It was dark down on the beach, but it was a warm night. I could see our house on the cliff above me, but also the unfinished one next door. The frame was nearing completion, but there were no walls to contain you and no roof to shelter you. I walked until I was right in front of it, sat on a rock, and listened to the crash of the waves and then the crickle-crickle as the water retreated over the sand.
I set my drawing pad down beside me and called Nicco.
“You’re home! A day early.”
“Yeah, unexpectedly.”
“Is everything okay? You sound awful.”
“I don’t know. Things are strange.”
“What’s going on?”
I still hadn’t told him about any of this. Not the art, not Jake, not the man watching us, who I now knew was an agent with the FBI. “Jake. He’s in some kind of trouble.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Large shit.” Somehow this reference to our old joke didn’t really work. It wasn’t the time to joke.
“God, Syd.”
I didn’t say anything. I just watched the moonlight decorating the waves with diamonds.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Has to do with art.”
“Art.”
“He buys and sells it, but you know, I’m not sure if it’s all… on the up-and-up.” To put it mildly. I had no idea who he stole it from, or how.
“Oh, wow.”
“It’s bad.”
“Oh, wow,” Nicco said again. “I hope you and your mom are okay.”
I liked how he said this. “You and your mom.” It shoved away all of her fame and the money and the important people and this big crime and all the rest of it, and made it about what it was about, just me and my mother. Me and my mother, and what could happen to us.
“He’s not a good guy.”
“Do you need me to come and get you? You could stay here.”
“Nah. I’m all right. Just sit here and keep me company.”
“I can do that. Are we still on for day after tomorrow?”
“God, yes. I definitely want that.”
“I wish I didn’t have to work, or it’d be sooner. If you need me to, I can take time off.”
“That’s okay.”
“And shit, my roommate’s having a party. If we want to be alone, we’ll have to go somewhere else.”
“We’ll go somewhere else.” I wanted to be alone, all right.
“Where are you? It sounds like a hair blower.”
I laughed. “It’s the ocean. I’m down at the beach. Hair-blower ocean,” I said. Something for his notebook.
“You’ll be careful? The tide comes in quick. There’s not much beach down there.”
I knew nothing about tides. The way they could come in and swallow you up, the way that they always went out again.
We hung up. I hadn’t even noticed, but he was right. Before I called, the water was out past a nearby group of rocks, and now the rocks were covered.
It was late, but I wasn’t going to go in yet. I could see that the lights were still on in our house. I’d go back when everyone was asleep.
I picked up my drawing pad. It was funny, because the last thing I’d drawn was a still life of some flowers in a vase that we’d done in class. But life wasn’t still, and this seemed like so long ago, and those flowers had nothing to do with me.
In those paintings, the women were bodies. The artists had held the brush and decided what to leave out. I’d never leave out the things that made a person human. I turned to a blank page.
And I sketched Nicco then. The way he’d looked when he was reclining on the beach that night in the fog.
I got lost in what I was doing. I wanted to capture him, the real him. The eyes were the hardest part.
And then I heard a shout.
“Sydney! For God’s sake, what are you doing? Get the hell over here!”
Jake. I looked up, and I saw that he was right; there was reason for alarm. The tide had crept in. The sea had covered the space between the unbuilt house and ours. The water had reached our stairs.
“Jesus!” he cried.
“I’m coming!” I yelled. But I had to wade. The water was up to my ankles. When a wave came in, it splashed up my thighs, wetting the hem of my shorts. I could feel the pull of it, drawing me out.
Jake reached his arm toward me, and I took his hand. The force of the next wave was stronger than I imagined. His hand gripped mine hard. Even with the way I felt about him right then, I was thankful for it.
“Your mother was worried.”
I doubted that. I doubted she’d even noticed I was gone. He’d noticed. His eyes were the ones that were always on me, even more than hers.
He yanked me up to the stair where he stood. The water still smashed at our feet.
“Do you know how dangerous it is out here? You would’ve had to climb back up.” He pointed to the cliff. “Could you have climbed that?”
“I lost track of time.”
He caught sight of my drawing pad. “What is that?”
I tried to flip it closed. “A study.”
“A study, huh?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I saw that. You think I don’t know who that was?” He exhaled disgust. “Nice, you know. Real nice. The guy’s dick hanging out.”
What did it matter to him? Didn’t he have bigger problems than me drawing a penis, for God’s sake? “The women are naked in all those paintings.”
“That’s art. This isn’t. You’re lucky I don’t burn that. You think that’s what men want? Someone easy? Someone handing it over? Wrong. Men want a lady. You gotta respect yourself. A beautiful girl like you, Jesus Christ.”
“I do respect myself.”
“The way you’re acting with that kid, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”
“What about him? Is he respecting himself?” Whoever said that about guys and sex? No one. Never.
“His job is to respect you.” Jake was pissed. “If I see that kid again, he better watch his ass, that’s all I can say. He better keep both eyes open while he sleeps.”
We were at the top of the stairs by then. Jake shook his head and exhaled, stormed into the house, mad. He slammed the glass doors of the White Room, making them shudder.
I opened the doors again slowly, carefully. I crept upstairs without being seen or heard. I did that because he scared me. But I was mad, too. Really mad. I mean, first off, he was a bully-asshole-criminal. And second, Jake and me and sex—he didn’t care about me taking a big step, or getting STDs, or using contraception. He was guarding my virtue, like my body and my spirit would spoil if I were touched. Like my body was his. To leer at and control. Well, fuck you, because it was mine, and I wanted it—the all-and-everything that any guy could have.
I was angry, you know. The kind of angry that makes you feel dangerous. Under my feet, the earth shook. I imagined how it would look when everything began to fall.