SUMMER
2002

Megan

I’d been hearing about it for so long, The Island had taken on mythical proportions in my imagination, fueled by the family photos I’d seen scattered around Holmes House with younger versions of Katherine and Michael and Lauren on sailboats, orange life vests strapped around their skinny chests, and younger versions of Senator and Mrs. Mabrey, their arms around each other like newlyweds, a gray sea in the background, foamy whiteheads kicked up in the surf.

I felt like calling everyone I knew back in Woodstock and mentioning, casually, where I was spending the summer. With my friend, the senator’s daughter. That’s right, on a private island off the coast of Maine. At the beginning of the summer, that excitement overshadowed everything else—all Lauren’s lies, all the hurt that had been bubbling inside me since that night when I’d found her photos. To be in the presence of the Mabreys’ generosity, on the receiving end of clean linens and plates of tiny cucumber sandwiches and handmade pastries, was enough to let me push all that hurt to the side. When Lauren and I sat side by side in the den at night, sharing the same blanket, watching one of the gazillion Disney movies her family had stored in the towering white cabinets that lined the room, I wondered if it really mattered at all. What was a lie or two between friends?

And then a moment later, I’d remember the way my mom always said that dealing with things right away was better than putting them on the back burner, where things had a way of simmering away, forgotten, until they suddenly boiled over.

Lauren and I, in one way or another, were headed toward a giant explosion.

* * *

For the first few weeks, it was like floating through a dream. We slept in late each morning, waking to whatever breakfast the cook, Jordana, had left for us: freshly squeezed orange juice, grapefruit halves, yogurt, scones, covered platters of bacon and eggs. Then Lauren and I would wander down to the beach together for a morning swim, the water so brisk and cold, our legs went instantly numb. Afterward, we might shower or not; the day didn’t require much of us. There was lunch and a nap and halfhearted studying for me and sometimes a trip back to Yarmouth, with Lauren operating the outboard motor like my chauffeur.

On those days, it felt like everything was fine between us, that there was no Joe and there were no lies, just ice cream on the pier and shopping in the overpriced boutiques along the water. Lauren always bought something—visors or sunglasses or tank tops with touristy slogans—more out of idleness than anything else, since she didn’t seem to need them, and most of her purchases only piled up on her dresser in plastic shopping bags.

Other times, the silence stretched deep between us, an immeasurable gulf. Lauren’s room on the second floor was sunny and lined with shoulder-high wainscoting, the knotty pine floors covered here and there with colorful rugs. She slept on a queen-size bed next to a window that faced the Atlantic, toward thousands of miles of nothing and then an entirely different continent. I had the daybed tucked under a sloping alcove, the ceiling so close to my head, I might have been in a top bunk. At night, with each of us in our beds and only the striped rug and the piles of Lauren’s discarded clothing between us, it felt like we should have something real to say to each other—I’ve been seeing someone, she might say, or I know about you and Joe, I might say, but mostly we joked and laughed until Lauren stopped responding to my comments and I knew she was asleep. Then I snapped on the bedside lamp and read late into the night.

I was presumably on The Island to help take care of Mrs. Mabrey, but it was clear from the first day that Mrs. Mabrey intended to take care of herself. She seemed in every way weaker than she had been the previous winter at Holmes House, although she went about business as usual—phone calls and emails in the morning; reading on the deck each afternoon, shielded by a giant umbrella. Lauren and I checked on her regularly, bringing water or tea, fetching something from another part of the house or delivering the mail that came each afternoon on the water taxi. But mostly Mrs. Mabrey waved us off, seeming annoyed by the attention. Any resemblance to my dad’s illness was only fleeting: Mrs. Mabrey wasn’t confined to a dingy, low-ceilinged living room, the gloom only mitigated by the canned laughter from a television in the corner. She had ocean breezes and catered meals, a view that changed from minute to minute, as if an artist were wielding a giant paintbrush on the horizon. A nurse came from Yarmouth every few days to check on her, noting vital statistics and asking intrusive questions Mrs. Mabrey wouldn’t answer if anyone else was in the room.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, as if on cue when I hovered in the doorway, one of the texts for my seminar tucked under my arm. “Go—read, do whatever it is you need to do.”

Other times she might say crisply, “Send Jordana in,” as if whatever she wanted was a task too important to be entrusted to me. Feeling sheepish, I would interrupt Jordana in the middle of chopping vegetables or marinating chicken, and she would wipe her hands on the apron tied around her waist and regard me with a silent fury.

“I’m so sorry,” I would say. “She asked for you specifically. Otherwise of course I would—”

Lauren laughed when I told her that I felt bad about the extra work for Jordana. “Why should you feel bad? She’s just doing her job.”

“I’m not used to it,” I admitted. “I feel guilty.” Up to this point in my life, the only people I knew who had household help were characters in Jane Austen novels.

“Well, don’t,” Lauren ordered, giving me one of her bone-shaking shoulder knocks. “Just relax a bit, okay? This is your vacation, too.”

* * *

In the second week of June, the rest of the Mabreys began to arrive. Kat, five months pregnant and noticeably sluggish, came when Lizzie’s preschool finished for the summer. Dark circles ringed her eyes like bruises, and other than her rounded belly, she was pin thin, arms and legs emerging like sticks from her babydoll dresses. The nausea caught her suddenly, morning and afternoon, and she was never more than a few feet from a bucket, just in case. “I didn’t have it this bad the first time,” she moaned. “After nine weeks, I could eat anything. But now...”

We began to refer to the south deck, where Kat and Mrs. Mabrey lounged silently side by side, magazines unopened on their laps, as the Sick Bay.

“Look at them,” Lauren said, gesturing through the open window. “This whole place is practically an infirmary.”

“Invalid Island,” I said, relishing the alliteration.

“Yes! Invalid Island. That’s exactly what this is.”

Since Kat clearly wasn’t up to the task, and Jordana’s hands were full, I offered to watch Lizzie in the mornings. This was a more difficult task than it had been at Holmes House, since The Island had a series of walkways and steps leading from one deck to another, and the entire east side faced treacherous, tumbledown cliffs. Only the west side of The Island had an actual beach, twenty yards or so of sand ringed with sharp shells in the morning along the rack line. The boat was docked there, tethered to the end of a somewhat rickety pier with Lauren’s expertly tied knots. We spent our mornings there, collecting shells and strange severed crustacean limbs, occasionally splashing with Lizzie in the cold shallow water while her arms were held aloft by giant pink floaties. “Watch me, watch me!” she shrieked, stamping her feet in the gentle waves. We burned and peeled and developed dark, sun-kissed tans. Lauren documented it all, the shutter on her Leica clicking away.

“I should pay you for your help,” Kat said more than once, but I always shrugged this off. At least, in one small way, I was earning my keep.

* * *

Time moved so slowly on The Island, where the day might hold only a single, meaningful task, that it was surprising to realize that I’d already been there for three weeks, then a month, then five weeks. Every day I woke up to sunlight streaming through the window in Lauren’s room was one less day of paradise. Lauren, of course, would stay until the end of summer, living out the same blissfully uncomplicated hours, day after day, week after week. There was no reason to think she wouldn’t be back here summer after summer, taking work vacations, bringing her children one day, continuing traditions like Saturday night crab feeds and motoring to shore in search of ice cream on the hottest afternoons.

Sometimes, I had to remind myself of my place—the guest who would be heading out soon and not returning, the girl from Nowheresville, Kansas, who had once looked forward to a weeklong vacation on a lake so small, we could see inside the windows of the cabins on the other side. Sometimes, I had to remind myself that I didn’t have a claim to anything on The Island, not the house, not the shady spot in the gazebo where I often retreated with my books, not the edge of the pier where I liked to sit with my toes skimming the surface of the water. I was only a guest in this life, an actor pulled in for a bit role. I was supporting actress to the golden girl, the one who sometimes spent the entire day in her bathing suit, a sarong tied low on her hips, her wet hair drying in crunchy waves. By being born at the right time and to the right people, she belonged to this place, and this place belonged to her.

At Keale, I’d noticed Lauren’s looks in an offhand, taken-for-granted kind of way—she was attractive enough in her jeans and ponytails, even with the thick cream she slathered on her face after a shower. But here, she was beautiful. There was no other word for it. She was beautiful when she started a fire, cupping her hands over the weak flame and blowing it to life. She was beautiful in the boat, one hand controlling the motor, seaspray stinging her face. She was beautiful when she fell asleep in the lounge chair, the edges of her sarong fluttering in a light breeze.

I could see why Joe had pursued her after that night in the gallery, when he had been so quick to discard me. Lauren had everything, but most of all she had the knowledge that no matter what, her life was going to turn out okay. She had more than a safety net from a life insurance policy; she was protected from things turning out wrong. I needed this summer program at Harvard to propel myself forward, but Lauren didn’t need anyone or anything to validate her existence. She didn’t need a poor, funny Midwest sidekick or a boyfriend who worked in a machine shop, but those were things she could easily have.

Sometimes at night, we snuck a bottle of wine down to the beach and split it between us, the alcohol making her silly and wild, and making me serious and contemplative, lost in dark thoughts. I wondered if we would still be friends five years into the future, or ten, or fifteen, if we would bump into each other at a Keale reunion and spend the night laughing over some long-ago memory, each of us getting the important details wrong. Or would we stay in touch, living in the same city, talking on the phone every day, meeting for lunches where she would tell me about her latest vacation, the most recent accomplishments of her famous family. Even in the unwritten future, I still imagined myself as the tagalong friend, with nothing of my own to contribute.

Once, in her silliness, she laughed so hard she pissed herself, then laughed even harder at the dark stain spreading down her shorts. Megan Mazeros of Woodstock, Kansas, would never have lived this down; she would rather have died of shame. Lauren Mabrey, who had everything she could ever want, waded into the ocean and emerged, pronouncing herself clean.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.” She grinned, and I smiled back, but inside I was wondering if there wasn’t a part of me—a small, bitter, jealous, horrible part—that didn’t like Lauren Mabrey at all.

Lauren

I meant to tell Megan about Joe—I really did. Every day presented dozens of opportunities, and every night ended with us chatting in the darkened shell of my bedroom, the moon hanging like a pendant outside the window. Somehow, the moment never seemed exactly right, or maybe the moments were right, but something about me was all wrong.

And then all of a sudden it was the end of June and the beginning of Megan’s last week before leaving for Cambridge. Following tradition, everyone began arriving on The Island, as if summoned by some sort of magnetic pull—first Dad and MK, then Peter, then some of Mom’s cousins with their kids.

Megan had overheard Mom refer to them as the “Brewster Holmeses,” a phrase that fascinated her. “Will the Brewster-Holmeses be joining us for dinner?” she asked in a bad imitation of a British accent, something she must have picked up from PBS.

“Their last names is Holmes, and they’re from Brewster,” I explained, but that wasn’t enough to stop her.

“The Brewster-Holmeses are in for a treat,” she remarked when she overheard my mother discussing the weekend menu with Jordana. And another time: “Will the Brewster-Holmeses be able to land their jet on The Island, do you think?”

It was best, maybe, to ignore her.

* * *

We took the boat to meet Dad and MK in Yarmouth, and it wasn’t until I spotted them waiting on the wharf that I realized how good it would be to have other people around. As much as I loved Megan, it had begun to feel claustrophobic with her in my bedroom, with her damp towels already looped over the rack before I got out of the shower. Together, we’d watched enough TV and told enough stories and worked enough jigsaw puzzles on the circular table in the den, and it was time for something new.

Megan half stood, waving, and on the wharf, MK raised a hand in acknowledgment. Dad was on his phone, briefcase clenched in one hand like he was on his way to the Capitol. Between them were two small suitcases. I killed the engine and the boat drifted over shallow water toward them.

“Ahoy, there,” MK called, reaching out with a skiff to pull us the rest of the way.

I caught the end of Dad’s conversation, something about not making any promises, about having others to consult before he could make a decision. Then he snapped his phone shut and looked from me to Megan. “Well, if it isn’t my girls.”

I stood, angling my cheek for a kiss. “Hey, Dad.”

MK handed one bag down to Megan, then the other, before taking an uneasy step onto the boat.

“How are things?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Things are things.”

He settled onto the bench next to Megan. “Haven’t you had enough of the Mabreys?”

She smiled. “It’s been torture.”

He gave a sharp, snorting laugh. “I’ll bet.”

Dad said, “Good to see you again, Megan,” and leaned over to give her a casual one-armed hug before settling down across from her. In his suit and wingtips, he looked comically out of place. With the luggage in one end and me in the other, the three of them were crammed in the middle, legs angled to the side to avoid smashing knees.

“Ready?” I called, and yanked the cord to start the engine. Over my shoulder, I caught snatches of their conversation, shouted over the motor and splash. Dad was asking Megan something about her seminar and her responses were enthusiastic. Of course—anything to do with Harvard impressed him. They were still talking when we approached The Island. I cut the engine, and we coasted toward the pier. Kat and Lizzie were on the beach, and Lizzie jumped up and down in the surf, calling to us in her incomprehensible toddler lingo.

“If it had been possible,” Dad was saying, “I would have stayed in school forever, racking up degrees.”

Megan’s laugh carried across the water. “I know what you mean. I’m thinking of grad school next fall—”

I brought the boat to an unsteady stop along the dock and didn’t feel too bad when it caught everyone slightly off balance. Dad exited first, extending a hand back to Megan.

MK grinned at me. “What about you, Lolo? Would you want to stay in school forever, too?”

“Fuck off.” I gave him a push, and he grabbed my forearms for balance, grinning.

“That’s my girl.”

* * *

MK took the boat back in the afternoon to fetch Peter, who had arrived just in time for our crab and lobster feast. There was a happy chaos around the table now that we were all here, and even Mom rallied, holding court about plans for the weekend—a family photo on the morning of the Fourth, the specific meals we would eat at specific times, the arrangements for the Brewster Holmeses. Jordana had made two giant pitchers of sangria, and we each vied for pieces of the wine-sodden fruit, spearing them with forks until Mom informed us that we were behaving like barbarians. Somehow MK and Megan began sparring again over the value of being an English major, with Peter chiming in that finance trumped anything the humanities had to offer.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Now, now,” Dad interrupted, as if he were stepping into the middle of the ring, ordering us back to our corners. He’d changed out of his suit, and his arms were pale in a short-sleeved shirt. “I’m proud of all of you.” He winked at Megan and nodded at Peter. “Even the ones I had nothing to do with.”

* * *

We settled onto couches in the living room afterward, the humid air displaced by the rotating blades of the overhead fan. It was too warm, we were too full and the night itself felt restless. MK opened bottles of beer and passed them around; Kat and Peter tucked Lizzie in for the night and only Peter returned. The conversation waxed and waned, ranging from Mom’s health—Fine, she insisted, although not very convincingly—to the weather in Washington to MK studying for the bar exam, and somehow always circling back to Megan’s upcoming seminar. I kept waiting to hear my own name on someone’s lips—And Lauren, how is the photography coming? How were your classes? Have you picked a project for your senior exhibit? I wished then that I’d stayed with Joe in Scofield, even if he hadn’t extended the offer. Joe cared. I was important to him.

Dad’s phone rang in his pants pocket, the sound startling us momentarily out of our stupor. “Hold on,” he said. “Let me get where I have some decent reception.”

We watched him as he wandered out onto the deck, slapping away the night’s bugs with one hand.

“So, did I hear you say this was a PEW scholarship?” Peter asked, turning to Megan. “That’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?”

She beamed. “Yeah. My professor wrote me a recommendation. I didn’t even know what it was all about until—”

I clapped my hands together, sick of it all. “Let’s play a game or something. What about Pictionary? Don’t we have that whiteboard in the office?”

“Pictionary?” MK groaned. “What are we, ten years old?”

“There are some games in the cupboard under the stairs,” Mom said. She’d wrapped herself in a blanket, but still seemed chilled, although the rest of us were covered in a sheen of sweat.

We all looked in the direction of the stairs, but it took too much effort to move.

From outside, somewhere on the pathway around the house, Dad’s voice cut through the dark. “You tell that lying piece of shit that we’re not going that way. I’m not going to have my hand forced...” A minute later he was back, cell phone in hand.

“I thought you were taking a break from work,” Mom commented drily.

“You’re right. No more calls tonight.” He settled onto the couch next to Megan. “So tell me more about this program,” he said, stretching out his legs on the ottoman in front of him. “It’s pregraduate. What does that mean as far as credits are concerned?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “Isn’t there anything else to talk about?”

Megan looked at me, stung.

“Someone needs her happy juice,” MK said.

I glared at him and took a long slug of beer, spilling some down my chin.

He laughed. “Classy.”

“Will you please fuck the fuck off?”

Mom sat up, the blanket falling from her shoulders. “We do not talk like that in this house.”

My sorry was an automatic reflex, as if she’d whacked me on the knee with a mallet.

“What’s the matter, anyway?” MK asked, trying to control his glee. “I mean, you’re not jealous, are you? It’s just a PEW scholarship. It’s just Harvard. No big deal.”

From her spot on the couch, I could feel Megan watching me. Dad, ever the peacemaker, asked, “Can’t we just have a nice evening here?”

“Yes. Yes, you can.” I stood up, banging my leg against the table. Some of the magazines fell to the floor.

“Where are you going?” Megan demanded. I caught the note of alarm in her voice: don’t leave me here.

I waved my hand in the direction of the beach. “Taking a little walk. I’ll be back.”

“Don’t worry. She just needs a time-out,” MK said, and I heard their laughter behind me.

I unlatched the gate that had so far managed to keep Lizzie from tumbling down the back steps. On my way to the beach, I finished the rest of the beer in three great gulps. Was I jealous of Megan? Of course not. But it would have been nice to be noticed by my own family for once.

The water was dark, purple shot through with black, the waves rolling forward, tugging back. In the distance, the lights in Yarmouth glittered. I settled onto the end of the pier, dipping my toes into the water. It was cooler down here than it had been in the house, and the night’s breeze dried the sweat on the back of my T-shirt.

Suddenly, footsteps thudded along the dock and MK was behind me. “You forgot this,” he said, holding out an open bottle of cabernet like a peace offering. The liquid sloshed in the half-full bottle.

I laughed despite myself. “You are such an ass.”

He sank down next to me, the wooden planks shifting under his weight. “Maybe. But you’re the one who’s acting like a three-year-old.”

I took a sip of wine, and then MK took one, and we passed the bottle back and forth like we used to do when we were kids, back when getting caught would have had actual consequences.

“How’s life after law school?” I asked.

He shrugged. “All they have me doing is studying for the bar, so it feels like I’m still in law school.”

“And then what, you conquer the world?”

“All in good time, little sister. All in good time.”

I reached for the bottle again and felt MK’s hand on my lower back a half second before a push sent me off the edge. The water was waist high and frigid, a shock to the system. “Jerk! What was that for?” I sputtered, thrusting my arms toward him. “Help me up.”

“Seriously? You think I’m going to fall for that?”

In retaliation, I yanked the hems of his shorts and he fell into the water with a splash that soaked the rest of me. The bottle of cabernet came with him, filling with salt water and bobbing silently away. I swung at him, and he caught my arm, the two of us play fighting until he took me by the shoulders, dunking me all the way under. I stayed there for a moment, long enough to locate his crotch with my knee. When I came up he was wincing, hands cupped beneath the water.

“Fuck, it’s cold,” MK said, his teeth chattering. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You didn’t happen to bring any dry towels, did you?”

We waded closer to the shore and stumbled onto the beach, dripping and shivering. “Maybe Megan can bring us some towels,” I said, and together we bellowed, “Me-gan! Meeeeeee-gan!”

There was no answer. Between us and the house, the trees waved silently in the breeze. I twisted the fabric of my T-shirt, sending a stream of water trickling onto the beach.

Next to me, MK had stripped down to his boxers, his wet clothes bundled in his arms. “What’s her deal, anyway?”

I laughed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is she here?”

“I invited her, you moron. We’re friends.”

“Right...”

I shoved him harder than I meant to, knocking him off balance. “What, are you upset that she’s not interested in you?”

He grinned. “Who says she’s not interested in me?”

I remembered, as I hadn’t in a long time, their sloppy New Year’s Eve kiss. “Seriously, don’t be such a pig for once.”

MK smirked. “I’ll try, but I’m not making any promises.”

I started for the footpath, hurrying against the cold. “Can’t you just pretend to be a normal human?”

From behind me came the unmistakable sound of MK beating on his chest. “Me man. Me no have friends. Me have conquests.”

* * *

The house was quiet when I entered, dripping water all the way upstairs. There was a light in the living room, and I caught a snatch of low conversation as I passed—my parents, having a heart-to-heart. In the upstairs bathroom, I left my clothes in a heap and grabbed a clean bath sheet, wrapping it around my body.

Megan was already in bed, but the reading light was still on and a book was open in front of her. Her smile was hesitant, and I felt every inch the bitch I had been earlier, when I’d left her with my family. Megan was completely right to be proud of her scholarship. She had every right to be happy.

I hovered over the bed until she moved her legs out of the way, giving me room to sit down.

“You went swimming?”

I ran a hand through my wet hair, working out the snarls. “Not intentionally.”

She smiled, darting me another hesitant glance. “Sounds like fun.”

“I want to tell you something. I should have told you earlier, but...” I shook my head. Megan closed her book and hugged her knees to her chest, waiting. Just do it already, I ordered myself. And then I said in a sudden rush, before I could lose my nerve, “I’m sleeping with Joe. That guy you used to know. The one who was there at the gallery.”

Her face was blank, not filled with surprise or horror or hurt or confusion. She didn’t even seem to blink.

“Since February,” I continued, still watching her. “I know that makes me a shitty person because I should have told you. There wasn’t a good reason for me not to tell you. Even Joe said I should.”

Her voice was flat. “Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know. I mean, at the time, I had all kinds of reasons, but none of them seem like good reasons now.”

She shifted on the bed, hugging her pillow to her chest. “So, are you in love or something?”

I laughed, running my fingers through the ends of my hair self-consciously. “I don’t know. I mean, we’re just...”

“Yeah,” she said. “I get it.”

No, I thought. She didn’t get it, because I wasn’t sure I got it myself. I’d been thinking about Joe all summer, missing the way I felt when I was with him. Missing him. Waking sometimes in the middle of the night, pressing a pillow to my chest as if it were his body I could pull close.

“Well,” Megan said, scooting over in a way that meant I had to stand up. “I’m getting pretty tired.”

I stared at her. “That’s it? You’re not mad at me? I thought you’d be more upset.”

Again the blank, unblinking stare. “Do you want me to be upset?”

“No. I want everything to be fine between us.”

She reached behind her head to flip the switch on the reading lamp, sending the room into darkness. “Why wouldn’t everything be fine?”

“Good,” I said into the shadows of the alcove. “Good, I’m so glad. I was worried what you would say. I kept wanting to say something, but I was thinking that you would...”

Megan shifted in her bed again, away from me and toward the wall, and my words hung there between us, hovering between apology and excuse.

* * *

I didn’t realize that I was asleep until noises in the hallway woke me—a high-pitched sob, feet pounding on the hardwood. Megan was there before me, barefooted in her short pajamas.

“What’s going on?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The hallway light was blinding. I peeked over the railing and saw that the chandelier in the foyer was lit, too. Something was definitely wrong. Megan followed me downstairs, where Dad was standing on the porch in a T-shirt and cotton pants.

He turned to us. “It’s Katherine. Peter and your mom are going with her.”

“Going where? What happened?”

“She wasn’t feeling well—it could just be indigestion or something, but she was cramping, and they thought it would be better not to wait until morning.”

Bile rose in my throat, remembering how sick Kat had been looking recently. “Should we go, too? Maybe there’s something we can do.”

Dad put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve already called the hospital. An ambulance is going to meet them on shore. And your mom will call as soon as they know anything.”

“What about Lizzie?” Megan asked.

Dad glanced at her. “She’s sleeping. Maybe when she wakes up...”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll watch her,” she said.

Even though it was too late, I hurried down the pathway to the beach, with Megan close behind me. Halfway there, we heard the motor sputtering, then the familiar catch. At the steps leading down to the beach, I stopped, spotting them out on the water, sliding away from us. Peter was at the motor, and Mom and Kat were on the bench seat, a blanket draped over Kat’s bony shoulders. Her moan floated back to us like the call of a lonely sea animal, until the boat was too far away, and the sound was absorbed by the water.

Megan

Peter and Mrs. Mabrey took turns waiting with Kat in the hospital, and the rest of us stayed behind, getting updates by phone. Lizzie became my sole responsibility, and somehow that felt right, as if all along I’d been hired to be her au pair, making sure her teeth were brushed and her hair combed. Kat was released two days later, with the promise that she would be on full bed rest. After the fourth, Peter would take her back to Connecticut.

Kat’s return to the house coincided with the arrival of the Brewster-Holmeses, who had been forgotten in the general craziness of the previous days. They spilled out of their fancy chartered boat with American flag T-shirts and inflatable inner tubes, instantly overwhelming The Island’s relative quiet. There were five of them—Mrs. Mabrey’s first cousin Patrick, his wife, Sue, their ten-year-old twins, Eric and Patrick Jr., and seven-year-old Annabelle. They were sleeping in the guest cottages, but during the day they spread out in the main house, occupying every lounge chair, sofa and bathroom. Wet towels and swimsuits dripped from surfaces; it was impossible to enter the front door without kicking a pile of flip-flops out of the way.

“We should have a picnic lunch,” Sue Holmes suggested at eleven-thirty, when breakfast dishes had finally been cleared away. “All of us, down on the beach. There are too many of us in here, and the kids are going crazy.”

Jordana flung up her hands in exasperation.

“I’ll help get it together,” Sue said, sensing that she’d thrown the domestic world into chaos. “Now, where do you think I can find a picnic basket?”

“Can we go out on the boat after lunch?” one of the twins asked, prompting a dash for swim trunks and towels and sunblock.

I asked Lauren if she would watch Lizzie while I stayed behind.

She raised one of her perfect eyebrows, product of a waxing last week in Yarmouth. “You’re not coming?”

I shook my head. “Just feeling a little tired.”

It was a relief to have them gone, the house quiet without kids shrieking or balls being tossed. But it was just as much of a relief to have a break from Lauren. We hadn’t talked since her casual announcement the other night. There had been the chaos of Kat’s condition and then the arrival of the Brewster-Holmeses, but there was also the fact that I was feeling restless, ready to wash my hands of all of them.

I helped myself to a leftover breakfast scone and escaped to the small room under the stairs that served as the Mabreys’ home office on The Island. With the door closed, I felt the instant relief that came from quiet, from escaping constant noises and needs. I’d been emailing my mother every few days since I arrived, and she’d replied, the gist of her message hidden in long newsy bits that made me miss her with a sudden, twisting ache. Woodstock was hot. Mom had gone shopping for new patio furniture but hadn’t seen anything she liked. Gerry was hoping I could pick up a Harvard sweatshirt for him, and he would pay me back when they saw me at the end of the summer.

This was normal, regular life.

I dashed off a quick reply, hesitating before I hit Send. Mom had friends, women she’d known since high school or even earlier, who she still saw regularly in town. They planned semiannual trips to the casino together; they met once a month for Margarita Mondays at the Mexican restaurant just outside of Woodstock. I knew Mom would be good for friendship advice, but it seemed too much to go into here, too difficult to provide the wording and tone and context needed for an email. Besides, I could imagine her reply, the sort of simple logic that was nonetheless compelling. Sometimes people just grow apart. Maybe that’s for the best.

* * *

They came back from the beach in the late afternoon, leaving a trail of toys and towels from the front porch through to the foyer, Jordana’s freshly mopped floor sprinkled with sand. I was sitting on a couch in the living room with a book on my lap and a highlighter clenched between my teeth.

Michael put a hand on my forehead. He smelled like sun and sweat. “Feeling better?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Where’s everyone else?”

Lauren yawned. “Dad’s helping Uncle Patrick return the cruiser. He only rented it for the day.” She plopped down next to me, leaning against my shoulder. Her wet hair was braided and tied with one of Lizzie’s chunky elastics. “God, I’m tired. Think I’ll take a nap.” I expected her to head upstairs, but instead she pulled the quilt from the back of the couch and curled up next to me, her head heavy on my shoulder.

We ate dinner on the back deck, the only place that could seat twelve comfortably, with Lizzie perched at one end in her high chair. I picked listlessly at my food, wondering if I was in fact coming down with something or if it was a general malaise, brought on by heat and exhaustion.

“Tonight’s fireworks night, isn’t it?” asked one of the twins, the one with the flat mole by his ear. This was apparently the only way to distinguish them, except that I’d already forgotten whether it was Eric or Patrick Jr. who had the mole.

“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Mabrey corrected. “They do a big thing in Yarmouth, and we have front row seats from our beach.”

“What about the ones we brought?” Annabelle whined.

Sue rolled her eyes. “Patrick stopped at a roadside stand and spent hundreds of dollars on these stupid fireworks. He’s basically turned our children into pyromaniacs. I promised that we could do some down by the beach, where they won’t start anything on fire.”

Mrs. Mabrey smiled tightly, annoyed to have the schedule disrupted.

“It’ll be nice to do our own fireworks,” Senator Mabrey said, his words carrying all the weight of a judicial pronouncement. “We haven’t done that in years, not since Lauren was little.”

Just after sunset, we traipsed down to the beach with lawn chairs and towels and a case of beer and a box of long-reach oven matches. The Brewster-Holmeses—I couldn’t not think of them that way—lugged boxes of fireworks onto the beach, and Michael shone a flashlight while Eric and Patrick sorted the fireworks into piles, by category. Annabelle tried to help and was rebuffed at every turn; she ended up claiming the sparklers for herself and Lizzie. Peter lit them one by one, and the girls went into a wild sparkler frenzy, dancing in and out of the water, like fiery amphibian creatures. Lizzie charged toward me, demanding that I appreciate the whirls and sparks.

“Okay, okay,” I laughed, brushing off a spark that landed on my bare leg. “Why don’t you write something in the air, like your name?”

She grinned, making indecipherable swirling marks in the air that might have been the letters of her name or nothing at all. “Do you think Mommy can see?”

Mrs. Mabrey and Kat had decided to stay and watch from the back deck of the main house. The space between the house and the beach was thick with foliage, but they would have been able to see little bursts of sparkler light and the ambient glow of fireworks.

“Mmm, maybe,” I said, and Lizzie ran off again, back toward the water.

We settled onto the beach in a line, waiting for the show—Peter and Mr. Mabrey and Patrick and Sue, empty bottles of Sam Adams sticking out of the sand like little flags marking their territory. I lowered myself onto a beach towel a few yards away and did the math in my head. Thirty-six more hours, and I would be on my way to Cambridge. Lauren would get me to Yarmouth, and a bus would take me the rest of the way. I was both nervous for the experience—would I be even half as smart or qualified as the other students in the program?—and excited for a break from the Mabreys, from smiling and being polite and navigating their social rules.

Lauren had brought her camera, and was documenting the scene with the diligence of a forensic analyst. Later, she could tuck the prints into an album to prove how wonderful they all were, how wonderful and happy. She laughed at something Lizzie said, and I remembered her coming into the bedroom the other night, suddenly determined to unburden herself to me. I’m sleeping with Joe. Not an explanation—just a statement of fact. Also: I know I should have told you earlier. Not an apology, not an acknowledgment of the lies she must have told night after night, about having to work in the darkroom or study in the library. She hadn’t apologized for all the times she’d blown me off, for putting sex ahead of friendship, for the ultimate betrayal of Joe being someone I had cared about. Immediately after her confession, she’d seemed lighter to me, no longer burdened by the weight of what she knew. Her conscience was clear, and everything was supposed to be fine between us. Her perfect world could resume.

“Who needs another one?” Senator Mabrey asked, holding out a bottle. “Megan?”

“Sure.” I took fast sips, reveling in my bitterness. Near the water’s edge, Lauren was teasing reactions out of Annabelle and Lizzie, who were hamming for the camera.

“All right,” Michael called. “Let’s get this show on the road!”

Three fireworks had been set up on a plank, and one of the twins struck a long oven match, tapping it briefly to the fuses and jumping back.

“Don’t go burning your fingers off!” Sue called, her voice shrill.

These weren’t serious fireworks, like they’d been in Woodstock. Most of the things my family had experimented with fell into the category of “illegal explosive devices,” to which the law enforcement in Woodstock had turned a blind eye. My dad liked things that he could tamper with in the garage, things that shot into the air with huge booming sounds. The Brewster-Holmeses’ fireworks were relatively tame, with short whistling sounds and flashes of impressive color. I watched as Lauren moved silently around the beach, camera held steady with both hands, getting too close to the explosion at times and backing hastily away. Some of the fireworks that were designed to spin fizzled out in the sand, and there was much discussion about whether they could be lit on the end of the pier, with Sue vehemently stating no and eventually being overruled.

Michael came over and nudged me with his foot. “Can you get some more beer?”

I glanced around, annoyed that this task was falling to me. “Are we already out?”

“We’ve got some serious heavyweights in this group,” he said, offering a hand to pull me to my feet. “In a few minutes, I bet they’ll be restless.”

I brushed loose grains of sand off my legs. “No problem. Be right back.”

The Island was eerie at night, something I only noticed when I was by myself. Footpaths cut through the trees, heading in a rambling way to the main house, to the cottages, to the beach, to the gazebo, to benches placed here and there. In our early weeks on The Island, when it had only been Mrs. Mabrey, Lauren and me, I’d been scared to go too far from the main house on my own, especially after sunset. Lauren had teased me about it—what do you think is going to happen? I’d laughed at myself, too, figuring I’d seen too many horror movies at the dollar theater in Woodstock. But now that there were so many people here, their voices carrying through the night over the hisses and booms of the fireworks, I felt more secure. I wasn’t likely to go toppling off the side of a cliff, and nothing was likely to jump out and get me.

So I didn’t even turn around when I heard footsteps behind me, the soles of tennis shoes slapping against the flagstones.

Then Michael was there next to me, out of breath.

“Really,” I said. “I’ve got this. A couple more six packs should do it.”

“Figured I’d keep you company,” he said.

“Weren’t you helping with the fireworks?”

“Peter’s got it under control.”

We took a few steps in silence, and then I felt his hand on my lower back, the touch light, like a form of chivalry, as if he were escorting me up the path. What was this? I walked faster, moving out of his reach. I remembered that New Year’s Eve back at Holmes House, the unwelcome kiss I’d been unable to dodge.

“Hey,” I said, when his hand found me again, lower this time, his palm cupping my ass in my denim cutoffs. I whirled around. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Sure you do,” he said. There was a strange smile on his face, an expression I hadn’t seen on him since that night in the basement, when I’d sidestepped his obvious hard-on. What was it he’d said then? Something about bragging rights, something I owed him.

“Really, I’m flattered, but no. Okay? No.” I reached out and gave his shoulder a let’s-be-friends, no-hard-feelings kind of pat, and I turned around, hoping that had done the trick.

I hadn’t gone far when one of Michael’s arms went around my neck and his other hand clamped down over my mouth. I yelled, a muffled sound that didn’t go anywhere. We were maybe halfway between the beach, with its crack and sizzle of fireworks, and the house, a towering behemoth lurking behind a canopy of trees. I remembered Mrs. Mabrey and Katherine watching fireworks from the deck. Would they be able to hear me if I yelled?

With Michael’s hand against my mouth, I screamed again, writhing in his grasp. He lost hold for a moment and I bit down on his finger, tearing the skin with my teeth. This was a joke, wasn’t it? Like when he and Lauren tussled, grabbing hair and going for the nuts. He was going to let me go and we were going to laugh, and he was going to make some comment about me overreacting.

Then he hooked his other arm around my middle, a fist pressing into my ribs. This wasn’t a joke. There was no punch line. There was only Michael and the darkness, an island with few places to run, the scattered members of his family.

“You’re not going to scream again, and you’re not going to bite me,” Michael said into my ear. “Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re not going to pretend this is something you haven’t wanted all along.”

I felt helpless and sick, the night’s dinner rising on a tide of nausea. What was better—to resist or to fight? Which would give me the best chance of getting away?

“What’s it going to be, Megs?” My nickname felt dirty and unfamiliar in his voice.

I nodded, wide-eyed, and he took the hand from my mouth.

“That’s better,” he said, and the smile was there again, grim and unpleasant, as if this was somehow a bitter necessity, something he was bound to see through to the end.

I darted out of his reach, seeing my chance, and made it a few stumbling steps before he grabbed me again, his arm tight on my elbow. “Please,” I whispered. “I don’t want this.”

He propelled me forward, his knees knocking into mine. I glanced around wildly, trying to gauge how I could break away, where I could run. One of Michael’s hands was on the back of my neck now, my hair twisting there with each movement. He jerked me to the left, to a side path that led away from the house, toward the gazebo where I’d spent so many hours this summer, glancing between my textbook and the constant, drifting waves. At its northern end, the gazebo was perched over a steep drop through dense foliage and jutting rocks. I dragged my feet and we floundered, moving forward in a herky-jerky dance.

“Let me go,” I begged. “I won’t tell anyone. I’ll just leave and—”

His hand clapped over my mouth again.

If someone had come upon us at that moment, I wondered what they would see. Two drunken people playing a rough game? Two lovers, engaged in a wild embrace? At what point would it look like a struggle? He pushed me into the gazebo, bending my body like we were ballroom dancers, and my body let me down, succumbing to choreography I hadn’t remembered learning. I imagined myself describing him to the police: six-two, broad-shouldered. He probably had sixty pounds on me, a weight I calculated as he lowered his body onto mine. But of course, he wasn’t a stranger. I knew his fucking name. I knew him.

With my free hand, I clawed at his chest, trying to pry his hand from my mouth. I punched at him, hitting his back and side. I made a fist and swung it, hoping to connect with his crotch as he unzipped his shorts.

“Stop fighting,” he hissed. “You know you want this.”

There was a second when he let go of my mouth, twisting both arms behind me and securing them with one hand. In that second, before his hand could silence me, I let out a scream louder than I’d ever screamed before. Not a word, not language. I couldn’t form help or stop; this was a primal sound, the cry of one animal being attacked by another.

It didn’t take long, start to finish. The floorboards of the gazebo were rough, and pine needles bit into the back of my thighs. I tried to keep my legs together, to attack with my feet and knees and arms. I scratched his face; he bruised my elbow, slamming it onto the deck so hard I literally saw stars, tiny sunbursts in the black landscape of my closed eyes. He pulled down my shorts and ripped off my underwear. He was inside me, saying “I knew you’d like this, I knew you’d like this” in rhythm with his thrusts.

I don’t know why I stopped screaming. Maybe, at some level, I didn’t want anyone to find us—not when I was naked from the waist down, crying and helpless, unable to protect myself. The shame was starting, the deep-down burn that went beyond scratches and bruises and things that could scab and heal. I’d been here before, that last night with Kurt Haschke, although I hadn’t said no then, hadn’t screamed or fought, hadn’t feared whatever came next.

Sometimes, when I thought about it later, I wondered how I hadn’t had a better sense of who Michael was and what he was capable of doing. Over the years I would replay every moment, looking for the time when I must have sent the wrong signal, encouraged when I didn’t mean to encourage. Was it on the boat, when our legs had been pressed against each other, knee to hip? Had I been too sexy in my black one-piece, my shorts too short, the V of my T-shirt too low? Had I given off a scent, a pheromone only he was attuned to, like a dog to a high-pitched whistle? Only that afternoon, he’d pressed his warm palm to my cool forehead, asking how I felt. Now his fingernails dug half moons into my skin, his breath quickened.

I thought about what it meant that he wasn’t using a condom, that I wasn’t on the pill.

I thought every horrible thing a person could think.

Michael said, “Fuck, someone’s coming.” Just like that, he was off me, zipping up. I scuttled back like a crab, struggling into my shorts, which were still hanging off one ankle. I felt around on my hands and knees for my underwear.

We heard Mr. Mabrey before he came into sight. He was talking into his phone, head bent, strides purposeful. In one hand he held three empty bottles, the glass clinking as he passed. Was he wondering what was taking me so long, why I hadn’t returned with a new case of beer? Had they even noticed I was gone, and Michael, too?

I didn’t call out, didn’t try to get Mr. Mabrey’s attention. It was too late; it was done now.

Michael tucked in his shirt, straightened the collar and brushed pine needles from his arms. He smoothed his hands through his thick hair, as if he were completing his regular grooming ritual in front of a mirror.

I wiped my hands on the hem of my shirt, then wiped the tears from my eyes with my dirty palms. You’re the same person you were ten minutes ago, I promised myself. This doesn’t change who you are.

Michael took a few steps out of the gazebo, looking in either direction down the footpath before turning back to me. I froze, my eyes darting around for a weapon. If he came closer, I would scream. I would kill him, even if I had to do it with my bare hands. Was he going to get rid of the evidence—strangle me or hit me with a rock or toss me over the edge of the gazebo, watching my body tumble down the side of the cliff? Would he follow me, chase me if I ran?

But Michael only said, “You call me if you ever need anything.” It was dark in the shadow of the gazebo, and I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read anger or regret or satisfaction there. A sob came up my throat, and I bit it back.

There was a loud boom from the beach, followed by a fizzing sound, like the sky was opening a giant bottle of soda. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and Michael disappeared down the path, heading back to the beach.

Lauren

The fireworks were winding down by the time I finished a second roll of film and dug around in my bag for another, coming up empty-handed. I’d captured close-ups of sparks and bursts of fireworks, and now I was thinking of other angles—on my stomach on the beach, aiming upward? What if I went out on the boat and shot from there, catching the reflection of light on the water? If I hurried, I had time to grab a fresh roll or two from my bedroom before they finished.

“Hey,” I called, spotting the white of MK’s T-shirt as he came down the path. “Where have you been? The natives are getting restless.”

MK’s face was red, and he was breathing hard.

“Don’t tell me we’re out of beer,” I said.

He gave me a funny, hesitant smile and looked over his shoulder, to where the path disappeared around a bend. “Promise you won’t be mad.”

“Why would I be mad? What did you do?”

“It just happened,” he said, palms up, like he was trying to explain a shattered vase. “We didn’t plan it or anything.”

I jerked my head, scanning as far as I could see into the foliage. “You did not. You fucking did not.”

He grinned.

I pushed him on the chest, and he stepped back, laughing. “What the hell were you thinking?”

He raised his hands, trying to distance himself from me, from what he’d done. From what they had done. “It’s not my fault! She’s single, I’m single, she’s been flirting with me all week...look, don’t make it into a big deal. It wasn’t that great.”

“You asshole,” I spat. “She’s my friend. Is nothing safe around here? Is everything that moves fair game?”

“Don’t say anything,” he said, grabbing my shoulder. “I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”

“I wish you hadn’t!” I shoved him again. “You are such a—I don’t even know the word. How could you do this to me?”

He did manage to look at least a little bit contrite. “I know, I feel bad already. Look, I promise, it was a onetime thing. But we’re adults. We can handle it. Nothing has to change.”

“Bastard,” I said, my mind reeling. “Of course it changes everything.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, flicking the end of my braid so it whipped over my shoulder. And then he had the gall—the fucking gall—to whistle as he disappeared down the path, back to the beach.

Megan

I don’t know how I made it into the house, or how I made it up the stairs, or how I was suddenly sitting on the closed toilet seat in the bathroom next to the room I shared with Lauren. I was shivering, rocking back and forth, trying to form thoughts. Get out of here. Call the police. I didn’t have a cell phone, but there was a landline in the office. Could I call 911 from there? Would the police come out from the mainland? Was The Island even in their jurisdiction, or was it somehow outside geographical boundaries? I couldn’t imagine police arriving here, docking at the pier, shining flashlights up the path, searching the gazebo for evidence—would there be evidence, other than scattered pine needles, the swirls of dirt and dust that had been trampled by our feet?

I tried to think. The evidence was on me, inside me. Go to the hospital. After what had happened with Kat earlier in the week, I knew there was a hospital in Yarmouth. There someone could do an examination and contact the police for me. This much I knew from watching endless Law & Order marathons with my dad, a million years ago. Someone would swab for evidence and that would trigger an investigation, and then I would...

Okay, think. I could call my mom. Even if she dropped everything to come, it would be a full day or more before she arrived. I could call one of the Sisters, although I didn’t know their home addresses or if their parents even had listed numbers. And there was Miriam, five hours away in Scofield. If I could get her home number, she would do something, I was sure of it. She would take me back with her, feed me and hold me while I cried. But then I would miss the start of my seminar at Harvard—unless she could smooth that over for me, make some phone calls.

Just get off The Island, then. Get off the fucking island.

Was I safe with Michael nearby? Was he done with me or waiting outside the door for another opportunity to catch me off guard, drag me down the hallway to his bedroom, stuff a pillowcase in my mouth and tie me to his bed with the sheets? No—he wouldn’t. Yes—he might.

Someone was going to have to take me to the hospital, or at least get me off The Island. I would have to tell Lauren. I would have to just come out with it: your brother raped me. That was the right word. It was the word I would have to tell the police. I would have to tell her everything, too—how he came up behind me, how he’d forced me to the ground, how he’d pulled down my shorts...

For the moment, I had to wait. Lauren was still down at the beach. Michael was probably there, too, helping to shoot off the last of the fireworks. For the moment, I was safe, then. For the moment, I could think.

Someone knocked on the door, a soft rap of the knuckles. I watched as the knob turned. Michael. He had come back for me, and I hadn’t even had the good sense to lock the door.

“Stop,” I sobbed, but the door opened anyway.

It was Mrs. Mabrey, a blanket from one of the downstairs couches draped over her shoulders. “I thought I heard someone come in,” she said, and we stared at each other. She looked slightly off center, and I realized she was wearing a wig, a bit askew on her scalp. Of course it was a wig—she must have lost her hair with the chemo and radiation, but this whole summer, not one of the Mabreys had mentioned it.

I could see my reflection in the mirror over the sink, so I knew that my face was smudged with dirt and streaked with tears, and that my right arm was red at the elbow, where Michael had slammed it into the wood planks. My arms and legs were scratched, and a few pine needles were still attached to my filthy shirt and shorts. Semen had dried on my thighs in a sticky trail.

Here was my chance to get help. Talk to a responsible adult. Wasn’t that what I’d been taught, all the way back in elementary school, in those lessons about “stranger danger”? I needed to say something. I had to ask for help. I whispered, “I was outside by the gazebo... I was walking back...” It wasn’t the way I should have started; it wasn’t the way that made sense because where I was and what I’d been doing weren’t the important part of this story.

I didn’t want to have to say it. I wanted her to see me and understand what had happened to me. I wanted a surrogate mother who would put her arms around me and promise that it would be okay.

But Mrs. Mabrey’s face was expressionless. “We may have our faults as a family,” she said, the words coming out dry and raspy, as if from a voice that hadn’t been heard in a long time. Her gaze moved from the scratches on my arms up to my face. “But in the end, we always support each other.” She pulled the door closed in a way that felt final and definite, like screwing the lid on a jar, or slamming shut the pages of a book, or telling me that no one would ever believe what I had to say.

Lauren

I was shaking when I reached the house, furious with both of them. Megan was my guest, my friend. Didn’t that mean something? Wasn’t she obligated to act like a guest, to follow the basic courtesies and expectations that came along with being a guest? At the top of that list was “don’t sleep with my brother”—right? It was one of those obvious things that didn’t need to be spelled out to any decent human being.

And Michael. God. He was such a pig. If she had the working parts, he was interested. Apparently, he had no moral quandaries, either. She was my friend, my roommate, but there were unwritten rules for siblings, too. There were just as many thou shalt nots.

From the den, I heard my mother’s voice. “Who’s there? Michael?”

I almost laughed then, realizing the full effect of what they’d done. Imagine if my mother knew. Dad was another story—he would shake his head and say he was disappointed and that would be the end of it. Mother would—what? Make Megan pack her bags and dump her on the wharf in Yarmouth in the middle of the night? Forbid her from ever contacting anyone in the family again? Megan might have been my roommate, but this would solidify the fact that she wasn’t Mabrey material, not at all. Forget Keale, forget the program at Harvard. There were a million other ways she didn’t measure up.

My mother was lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Her wig was tilted at a strange angle, exposing part of her scalp.

“Where’s Megan?” I demanded.

Mom didn’t look at me. “Upstairs.”

Something didn’t feel right. Did she already know about Michael and Megan? Had she sniffed them out, the way she’d always sniffed out the trouble I got myself into?

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

I took a step closer, and she screwed her eyes shut, like a child pretending to be asleep. “Why are you acting so weird?”

The screen door slapped behind me, and I turned around to see Aunt Sue dragging Annabelle by the hand. Annabelle’s shorts were wet at the crotch, and her cheeks were tear stained. “Someone had herself a little accident,” Aunt Sue said, and the two of them disappeared into the downstairs bathroom, the soles of Annabelle’s shoes squeaking on the hardwood.

Mom ignored them, still staring up at the ceiling fan, practically catatonic.

* * *

I stormed upstairs and found Megan sitting on her bed, arms wrapped around her body, rocking back and forth. She stopped to look up at me. “Lauren—” she began, and then she seemed stuck, as if there was no way to continue. That was fine with me; I wasn’t interested in her version of the story. I didn’t want my brother to be an anecdote for her future stories. This one guy, this one time. I didn’t want to know the particulars, the whats and the hows. I was going for the bigger question.

“Just tell me. Why did you do it?”

She blinked, surprised. I noticed then how dirty she was, as if she had been rolling around in the bushes. Which was probably what had happened, one of the specific details I didn’t want to know.

I unwound the strap from my neck, set my camera carefully on top of the dresser and closed the door. It was too late to go back to the beach; the fireworks were done by now, and I didn’t trust myself not to scream at MK in front of everyone. “I know what happened, okay? I ran into my brother, and he told me everything.”

“He told you everything?” Her question came slowly, as if she were sounding out the words.

I shook my head. “I guess not. He spared me the salacious details, which I’m just fine not knowing, thank you very much.”

Megan bent forward at the waist, head over her knees.

“You’re not going to tell me why you did it? I trusted you.”

She didn’t say anything.

I began undressing, stepping out of my shorts and T-shirt, sliding off the bathing suit I’d been wearing since before breakfast. My pajamas had disappeared into the day’s laundry, so I chose a pair of too-warm flannels and a tank top. I heard movement from Megan, and when I turned around, she had her duffel bag out, the zipper gaping open.

“What are you going to do?” I demanded. “Cut and run a day early?”

She didn’t answer.

“I don’t blame him,” I snarled. “I mean, you are female and you are alive and you did cross his field of vision. I just can’t believe you fell for it. Jesus. He’s my freaking brother.” I shuddered from a brief vision of the two of them together, MK’s lips pressed against Megan’s.

“You blame me,” she said, like a robot programmed for repetition.

I rolled my eyes. “God, Megan.”

She opened her dresser and pulled a clean shirt and shorts from the top of two neatly folded piles. As she changed, she turned her back to me—surprising modesty, I thought grimly, for someone who didn’t have qualms about sleeping with my brother when his family was literally within earshot. She wasn’t even wearing underwear, I realized, turning away in disgust.

“Can I use this?” she asked a moment later, holding up a plastic bag that had been sitting on top of my dresser for weeks. It held a trinket I’d bought in one of the stores by the wharf, a sand globe with purple lettering that read Maine 2002. “Just the bag,” she clarified.

I shrugged, watching as she wadded up her dirty clothes and placed them in the bag. She tied the ends and shoved the plastic bag into her duffel, then began transferring the rest of her clothes. She seemed remarkably calm for someone who had just upset the whole order of our friendship.

“How long have you been planning this?”

She whirled around. “What?”

“I know that you kissed him that New Year’s Eve.”

Her eyes were wide. I’d surprised her, for once. “How did you know that?”

I laughed. “I was there, remember? I was the one who invited you to stay with my family—just like this time.”

“You were sleeping.”

I shook my head. “I woke up in time for the main event, I guess.”

“Then you know that he kissed me. It’s an important distinction.”

I shrugged. “You were both flirting. You could have stopped it.”

Again, a blank stare. Then she turned her back to me, removed her books from the shelf next to her bed and placed them inside her duffel bag, sliding them into the gaps left by her clothing. All summer she’d handled those books so reverently, highlighting lines in clean yellow streaks, making precise notations in the margins with the fine point of her mechanical pencil. She was packing for her trip to Harvard, of course. That had been coming all along, the expiration date looming on our summer together. But doing it tonight, in front of me, made the act feel more final.

The bag packed, she heaved it off the bed and onto the floor. Finally, she turned to me again. “I think it would be a good idea if I left in the morning.”

“Seriously? That’s dumb. Everyone’s expecting you to be here tomorrow.” Tomorrow was the Fourth of July and all our festivities, the real hurrah of the summer. Maybe tomorrow, she would see what she had done wrong. Maybe tomorrow, I’d realize that I’d blown things out of proportion.

She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at me. “Did he tell anyone else?”

I rolled my eyes. “I very much doubt it. My parents wouldn’t exactly be thrilled.” Then I remembered Mom downstairs, the strange way she was staring at the ceiling. What did she know? “Seriously. You’re staying at my house. On a tiny island. Did you think no one would ever find out?”

She didn’t answer. She was sitting stiffly on her bed, hands on her knees. I felt bad for her, almost. If it hadn’t been my brother, I would have sat next to her and hugged her and told her that we all make mistakes. But Megan hadn’t considered my feelings, had she? She’d hardly even talked to me over the last few days, ever since I told her—

“Wait,” I blurted. “Is this because of Joe?”

She straightened like a puppet controlled by an invisible string. “Is what because of Joe?”

My head spun. I’d told her that I was sleeping with Joe, her ex-whatever, and just a few days later, she slept with my brother. It was a twisted kind of payback. At the time, her reaction had seemed too strange, so un-Megan-like, so reserved and nonchalant. But now it all made sense. Should I have seen that coming? I felt uneasy now, sick to my stomach. “Did he really mean that much to you? You never mentioned his name to me, not once.”

Megan’s hand was on her knee, her fingers tracing a thin red line that ran up and over her kneecap and coming away, faintly pink with blood. “Well, then,” she said. “I guess we must be even now.”

And then her hand reached over for the bedside lamp, plunging the alcove into darkness. The mattress creaked for a moment as she settled into it, and the room was quiet.

Bitch, I thought, still fuming when I slipped between my cool sheets a moment later. It was earlier than I normally went to bed, but I didn’t want to go downstairs and run into MK or deal with my sugar-hyped cousins. It was best to let the exhaustion take me, to close my eyes and be done with this day. Only that morning, Uncle Patrick and Aunt Sue and the kids had arrived, and Kat had been discharged from the hospital. Already those events seemed distant, etched into the long-ago past. In the present were Megan and MK, and tomorrow the nuclear fallout, the half-life of what they’d done.

Maybe I wouldn’t fight her if she wanted to leave a day early. Maybe, I thought, the reflection of the moon playing across my closed eyelids, it was best to just let her go.

* * *

The first scream came just after midnight, waking the whole house. There was no doubt this time that it was Katherine. A moment later, Lizzie was screaming, too, a high-pitched, relentless Mom-my! Mom-my! that stung my ears. I met Peter in the hallway, still wearing the clothes he’d worn down at the beach for fireworks. He rushed past with a handful of towels, barking “Call the hospital” in my direction.

“What do you mean?” I asked, following him toward their bedroom. Annabelle and Lizzie were both awake, crying in the doorway. “Peter, what’s happening?”

Mom and Dad were at Kat’s bedside, trying to reason with her. I caught snatches of their conversation around the girls’ sobbing. We have to get you out of here. You need to see a doctor.

But the worst was Kat herself, repeating in a controlled voice, “It’s just a little blood. I’m not having a miscarriage. It’s just a little blood. Just a little blood.”

“Okay, we’re going to get you downstairs,” Peter said. He and Dad made a sling out of their arms and hoisted Kat, with much grunting and swearing, down the stairs.

Mom came into the hallway, clutching the formerly white bathroom towels now stained dark with blood. She dropped them into a heap on the floor. “We’re going back to the hospital. You and Megan need to look after the girls while we take care of this.”

I nodded numbly and held out my arms for Lizzie, who stopped midshriek, her mouth open, too stunned for sound. I held out a hand for Annabelle. “Let’s go get your mom.”

“I don’t know where my shoes are,” she whined.

“That’s okay. You don’t need shoes for this.”

MK came in, shirtless, running a hand through his hair. I could hardly look at him. “What’s going on?”

Mom said, “Kat’s having a miscarriage,” and pushed past him, her nightgown trailing on the stairs.

Lizzie screeched in my arms, and I turned her away from the faint impressions of bloody footprints in the hallway. Where was Megan? She would be able to handle this better than I could. Balancing Lizzie on one hip, I peeked into our bedroom, wondering if Megan had somehow slept through the chaos. Her bed seemed to be empty. Not just empty, I realized, flipping on the light—the sheets were tucked in, the comforter folded back, the pillows neatly stacked. The duffel bag she’d been packing earlier was gone.

Shit.

I bumped into MK and Annabelle in the hallway and took the stairs carefully, Lizzie still in my arms. MK and Annabelle followed with heavy, lumbering steps.

We should have heard the motor by now, the sound splitting the night. Instead, Peter came racing back up the pathway.

“What’s going on?” I called.

“The boat’s gone,” he panted, passing us at a breathless pace. “I’m calling the police, the water taxis, the Coast Guard, anyone I can get on the phone.”

“The boat’s gone,” I repeated. “And so is Megan.”

I turned to MK, and his face was pale, realization dawning. For once, he had the decency to look ashamed.

Megan

In some ways, those minutes on the boat, floating out into the darkness between The Island and Yarmouth, were the worst moments of my life—worse than my father dying, even worse than those moments in the gazebo with Michael, when I was already promising myself I would survive.

I couldn’t make the same promise to myself now. After the house was finally quiet, I’d lugged my duffel bag down the stairs, out the door and down the footpath, loading it with a mighty heave into the Mabrey’s fishing boat. Too late, I realized that the bottom of the boat was filled with a few inches of sludge from the day’s excursions, and no one had bothered to tip it over. Well, shit. Wherever I was going, I would arrive with damp clothes and ruined books.

Behind me, The Island’s quiet was ominous, the sound of waves and wind indistinguishable from each other. Get out of here, get out of here now. I untied the knots, freeing the boat from the pier, and pushed off with an oar. For a dizzy moment, the boat spun, directionless, while I steadied it. I knew the motor would be too loud; it would split the night and wake everyone back at the house. I would have to row, at least until I was far enough away to risk the noise.

I struggled to get both of the oars in place, eventually finding a shaky rhythm. Sweat dripped into my eyes. My arms were instantly tired. If I’d known I was going to have to row alone in the middle of the night on the Atlantic Ocean, I would have taken a different PE class than beginning jazz dance. What if I never made it to shore? What if the motor didn’t work, or the boat took on water, or a giant wave came over the side, washing me into the ocean?

These were good questions, and I focused on them, stroke by stroke. The next one—what was I going to do when I got to shore?—was harder to answer. But I didn’t doubt that I’d done the right thing. I couldn’t stay on The Island one more night, not under the same roof as Lauren’s scorn and Mrs. Mabrey’s indifference, to say nothing of the threat that was Michael, sleeping just down the hall.

Something bumped against the side of the boat, and as a reflex, I leaned over, seeing nothing but the lapping of the water, not even my own face reflected darkly back to me.

I didn’t allow myself to turn around until The Island was far behind me, ringed by its exterior lights. It was beautiful and fantastical, a dream and a prison. From this distance, the house itself was solid and massive, like a natural element, formed over time, impermeable and everlasting. I thought about everyone back there, sleeping in their beds—Mr. and Mrs. Mabrey, Kat and Peter and sweet, spoiled Lizzie; the horror show that was Michael; the Brewster-Holmeses in their cabins; and Lauren, the loss that would hurt the most. Lauren who had been so kind and funny and clueless; Lauren who was now my enemy.

Here was where it ended, here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of our lies.

There would be no more Lauren and Megan.

I pulled the cord to start the engine, but nothing happened. Deep breath. I remembered how easily Lauren had done it, how she’d said, “Hold on, hot stuff,” when I picked that moment to crawl over a bench to get closer to the stern. How did she make it look so effortless? Because she’d done it her whole life. Because everything was easy for her. I pulled again, too slow and too weak. Damn. What the hell was I doing? It was freezing, and I was alone, wearing tennis shoes weighted down with seawater. At this moment, no one on earth knew where I was, and no one was waiting for me to arrive on the mainland. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed since I left The Island—ten minutes? Half an hour? Longer?

Then I remembered Dad’s long-ago lesson in our front yard and gave the cord another yank, this one quick and decisive. Like a lawnmower. The boat shot through the water, nearly knocking me off balance.

I was aiming for the lights of Yarmouth; beyond that, it didn’t matter. The Mabreys would find their boat or they wouldn’t. Jordana would probably be the one to notice it was missing; by the time everyone gathered for breakfast, it would be clear that I was gone, too. The boat would be an inconvenience for them—they would have to call the water taxi and figure out something once they got to Yarmouth, but at that moment I didn’t particularly care about inconveniencing the Mabreys.

For once, I was going to care about me.

I almost sobbed with relief when I could make out the landmarks I recognized—the restaurant at the end of the wharf, with its gaudy lobster outlined in blinking red lights, the ferry building with its slanted roof. I tried to slow like I’d seen Lauren do countless times over that summer, but I cut the engine too late, misjudging the landing and crashing hard into the side of another boat tethered to the wharf. The noise was loud enough that I figured someone would come running, but the only movement was the water churning against the sides of boats, jostling them gently against their moorings. I hadn’t paid close attention to the knots Lauren made when she secured the boat, so I tied the same simple loop twice, my fingers fumbling in the dark. It would do. It would have to do. I reached for my soggy duffel bag, nearly losing my balance as I threw it over my shoulder.

And then, for the first time since I’d dried my tears in the upstairs bathroom, I allowed myself to cry, just a little.

* * *

Somewhere between The Island and Yarmouth, I’d made a decision without knowing I was making one. I wasn’t going to the hospital, and I wasn’t going to the police. To do either one was to put myself squarely in the path of the Mabreys for the foreseeable future, and possibly for the rest of my life. Michael would deny any accusation I made, and the wagons would circle. It had already happened—Mrs. Mabrey must have known, and she’d turned away. Lauren hadn’t even questioned her brother’s version of events. She’d already framed me as the jealous slut, bent on getting revenge. If I told the truth, I would be reminded, over and over, that I was a no one from nowhere, that the Mabreys had the kind of power that could buy justice, that could shape truth.

I remembered Lauren’s story, the dark secret of her boyfriend who had ended up dead in a prison yard. The pot had been found in Lauren’s backpack, but she’d never been charged. Even with the evidence right there, she’d walked free. It would be the same with Michael. The semen that was still crusted between my legs only proved we’d had sex, a story he’d already told. Somehow, I would be the bad girl, the ungrateful houseguest, the horny roommate, the girl who was plotting to bring down a modern-day Camelot.

And then there was me—all the lies I’d told, but the truths, too. Maybe Lauren was right now unburdening herself in front of her family, telling them what I was really like, a fiction cobbled together from my foolish bravado. Oh, please. She’s had a lot of boyfriends. Maybe she would even offer up my darkest truth, the pillow I’d pressed over my father’s face and held there, willing myself not to feel anything, until he was gone. Do you know she actually killed her father? This was all the evidence they needed, wasn’t it? Megan Mazeros couldn’t be trusted, not even as a character witness for her own character.

No, I wouldn’t put myself through that. I would do anything not to see the Mabreys again, even if it meant staying silent about Michael’s crime.

* * *

We’d passed the bus station on the way into Yarmouth six weeks ago, but it looked different at night, buses lined up silently next to their platforms, casting giant rectangular shadows in the moonlight. It was after two-thirty, according to the clock over the locked gate. The station opened at five-thirty, and there were buses to Portland every forty-five minutes, beginning at six-fifteen. That was nearly four hours from now. My elbow throbbed and the cut on my knee stung, but more pressing was my general exhaustion and the niggling edge of panic. Would the Mabreys report their boat missing, sending someone from the Yarmouth police department out to find me wandering through the streets? Would one of the Mabreys themselves locate me before I could get on a bus and on my way to safety, away from them?

I left my duffel bag on the bench outside the bus station and crossed the street to an ATM, drawing curious looks from a man in a pickup truck that rattled slowly past. The town stretched in front of me, its streets deserted, gutters littered with food wrappers and tourist debris. I withdrew my daily limit, two hundred and fifty dollars in crisp twenties and a ten. Thirty-eight dollars would get me a bus ticket to Boston, but what would I do when I arrived there, a day earlier than scheduled and on a federal holiday?

Back at the bus station, I lay down on a bench, using my duffel bag as a lumpy, soggy pillow. I’d been awake for nearly twenty hours, during which time I’d survived a rape by my best friend’s brother, rowed several miles through the Atlantic and lugged a heavy duffel bag through half of Yarmouth. I had a horrible moment of déjà vu when a car turned into the empty parking lot, remembering how I’d met Joe Natolo at the bus station in Scofield. I’d thought I had it bad then. Now I was alone again, in much worse shape, with fewer options.

The car—navy with white lettering on the side—stopped in front of me. A-1 TAXI, PORTLAND. The driver, an older man with a trim white beard, called through the open window, “You heading somewhere?”

I sat up. “Can you take me to Boston?”

He whistled. “That’s a couple of hours. Maybe less at this time of night.”

“How much?”

“Hundred and fifty,” he said.

I nodded.

He left the taxi idling while he loaded my bag into the trunk. I climbed into the back seat, numb and relieved. I noted the identification badge pinned to the dashboard: Jim Perkins. We navigated Yarmouth’s dark streets, its slowly blinking traffic lights, its credit unions and crab shacks.

“You got an address in Boston?” he asked, just as I was drifting off.

“Cambridge,” I said. “Harvard.”

Jim whistled, studying me in the rearview mirror. It occurred to me that he was the age my dad would have been, with the same kind eyes. “Harvard. Not bad.”

I unbuckled my seat belt and curled up across the back seat, staring out at the purple-black sky. I would have to call someone when I got to Boston, but none of the options looked any better than they had a few hours ago.

Despite all logic, I wanted to talk to Lauren. Since I left Kansas, she’d been the hearer of all my thoughts, the holder of all my secrets, but she was the last person I could talk to now.

Would she be worried about me in the morning, the same as I’d felt when she went to New York? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

Once, Lauren had told me that the Mabreys would pay two million dollars to keep their scandals out of the media, and I’d laughed, thinking it was a strange kind of joke, political humor that I just didn’t get. Now the number seemed very specific, a calculation of risks versus benefits. How much was their son’s future worth to them? I tried to imagine myself cornering Senator and Mrs. Mabrey, presenting them with evidence and demanding a specific amount of money. No—it probably didn’t happen like that at all. These things undoubtedly involved lawyers and mediation, a piece of paper pushed back and forth across a table, the dollar amount being negotiated, like the purchase of a used car.

What was the going rate for my body? I was twenty-one, with larger breasts than I needed, hips like a bell curve, a scar on my forearm from where I’d scalded myself with hot coffee at the Woodstock Diner, a dimple that only showed when I really, really smiled. What was all of that worth? Or would the calculation relate to time, in seconds rounded to minutes, from the moment Michael’s hand had groped my ass, to the moment I’d been on my back, staring up at the peeling paint of the ceiling of the gazebo? More likely any calculation would take into account our futures, our relative worth. Whatever amount I was offered would represent only a fragment of Michael’s potential future—lawyer, politician, bearer of the family name.

I must have slept at some point, because I woke to Jim asking a question. I ran a tongue along my teeth, grimy and unbrushed. My throat was dry—the last thing I’d had to drink was a Sam Adams on the beach during the fireworks. It took a full minute for me to remember why I was sore—my arms bruised, legs aching.

Michael Mabrey, the gazebo.

I sat up, blinking. The sky was a lighter shade of purple now, buildings visible out the window. “Sorry, what?”

“We’re in Cambridge, coming up on Harvard Square. Is there anywhere particular you want me to drop you? I mean—pretty much everything is closed at this time of day.”

I asked if there was a coffee shop nearby, and Jim circled for a few blocks before finding a bakery where a woman was setting out chairs on the sidewalk. I counted off one hundred and fifty dollars, but Jim handed fifty back to me. “Do me a favor,” he said, shoving the bills into his pocket. “Call your parents, would you? It’s a holiday. I bet they’d love to hear from you.”

I spent the morning drinking strong coffee and eating day-old bagels at the bakery, trying to figure out what came next. Most of Cambridge seemed to be closed for the Fourth, and traffic outside the window was light, only a few pedestrians passing the storefront in jogging shorts, their dogs panting at their sides. I felt safer the farther I was from the Mabreys, until it occurred to me that they knew I would be here. They’d asked incessant questions about my program, and I’d obliged with what I was studying, where I was staying, what my daily schedule looked like. It wouldn’t take more than a phone call to the program administration to track me down.

I asked the woman behind the bakery counter about hotels in the area, and I watched her unsubtle gaze take me in—the matted hair, the bruises on my arms, the duffel bag that contained, for all practical purposes, everything I owned. “There is a place,” she said, and drew me a map on a rectangular napkin.

“The Algonquin,” I said, reading the name.

“Yeah, it’s not too fancy or anything, but...” Her eyes lingered on my wrist, where a bruise was forming. Michael had held me there, pinning my arms over my head. “Listen, if you don’t mind my asking—”

I snatched the napkin from the counter, my elbow smarting from the motion. “That’s perfect, thanks.”

* * *

The Algonquin was better than I expected, although after a summer on The Island, my standards had been greatly inflated. I paid sixty-eight dollars for a room on the fourth floor. The pillows were lumpy and stained beneath their cases, but the bedding was clean. I tried to pick up the remote control that operated the tiny television in one corner, but it was anchored to the nightstand. The door had a lock with a deadbolt, but just in case, I wedged the room’s only chair beneath the knob, then settled fully clothed onto the bed and sank into a relieved sleep.

When I woke, it was dark, and I was surrounded by gunfire. No, not gunfire—fireworks. I peeked out the window and saw an explosion high in the sky, out over distant water.

Back on The Island, the Mabreys were probably watching the fireworks from Yarmouth, the adults lined up in the sand on the beach, the kids splashing in the water. Lauren would be there with her camera. Michael would be there, maybe chuckling to himself over how easy I’d been, how he hadn’t even had to break a sweat. Mrs. Mabrey would be grateful that I was gone.

Forget about them.

Forget everything.

I found the bathroom down the hall, showered without any soap, and dried myself on a scratchy towel that may or may not have been clean. It was late when I ventured out into Cambridge, clutching my money and identification inside the front pocket of my jeans, not trusting the security of the Algonquin. More people were outside now, drinking in bars, wandering the sidewalks and lingering in the square. I bought a slice of pizza from a vendor and then went back for another, washing it down with a warm can of Coke. Following street signs, I wandered the perimeter of the university. It was massive, much larger than I expected, the gates imposing and immense. Students milled past in groups, laughing and talking. Someone yelled the word entropy! and was answered by a call of “Long live entropy!” from a nearby group. I was the same age as they were and dressed roughly the same, but I wasn’t one of them. They were brimming with confidence as if they knew their place in the world, and this was it.

That would be me tomorrow. Anytime between noon and four, I would gather my belongings from the Algonquin and walk down Massachusetts Avenue to the campus, where I would find Boylston Hall and complete my registration. I’d read the letter from the PEW committee often enough to have memorized the important details—registration until four, room assignments, meeting with program organizers in the dorm, dinner, opening lecture and mixer. Tomorrow, I would be one of those students, talking about literary theory, name-dropping Foucault and Derrida. I would put Lauren and Michael and the whole mess of the Mabreys behind me, and I would do it on my own.

I decided to cut through one of the parks near campus, trying to avoid being jostled on the crowded sidewalks. Cambridge was drunkenly celebrating. I moved forward, still clutching my half-full Coke, trying to embrace the feeling of being one of them, someone who belonged. Every noise had me on alert—the random crackle and pop of fireworks, the occasional sound of glass breaking as a bottle hit the ground or went clanging into one of the giant metal trash bins. You’re okay, I told myself. This is okay. This is all normal.

I didn’t hear the man until he was nearly on me, his footsteps hitting the earth with solid thumps. I whirled around, terrified, bracing myself for whatever might be coming—an arm around my neck, my knees knocked from under me. He was about ten feet away, close enough that with a determined lunge he could reach me. Under the shadow of his baseball cap, only his mouth was visible, his breath coming hard.

“Get the fuck away!” I screamed. The only weapon I had was the Coke can, and I lobbed it in his direction, the liquid arcing over the grass, the can coming to rest by his feet.

The man stopped, and I saw him for what he was: a runner in a tank top and spandex shorts, white sneakers. A key hung from a cord around his neck. “What the hell? Are you crazy?” He took a few steps to the side and then continued his run, muttering “bitch” as he passed me.

I was back in the Algonquin ten minutes later, the chair wedged under the doorknob, sitting with my back to the exterior wall, arms wrapped around my chest, sobbing.

* * *

I woke to someone pounding on the hotel door, the knob rattling. I grabbed one of my tennis shoes for protection. “What do you want?”

The voice that answered was female and gruff. “It’s after eleven. You’re supposed to be checked out. You’ve got five minutes before we come in.”

I moved the chair and opened the door. The woman was about my mother’s age, dark hair twisted into a messy knot on top of her head. She wore a heavy utility apron with her name, Krystine, written in permanent marker on the pocket.

“Check out time was eleven,” she repeated more slowly. And then she looked at me, her expression softening. “Are you okay?”

* * *

Krystine let me shower and gather my things, and when I headed past the desk in the front lobby half an hour later, she nodded at me silently and didn’t demand any extra payment. I struggled down the sidewalk again with my duffel bag, heading in the direction of the university. I made it as far as the entrance to Boylston Hall, where a sign indicated REGISTRATION FOR PEW SCHOLARS.

There was a bench across from the hall, and I sat on it, collecting myself. I didn’t have to register until four, and that was still hours away. Occasionally, students went in the building in groups of one or two, exiting with maroon folders. These were my peers in the program, the other promising young scholars of tomorrow. They looked healthy and happy, ready to discuss philosophy and culture and literature. They didn’t look damaged or frightened or insecure. They didn’t have bruises in the shape of fingerprints on their forearms, or look like they’d spent the night cycling from one nightmare to another. They looked normal, like I used to be.

At four o’clock, I left the square and returned to the hotel.

* * *

I stayed in the Algonquin for the next five weeks, paying day to day. I kept my head down when I passed men in the hallway and, back in my room, I wedged the chair beneath the doorknob, my low-tech security system. Most of the time I slept, and in the evenings I tuned in to one of three television stations, finding the comedies unfunny and the dramas unrealistic. Once a day, I ventured out for food, usually passing near campus with my plastic bags of half sandwiches and potato chips and soda. Although school was out for the summer, there were all kinds of special programs and groups on campus, and I watched the students curiously, like they were visitors from another planet. What were they reading? What were they learning? What was it like to sleep through the night? What was it like to be that happy?

The night I was supposed to register for my seminar, I’d found a payphone near the hotel and called information for the phone number of Miriam Stenholz. She answered on the third ring and seemed thrilled to hear from me. “Tell me all about everything,” she’d said, and I hesitated before launching into the story I’d rehearsed that afternoon while I watched students enter and exit Boylston Hall.

Something happened, I explained, trying to sound sad and resigned, which wasn’t that difficult in my current situation. There had been a family emergency, and I would be heading back to Kansas for the rest of the summer.

“For the rest of the summer?” she repeated. “You don’t think you could return to the seminar at all, only a little late? I could make some phone calls on your behalf...”

“It’s not the sort of thing that will be better in a week,” I told her. “And I should probably go, because things are just... I mean, it’s pretty bad.”

I could read the disappointment in her silence. She was probably thinking it had been a mistake to recommend me for the seminar when any of the Sisters would have been just as good and more reliable, too. Finally, she asked, “Will you call me later, when you have an update?”

I promised that I would, knowing I probably wouldn’t. Maybe when I was back at Keale in the fall, I would tell her everything, all the things I could hardly acknowledge to myself, everything that began and ended with the Mabreys.

In the public library, I created a new email account and wrote to Mom every few days, long, newsy accounts of the seminar I wasn’t attending. Good for you, kiddo, she wrote back sometimes. And then: Your dad would be so proud. She signed her emails always XOXO, Mom.

What kind of horrible person lied to her own mother?

I called Lauren three times at the number on The Island—once at lunch and twice around dinner. Mrs. Mabrey had answered each time, and the silence around her was deep, her words echoing as if she were standing in an empty space. Where was everyone else?

On the first two calls, I hung up without saying anything. The third time, I cleared my throat and asked to speak with Lauren. I was going to tell her what had happened—just give her the information and back away. There was a silence on the other end of the line, and I tried again. “Is Lauren there?” My heart was pounding—of course Mrs. Mabrey would recognize my voice.

Her response was icy, and I had the feeling that she knew it was me the other times, too—maybe she’d only been waiting for me to speak. “Don’t call here again,” she said, her voice sharp and authoritative. “Do you understand? You’ll regret it if you do.”

I dropped the phone and ran back to the hotel, as if I could outrun all the hatred I’d heard in her voice. Your son raped me, I thought, nearly falling over my own feet. He raped me, and you let him get away with it.

They were all a bunch of monsters—Michael and his mother, and the rest of them by extension, and that included Lauren, too, for sneering at me that night, for suggesting that I was a slut who just couldn’t control herself, that I was only jealous of her.

And because they were monsters, they could get away with anything.

* * *

In the middle of August, when the seminar I wasn’t attending came to an end, I took a bus from Cambridge to Westport, a little town in southern Massachusetts. Mom and Gerry met me there in a rented Ford Taurus and we spent a week in a cottage overlooking Buzzards Bay. It was unimpressive after The Island’s endless amenities, although Mom pronounced it “paradise” at every turn.

Gerry wore the Harvard sweatshirt I’d bought him from a street vendor in Cambridge, and Mom beamed at me, proud by association. “Did you ever think, back when you were waiting tables at the diner, that your life would turn out like this?” she asked, squeezing me in a tight hug.

I almost told her everything then; it had been exhausting to maintain the lie all week, to be yet another fake version of Megan Mazeros. If only Gerry hadn’t been there—but that was a lie, too. My shame was rooted more deeply, already part of who I was.

They hugged me goodbye at the bus station that weekend, and I promised Mom that I would call when I was settled in at Keale. Then I sat for a long time on a bench while travelers hurried around me, listening to departure calls.

There was no way I could room with Lauren again—I knew that. I needed to talk to the housing department to figure out new arrangements. Was it possible that Lauren had already done this? But even the thought of running into Lauren—bumping into her in class, in the library or on one of the footpaths—made me break out in a cold sweat. How would I make it there a full year without breaking down, without screaming at her that her brother was a rapist, without letting my shame spill out at every moment? I was scheduled to take a full load of classes, but I hadn’t even been able to contemplate taking a single seminar at Harvard. Most days, I’d slept for at least twelve hours and zoned out in front of the television for another three or four, and still I felt unbearably tired.

No, I couldn’t go back to Keale. I couldn’t brush off everything that happened that summer and sit in class and pretend I was the same person I’d been before. That night, I took the last bus back to Cambridge, and in the morning, I called Keale from the phone booth outside the Algonquin.

* * *

It would be months before I told the truth—or at least, a part of it—to my mother.

When I did, she railed at me over the phone. “Are you crazy? You’ve got three years under your belt. You’re so close. And all that money spent...”

“I might finish someday,” I said, vaguely, not believing it myself.

“At least come home, then,” Mom pleaded, as if Woodstock, Kansas, still fit that description. “There’s always a place for you here.”

“Mom,” I said, fingering the coils of the phone cord. “I’m sorry, but no.”

By that time, I had moved out of the Algonquin and into an apartment I shared with three other girls, all waitresses and part-time students. It hadn’t been hard to find a job or slip back into the routine of restaurant life. I spent my afternoons and evenings at The Sea Shack in a white shirt and black pants and thick-soled shoes, tucking my tips into the money belt I wore clipped around the inside of my waistband, an old trick I’d learned at the Woodstock Diner. The shifts kept me so busy that I hardly had time to think at all.

Still, sometimes when I was bussing tables or taking orders, I would catch a glimpse of someone who reminded me of Lauren—glossy dark hair, a confident set to her shoulders, an unabashed laugh. Other times, I froze when I thought I saw the back of Michael’s head at the bar, and it would all come back—the hand on my neck, how easily he’d pushed me onto my back, the pine needles pressing into my skin—and I would step outside the service entrance, taking a few deep breaths.

That’s all behind you, I promised myself.

None of the them can ever hurt you again.

Lauren

The day after Megan left, when everything was still in chaos on The Island, a Coast Guard official found our fishing boat floating in the bay, not far from Yarmouth. Save for a few inches of water, it was empty. There was no sign of Megan or any of her belongings.

“She must have tied a sloppy knot,” Uncle Patrick decided—everyone else was in Yarmouth with Kat by then, and it was only his family, Lizzie and me left on The Island. “It probably just floated loose.”

It made sense—Megan wouldn’t have known how to tether the boat properly. If she’d left it and made her way to Cambridge, she was probably right now settling in with her roommates and attending her first seminar. On the other hand, since she hadn’t left so much as a note, and she hadn’t called, there was no way to know if she’d made it at all. I had nightmares, those first nights after she left, thinking of Megan sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic, her curls fanned out from her head like seaweed. But when I woke, I was angry again, stung by her absence, the fragments of my family she’d left behind.

That horrible night, down at the pier, Mom had taken me by the shoulders and given me a bone-rattling shake. At the end of the pier, Kat was curled on her side, one bare foot dangling close to the water, waiting for the police cruiser that would take her to the hospital in Yarmouth. “Where did Megan go?” Mom had demanded. “What’s she going to do?”

And all I could manage was that I figured she’d gone to Harvard a day ahead of schedule because she wanted to get away from The Island. She’d been packing; she’d been upset. The words from our fight rang in my ears. Well—not our fight, exactly. Megan had just listened; I’d done all the talking. But there was no way I was going to have this blamed on me. “Ask Michael,” I spluttered. “He’s the one—”

Mom had reared back her hand like she was going to slap me, but her hand whizzed emptily to the side of my face. Still, it stung—a phantom slap. So Mom knew about Megan and MK, or she suspected. Either way, it was unfair that I should bear the brunt of what they’d done.

“Ask him,” I repeated, darting out of her reach. “Ask your golden boy what he did.”

I whirled around, looking for him, but MK wasn’t down on the beach with the rest of us. Even when the cruiser arrived and Kat was hooked up to some monitors and whisked away with Dad and Mom and Peter, he didn’t make an appearance. Later, walking back to the house with Lizzie in my arms, tears dried on her cheeks and hair, I spotted him sitting on the railing of the gazebo, looking out over the cliff at the water.

It had been the plan all along for him to leave on the seventh, but still, it felt like a cowardly move. It was easy for him to set into motion a chain of events and then disappear, leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. We had stayed away from each other except for mealtimes, although it was difficult to tell who was avoiding whom, or if it was in fact a mutual evasion. On the day he left, I called my goodbye from the deck, not looking up when I heard the motor start and not relaxing until the hum faded into the day, lost in the sound of waves and seagulls.

Kat spent a week in the hospital—first recovering from the miscarriage, then some internal bleeding from the D&C and an infection that was slow to heal. She refused to go back to The Island, insisting it was the cause of all her problems. If she’d just stayed home in Connecticut, after all, if she’d just been able to relax without all the chaos, her baby would be alive.

“It wasn’t The Island’s fault,” Peter fumed on his last night with the rest of us, Kat and Lizzie’s bags packed and waiting at the door to be lugged down to the pier. He glared at me from across the dinner table. “It was your friend, that bitch. If she hadn’t taken the boat, this would have all been different.”

I didn’t say anything because there were no words that would bring back their baby. The morning after everything had happened, I’d seen Jordana haul Kat’s bloody sheets and towels to the burn barrel, and by afternoon she’d scrubbed down the hallway and stairs, erasing smears of blood from the hardwood. There had been too much blood, even before they discovered the boat was gone. No, Megan hadn’t caused Kat’s miscarriage, but she had managed to drive a wedge firmly between the Mabreys.

“You,” Peter continued, pointing a finger at me. His face was unshaven and there were deep hollows under his eyes. “You should track her down. She should pay for this, somehow. At the least, she should be arrested for theft.”

Dad cleared his throat. “The boat was found.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that it was stolen in the first place,” Peter huffed.

“She’s at Harvard,” I reminded them. “I don’t think she’s hiding or anything.”

Mom looked around the table, taking in each of us—Peter, Lizzie drowsing in her high chair, Dad, me. “We will do no such thing,” she announced. “None of us will contact that girl. Is that understood?”

I started to object. That girl. That girl who had spent half the summer asking Mom if she wanted more tea or a blanket or something to eat. That girl who I had shared everything with, who I was rooming with again in the fall.

Dad said, “Sounds reasonable,” with a nod at me.

I didn’t protest, but inside I scoffed. My parents could make all the official pronouncements they wanted, but there was no way they could enforce them. Of course I would talk to Megan again. But as the days passed, the silence between us grew deeper and more profound. It was the longest we had had gone without talking, or emailing or calling, in almost three years.

* * *

By the middle of July, it was just Dad and Mom and me on The Island, three people who had never spent any significant amount of time with each other. Dad was on his laptop or cell phone, and the conversations I overheard dealt with the budget and staffing and subcommittee business. Still, I was sad when he left, since it would be only Mom and me for the rest of the summer, moving politely around each other on an island that seemed to be haunted by the ghosts of our family members.

Without Megan, I missed Joe more sharply than I had the rest of the summer. I wanted him there in the mornings when I woke up, realizing I would have to face the day alone. I wanted him when I sat on the end of the pier, the loneliness in the air like a crushing weight on my chest. If I couldn’t talk to Megan, at least I could talk to Joe. Maybe I could explain to him all the things I wanted to explain to her.

Finally, I did call him, holding my breath while the phone rang once, twice, three times.

“Hello,” he said, and he was so Joe, so himself, I almost cried in relief. I imagined him in his apartment, yesterday’s dishes crusty in the sink, the mattress still dented with the shape of his body.

“It’s Lauren,” I said.

“Oh, hey. Are you back already?”

Tears stung in my eyes. “No—I’m still out here. I was wondering—” The words I’d rehearsed so many times dried in my throat. “Why don’t you come out here? Just for a few days?”

“Come to Maine? Isn’t your family there?”

“No. It’s only my mom and me.”

“I mean...” The pause told me everything I needed to know. “You know I’m working, right? I’m on the schedule for the week, so I can’t just...”

“Forget it,” I said quickly. “It was a stupid idea.”

He didn’t disagree. “But you’re coming back soon anyway. School starts in August, doesn’t it?”

“Right. Never mind. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay, yeah,” he said. I waited for him to ask me why I had called, what was wrong, but instead he offered up the information that Scofield was hot, that he was going camping over the weekend, that he wasn’t getting as many hours at the shop as he wanted. I hung up feeling lonelier than before.

One day during our lunchtime, the phone rang, and Mom picked up the extension in the den. She shook her head when I asked who was calling—a hang-up then, a wrong number. Not many people had the number of our landline, not since Dad’s election when numerous steps had been taken to protect our privacy. There was another phone call later that evening, dismissed just as quickly by Mom when I looked up from the catalog I’d been browsing, lazily dog-earing pages. The following night, the phone call came when we were eating dinner, a bounty carefully prepared by Jordana even though it was just for Mom and me, and neither of us had our full appetites. Mom took the phone into the other room, and I heard her say something before she returned, placing the receiver into its holder with a decisive click.

Was it Joe—did he have our number? My heart thudded. Later, after Mom went upstairs, I picked up the receiver and dialed *69. The phone rang and rang, the sound echoing distant and tinny in my ear. Eventually, there was a click and a man, not Joe, said, “Yeah.”

I explained that someone had called me earlier from his number.

He laughed. “Lady, this is a pay phone. Coulda been anyone. Now can you get off the line so I can make my call?”

“Hold on,” I pleaded. “Where are you? Where’s the pay phone?”

“Ah,” he said. “Let’s see. Church and Brattle. Cambridge, Mass.” There was a click, then a silent moment, and a dial tone.

Cambridge, Massachusetts. So Megan was alive and well—just as I figured.

And eventually, she would have to talk to me.