The East End

by Jason Allen

  A tragic accident threatens to unravel two families in this gripping novel of suspense and culture clash set in the Hamptons.

  Corey Halpern, a local high schooler with a troubled home life, is desperate to leave the Hamptons and start anew somewhere else. His last summer before college, he settles for the escapism he finds in sneaking into neighboring mansions.

  One night just before Memorial Day weekend, he breaks in to the wrong home at the wrong time: the Sheffield estate, where he and his mother, Gina, work. Under the cover of darkness, Leo Sheffield—a billionaire CEO, patriarch and the owner of the vast lakeside manor—arrives unexpectedly with a companion. After a shocking poolside accident, everything depends on Leo burying the truth before his family and friends arrive for the holiday weekend. Unfortunately for him, Corey saw what happened, as did other eyes in the shadows.

  Secrecy, obsession and desperation dictate each character’s path in this spectacular debut. In a race against time, each critical moment holds life in the balance as Corey, Gina and Leo approach a common breaking point. With an ending as explosive as the Memorial Day fireworks on the island, The East End welcomes a bright new voice in fiction.

  Praise for The East End

  “An intense, heart-pounding experience from the first page, with brilliant, complex characters more real than people I actually know. I challenge you to put this novel down once you start reading.”

  —Simon Van Booy, award-winning author of The Sadness of Beautiful Things

  “Allen has created a fascinating, kinetic, and insightful look at America’s unspoken caste system of class. Characters bound by family, defined by place, and divided by great fortune converge in The East End. I was constantly surprised by the psychological depth of each character and how quickly my sympathies widened to take them all in.”

  —Devin Murphy, national bestselling author of The Boat Runner and Tiny Americans

  “The East End is equal parts heart and suspense. Both daring and forceful, every sentence as compelling as the high-wire dazzle of its plot line. But what sets this novel apart is Allen’s compassionate and psychologically complex characters.”

  —Jack Driscoll, author of The Goat Fish and The Lover’s Knot

  “Allen is masterful in creating believable, original characters—both wealthy and working class—each compelling in their own way. Allen’s plot twists are deft and amazing. With Corey Halpern, he gives the readers a perfect blue-collar antihero for the twenty-first century.”

  —Craig Lesley, author of Winterkill and Burning Fence

  “The East End is a razor focused and suspenseful race through one fateful weekend in the Hamptons. Allen deftly navigates the jagged chasms between the Haves and the Have-nots, revealing the very things that often bridge those distances—the hard and often tragic choices people make when they are lonely and longing.”

  —Nicholas Mainieri, author of The Infinite

  “Every page is filled with wise insights about social class and the human heart.”

  —Bonnie Jo Campbell, National Book Award finalist and author of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

  Also by Jason Allen

  Poetry

  A MEDITATION ON FIRE

  The East End

  Jason Allen

  For my mother and brother

  Contents

  EPIGRAPH

  COUNTDOWN TO MEMORIAL DAY: THURSDAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FRIDAY

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SATURDAY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SUNDAY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MEMORIAL DAY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  WEDNESDAY: 2,400 MILES WEST

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

  —Georgia O’Keeffe

  COUNTDOWN TO MEMORIAL DAY

  THURSDAY

  ONE

  After sunset, Corey Halpern sat parked at a dead end in Southampton with his headlights off and the dome light on, killing time before the break-in. As far as he knew, about a quarter mile up the beach the owners of the summerhouse he’d been casing for the past two weeks were busy playing host, buzzed from cocktails and jabbering beside the pool on their oceanfront deck, oblivious that a townie kid was about to invite himself into their mansion while they and their guests partied into the night.

  Smoke trailed up from the joint pinched between Corey’s thumb and forefinger as he leaned forward and picked up a wrinkled sheet of paper from the truck floor. He smoothed out his final high school essay, squinting through the smoke-filled haze to read his opening lines:

  In the Hamptons, we’re invaded every summer. The mansions belong to the invaders, and aren’t actual homes—not as far as the locals are concerned. For one thing, they’re empty most of the year.

  The dome light flicked off and he exhaled in semidarkness, thinking about what he’d written. If he didn’t leave this place soon, he might never get out. Now that he’d graduated he could make his escape by taking a stab at college in the fall, but that would mean leaving his mother and brother behind, which for many reasons felt impossible, too abstract, the world outside this cluster of towns on the East End so unimaginably far away.

  His keys jangled as he slipped them from the ignition column and the dented pickup door swung wide with a whine at the hinge, and even after he’d pressed the door shut, tendrils of smoke continued seeping through the slim space where he’d left the driver’s-side window cracked. He walked past the Dead End sign and over the hard-packed sand of the shallow dune with his sweatshirt hood raised and hands balled up in the front pocket, head bowed like a monk, hooking left to trudge down the beach against the stiff ocean breeze.

  A few minutes later, he let his hands fall to his sides and paused at the wooden stairs that connected to the seventh house down. On the other side of the dunes he’d need to be on his game, but he didn’t feel quite ready to break in yet. For one thing, the weed he’d smoked had been much stronger than he’d expected and kept creeping up on him, his mouth perceptibly dry and cottony while he faced the miles of light sparking against the ocean. Standing on the beach, drifting from shore, he imagined thousands of broken necklaces slowly unraveling between ropes of white water, the scattered diamonds bobbing and blinking like tiny stars or Fourth of July sparkler heads. Wave after wave crashing and coming to rest, while
the sand all around him, blanketed by moonlight, looked frozen, like a wide shelf of Antarctic ice, the dunes like a series of icebergs all huddled together.

  If only he could write as he saw things, maybe this place wouldn’t be so bad, though each time he’d put pen to paper and tried to describe these solo hours at the ocean, or anything else, the words remained trapped behind locked doors deep inside his head. Sitting on his heels, he reached up and pressed the faint bruise below his right eye, recalling the fight last weekend with that kid from North Sea and how each of them had been so quick to throw punches.

  His reason for being there on the beach returned to him. He couldn’t wait any longer, so he turned and slogged over the deeper sand at the foot of the dunes with his favorite line from a black-and-white Bruce Lee interview playing in his head at full volume: Be water, my friend, Bruce was saying, be water... These few simple words ranked as just about the wisest he’d ever heard, the best mantra to hold inside his head right now as he reached the dunes, dropped down and began crawling elbows-first with his chest as low as possible.

  He crested the soft hill and slid like a lizard down the other side, his shirtsleeves and the belt line of his jeans filled with sand by the time he entered a copse of beach grass waving in the wind. The mansion’s deck came into view. He wriggled forward another few yards with an arm out to protect his face from the grass blades slapping like whips against his hood with each rush of wind, and squinted up at the vaulted oceanfront windows of the vacation home. The glass wall loomed like a movie screen reflecting the moonlight. He stared at the dark balcony, his muttered curses the only sound aside from the backdrop of crashing waves. Despite overhearing the homeowners say last weekend that they’d be hosting another party tonight, by the looks of things now, the night might turn out to be a total bust.

  Just to make sure, he rose to a crouch and crept alongside the three-story east wall and its series of dark windows, on high alert for any signs of neighbors or headlights out on Dune Road as he turned the corner and went scrambling up the front steps on all fours. He cupped his hands to one of the glass panes beside the door and immediately saw what he’d hoped not to see. The red light on the security system wall panel told him all he needed to know. The house was locked down, and breaking in with no one here to hide from, or to narrowly avoid, defeated the purpose. He stood and looked out at the quiet road, the letdown still sinking in, way too aware now that if he didn’t get off this goddamned island soon it was only a matter of time before he started vandalizing these mansions instead of playing pranks, or finally caved and started to cop a serious drug habit, or pounded ten-too-many beers some night and had a head-on collision. If he didn’t escape this place for real, for good, in another year or two he’d fall into the trap of seasonal work, the same cycle of poverty in the winter and endless hours of work all summer that his mom, Gina, went through each year with her bosses, the Sheffields. Maybe only a matter of months or weeks before he slid down into the same slippery pit most of the Hamptons locals never managed to crawl out from.

  Feeling gut-punched, Corey exhaled and moped down the front steps between two giant flowerpots that were meant to mimic Grecian urns, tempted to tip them over and smash them, but then noticed a black Ferrari and white Mercedes convertible sitting side by side in the crescent-shaped driveway. The cars meant people were likely inside. The dark windows meant they were likely asleep. The conversations he’d overheard the past two weekends and the overall look of the house meant they were the exact Wall Street types he liked to mess with.

  Headlights appeared in the distance on Dune Road just before he slipped between the bushes along the west side of the house and ninja-climbed onto an oversize air-conditioning unit, not hesitating or doubting the wisdom of this at all as he hoisted himself up to a flat section of the roof and scurried over to a shadowy section of the wall. As soon as the headlights passed, he quickly checked the second-story windows. They always leave at least one unlocked, he thought, a rule that once again held true. Buzzing from adrenaline, he used his putty knife to pluck out the screen and jimmied open the unlatched window, then angled his body in over the sill and stepped down into a dim space with a coffee table centered on a cheetah-print rug, a wraparound couch and a wide-screen TV. From there, he tiptoed into the hall. A few doors down, he arrived at a bedroom doorway and immediately stepped back. With his hood still raised and half his head concealed, he peered past the jamb at a couple sleeping on a king-size bed.

  Even with the ocean roiling on the other side of the glass wall, it was quiet enough in the room to hear them breathing when he dropped to his knees and edged his way toward them, trying to ignore the stabs of pain in the cartilage of his kneecaps with each movement across the hardwood. Slowly, he rose to his feet and leaned beside the bed until he was within a few inches of the couple—a pretty blonde woman in her thirties and a much older man with ghost-white hair—their features softened by the bluish light from the moon hovering outside the balcony door. Corey lingered there, still as ice, so close that he could smell the woman’s white-wine-and-cheese breath. This had always been the ultimate high, daring them to catch him.

  Compelled to push the limits, he leaned even closer, ready to run when he whispered next to the woman’s ear, “You are...ugly.”

  A moment passed as he listened to the faint rumble of the ocean waves mingled with their soft snores, and watched them, the bodies of both sleepers in the exact same chalk-outline positions in their silk sheets as when he’d arrived, their eyelids still closed, their dreams as peaceful as ever.

  Corey sighed and rubbed his sore knees, staring at their dead-calm expressions before he turned and went out. Much less cautiously than he’d entered the house, he walked with heavy steps along the hall and down a wide spiral staircase. In the kitchen he broke one of his rules by flipping on the light, then opened the stainless-steel refrigerator and found it well stocked with imported beer, so he opened one and chugged half of it before returning the open bottle to the shelf. The milk—yep, that’s how he’d prank them. A quick search of the cupboards and he located the bulk container of Morton salt, which he emptied into the open milk carton and swished together before quickly returning everything where he’d found it. He cracked a smile, thinking of their expressions in the morning when they munched a spoonful of cereal or slugged the first sip of coffee with horribly salty milk mixed in. But still, this didn’t seem enough; so just after he tiptoed from the kitchen through the vast living room and eyed the deck through the sliding glass doors, he stopped, turned toward the staircase and whispered, “What if I woke them up on purpose?”

  This violated one of the most fundamental rules of his ninja code—don’t do anything stupid to increase the risk of getting caught. But the decision had been made even before he’d finished asking the question, and with his next step the door latch turned in his gloved fingers and he exited the house onto the deck, intentionally setting off the alarm, a siren blaring as he backpedaled toward the oceanfront railing. No more than a few seconds passed before lights flashed on in the window above the balcony and two shadowy figures entered the frame. Corey ducked down like a gargoyle at the corner of the deck, not sure yet what he wanted to do.

  Then the thought struck like a lightning bolt—not all of us are on vacation—and he shot to his feet with his hands cupped to his mouth and shouted, “Go back to the city!”

  He heard the woman shriek and the man call out, “Holy shit!” from the other side of the glass, and then in a blink their silhouettes vanished from view.

  They’d be calling the cops, of course, so now he really did need to haul ass out of there, and with Bruce’s words flowing through his head, Be water, my friend, be water, he launched his body sideways over the deck rail and became a river rushing down a cliff face, long-jumping and sprinting over the dunes, his legs pumping as if he were running in free fall all the way down the beach to his truck. Key turned, e-brake released, he pulled o
nto Dune Road and shifted gears about as quickly as he ever had. After the first sharp turn onto a sleepy side street, block after block his tires squealed past stop signs as if they were nothing more than pylons marking off racetrack curves.

  A few blocks later, he slowed to cruising speed and pushed the hood from his head. Now that he’d made it a mile or so from the beach house, the high had already mostly faded. He downshifted to first gear and rolled to a stop sign. Though it was still early, the entire neighborhood had an air of sleep, even the ranch house to his right with the blue light of a TV flashing through a space between the drapes. He wasn’t ready to head home, wasn’t ready to go catatonic like the working-class people in these small houses. Not yet. There was still one more spot to hit up in Southampton before calling it a night, the mansion he’d debated burglarizing for so long. The idea seemed too crazy the last time he’d considered it, for one because he’d never robbed any of these rich people, only pranked them, but tonight breaking into the Sheffields’ summer estate might be the only way to stave off the sense of suffocation he’d felt all day long. With the holiday weekend closing in like walls of a massive vise, he had to do this tonight—or wait until the fall.

  A few miles later, with Iggy Pop and The Stooges blaring from his door panel, it made perfect sense to take the night to a whole new level and rob his mother’s bosses before they came out from the city; before Gina came home crying after one of the longer, more grueling workdays; before he joined her for the summer as the Sheffields’ servant boy. Iggy reinforced the necessity of the much higher risk mission—the need to do it now—as he belted out one of his early-seventies punk anthems, the lyrics to “Search and Destroy” entering Corey’s brain and seeping much deeper inside his chest as a truth he’d never been able to articulate for himself. His fingers tapped steadily on the wheel when he turned off Main.