When I finally stop running, I am, once again, at the rental shack for the paddleboards. It’s early enough that there’s very little line. I don’t even really think about it; I rent a board, collect it, and paddle myself into the exact center of the lagoon.
Where nobody will be able to find me.
Where I can be alone with my thoughts, with my wrongness, with the way I obliterated any semblance of dignity for me or my family, with all that I’ve been so clueless about, all that I didn’t know, because no one bothered to tell me.
I sit there on the board, legs in the cool green water, the sun beating down on my back, and I wish that the world would swallow me up. But the world cruelly refuses.
After a while I see something swimming toward me: a head, followed by a long, lean body in a red bikini. When she reaches me, she starts treading water. Which feels like a metaphor.
“I need to talk to you,” she says softly.
“You’ve been saying that all week.”
“Maybe now you’ll listen.”
“Fine. Come aboard, then.” I try to counterbalance so she won’t tip us over as she pulls herself up onto the board, water pouring off her. She arranges herself to face me, but then it seems like she loses her nerve.
The water laps at our legs. The wind stirs our hair. I can hear the agitated in and out of my sister’s breathing—I can almost see the words forming in her head, the excuses she wants to give me about what she’s done.
But I don’t want to hear it.
And she knows that. Because she knows me.
So here we are, having a non-conversation while, around us, kids splash and play, and couples pass by in kayaks, and the world goes about its business as usual.
I want to say, You said you need to talk. So talk. But I can’t be the one, this time, to break the silence.
Her jaw shifts. She’s chewing on the inside of her cheek, a habit I hate. Her breath, in and out, in and out. Until she finally says: “I’m sorry, Ada.”
“Apology not accepted. I can’t believe you let me think that it was Mom.” I swallow back tears. “Do you know what that was like for me? I felt like my life—our life—was over.”
“I made a mistake,” she murmurs.
I scoff. “Obviously. But guess what? You don’t just get to say you’re sorry and have it be fine.”
“I know!” she cries, and then, to my total horror, my tough big sister starts to cry, not just movie star tears, but red-faced bawling her eyes out that shakes the paddleboard.
“It’s just, I felt so broken,” she says between sobs. “I didn’t think I was fragile like that. I didn’t think I would feel so . . . empty after.”
My teeth grind together. I want nothing more than to kick that boy in the balls right then, no matter how mad I am at my sister.
“He’s an ass,” I say. “Which is a letdown, honestly, because I always thought Michael was okay.”
She blinks at me, her eyebrows drawing low over her wounded blue eyes. “Michael? I meant Logan.” Her face contracts into a grimace again. “This was always about Logan. The thing is, I loved him. I still love him. I wish I could stop, but every time I check, it’s still there. But he’s right that it wouldn’t be feasible for us to keep seeing each other from across the country. We’re moving on to a new part of our lives. I get that.” She wipes at her nose with the back of her arm—the most un-Afton-like gesture I’ve ever witnessed.
Now I am chewing on the inside of my cheek.
Afton shudders. “I was so embarrassed that I was such a mess,” she says, not looking at me but out to the horizon, fat tears still rolling down her face. “And then you were so ready to have sex with Leo, and we started talking about my first time, and . . .” She pauses. “That first time, in the garage, with that guy. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“Then why did it?”
“I was angry at Dad.”
“Dad? As in . . . Aaron?”
“Yeah.” She sniffles again. “Up until then, he always came to my ballet recitals.”
“I thought you hated that.”
“I did, but . . .” She almost laughs, or sobs. “But then, this one time, he didn’t come. And I thought, okay, that’s it. He’s not ever going to come again. And I knew I shouldn’t be so broken up about it. Dad is such a small part of our lives, and I told myself I didn’t care. But it upset me, him not coming. And this boy was there, and he kind of offered, and I felt so bad about Dad. I just wanted to feel better. I wanted to feel good. So I did it.”
I nod. Of course I know exactly what she means. It’s possible that she and I, in spite of our differences, are cut from the same cloth.
“The second time was even worse. I got drunk at a party. I wasn’t so drunk that I passed out, or I didn’t really know what was happening, but . . . I wouldn’t have gone through with it, if I’d been sober. And there was no condom and I was so scared after. Oh my god. So scared.”
I remember the train ride we’d taken to the Planned Parenthood for Plan B. Afton hadn’t seemed scared. She’d just seemed pissed off that all of that was necessary.
“So that’s why you tried to warn me, when I was talking about having sex with Leo.”
“Yeah. After that I just felt kind of gross about sex. Until Logan. It was good with Logan. Because I loved him. That’s the thing, Ada. If you don’t love the guy, sex can complicate things in a bad way. And you didn’t love Leo.”
“No,” I admit, easily now. “I didn’t.”
“I loved Logan. But then that fell apart, too, and I was right back where I started. It’s like I didn’t even remember my own advice. I heard that Michael wasn’t coming, and I felt disappointed, and then I found out he was coming, and I thought, he’s cute, and he’s funny, and he knows me so it’s safer than it would be with a stranger, and if I have sex with him, maybe I’ll feel something else besides heartbroken. But it didn’t work.” She sniffles. “Of course it didn’t work. If anything, it made me feel worse. And then you saw us, and you thought I was Mom. I wanted to tell you the truth—I swear I did—but I was too ashamed of myself. If I said it was me, it’d be like I was just as bad as you thought Mom was.”
“Well, not just as bad,” I say reluctantly. “Michael’s not married. And you didn’t force him to cheat on his girlfriend. He did that all by himself.”
“He’s been with Melanie since his junior year of college. He was planning to ask her to marry him. I knew that, actually.” She takes a deep breath. “I didn’t even really care, honestly. I was thinking about myself, and how if I could get Michael to like me, not just this one time hooking up but really like me, like we were falling in love or something, then it would somehow be worth it.” Her nose wrinkles, like she hates her own bad smell. “I was so stupid. I could see that Michael did love Melanie—he was just freaking out because he’s getting to that time in your life when all the big decisions happen, the ones you have to live with. It was, like, cold feet.”
“You’re not going to get me to feel sorry for Michael. And you’re far from stupid, Afton. You just got your heart broken and did some stupid, stupid . . . really stupid things,” I say.
She smiles at the three stupids, her eyes finally meeting mine. The broken pipe that has busted loose inside her slows to a trickle.
“I know I don’t act like it,” she says. “But I’m jealous of you, Ada. You’re always so good, so goddamned perfect at everything, with your sketchbook and your to-do lists and your plans. You’ve always got things figured out.”
I give a disbelieving laugh. “What.”
“Really. You do.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Tell me the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”
“Um, have you forgotten that less than an hour ago I accused our mother of having an affair with her business partner, in front of a bunch of her colleagues, and also in front of our little sister and our dad?”
“But that was my fault.”
I snort. “Okay, let’s go with that when they sit me down to talk to me about it.”
“If I’d just fessed up as soon as you told me, it wouldn’t have happened. It was my stupidity, rubbing off on you.”
I bite my lip, then release it. “Fine. How about this: I asked Nick Kelly to have sex with me. I thought, he’s cute, and he’s funny, and he knows me so it will be safer than it would be with a stranger, and I thought, if I have sex with him, maybe I’ll feel something else besides heartbroken.”
She doesn’t look surprised. Because of course she already knows this.
“Oh, so you did read that in my sketchbook,” I confirm.
She cringes. Nods. “Sorry. To be fair, I wasn’t expecting to find anything like that. But did it happen last night? Did you two . . .”
“No. I freaked out at the last minute. I tried to. But no. It didn’t happen.”
“Wow. That sounds . . .”
“Humiliating? Yes. But it actually turned out all right. Afterward we crashed somebody’s wedding, and we danced and talked and looked at the stars, and I did feel something else, for a little while, at least.” I sigh. “And then this morning happened.”
“Yeah, well, we were blindsided by Pop.”
“He really could have warned us. Of course, I basically told him to do something exactly like that, the last time I spoke to him.”
Suddenly Afton laughs, a choked-up, husky laugh—a kind of sound I’ve never heard come out of her before. She puts her hand over her mouth to try to hold it in, but it just keeps tumbling out, making the board underneath us tremble.
“I bet he never tries to surprise us again,” she titters.
I laugh, too. “Let’s hope not.”
“And Marjorie was just sitting there like she was at the movies having popcorn,” Afton says, wiping what I hope are laugh tears from her eyes. “Did you hear her? No way, Jerry. I want to see how this turns out.”
We laugh and laugh, until we’re tired and our sides hurt. I sigh and put my hand on Afton’s shoulder.
“I can’t say I forgive you,” I say.
“I can’t say I blame you.”
“I want to forgive you, though.”
“Okay.”
I nod solemnly. “I’ll probably only hold this over your head for another twenty or twenty-five years, tops.”
“That seems fair.”
“The thing is, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. Also, we’re sisters, and that, unfortunately, is an unbreakable bond. Like forever.” I hold out my pinkie to her.
“Sisters forever,” she whispers, shaking my pinkie with hers.
We hug then, because of course it is a requirement of sisterhood, but it turns out that hugging is more than we can manage while still balancing on the paddleboard. We go right over into the water.
I come up sputtering. “Shit.” I grab for the paddle, which is floating away.
“Ada, look!” Afton says excitedly.
“Get it!” I order.
But she isn’t looking at the paddle. She’s gazing down in the water below us. “It’s a turtle,” she says in a soft voice, like it will disappear if it hears us.
I stop. “Shut up,” I say, the affectionate kind of shut up, though, meaning, you can’t be serious.
She points down.
There, only a few feet beneath us in the pale clear water, is a massive sea turtle.
“Oh my dog,” I whisper.
Its shell is a red-brown color, segmented into thirteen large sections that each bear a starburst pattern with hash marks of golden and lemon and white. Its fins and head are darker—almost black, and threaded with pure white, which makes it look like it’s paved with cobblestones. It’s gorgeous. I’ll never be able to do it justice in a painting in a million years.
As Afton and I tread water, staring at it, it’s looking at us, too. Then, slowly, lifting and dropping its huge front fins like it’s flying instead of swimming, it ascends to the surface. Its head is less than a hand’s stretch away from me. Its eye as it gazes back at me is an inky, fathomless black.
We aren’t supposed to touch them. It’s illegal, in fact. There are signs posted all around the lagoons saying not to touch or ride them, that you could be fined up to fifteen hundred dollars for harassing a Honu—the Hawaiian word for a green sea turtle.
So I don’t touch. I tread water, holding the board with one arm and trying to stay as still as possible in the presence of this creature.
It stays for a minute. Maybe two. Then it lowers its head and drifts downward again, turning in the water toward the mouth of the lagoon, and with a few sweeps of its powerful fins, it disappears into the darkness of the ocean.
Afton and I don’t say anything. She swims over and fetches the paddle, and then we climb carefully back onto the paddleboard and, together this time, we paddle toward the shore.