Tighter (Page 8)

“Uh-huh,” Milo answered, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. “You’ll see.”

“Are you warning me?”

His smile faded. “I guess I am.”

I didn’t like the look on his face. I changed subjects. “So why’d they kick you out, camper boy?” I asked. “What’d you do? Hijack a canoe? Cheat in the potato-sack race?”

“Let’s just say … when I’m bad, I’m bad. I was never gonna stick. Dad won’t be surprised when he finds out. He’s just like me.”

Any reaction other than blasé would put me at a disadvantage, so I dismissed Milo with a flick of my hand. “You’re like him, you mean. He came first. And if you’re such a rebel, answer me this—could you jump off those rocks at the halfway point up to the lighthouse?”

He frowned. “If I wanted to spend the summer in a full-body cast.”

“So, no way, nohow?”

“Eh. You’d have to know the water inside out. It’s got different depths, depending on the tide. I mean, I’d never do it. So you can cross it off your au pair worry list.”

“Kiddo, I’m not babysitting you, just your sister. Go jump off a cliff all day long, as far as I’m liable.” Then, to soften it, “What I really mean is, I’m not here to tell you what to do.”

He smiled. “Cool. We’re gonna get along just fine.” Then, out of nowhere, “Do you believe in your soul mate?”

“Sticky question. Define soul mate.”

“A person you feel like you knew in another life. You ever make that kind of connection to someone else?”

Annoyingly, all I could picture was Sean Ryan. How for three giddy months, I hadn’t cared about myself except as I existed through his eyes. Like if my hair was shiny enough or if my fingernails were buffed clean or if I smelled irresistible whenever he leaned over my shoulder to look at my ChemDraw printouts.

Milo was motionless, watching me. Did he know my secret? A secret that I hadn’t even told Maggie? Could he tell I was the type of girl who’d be dumb enough to get semi-seduced (and then fully rejected) by her barely-out-of-school-himself science teacher?

What I didn’t want was for Milo to think I was a goopy girl on a quest for summer love.

“Who cares if I have a soul mate? This is my summer to disconnect,” I said.

“I care,” he said. “I think someone’s out there. For each of us.”

He sounded so much like Maggie, it was actually comforting. I looked him in the eye and said to him what I would have said to her. “How adorable. Do you also believe in Santa Claus? Or is it just looking at stars that makes you want to talk in clichés?”

He blinked. I’d hurt him. Then he laughed. “Screw you, Jersey Girl.”

One thing I hate is when people take a free jab at New Jersey. As if it’s the last word in tacky wasteland. I especially disliked it coming from this self-entitled rich kid. Leading me on with his silly poetic thoughts, then reverting to some easy joke about New Jersey when I didn’t act all enraptured. Maybe I would find my soul mate this summer, on this island. It wasn’t the craziest idea. But if I did, I wouldn’t be gunning to go tell Milo McRae all about it.

Meantime, I did my best to act unbothered. Leaning back and stretching my arms over my head. “Put out your cancer stick,” I told him. “Forcing me to breathe in your secondhand is illegal. Even in New Jersey.”

FIVE

They arrived in spite of the deadening effects of my sleeping pill. I’d hoped they wouldn’t follow me to Little Bly. I’d even considered not taking anything. But then I popped it on the decent chance it was a muscle relaxer. My grab-bag game always held an element of risk, and the only pill I didn’t want was one of Mom’s weaker antihistamines. Okay by day, but too thin a blanket for night.

Earlier, I’d knelt by the bookcase and rolled the pill in my fingers. I was tired. Did I really need a send-off? Shouldn’t the act of falling asleep be somewhat effortless?

As a compromise, I bit it in half. Sleeping pill. Fifteen minutes later, I was out.

They’d been waiting. Hank was facing me on the small chair by the vanity. Uncle Jim was closer, cross-legged on the duvet I’d pushed to the foot of the bed. The steady pressure of his kneecap against my foot had caused me to wake up, although I’d tried, in my twilit state, to ignore him.

Go away.

My vision adjusted. Hank was slumped in his seat the way I imagine he used to watch television: his arms hanging over the sides and his chin doubled, his gaze lifted. They were distant as twin moons, my dependable companions, visible and yet far out of reach as always.

“You don’t have to watch over me,” I whispered, sitting up. “I think I’ll be okay here. Mom was right. I needed the change.”

Silence. That’s always how it was with Hank and Uncle Jim. They didn’t acknowledge our communion. Then I could stare at them all I wanted. That night, like every other night, Uncle Jim wore his too-big navy suit. The rope marks were like tar streaks beneath his collar.

The way everyone remembered it, Uncle Jim had been cheerful that night, downing a glass of birthday champagne and then excusing himself to slip into Granddad’s study. A private room with a sturdy ceiling light. He’d done it perfectly, a hangman’s noose with coils proportioned exactly to rope thickness, slung in correct position behind his ears. No extra, flopping minutes. He’d been studying to be an accountant, and his death seemed accountably tidy.

The note in his breast pocket had read: please forgive me.

Hank’s had been the more “predictable” death. Everyone said he’d been “a little off” since boyhood, with a decidedly bad temper. More than once I’d heard family members confess relief that he’d turned that rage on his own body. No note—but my dad’s line on that was that Hank often took himself by surprise.

I’d been born three years after Uncle Jim died, and I’d only met Hank once, at a long-ago holiday party. Yet they’d both known exactly what it was like for me that night, when I’d stood outside Mr. Ryan’s door, unable to breathe, buried alive in the avalanche of the moment.

“Who is it?” the woman had called. I’d gotten a glimpse of a brunette in a twinset.

“Some kid needs directions.” Mr. Ryan was already turning away from me.

The shut of the door, the slide of the bolt. I’d stumbled to my car. In motion, my humiliation turned liquid; my eyes were swimming in it and my brain was toxic with it until I got home and dropped a couple of muscle relaxants—one more than I’d been prescribed. I went to bed and let the bath of anesthesia wash over me. Lying numb and motionless, I let my mind slip into the quietest room of myself, and I thought absently of bridges and pills, of filling the tub and drowsing into the courage to slice.