What I Thought Was True

by Huntley Fitzpatrick

  “Me? What about you? And you, Spence? What was that? It’s not enough to take his captain shot, you had to go for his girlfriend too?”

  “This isn’t like that, Gwen,” Cass says. Spence just stares at the ground.

  “This? There’s a this? And you knew? When were you going to tell me? Ever? What happened to ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Gwen’?”

  He’s ruffling his hand through his hair with that same expression he had the night after the Bronco.

  Guilt.

  Viv’s still crying. Spence is wiping away the blood still running from his nose with the back of his hand. Hoop’s muttering, “I haven’t had enough beer to deal with this.” Pam and Manny and the other island kids are standing around helplessly, murmuring.

  And I can’t stop my mouth. “So what did you two do to get this?” I ask.

  “What did we do?” Cass asks, low and furious. “We swam. I deserve this. Spence does. This has nothing to do with money. It’s about teamwork. And you know it. Maybe Nic used to be able to do that. But he can’t anymore. I don’t know why, but you know it’s true. He’s a cheater.”

  “Nice, Cass. You’ve taken this away from him. And now you take his integrity too? Classy.”

  “I didn’t take anything, Gwen.”

  I back up, move away from all this, everything, everyone.

  “I didn’t take anything,” he repeats, turning away.

  I scramble up to the parking lot. But there is no longer any sign of Nic.

  “Come fly, come fly come fly with me,” sings Frank Sinatra loudly, in his seductively snappy alto. Emory is swaying to the beat, doing his version of finger snapping, which involves flicking his pointer fingers against his thumbs. He’s got the happy head-bobbing down, though. Grandpa Ben is cooking dinner, waggling his skinny old-man hips in time to the beat. I reach over to turn Frank’s exuberance down a few notches, but still have to bellow when I ask if he’s seen Nic.

  Grandpa Ben shrugs.

  “He didn’t come back here? Where the hell did he go? Where’s Mom?”

  Ben clucks his tongue. “Language, Guinevere. He was not here when I got back from the farmer’s market. Your mother, she is on a date.”

  A what?

  Nic’s pulled a disappearing act. Viv’s consoling Spence. Cass knew. And I blew him off, even when I . . . I . . . And Mom’s on a date. Whose life is this???

  Grandpa shrugs again, points to the note scrawled on the dry-erase board on the fridge. “Papi. On a walk around the island with a friend. If you see Nic, talk to him.”

  “If you see him, keep him here,” I say. “I’m going to look for him.”

  I grab Mom’s car keys, clatter down the stairs, and am throwing the Bronco into reverse before it occurs to me to wonder how Grandpa Ben managed to translate a “walk around the island with a friend” into a date.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  They’re walking side by side. Not holding hands or anything. But side by side is startling enough. Mom with any man but one on the cover of a book is a jolt. I jerk the truck to a halt. “Mom. Coach? Where’s Nic? Have you seen him?”

  Mom’s frowning, worried. Coach’s face looks, if possible, even ruddier than usual. He’s out of his element, no whistle, wearing a baggy yellow windbreaker that somehow looks sadder, so much less official than his SBH jacket.

  “We were hoping with you. He was headed to that bonfire,” Mom says. “Wouldn’t talk to me. He was wicked upset.”

  Wicked. Dad’s word.

  “I’ll say,” I snap, trying not to glare at Coach. Who’s just doing his job and not actually responsible for this whole mess.

  “Look, Gwen,” Coach says, weary but resolute. “Inches from winning state this year. We need captains with nothing to prove. Gotta have that. Nic’s a solid kid . . . but these days, he’s no team player.”

  “I should have insisted he talk to me,” Mom says. “I tried calling after he left, but I just got that damn voicemail. He never recharges his phone.” She pulls out her own, punches in a number, shakes her head. “Stupid voicemail again.” The creases in her forehead deepen. “Get Vivien,” she tells me. “She’ll know where he is.”

  He’s not at Abenaki. I strain my eyes, looking way out beyond the pier, but there’s nothing in the water but a flock of seagulls, and a lone kayaker way far out. The bridge by the Green Woods is still and deserted. Standing there, I feel a pang. What used to be Nic’s and my place, years of memories, feels as if it belongs to me and Cass now. That thought leaves me feeling strangely disloyal. How did I not know about Viv? I’m so off balance, the way you are when you step off a rocking boat onto land, not sure how to find your footing.

  I drive back to Sandy Claw, but the logs from the bonfire are just embers now, and no one’s still hanging around. Nobody at Plover Point, not even the plovers, who have raised their eggs and moved on. I pull into Hoop’s driveway to find him sitting on the steps smoking.

  “Not here?”

  “Nope.” Hoop drops the cigarette, grinds it out with the heel of his flip-flop. “I was hoping you were him when I saw the Bronc. Not answering texts either. Dunno where he is, but he’s on foot, since we hit the beach in my truck. Wanna beer?”

  I shake my head, tell him to text me if Nic shows. He nods, lighting another cigarette, popping open another beer. As I drive away, I see him in the rearview, rumpled shirt, shoulders slumped. Will he still be sitting on those same steps, doing those same things, twenty years from now?

  I find myself driving to Castle’s.

  It’s ten thirty, a slow night, and it’s shutting down. All the other workers have long since gone home. There’s only Dad, tossing water on the grill, scraping off the last particles of grease and onions. Pulling out Saran Wrap to cover the tubs of ice cream in the freezer so they won’t get freezer burn before he jams the lips on. Chopping onions and peppers for tomorrow’s hash browns, knife flashing so fast it’s a blur. Those jobs are so familiar. I’ve done them all. Dad’s concentrating, never looks up to see me watching him.

  This is the last place Nic would ever go.

  I’m not even sure why I came. That “fix it, Dad” feeling? I can practically hear Cass saying, “You get pissed off when I rescue you.” I swallow the lump in my throat.

  We were doing so well there for a second.

  I drive back toward Seashell, hitting the gates just as Cass’s BMW roars up the other direction on Ocean Road, a little too fast over the speed bumps.

  We both slow to a stop, our headlights picking out individual blades of grass on well-mown, carefully tended lawns on either side of the street, their brilliance turning the green into gray and white.

  The passenger-side door of Cass’s car opens, and Viv climbs out, crossing over to me.

  “You gonna hear me out?” she asks.

  “You gonna help me find Nic?” I return.

  She walks around the front of the Bronco, opens the passenger-side door and slides in.

  I expect Cass to zoom away immediately, but he doesn’t, idling the BMW by the side of the road, waiting . . . for what? Me to get out and talk to him? What am I supposed to say?

  I stay where I am, and after a few seconds, he pulls forward and leaves us in the quiet of the night.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Viv says, quickly, like she’s accidentally broken a plate or something.

  I slow to Seashell’s only stop sign. Shift into park, because no one’s behind us. No one’s in any hurry this time of night. Ever, really, on Seashell. That’s one of the promises that should be on the sign separating us from the causeway. All the time in the world.

  Except that that’s a promise no one can really make.

  Forever.

  “You got together with Spence by accident?” I ask, then hate the harshness in my voice. If anyone can understand that, it should be me. But Viv isn’t supposed to have “crumble lines.” Or not this kind. And if she did . . . why didn’t she tell me?

  She leans her head back again
st the headrest, eyes shut. “What do I say to you, Gwen? I hate that you know this. I’m glad you know this. I want to make excuses . . . I want to say they’re enough. But they’re not. I hurt Nic. You. If I didn’t lie to you, I sure didn’t tell you the truth, even when we said no secrets. Joke’s on me. Because, let’s face it, in my head I was all judgey about you and some of your choices. Alex, freaking Jim freshman year. Ugh. Cass, the first time around. Spence . . . I pretended not to be, but I was . . . smug. Like I couldn’t get what you were thinking, so you must have been wrong. I guess you knew that. You had to have felt it. I guess that’s why we couldn’t really talk this summer. ’Cause I suddenly got it. And . . . and I didn’t want to get it! I wanted Nic. Only. Ever. Until . . . Until I didn’t anymore. And I didn’t know what to do with that.”

  Did I know, deep down? Maybe. This weird feeling I’ve had this summer . . . I thought it was because things were different—me the third wheel, not a threesome anymore. But maybe I somehow knew that we really were, really, not a threesome anymore.

  I lean my forehead on the steering wheel. “But Spence, Viv? Why him—of all people?” I turn so I can see her, flipping my hair away from my face. “Did you do it to . . . to hurt Nic? Is that what this—Spence—is about?” As I ask, I feel an unwanted pang of sympathy for Spence, the handy weapon in someone else’s war. Again.

  “No. Not at all.” She flushes. “But hell, Gwen . . . I thought Nic and I were . . . in this together. And then he’s all . . . ‘well . . . eight years from now, we’ll’ . . . Eight years! What am I supposed to do, while he’s off having adventures, meeting girls who . . . I don’t know. Dangle from tow ropes with their teeth? He’s supposed to stay impressed with the girl who keeps everyone’s water glasses filled? Screw that. I . . . can’t compete. And I . . . don’t want to. What’s wrong with wanting to be here? If what I want is a little less big, less noble, than what he wants . . . does that make me a loser? That’s the thing. I don’t feel like a loser with Spence. He . . . I . . . Al got that contract to work with the Bath and Tennis Club late this spring . . . and it seemed like everything he did there, we’d run into Spence, because even though his dad owns it, his dad is kind of . . . out of it. At first I started talking to him just because of business. But then . . . he’s not who I thought he was. At all.”

  I’m starting to wonder who is. But to be fair, I have to weigh the six or whatever girls in the hot tub against Cass’s unflinching loyalty and those flashes of perceptiveness I’ve seen myself.

  “I started feeling . . . really liking him . . . that’s why I wanted the ring. I thought it would make me stop thinking about Spence and focus on Nicky.”

  “You do know that’s incredibly messed up, right?”

  She raises her hands in defense. “You don’t get to be the only one who can be stupid and blind, Gwen.”

  “Yeah, welcome to my world.” I’m laughing despite myself. But then I sit up and look at her, my lifelong friend, with the cartilage piercings at the top of her ear that Nic hated, but never told her because she wanted them, and I hurt so much for my cousin—what he had, what he lost—that I have to fold my arms against my stomach to keep the pain contained. “Viv? Did you ever really love Nic?” I ask it, and then wish I hadn’t. I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.

  “I’ll always love him.” She responds so quickly that I know it’s true. “He was my first . . . everything. I never thought—I never planned—he’d be anything but my only everything. But these few months, and especially the last few weeks—it’s not the same. He’s . . . not the same.”

  “Maybe it’s just that he’s really tense,” I say, “maybe . . .” Then I stop. Viv puts her hand on mine, clenched tight on the steering wheel, squeezes. Maybe I stop talking because I don’t know what to say. Or maybe I stop because I finally get that sometimes we hold on to something—a person, a resentment, a regret, an idea of who we are—because we don’t know what to reach for next. That what we’ve done before is what we have to do again. That there are only re-dos and no do-overs. And maybe . . . maybe I know better than that.

  We can’t find Nic anywhere. We try the same old places in another loop, but no luck. We text and call him. Nothing. Viv’s eyelids begin to droop, and as I’m driving over the bridge yet again, she falls asleep, cheek pressed against the passenger door, so I carefully maneuver the car to the Almeidas’ house, shake her awake and urge her into the house. Luckily, Al and her mom are out, so I just have to get her to her room, take off her shoes, and cover her up with the puffy green blanket she’s had since we were little.

  He has to be at the creek. He must have been walking through the woods before and now he’s there. Of course that’s where he’d go. Dangerous, but familiar. I pull the Bronco up, get out so fast I don’t even shut the door, run to the bridge, looking out at the dark rushing water. But it’s a cloudy night and there’s not enough moon to see anything, so I pull the Bronco closer, snap on the headlights and run back.

  The lights cast stark shadows. It’s high tide. I stand at the place we always jump from, scanning the water, but there’s nothing but the dark outline of Seal Rock and the gradual widening of the creek shore as it empties into the ocean.

  When Nic and I were little, people who didn’t know us would ask if we were twins, even though I was tanner skinned and darker haired than him. Now I wish like anything we were and had that twin bond you hear about. I wish I could reach out with my mind and know—just feel—where he is. But when I think . . . all I feel is scared.

  Mom and Grandpa Ben both jump up from Myrtle when I come in, looking over my shoulder, faces falling when they see I’m alone. Emory’s awake, cuddling Hideout, staring big-eyed at the television, which isn’t even on.

  “No panicking,” Grandpa says sharply to Mom, despite the fact that he’s reaching into the cabinet in the kitchen where he keeps his pipe, pulling it out and packing it with rapid, jerky movements completely unlike himself.

  “I shouldn’t have gone out with Patrick.” Mom’s twisting her hands nervously. “All we did was talk about Nico, but still, I knew better. You should have seen Nic’s face when he told him. Like his last dream had died.”

  Sometimes the melodramatic phrases she picks up from her books are so not helpful. “Well, it didn’t,” I snap. “He’s eighteen. He’s got plenty of time to dream. He’s still got the Coast Guard Academy.”

  But not Viv.

  Which Mom and Grandpa probably don’t even know. I’m not going to tell them because the rush of worry in my head is dark and loud as the creek water. They don’t need to be there too, staring into the shadows, afraid to see what they’re searching for.

  I sit on our steps, looking up and down the road, waiting for Nic’s broad-shouldered figure to appear out of nowhere, illuminated in the orangey glow of the porch light. But there’s nothing except the dark road, the distant waves, the hulks of houses, the Field House rising a little higher than the ones before it.

  Five houses down.

  The Field House is five houses down. What, an eighth, a sixteenth of a mile? I could walk there. But I can’t. Because my first instinct was to tell Cass he screwed this up for me. We finally had that conversation about what we were doing together. And doing this right. Is that gone now? Now that he kept something from me, and I left him without a word, or with all the wrong words, choosing my cousin’s side without a second thought?

  I let the screen door slam closed as I finally head inside.

  “Anything?” Viv texts the next morning at five.

  “Nicky Nic Nic!?” Em asks, throwing back the covers of Nic’s bed as though he’s sure to find him there.

  Grandpa Ben frowns over his raisin bran grapefruit. Instead of leafing through the newspaper while he eats, highlighting the yard sales, he focuses on the food, only occasionally flicking a glance to the screen door.

  I try Nic’s cell again and again. It goes straight to voicemail every time. He never remembers to charge that thing, I repea
t to myself, again and again. It’s in his pocket, dead. It’s not somewhere under water, somewhere where Nic jumped deep, somewhere he didn’t swim back up.

  Mom doesn’t even ask. She gives me one swift look when she comes out of the bedroom, then, shoulders slumped, piles her supplies into her cleaning bucket, bumps it down the stairs to the Bronco.

  Then she turns back.

  “Shouldn’t you be dressed to get to the Ellingtons’?”

  “Mom. I can’t go today.”

  Her gentle face turns as stern as it ever gets. “I didn’t raise you to let people down. Abandoning an old lady who counts on you is out of the question. Get to work, Gwen. That’s what we do when we don’t know what to do.”

  So I go.

  All morning I’m preoccupied, peeking out the front window, looking across at the Tucker house, waiting to see Hoop’s truck, Nic hitching out of it, paint-covered, complaining, resentful, or sad or angry . . . just—alive.

  Or the flash of a pink shirt or the gleam of a blond head.

  But Cass, who was everywhere at the beginning of the summer, and especially in my days and nights lately, is nowhere to be seen. Half a dozen times my fingers hover over the buttons of my phone to call him. Finally, Mrs. E. reaches out her hand, exactly like one of the teachers at school, and confiscates it, saying briskly, “You will get this back at the end of the day. We agreed from the start that you would not be one of those texting teenagers, and I am holding you to our agreement. Now, I’m in the mood for some hot tea, so please make me a pot. You look as though you could use some as well.”

  I go through the motions, the lemon thingie, the scalloped silver spoon . . . but the little silver creamer and the silver sugar bowl are nowhere to be found. Great. Somehow, from the moment I saw Henry and Gavin Gage doing . . . whatever they’re doing, I knew that the person who’d be there when one of those itemized things turned up missing was me.