hastily as Aisha and Zoey began to giggle. “You guys know what I mean.”

“Are we there yet?” Lucas asked, coming out of his stupor.

“You know, I could do this myself,” Aisha said. “If you guys are going to bitch the whole time.”

“Island solidarity,” Lucas muttered.

The car pulled into the brightly lit zone of the ferry landing. The plastic-wrapped newspapers lay waiting. Nearby lay a large bundle of rags. Nina wondered why anyone would pile a bunch of rags on the dock, but then her eye was drawn by a slight movement.

“Hey, hey!” she cried. “That's a person.”

Aisha braked and the four of them piled out, approaching the inanimate figure cautiously.

“It's Jake,” Zoey said, putting her hand over her heart. She knelt beside him and tried to wake him by grabbing his hand. “He's ice-cold.”

“He must have hopped the water taxi when it came to drop off the papers,” Lucas said. “I'm guessing Jake may have been having a little too much fun.” He nudged him fairly hard in the
side with his boot. “Come on, Jake. Party's over.”

Jake stirred and blinked. He squinted to focus. “Wha—?”

“You're on the dock,” Zoey said.

“And he's in deep flop if he shows up back at his house and his dad sees him like this,” Nina said. “I can't believe
Joke
is this messed up. Just because we lost the dumb game?”

“It's not about the game,” Zoey said. “Come on, Jake, we have to get you out of here.”

“Zoey?” he said thickly.

“Yes, Jake. Come on. Try and stand up. Lucas, give me a hand.”

Lucas looked doubtful, but came and took one of Jake's arms, draped it over his shoulders, and tried to get him up. Jake lay limp at first, but finally staggered up. He wobbled for a moment, then stumbled to the dock railing. He leaned over and began vomiting into the water below.

Zoey went over and stroked his head, murmuring soft encouragements.

Lucas wasn't amused. “Should we just leave him here to sleep it off?”

Jake finished and stepped back from the railing. Zoey used her scarf to wipe his mouth.

“What are you all looking at?” Jake demanded belligerently.

“Jake, no one is looking at you,” Zoey insisted.

“Leave me alone, you . . .” He searched for the right word. “All of you,” he finished with a bearlike sweep of his arms.

Nina realized that Zoey was crying silently, biting her thumb.

“Let's take him to my house,” Nina said suddenly, surprising herself. “My dad sleeps like a corpse. We can stash him in our guest room.”

“I don't know how your sister would feel about that,” Aisha said.

“He's sort of her boyfriend,” Nina said. “Used to be sort of her boyfriend. Whatever.”

“Good idea,” Lucas agreed quickly. He looked pointedly at Zoey. “He's
Claire's
boyfriend.”

“Come on, Jake, get in the car,” Zoey said. She took his arm, a frail figure beside him, and led him away.

“Look, Lucas,” Nina told him in a low voice, “it doesn't mean anything.”

“Really,” Aisha agreed. “They
were
together for a long time. You can't expect her not to try and help him out when he's this screwed up.”

“You're the only one, Zo,” Jake said as Zoey tried to push him into the backseat. “Everyone else . . . Screw 'em.”

“Watch your head. That's right. Easy.”

“Don't take me home, okay? Wade . . . he'll laugh 'cause I . . . 'cause I think . . .”

Nina felt a chill. She saw the hard expression on Lucas's face soften a little and he turned to her.

“Sort of the downside of true love, huh, Nina?” he said. “You still sure you want to start playing this game?”

Claire woke to the sound of car doors closing. There was no nocturnal traffic on Chatham Island normally, and she was sleeping with her windows open, just her head sticking out from under the goose-down comforter.

She wrapped the comforter around herself and went to her window. In the front yard Lucas and Zoey were manhandling a big, shambling figure between them. Nina and Aisha ran ahead to open the front door. Claire glanced at her clock. It was almost four in the morning.

She heard the sound of heavy steps on the stairs and loud whispers. Claire waited. Finally, after ten minutes, there was the sound of footsteps retreating. The car drove off.

Claire dropped the comforter back on her bed and put on warm sweats and a bathrobe. She went down to the lower floor, retrieved several items from the bathroom she shared with Nina, and found Jake snoring in the rear guest bedroom.

They had pulled covers on over his clothes, stuffed a pillow
under his head, taken off his shoes, and closed the blinds so that he would sleep through the dawn.

Claire set vitamin pills, aspirin, and a pitcher of tap water on the nightstand. Then she sat on the bed beside him and lifted his head. “Come on, Jake, just wake up for two seconds.”

His eyes opened without focusing. “Thirsty,” he croaked.

“Yeah, I thought you might be.” It had been a long time since she'd been drunk, but she remembered what it felt like. She put the pitcher of water to his lips and he drank greedily. Then she poured three vitamin B pills and two aspirins into her palm. “Open up.”

She tossed the pills in his mouth and gave him the pitcher again. “That will help. A little, anyway. If you need to throw up, use this wastebasket. All you have to do is roll over.”

“Claire?”

“Yes, Jake.”

“Claire?”

“Yes, Jake, it's me.”

“. . . kicked me off the team.”

Claire bit her lip. He'd been kicked off the team? Was that real, or some drunken hallucination? “Don't think about it now. Just lie back and close your eyes.” She pressed him back against the pillows.

In a moment he was unconscious again. Claire sat in the
small rocking chair at the foot of the bed and closed her eyes.

“I don't seem to have a very good effect on the guys I hook up with, do I?” she asked the darkness. “First Lucas. He ended up spending two years in Youth Authority. And now Jake.”

“What am I supposed to do about you?” she whispered. “I can't change what happened. I can't bring Wade back to life.”

If Jake were a different person, he would be able to get past this loyalty to his brother. While Wade was alive, he had relentlessly belittled and harassed Jake, making him the object of every joke, feeding his own ego at the expense of his adoring little brother. And now, it was as if even in death, Wade was finding a way to make Jake miserable.

But Jake wasn't interested in the truth about Wade. Wade was his big brother, period. He would probably never allow himself to see any further than that. And Claire, whatever else she might be, was the person responsible, in Jake's mind, for Wade's death.

In the same position,
she
would find a way to resolve the conflict. She was not a person who believed in absolutes, and she refused to be trapped by them.

But Jake was a different person. There were no shades of gray for Jake: it was all black and white, right and wrong. To love her was to betray Wade. She could not coexist in his mind alongside the memory of Wade, and the more Jake tried, the
more he destroyed himself.

Claire sighed. Wade could not be made to go away. Which meant that in the end there was only one solution.

She felt something crawling down her cheek and touched it with her finger. She was surprised to discover that it was a tear.

Zoey led Lucas up the dark stairs to her room. Lucas's father was up and on his way to work each day before dawn, like all the professional fishermen and lobstermen on the island. Lucas didn't want to run into him and face the possibility of having to explain why he was out.

Zoey closed the door behind them and flipped on the light. It had seemed like a perfectly normal thing, to invite Lucas to sleep over for a few hours. But now, with him in her bedroom, both moving quietly like a pair of burglars, it began to seem a little more dubious.

Lucas yawned. “I'm beat. What a bizarre night. Dragging Jake up the stairs, driving around like vampires on the prowl throwing papers.” He sat down on Zoey's bed and unlaced his boots.

Zoey fidgeted nervously, not quite sure how to proceed. Normally, she would change into her favorite Boston Bruins jersey and crawl under the covers.

“Urn, I'll hit the bathroom,” she said, snatching up her
nightshirt. She brushed her teeth and combed her hair and changed into the thin cotton shirt. It came most of the way down to her knees, so it wasn't exactly provocative. Still, it was what she
slept
in. Not what she wore when she had guests over.

She went back to the room and found the lights turned off, for which she was grateful. Maybe Lucas had already fallen asleep. That would be best.

She slid beneath the covers and had the shocking and completely unfamiliar experience of touching a bare leg with her foot. She nearly yelped out loud. But that was being silly. They were practically adults. It wasn't like they couldn't sleep in the same location without it being some big thing. Zoey repeated the phrase in her mind—yes, that's all it was, sleeping in the same location.

She rolled onto her side, facing away from him. “Good night,” she whispered.

“Don't I get a good-night kiss?”

“Sure.” She twisted her head toward him, intending to accept a light peck on the lips. Instead his arm went around her and he drew her against him. His kiss left her gasping.

“Lucas,” she said.

“Yes?”

“We are
not
doing that.”

Long silence. His face was inches away in the darkness. His
arms were around her. She could hear his breath coming fast.

“Um . . . Why not?”

Zoey shrugged, feeling uncertain. “I just haven't decided that's something I want to do. At least not yet.”

“How about if I've decided that it's something I
do
want to do?”

“It's one of those things that kind of has to be unanimous,” Zoey said. “Come on, you know I only let you come up here because of your dad. You know I wasn't planning on having sex.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Okay. Excuse me for just a minute,” Lucas said with deliberate politeness. He rolled away and in the darkness Zoey could hear him screaming into his pillow in frustration. It went on for longer than she would have expected. Finally he surfaced again.

“Did that help?” Zoey asked tentatively.

“No. It didn't. Look, Zoey, I don't know how it is for girls, but for guys this whole thing is sort of important. In the way that air is sort of important if you want to breathe.”

“Well, it is with girls, too, but—”

“See? That's the problem. With girls there's a
but.
With guys there's no
but
anything. It's like, if someone said to me right now, you can have sex with Zoey, but we have to cut off
your hand, I'd probably say, okay, what the hell, a hook will look cool.”

“That's kind of flattering in a way,” Zoey said, trying to defuse the level of tension. “Insane, but flattering.”

“Insane, exactly. That's what it makes me, insane.”

Zoey sat up in the bed, drawing her knees up and encircling them with her arms. “Lucas, look, I think I understand how you feel, but it
has
to be different for girls. First of all, guys don't get pregnant, have kids, and end up on welfare. Second of all, girls have a greater risk of getting AIDS and all the other popular sexually transmitted diseases. And third, the problem with you guys is that sex is
all
you think about, whereas females, being a little higher on the evolutionary scale, also think about things like commitment and love and all.”