chapter 18

PIPER BLANKENSHIP

 

 

 

Everyone in the house was in bed, not one light on, so even the house itself felt asleep. Nighttime was always the worst for me. The jagged feelings returned—the awful me again. And I wanted escape. I didn’t know what mattered. I didn’t know who mattered, and the rest of the world did seem to know. I could be witty with old myths in a café, or tell you my favorite books, or look cute in too-short shorts, but I didn’t know what the hell really mattered. What was the deal with Owen and Mom sneaking phone calls like a cigarette? And Lainey, missing him so badly that I heard her cry?

I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and the sea called to me like it wanted to tell me how to fix whatever it was that was wrong with me. I slipped on my shorts and a T-shirt, and carried my flip-flops as I tiptoed out of the house. I held my hand on the screen door and guided it back into its frame to avoid the bump-slam that might wake someone.

The flashlight app on my phone and the crescent sideways moon guided me across the street and over the dunes, past the prickly bushes and onto wet, packed sand. I heard them before I saw them—a group of teens around a bonfire. Loud country music vibrated across the sand. Coolers of all shapes and sizes were scattered about the beach, some open and some being used as chairs. Aluminum beach chairs, bent and pulled close to the fire, were full of kids and couples. I stood still, about to turn around, when I inhaled the sweet aroma of someone’s joint. Yes, that would definitely help.

I dug my toes into the warm sand that held the leftover sunshine of the day as if the beach didn’t want to let the day go. I wandered close to the bonfire: girls in shorts, boys in baseball caps, beer cans scattered and a guy with a guitar butchering a Kenny Chesney song about a blue chair. It felt like I’d been dropped into a country music video.

I stood still and quiet, trying to decide whether to bolt or make the first move, but I didn’t have to because it was then that a guy with curly dark hair and a scruffy beard came over to me. “Hey,” he said and tilted his head as if questioning me instead of greeting me.

“Hey.” I smiled and glanced at the joint in his hand. “I’m Piper. I don’t mean to crash your party, but I heard y’all and thought I’d come down here.”

“A pretty girl like you can crash anytime. You a vacationer?”

I laughed. “I didn’t know that’s what we were called, but yeah, I guess I am.”

He bowed in a silly gesture and pretended to wave a hat. “Welcome to our small boring town. I’m Lyle.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He held out his joint. “Want a hit?”

“Absolutely,” I said and took it from him, inhaling the sweet, pungent smoke that would burn and then soothe. It would happen quickly—the fluttery fear would settle down and leave me alone. I would be fine with who and what I was. I took another hit and then tried to hand it back to him. “Keep it,” he said. I tapped it out on the sand and slipped it into my back pocket for later.

Soon a few of his friends joined us and I met local kids with names that blurred together like watercolors. I sat in one of the empty aluminum chairs and stared into the flames, watching them lick the sky and attempt to join the stars.

A slow fuzziness descended and the warm night soaked through my skin and my eyes closed. I sank deeper into the chair and felt my body melt into it. Who cared if I didn’t know what mattered? I would figure it out. Who cared if Ryan was with Hannah? Who cared if I lost my virginity to a guy who didn’t give a flying F-word about me?

I couldn’t feel my teeth, which happened when I got stoned, but I could feel the hot sting of heartbreak. I opened my eyes and stared out to the sea. Then I stood and stumbled to the edge of the ocean to sit and dig my feet deeper into the sand, burrowing for something solid.

“Piper?” My gaze wandered, languid and tired, to my name. A flicker of familiarity crossed my mind: Fletch from the Market.

“Fletch,” I said, peering over my shoulder. “Hey there.”

“You’ve got a little fan club up there. You’ve already made friends and you’ve been here for, like, a minute.” He laughed and plopped down next to me.

I was not in the mood for this—making small talk with some guy I didn’t know while I was stoned and wanted to be alone. And cry about Ryan. And stare at the waves. And think about my life. Everyone thought I didn’t care about anything. Like Dad saying, “Why don’t you care about anything at all?” when he found out about my failing grades. But how could I ever explain that it wasn’t that I didn’t care about anything, it was that I cared about everything. Too much. The world poked at the softest places inside of me all day long. I didn’t fail because I didn’t care. I failed because I felt too much, and then avoided all the things I was supposed to do.

But there was no way to explain all of that, to my parents or the teachers. It sounded ridiculous.

I smiled at him. “You sure get around.” My words were slow and soft around the edges. I tried to articulate in that awful way people do when they’re trying to prove they’re sober.

“Not much to do around here. This bonfire?” He pointed back at the crowd. “Happens almost every night even though any minute now the cops will come and tell us it’s illegal and to pack it up. Then we’ll do it all again tomorrow night.” He paused and ran his hand through the sand. Finger trails wavered like tiny rivers. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just fine.” I shifted on the sand. “Can I ask you something crazy?”

“Anything.”

“Why do you have blue eyes?”

His laugh was so deep and resonant that I actually felt it rumble across the sand. “Do you mean why am I a black man with white man’s eyes?”

“I wouldn’t have put it quite that way . . .” Embarrassment needled at my softly stoned conscience. “It was a stupid question. I’m sorry.”

“I get asked that a lot. And the answer is simple. My dad, Hayden, is white and has these exact same eyes. He’s from North Carolina, but his family vacationed here one summer when he was a kid and he never forgot this place. My mom, Keke, is black, with some obvious recessive genes in her DNA. They met and married in college in D.C., and that’s where I was born. But Dad wanted to come back here to open an organic market. I think Mom was worried about coming to South Carolina, all the Old South bullshit, but it’s never once been a big deal. Life is one big adventure for the two of them, always wondering what might happen next.”

“Well, your eyes are so beautiful that when you leave I want to see them again.” I again lolled back in the sand and cringed. What the hell had I just confessed?

He twisted toward me and laughed. “That is literally the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Don’t count on it again.” I tried for levity and failed.

“Don’t you want to come join the party?”

“Maybe in a minute,” I said.

“You too busy staring at the ocean?”

“Yep. Staring at the ocean is on my to-do list this summer.”

“It’s a very good to-do.” He leaned back on his elbows, staring at the sky. His dreadlocks caught in the breeze, tangling. His voice was low and husky, a just-woke-up kind of sound.

“My mom’s best friend came yesterday,” I said before I knew I said it, like I always do. “And her mom disappeared here years ago. On purpose.”

He sat up and turned to me. His face was in half shadow, and still I could see the sympathy, eyebrows drawn together with concern. “That’s horrible.”

“Why do you think Lainey would come back to the place where her mother disappeared?” I asked Fletch as if he’d know. I rested flat on the wet sand. “Shit. I don’t know why I’m asking you. I don’t even know you. I don’t understand anything.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “So look there, we already have something in common.” He lay down also and we turned our heads toward each other, our hair splayed on the wet sand like seaweed.

I spoke so softly, but I was sure he could hear me face-to-face. “Sometimes the ocean makes me feel like everything is going to work out and be fine, and sometimes it makes me feel like the world is too, too big and nothing will ever be right because there’s too much of it all.”

Fletch laughed, but it held sadness underneath it all. This was not what I wanted. I didn’t even know him—why would I want his pity?

“Forget I said anything.”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, not to kiss or even touch me, just to have me there on the sand next to him. He released my hand. “You should stay right there until you know it’s the first option. Until the ocean lets you know that everything is going to be all right.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to happen. There’s just . . . too much that’s messed up.” I knotted my hands behind my head and felt the gritty sand in my hair. I almost listed it all for him: failing out of college; court date for public intoxication; Mom leaving Dad; Mom’s mistake at work . . . but then decided that a boy I barely knew didn’t want to hear it all.

We were silent for a minute, only the background noise of the crowd and the music, bursts of laughter and a squeal. Then someone called Fletch’s name, a girl’s shrill voice.

I turned my head to him. “Someone is looking for you. A girlfriend?”

“An ex.” He smiled at me in the half-light. “This is usually about the time she wants to talk about ‘it’ again. Right after her third beer.”

I laughed and it felt good, and I wished I hadn’t taken a couple hits off that joint. I wanted to feel the laughter fully.

“You have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Back home waiting? Is that why you’re here pining away?”

“Nope,” I said. “He ran off with a girlfriend of mine to jaunt around Europe for the summer.” I tried to say it with a jovial nonchalance, but my attempt failed miserably. I sounded as sad as I was.

“He’s a fool,” Fletch said and wiggled his fingers up the sand to give my hair a little pull.

“The perfect thing to say,” I replied.

We smiled at each other and then a spotlight hit the sand and the police made their nightly visit and someone threw water on the bonfire. It all ended that quickly, like a dream that ends when the morning alarm blares. Fletch stood and held his hand out to draw me to my feet.

“You should head home. They don’t arrest anyone, but don’t hang around.” He rubbed his hands on his jeans, brushing off the sand, and then drew his fingers through his hair.

It would be nice, I thought, to rest my head on his chest, let him run those same fingers through my hair. But those were stupid thoughts of a stoned girl, and I didn’t want him to know I was stoned.

I nodded and waved my hand through the air. “Go on. I’ll see you in town.”

I didn’t watch him leave, but I continued to observe the water. I could do things to make the world fade, but it would come back. Always, and sometimes worse.

I walked to the shoreline, where tiny shells crinkled under my toes, and I threw the rest of the joint into the waves. It bobbed like an oblong, tiny white fish and then sank with its own weight. I again dropped to the wet sand where water met beach. I thought about Lainey’s mom, about being desperate and sad enough to disappear from her life and her kids, maybe even sink to the bottom of the ocean. And I cried.