MATT O’CONNOR TRIED TO think about his job. Racing cars. The wonderful hot smell of tires leaving patches on asphalt. The feel of the tools and the frenzy of speed. And so much would be at stake! He would be on probation and if he didn’t fit in, wasn’t good enough, couldn’t get along with the crew, then he’d be out.
It was a life that made Matt hot with excitement. Or had. Now it sounded like a paragraph he was reading in Popular Science or Sports Illustrated. Something other men did. Something far removed from his real existence.
Matt watched Kip and Con swim away. He was envious. He’d love to swim away from this problem. And he wouldn’t swim back, either.
The important thing, he told himself, is to stay nonviolent.
He was grateful for the noise ordinance that meant they’d have to get off the river shortly. No power boats past ten-thirty. Con had had to get a special permit to have the fireworks. Although no doubt Kip had actually done that for him, too.
Matt glimpsed Emily. She was alone. Holding a plate she had not touched. Probably wasn’t going to touch, since she had picked up no fork. She looked very small.
On the other side of the cabin, Matt could hear girls talking. “There’s enough food down there to sink the Duet,” said one.
“One duet aboard this ship already sank,” giggled another girl. “Matt and Emily are over. Done. Split. She isn’t wearing her ring anymore.”
“Yeah?” said the first, with intense interest. “What happened? You know any details?”
“No. Let’s corner Emily and get them.”
The gossiping girls laughed almost wildly.
Matt felt ill. Em would hate having to tell people she wasn’t friends with what had happened. He moved quickly to get to Em first. “Stick with me,” he said to her without preliminaries, “there are some Class A gossips en route to talk to you.” He took her plate, shoveled more food on it, grabbed forks and napkins, and retreated with Emily to the stuffy little cabin.
“We can’t talk here,” murmured Emily, waving at a group of friends who had most of the seats already.
“You don’t want to talk anyhow, do you?” Matt said.
She shrugged infinitesimally. Which probably meant Yes, she did want to talk. Matt balanced the plate and moved on with her, trying to find privacy. Finally they sat on a bench—but not close. There was room for another couple between them. In fact, conversation was so awkward, it felt like there had to be another two or three people there—invisible but interfering.
Matt heard faint splashing. Was it Kip or Con coming in first? It would matter so much to each of them, and it would not matter to anybody else at all. What matters to me? thought Matthew O’Connor. Do I even know? He said, “Emily, okay. I won’t go.” The words wrenched him, like the bolt on a wheel. Metal scraped metal. I want to go, I want to go, his heart said. “I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too,” he said, quoting his mother and Marie Antoinette. “I guess that was pretty adolescent.” But I’m adolescent! he thought. And I want to go.
Matt tried to crush down the vision of the race cars. He felt as if he were crushing himself as well.
Emily just sat there. She kept a watch on the food on Matt’s plate, as if it had some special significance never previously noted; as if she could read fortunes in the leftover tomato sauce, the way old ladies of yore had read fortunes in tea leaves.
She felt like a glass Christmas ornament, trod underfoot, nothing left but tiny, dangerous glass splinters. If she told Matt that announcement made her happy, it would be a lie. She did not want to be his sacrifice. She wanted to be his first choice. But if she told Matt to take the job, she would still be unhappy. Still be left behind.
Emily could think of nothing to say.
She took Matt’s hand and held it tightly. When she had to wipe tears off her cheeks, she used his hand as well as hers, and finally she moved next to him, and they put their arms around each other. But it was only comfort, and not love.
Now how are you supposed to answer a question like that? thought Beth Rose. I hate that kind of question. It is unfair and bad manners.
If I say I’m not doing anything, and smile at him, I make it clear I’m expecting him to ask me out. And maybe all he was doing was asking what interesting things I might be up to on the last Sunday in August. And maybe he’ll tell me what interesting things he’s up to on the last Sunday in August.
If I say I’m busy, though, he might think it’s a brush off, and he won’t ask me out even though he was planning to. If I lie, and say I’m not busy, when I really am busy, and after that lie, he—
Her mind spilled over the possibilities for answers and misunderstandings, flirtations and irritations. She fell in love with him and out of love with him. She saw a handsome young man with a mischievous grin who had just given her a garlic-laden kiss, and she saw a dumb kid a year younger who kept fondling the camera by his sneakers.
“My big plan for the day involves my radio, the beach, and a hot dog with chili and onions from the concession,” said Beth. “Want to come? Or do you have something else in mind?” There. That was making it pretty darn clear.
“Oh. Well, would you rather go to a wedding? I’m filming one over in Raulston. They let you eat all you want at the reception, and we could dance, too, if we dress right. I get bored at those things. I’m the only outsider. I have to circle around and be sure I’ve filmed everybody with everybody else. But it would be fun if I had company.”
An invitation to a wedding. That was a novel date. Although he had not used the word “date.” If I had company, was his phrase. Beth Rose wondered for the millionth time if boys analyzed little scraps of words at the same rate that girls did.
“Your company,” added Jere, when she didn’t answer.
Which was a phrase that, even to Beth, did not require heavy analysis.
The thing Kip Elliott loved about sports was that the goal was so definite. You knew where you were going. There was a finish line, or a basket, or a post. And you didn’t labor on forever. You had a timer, or a quarter, or a ten-second limit.
All her life she had swum off Swallow Island. Now she swam with all her strength, to get away from the fears this party had aroused. She did not want to think of what could go wrong in her life. Only of what must surely go right.
She wanted to beat Con. She wanted to beat everybody.
Was it wrong to want to be a winner all the time? But who would want to be a loser? Who would wake up in the morning, crying, “Hey, great day, sun is shining, think I’ll go out and be mediocre!” Of course not. Normal people wake up and cry, “Hey, think I’ll take on the world!”
So why, thought Kip in grief, why do they just accuse me of being bossy? Can a person take on the world and not be bossy? Are presidents ever not bossy? Would you hire a captain of industry if he didn’t like to be the boss? Would you elect a senator if he said he didn’t like taking charge?
I am what I am, thought Katharine Elliott. Con may insult me all he likes, and call me bossy, but that’s not what I am. I am organized to win, is what I am.
She swam with powerful strokes that pulled her swiftly through the water. The currents in Westerly River were gentle. She knew in a moment it would be shallow, and she’d flounder a little, staggering out on the sand, yelling to Con that she had made it. Kip kicked deeper, but felt nothing. It was strange, swimming in the dark. She could hardly tell where Swallow Island was, and she could no longer hear Con.
Because I’m ahead of him, thought Kip.
No other reason was acceptable.
Anne Stephens was beginning to be painfully aware that Con had not been by her side in a long time. She detached herself from the group that had gathered around her and wandered around the Duet, trying to be casual. Con was not with Gary and Mike, his buddies. Not flirting with Molly. Not near Beth Rose, who herself was extremely near to that camera boy.
How amazing, Anne thought. Beth came aboard with that new boy Blaze and now she’s kissing that new boy Jere. Imagine Beth Rose, on a social whirl!
Anne checked the cabin, below decks, the dance deck. No Con.
Great, she thought. He’s so mad at me he jumped overboard. (Which was actually a rather flattering thought.)
The boat reached Lincoln Bridge. It swung gently in a long slow circle for the return journey to its dock. All the shadows slid in dark slithery shafts to face the other way. The boat’s lights were bright but every rail, step, stair, and cabin cast pools of dark that changed and deepened.
Light washed over Beth Rose’s face, and then Beth drowned in the dark, and Anne could see only a fraction of Beth’s face.
A ship of ghosts, Anne thought.
“Anne, come over here!” Beth called. “Have you met Jeremiah Dunstan?”
“No. It’s so nice of you to be taking films for us, Jere,” she told him, as if she thought this was a friendly good-bye gesture on his part, and not a paid job.
Jere said he hoped she’d have a great time abroad, and asked about her itinerary.
It was less than twelve hours till her New York flight, but it seemed less real than ever. Anne said instead, “I was looking for Con.”
“You won’t believe this,” Beth Rose told her, “but he and Kip are having a race to see who can swim quickest out to Swallow Island and back.”
“I can’t hear them,” Jere said. “Probably got to the island and are out on the sand arguing about who touched land first.”
Anne disliked swimming. If she had to swim, she used only pools where you could see the bottom, the sides, and everything else in the water with you. Nothing would make her swim in Westerly River—and at night!
“They’re crazy,” she said.
Nobody argued.