Evan hated Holden Caulfield. Really hated him. Maybe he was only a character in a book but to Evan he felt real, like one of those people you get stuck sitting next to on an airplane and they won’t shut up about their totally unfascinating lives. Evan could in no way understand why his father had been shoving this book at him for the entire past year, insisting he read it, telling him it was one of the most important books of the twentieth century. His father got like that sometimes.
He decided to read it anyway. He’d seen it on his freshman reading list so he figured why not get it over with and get his father off his back at the same time. Two birds, one stone. In a weak moment, he’d admitted to his father that he hated Holden with a passion, and his father had given him this solemn look and said, “My guess is that this book is touching something deep inside you, Evan.” To which he’d said, “Yeah, right, Dad.” But sometimes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, Evan wondered if maybe what his father said was true.
He was down at the beach reading the book one Friday afternoon when someone came up and said hey and asked if he wanted to hang out. It was Shane, one of what Evan referred to as the “boys in black.” Evan often labeled people. He liked to think this was the product of a creative mind, but his best friend last year in eighth grade, right before he stopped being his best friend, had told Evan he thought he was basically a snob. Which Evan knew for a certifiable fact wasn’t true, although no matter how many times he replayed the conversation in his head he couldn’t come up with what he was, if he wasn’t a snob.
The boys in black had caught Evan’s attention the first week he and his family were out at the beach house. It was five o’clock, and like every other day at five o’clock, after the lifeguards blew their whistles and waved their arms to let everybody know they were going off duty, little kids in bunches, Callie included, ran to the abandoned lifeguard stand to clamber to the top, hurl themselves off onto the huge pile of sand at the base, then repeat the process over and over until they were called away for dinner.
“Watch me, Evan!” Callie shouted. Evan watched, at the same time keeping an eye on the retreating figure of the lifeguard named Chris who secretly Evan thought was the coolest guy on the beach. Who secretly Evan wished he could be. Evan admired Chris’s mirrored sunglasses and had decided he was going over to Fair Harbor one of these days to get a pair just like them. The only question was whether he’d have the nerve to wear them to the beach, although he wasn’t sure why this was even a question.
Evan was imagining himself sitting up on top of the lifeguard stand in his mirrored sunglasses, twirling a whistle cord around his index finger and looking seriously cool, when five boys in black wet suits, shiny and snug as coats of fresh paint, raced past and plunged into the water. Once in, they pulled themselves onto their surfboards and paddled furiously over and through the rolling waves, calling to each other all the while like crows cawing. Everything about them worked together as one: their bodies, their suits, their boards, the water, their coded calls. Evan wished he could be out there with them, envying not their surfboards but their ease with themselves and one another.
He saw them other times after that, other places. Sometimes there’d be just one of them, eating an ice cream out in front of the all-purpose store in town, or two of them, with fishing poles in hand, headed for the bay. But most times he saw all five, moving shoulder-to-shoulder along the boardwalks, a basketball in constant play, looking, in their high-style shorts and ankle bracelets and backward baseball caps, like a pack of Gap-ad Huckleberry Finns.
At the beginning of their vacation his mother had been bugging him. “Why don’t you make some friends, Evan? Those boys, you know the ones I mean, they look nice, don’t you think?” He had come up with reasons, then excuses, and finally had just ignored his mother until she backed off.
Then there he was, hearing somebody say hey, and looking up at this tall, tightly muscled kid with shoulder-length dirty-blond hair whom he recognized immediately as the one he’d heard the others call Shane.
“I see you sittin’ here,” Shane said, squinting down at Evan. “How come you’re always sittin’ here reading?”
“I’m not always reading.”
“I never see you in the water.”
“I go in the water. Maybe not when you’re looking.”
Evan’s cheeks were hot. He prayed that his mother, stretched out on a towel several feet behind him, was plugged into her music or one of those meditation tapes she was always listening to these days and wasn’t paying attention to this conversation.
“So what’s your name?” he heard Shane ask.
“Shane,” Shane said in a bored voice. “So you want to hang out? I mean, you know, you want to hang out?”
“I guess,” Evan said. His eyes were level with Shane’s knees. He noticed now many pink scars and scabs dotted the landscape of the other boy’s sun-brown legs. He imagined all the falls and mishaps it must have taken to create so many scars and felt a deep sense of shame that at fourteen his own body revealed so little history.
“Where’s the rest of, you know . . .” Evan raised his eyes and let his question fall away.
Shane shrugged. “Josh and Eric had to go home for a few days. Brendan’s bonding with his stepdad, for godsake, he’s like, I just want to take you sailing, Brendan, none of your friends this time, okay? I mean, like, that’s really gonna win points with Brendan, right?”
Evan nodded sympathetically.
“So, anyway, Joel and me, we were gonna hang together, but then he had to do this thing with his sister. Anyway, where’s your sister at? For a long time, I thought maybe you were like a hired baby-sitter or something, the way you were always with her, playing and everything, y’know.”
Embarrassed and flattered at the same time, Evan stammered, “I, uh, she’s, she’s with a friend, she made a friend, she’s at her friend’s house.”
“Oh.” Impatiently, Shane ran a self-admiring hand over his shirtless chest. “So?” he said.
“Sure,” Evan said, rising to his feet. He turned to look down at his mother, whose approving smile at once granted him permission to leave and acknowledged that she had heard everything.
As they were leaving the beach, the girl who sat on the top of the steps, the one Evan called the watcher, quickly closed the book in which she was writing and ran off.
“Cereal material,” Shane muttered contemptuously.
“Huh?”
“The girl’s a flake,” said Shane. He turned to Evan and arched his eyebrows.
“Not to mention that she’s like a public nuisance, sitting there all the time, blocking traffic. Somebody ought to do something about her.
“Hey, I’m hungry,” he continued as they left the beach and Evan puzzled over the veiled threat in Shane’s words. “You hungry?”
“I guess,” Evan said. “Sure.”
“You like pizza? They got the best pizza over in Fair Harbor. who doesn’t like pizza, right? You wanna split one?”
“Sure,” Evan said again. It was just occurring to him to wonder why Shane had taken this sudden interest in him.
Coming to a long row of haphazardly parked bicycles, Shane asked, “You got wheels?”
Indicating that he did, Evan retrieved the rust-eaten dirt bike he’d claimed as his the day he and his family had moved into the rental house. Most houses on the island came with bikes; cars weren’t allowed, so if you wanted to get anywhere fast a two-wheeler was the only way.
The trip to Fair Harbor was a short one, under five minutes if there weren’t too many walkers or joggers clogging the narrow walkways. Since it was easier to go single file, Evan let Shane take the lead, which gave him a chance to think about what was happening. The funny thing was that for as long as he’d been watching the boys in black he’d been putting them down in his head and at the same time wishing he could be one of them. When Shane came over and asked him to hang out, it was as if a movie star had just invited him to be in his new movie. But even though Evan had jumped at the invitation like a hungry dog going for a handout, he wasn’t sure he even liked Shane, much less wanted to be in a movie with him. One thing was for sure: the whole situation was making him nervous.
As they got closer to Fair Harbor, Shane pointed off to his right. “My house is down that street,” he shouted. “Second in from the beach.” The island was so narrow at this point you could stand in the middle and easily see the sea on one side and the bay on the other. Evan looked to see if he could make out which house was Shane’s but was distracted by the loud music coming from one of the houses at the bay end of the same street. He was pretty sure it was opera, though he couldn’t have told you which one. The thing about it was, you didn’t expect to hear that kind of music out at the beach. Yet in a funny sort of way it fit. At least, to Evan it did. It made him think of other island sounds: the doves cooing in the middle of the night, the cicadas, the plaintive foghorns. They were lonely sounds. This was a lonely sound, too.
When he said something to Shane about it later, Shane told him that the people who lived in that house were probably deaf. “For real,” he said. “They’ve played that music so loud the police have had to come a coupla times to get ’em to turn it down. If you ask me you’d have to be deaf to listen to that shit anyway. Shit sounds like a bunch of cats get-tin’ their balls yanked. If you ask me.”
After they got their pizza, they carried it to the end of the ferry dock and, over sodas and wedges, swapped “stats,” as Shane put it. Shane lived in New York City; Evan in a small town on the Hudson River just north of the city. Shane went to private school; Evan to public. Both were starting high school in the fall. Shane had two brothers, one in college, one just married. Evan had a sister, going into second grade.
To Evan, the most interesting thing about Shane was the one thing Shane didn’t want to talk about. His parents had been recently divorced. As part of the settlement, his mother had gotten the apartment on Central Park West and the house on the island. She had also gotten Shane.
When Evan asked, “So what’s it like?” Shane asked back, “What’s what like?”
And when Evan said, “Having divorced parents,” Shane shrugged and said, “It’s like having divorced parents.”
Case closed.
Shane switched the subject to sports, which didn’t interest Evan that much, and then to girls. Which is to say, to sex—a topic that inspired Shane and made Evan itchy. Most of the time, Evan had only a vague idea of what Shane was talking about but was too embarrassed to let on. Which Shane quickly figured out.
“So did you ever do that with a girl?” he asked Evan at one point, his eyes daring him to lie.
“Not exactly,” Evan said.
Shane snorted. “What’d ya mean, not exactly? You’ve either done it or you haven’t. You probably haven’t even kissed a girl. Tell the truth.”
Evan felt his throat tighten, his cheeks burn. A picture flashed into his mind of himself shoving Shane, hard, into the bay. He imagined Shane hitting his head on a rock and water filling his lungs as he, Evan, went off slowly to seek help.
“No,” he heard himself say.
“Geez,” Shane said, “you sure thought about it long enough.” He jabbed Evan lightly on the arm. “No big deal. City boys grow up faster than small-town boys. It’s a known fact.”
Shane didn’t wait for Evan’s response. He stood up and stretched lazily; then, in a different voice than Evan had heard him use before, he said, “Hey, you got pockets?”
Evan looked up at him. “Pockets?”
“Pockets. You know, pockets.”
“Oh. Yeah. I got pockets.”
Shane smiled. “Great. Let’s have some fun.”
“But what—”
“What do you need?”
“What do I need?”
“Or want. What do you want? Let’s see.” Shane bent down to scoop up the empty pizza box with one hand, indicating to Evan that he should take care of the soda cans. “Like, for example, I could use a new lure.”
“Oh,” Evan said. “Well, I’ve been wanting to get some sunglasses.”
“Shades,” Shane said. “Perfecto.”
They dumped their garbage in the can outside the general store. Shane turned to Evan, dropping his voice to a near whisper. “Two rules. First, you gotta ask for what you want. Then after you take it, you gotta say somethin’ on your way out like, ‘I didn’t see anything I liked.’ Or, uh, ‘Thanks, anyway. Maybe next time.’ Got it?”
“What do you mean, take it?” Evan asked. “What d’ya think I mean?”
“Steal?”
Shane clapped a hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Brilliant,” he said. “Now, come on. Shades are an excellent choice, by the way, a total challenge for the advanced player. They’re right up by the register.”
As Shane dropped his hand away, Evan said, “But we don’t need to steal. This stuff doesn’t cost much. Besides, we can just charge it to our parents’ accounts. I don’t get why—”
Shane turned back, losing patience. “Listen, turkey,” he said. “We don’t need to do anything, right? That’s the point. It’s a question of creating a little entertainment value, okay? So you with me or what?”
Evan despised himself for knowing without having to think about it what his answer would be. “I’m with you,” he said.
“My man” said Shane, holding out his hand for Evan to slap him five.
The store had only a handful of customers when the boys entered. Two girls leafing through magazines glanced up at Evan and Shane to see if they were worth more than a glance. A mother, with a child in a stroller, was in the hardware section.
“You ever done this before?” Shane whispered. “Never mind, I don’t wanna know. Just keep alert to where everybody is and where they’re looking. And don’t act suspicious. And don’t look at me, just concentrate on what you’re doing. Anyway, we’re lucky. It looks like there’s only one person working. And she’s a total airhead.”
A girl of eighteen or so was wiping down the counter at the front of the store. Her hand was just inches away from the rack of sunglasses.
“Don’t forget the rules,” Evan heard Shane whisper before he walked brazenly up to the girl and asked,” ’Scuse me, you got any fishing lures?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly when she looked into Shane’s face. Evan wondered if she recognized him and had guessed what he was up to. But then she said as casually as she would say to anybody asking anything, “Yeah, sure, they’re back there with the sports stuff behind hardware.”
Evan knew it was his turn now, but how was he supposed to ask where the sunglasses were when they were staring right at him?
The girl gave the plastic bottle in her right hand a squeeze, then began to wipe the countertop. “You need help with something?” she asked, looking Evan’s way
“Um, yes,” Evan said. “Sunglasses are . . . those sunglasses there, are they the only ones you’ve got?”
The girl said, “That’s it,” and went on with her cleaning.
Evan approached cautiously, turning back only when he heard the girls at the magazines whispering. The palms of his hands were practically dripping they were so sweaty all of a sudden.
Turning the display rack, he began to hope he wouldn’t see the glasses he wanted. After all, why should he steal a pair he didn’t want? He could just tell Shane . . . what? That he couldn’t do it? Evan began coming up with a plan. He’d steal a pair of glasses, any pair, the cheaper the better. Then he’d come back another time, alone, and, just the way he’d taken them when no one was looking, he’d put them back when no one was looking.
Now that his conscience was eased, all he had to do was “borrow” them without getting caught. He gave the rack another turn and spotted the ones he wanted. From the looks of it, they were the only pair left. What if he took them and quietly said to the girl, “Charge, please,” and hoped that Shane didn’t hear?
“Excuse me.” Evan and the girl both looked back toward the hardware section. “Can you help me?” the mother with the baby asked. “I’m having trouble finding what I’m looking for.”
Putting her bottle and rag down on the counter, the girl said to Evan, “I’ll be right back,” and left him alone with the sunglasses. Lifting them gingerly from the rack, he put them on and studied himself in the mirror. He looked older, tougher. More like Chris.
“I couldn’t find what I wanted. Thanks, anyway.”
Evan turned at the sound of Shane’s voice and watched him sauntering up the aisle past the salesgirl. As he went by Evan, he patted his pocket and winked.
Evan looked around. No one was paying any attention to him. Wiping his hands on his bathing suit, he carefully took off the sunglasses, folded them, and told himself he could do it. H e could. He could slip them into his pocket. He could even come back another time and pay for them. Shane would never need to know that part of it. He just needed to see Evan come out of the store, patting his pocket.
A burst of laughter jarred him from his thoughts. Coming through the door with a bunch of his buddies was Chris, wearing the same kind of sunglasses Evan held in his hands. Chris looked right at him, or Evan thought he did, so taking him by surprise that he thrust the sunglasses under a pile of goggles and noseguards that were sitting in a box on the counter. He rushed out of the store, remembering only at the last minute to call back in a faltering voice, “I couldn’t, I didn’t find what I wanted.”
“My man?” Shane cried when they’d rounded the corner to fetch their bikes. “Lemme see. Where are they?”
“I, I had them in my hands,” Evan stammered, “but I couldn’t—”
Shane cut him off. “Forget it,” he said. “Listen, it’s almost five-thirty. I’ve gotta meet the ferry back in Saltaire.”
“But I can explain,” Evan said. “I was going to do it. Honest. See, what happened—”
Shane put his hand on Evan’s shoulder, but it felt different this time, less like a buddy, more like a teacher who’s pulled you aside to have a serious talk. “Don’t sweat it, okay? It was just for a goof. Don’t make a federal case out of it.
“Anyway, I gotta meet that ferry. You comin’ or what?”
Evan nodded, mounting his bike and trailing behind Shane. The whole way back, Evan tried not hating himself, tried telling himself that he’d done the right thing, that it was Shane who should be feeling bad about what he’d done, not him for what he hadn’t. He imagined himself saying all sorts of things to Shane, but none of them changed the way he pictured Shane responding—the patronizing touch on the shoulder, the look in the eyes telling him he had failed.
They arrived just in time for the five-thirty ferry. Shane, with barely a backward glance, dropped his bike and called out, “There’s my main man! There’s Josh!”
Evan saw a boy waving from the top deck of the ferry. “Yo, bud!” he heard the boy call out. Then he heard, “Evan!” And for a moment he imagined that Josh, who didn’t even know him, was calling his name.
But it was his father who was calling, his father who clapped his hand on Evan’s shoulder as they walked back to their house, his father who said, “Well, this is a nice surprise. I didn’t know you’d be meeting me at the ferry.”
Evan said, “I guess I missed you, Dad,” as Shane passed them on his bike, balancing his main man Josh on the crossbar.
“See you, Shane!” Evan called out, with a sideways glance at his father.
Shane didn’t answer, just cocked his head slightly to indicate he’d heard.
“Another surprise,” Evan’s father said. “You’ve made some friends.”
That night, out on their screened-in porch, as his mother and sister played Uno and his father muttered his way through a crossword puzzle, Evan picked up The Catcher in the Rye and tried reading again the part of the book where Holden calls him-self a coward. “One of these very yellow guys,” was how he put it, and those words were one of the biggest reasons Evan hated Holden Caulfield.
He’s a loser, Evan thought, shutting the book and looking down at his long, fuzzy, scarless legs. A total loser.
In the days that followed, the girl and the prince spent much of their time together. They loved to walk along the beach, collecting shells and talking. Miranda thought the prince the most perfect companion she could imagine. She dared not tell him so, but then he surprised her by saying, “You are the best friend I’ve ever had, Miranda. I feel as if we have known each other always.”
“Perhaps we have,” Miranda replied.
They looked into each other’s eyes, wondering.
The girl noticed that the prince never told her how he and his family came to rule the island. In like manner, he never asked her where she lived or where she went at each day’s end. She was glad for that for she could never have told him about the beast and the enchanted doll.
The princess was named Caliandra. She adored the older girl, telling her, “You are the sister I always wished I had. Not that my brother isn’t kind, but there is something special between sisters, don’t you agree?”
The girl did not know how to answer, for she had never had a sister. But in her heart she believed that what the princess said was true, and almost told her, “I wish you were my sister.”
One day as Miranda helped Caliandra build a sand castle, the princess asked, “What is that locket you wear about your neck?”
Miranda touched the golden locket and felt her heart grow heavy. “It was a birth gift from my mother,” she said. “I lost her long ago. I have no memory of her, only this locket.”
Caliandra took the locket in her tiny fingers. It was a heart, or rather a piece of one, for it looked as if a jagged saw had cut the heart down the middle and left only half. It was odd to behold, but odder yet was the truth now dawning on the young princess.
“I have seen another such locket,” said Caliandra excitedly. “Perhaps it is the mate to this one.”
“But where?” asked Miranda.
Caliandra leaned over to whisper in Miranda’s ear. “Amongst my mother’s possessions,” she said.