The Paper Palace

by Miranda Cowley Heller

17

  July

  Sunday. Our day off from camp. Jonas and I have made a plan to take a picnic to the beach. We’ll canoe across and walk to the ocean from there so Jonas can fish on the way home. When he arrives, I’m in the kitchen making ham and Muenster sandwiches. I have a jar of dill pickles already packed in the basket, a thermos of iced tea. I throw in a bag of cherries, some paper napkins, and a baggie of Milanos. Jonas leans against the counter and watches as I fold wax paper around the sandwiches, making hospital corners.

  The screen door slams open and shut. Conrad sits down at the porch table. I head into the pantry, bury my head in the icebox, pretending to look for something.

  My cabin door has stayed locked every night since that night, but I’ve started to feel safe in daylight, as long as we aren’t alone. As long as I never, ever look at him. I have become a blindered horse. Conrad pretends to act as if nothing happened, but he has been unusually solicitous—pulling out my chair at the dinner table, refilling my water glass.

  “Quite the young gentleman,” my mother says, smiling at him.

  “Hello, Conrad,” Jonas says now.

  “What’s up?” Conrad grunts.

  “Not much. Elle’s making us a picnic to take to the beach.”

  “What’s she making?”

  “Ham and cheese.”

  “Maybe I’ll come with you.”

  “Okay,” Jonas says.

  The mustard jar I’m holding slips from my hand, shatters on the floor, splattering everything around me in Dijon yellow.

  I crouch down and pick up shards of glass.

  “Are you all right? Did you cut yourself?” Jonas asks, coming into the pantry to help me.

  “I’m fine,” I mutter. “Just glass and mustard everywhere.”

  “Conrad wants to join us.”

  “We can’t fit three people in the canoe.”

  “I can fish later. It’s not as if the bass are going anywhere.”

  “You should have asked me first.”

  “What was I meant to do? Say ‘Hold on a sec while I go ask Elle if she wants you to come? . . . Sorry, she says no?’ That would have been marginally awkward, to say the least.”

  “I need wet newspaper and a broom,” I snap.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, turning away from him. “Stop asking.”

  We take the path that leads from the camp to the beach, walking single file through the woods—Conrad, then Jonas, then me.

  Jonas keeps up a patter of conversation with Conrad. I slow down and let them drift ahead. When they are out of sight, I double over, dry-heaving. I was wrong. I can’t do this. I can’t be with him. Smiling, naked except for my bikini, swimming, knowing. Knowing that he knows. The panic in me feels like a snake slithering out of my mouth.

  Somewhere up ahead, Jonas is calling me.

  “I stubbed my toe,” I yell. “I’ll catch up.”

  I want to turn around and run home, lock myself in my room. Instead, I close my eyes and will myself to calm down, move forward. I’ve been down this path so many times I recognize every root, every tree. I know when I round the next corner I will see wild grapevines climbing into the trees and scrub, clusters of sweet Concord grapes hanging down from the bay laurel, crops left over from a hundred years ago when this wooded hill was still farmland. I know that beyond the vines, the path will widen and steepen. I will crest the hill and come down into a hollow between the dunes, where an old fire road runs parallel to the sea. Beyond, at the top of the next dune, I will come to a wooden hut, dilapidated but still standing, built during the war as a lookout for approaching German submarines. Anna and I played there with our dolls when we were little. I will stand there, looking out at the wide ocean, my ocean. I know this place. This is my place, not his.

  The beach is beautiful and broad. Low tide. Conrad is already knee-deep in the water, wading out. The skin on his back is bright white against his ugly red bathing suit. There’s a smattering of acne across his shoulders. I scan the ocean, looking wistfully for a shark fin. I run down the steep dune, letting my towel out behind me like a sail.

  I sit down a few feet away from Jonas.

  “Hey.” He pats a space on the towel next to him, but I ignore it.

  Conrad dives under a wave and gets tumbled. His fat legs poke out of the water like a giant’s fingers giving us the peace sign before the sea finally rights him.

  “Did you two have some big fight?”

  “No. Just the usual: he’s a jerk and I hate him.”

  “So why are you acting so mad at me?”

  “I’m not acting like anything. You ruined a nice day. It’s no big deal.”

  “I didn’t ruin the day, Elle. It’s beautiful, perfect. Look at that water. Even Conrad’s glad to be here.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” I stand up. “I’m going to take a walk down the beach. You two have a nice time. There aren’t enough sandwiches for three of us.”

  “You can have mine if you promise to stop acting like an insane person.”

  “Don’t talk so loud,” I snap, and storm down to the water’s edge, hating myself. Conrad has ruined the pond, ruined the Paper Palace, ruined me. But I will not let him come between me and Jonas, stain the one thing that is still mine with his black squid ink.

  Conrad is jumping waves, his back to me. I reach down to the tide line, pick up a chipped-flint stone—my heart, I think as I hurl it at him with all my strength, aiming for his head. The stone misses, disappears into the sea a yard short of him. I have always thrown like a girl, and I hate it. It’s a weakness that others can see. I look down, searching for a better rock. Each time the tide recedes, a hundred little holes appear in the smooth wet sand where clams have hurriedly dug themselves down, hiding from the sharp-eyed gulls above. I find the perfect stone: gray, tangerine-sized, with a raised white streak running across its middle. When I stand up, Conrad is looking at me. I put the stone in my pocket for later, and walk away, follow the edge of the sea until I am so far from him that when I look back, he is nothing but a meaningless speck.

  * * *

  —

  When I get home from the beach, Jonas is waiting on the steps of my cabin, something cupped in his hands. “Look.” He’s holding a tree frog the size of a button.

  “Sweet,” I say. “I’m fairly certain you are touching frog piss. They pee in your hand whenever you pick them up.” I push past him and shove open my cabin door.

  “Yes,” Jonas says. “It’s an instinctive reaction to fear.”

  “So, see you Monday, I guess.”

  “Elle, wait. I’m sorry.” He puts the frog on the ground, watches it hop away.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. You’re so mad at me. Please don’t be mad. Haven’t I already been punished enough? All that guy talks about is wrestling and Van Halen, my two least favorite subjects.”

  He looks like a little boy. I feel terrible. None of this is Jonas’s fault, but there’s nothing I can say that will make him understand, because there is nothing that can be said. “It could have been Best of Bread.” I sit down beside him. “I’m sorry I was mean.”

  * * *

  —

  Three weeks into sailing camp, Jonas and I are upgraded from a Sunfish to a Rhodes. We each receive a small iron-on badge. Jonas is the natural sailor, but I’m a decent second mate, and I feel peaceful when I’m out on the water with him. The boat typically holds six of us, but our instructor wants us to be “self-sufficient,” able to navigate with a two-man crew. So, today, Jonas and I get to team up on our own. It’s been drizzling all morning, and we are far out on the bay in our bright yellow slickers. The wind is fickle, changing direction every ten seconds. I’ve been hit by the boom so many times that even Jonas stops laughing at me.

  “Thi
s is ridiculous,” I shout.

  “I agree. Let’s head back.” He trims the sheet and tries to come about, but the wind refuses to cooperate. Our boat bobs around in the surf, its sail flapping slack.

  “We should call out for a tow,” I say. Our instructor will come get us if we need him.

  “No way. It’s our first two-man. It’ll pick up.”

  Instead, the rain begins to bucket down on us so hard that my ears fill with the water dripping off my hair. I can no longer see the dock. Nearby, in the mist, our teacher is towing in another boat.

  “I’m calling him over.”

  “Give it five more minutes.”

  “I’m freezing to death.”

  He stands up, fiddles with the jib.

  “Fine. Five.” I pull my collar up and scrunch down in the cockpit.

  Jonas leans against the mast, gazing out at the rain as if he is looking for answers.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” I say.

  A sea gull flies out of the fog and lands on the bow. It cocks its head and looks at Jonas, unblinking. Jonas looks away first.

  “I don’t want you to get mad,” he says.

  “I won’t.”

  He sits beside me, with a resigned breath. “Have you and Conrad ever, you know, done anything together?”

  “Done anything?” I spit-take the words. “Done anything how? What does that even mean? Why would you ask me that?”

  “It’s just, he said something that day after you left the beach.”

  I brace myself. “What? What did he say?”

  “He said you let him feel you up. He said you fool around. He said I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  A hysterical laugh escapes from my mouth. My windpipes start to close in on themselves. “That’s so disgusting.”

  He laughs, relieved. “Well, technically you aren’t related, but the thought did make me want to puke.”

  “What’s wrong with him? I hate him so much. I would die before I ever let him touch me,” I say, voice shaking.

  “I never really thought you had.”

  I will myself not to cry in front of Jonas, but the tears start slipping out against my will.

  “Elle, forget it. He was joking around, being a jerk.” He takes the bottom of his T-shirt and wipes the rain and tears off my cheeks. “So, I can get my hopes up again?”

  “I’m too old for you,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe myself.

  “I know you think that, but you’re wrong.”

  “And you’re way too good for me.” And this I know is true.

  He reaches into his slicker, pulls out a smushed Peppermint Pattie and tears it in half. “Lunch?”

  There is something so sweet about everything he does, something in his gesture that breaks my heart and makes me start crying again.

  “What? You hate mint?”

  A sob bursts out of me, half laughter, half pain. Conrad has stolen everything from me. I will never be sweet again. I will never be clean again. I always imagined my first time would be with someone I loved. Someone like Jonas. I’m sobbing uncontrollably now, all the terror and shame I have held vomiting out of me in massive heaves and gulps.

  “Elle. Stop, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m an idiot.”

  I try to stop, to catch my breath, but the more I try, the harder I cry. The sea fog rolls in now, so thick it muffles my sobs, turns us both into specters.

  “He enjoys belittling me. We know that. I shouldn’t have said anything. Please stop crying.”

  I want to tell him everything, to unshoulder this burden, but I can’t. He’s barely fourteen, and this murder of crows in my belly is mine alone to carry. The wounds inside me will scab over and heal, however lopsidedly. And next time I will be prepared, armed with more than pills. In the distance, I hear the toll of a warning bell.

  “We should head in,” I manage to gulp out, through my snot and tears and sobs.

  “Elle, I don’t understand. Please stop crying. It’s not like it’s true.” He is anguished, confused. “Did something happen that you aren’t you telling me?”

  I stare down at my waterlogged sneakers. An inch of seawater has collected in the bottom of the boat. I tap at it with my shoe, making little splashes, wipe my face with the sleeve of my plastic slicker.

  I feel him scrutinizing me, trying to weigh things up. “Did Conrad hurt you?”

  “No,” I say in a whisper.

  “You swear on your life?”

  I nod, but my face must betray me, because all of a sudden his body slumps, as if the sharp blade of discovery has de-boned him.

  “Oh god.”

  “You can’t say anything. Ever. No one knows.”

  “Elle, I promise, he will never touch you again.”

  I laugh, but the sound is bitter, hollow. “That’s what I promised myself after the first time he came into my room.”

  A large shadow passes under our boat. It hovers for a moment before slipping off into the mists. Our boat rocks gently as I tell Jonas everything.

  18

  August

  The most beautiful days in summer come after a heavy rain. White cumulus clouds hover in a deepened blue; the air is crisp enough to drink. Today is one of those days. Yesterday’s storm has washed the skies clean. I wake up having forgotten—I may even be smiling before memory strikes and I wish it away. A stick cracks outside my cabin door, the steps sag with a hollow groan. My mother’s face appears in the screen door.

  “Why is this locked?” she says, rattling the handle.

  “It catches sometimes.” I jump up and unlatch the door.

  “Put this stuff away, please.” She dumps a pile of fresh folded laundry on my bed. “Leo thought it would be fun to take my father’s old boat out today.” My grandfather’s sailing dinghy has been parked on a trailer at the bottom of our driveway collecting pine needles all summer. “We’re thinking eleven-ish to hit the outgoing tide, so up you get. No dawdling.”

  “I think I’ll skip it, if that’s okay. I’m not really in the mood.”

  “Leo wants a family day. We’ll have a picnic and then sail out to the Point.”

  The Point is the literal end of the Cape, a dwindling spit of sand that curves around the wide harbor in a protective embrace, the final barrier between civilization and the wide-open ocean. From the launch at the town beach you can sail out to the Point, drop anchor in the warm, glassy shallows of the sheltered bay, watch scuttling crabs in the sea grasses, dig for clams when the tide recedes. But three minutes’ walk around the point and you are facing out to sea, nothing between you and Portugal but an occasional yacht coming in for safe harbor, fishing boats in the far distance heading out to the rich waters of the Stellwagen Bank in search of bluefin tuna and halibut, the breaching whales.

  “Why do I have to come? Why can’t you and Leo go by yourselves? Anyway, we won’t all fit.” The dinghy is barely big enough for two, three tops. And Leo is so huge, he’s basically two people already.

  “We’ll go out two at a time. Conrad’s coming.”

  “No way. I’m not going sailing with Conrad.”

  She sighs. “Elle, I’m asking you to do this.”

  “It’s a terrible idea. He’s like a big fat cat in the water.”

  “Don’t be nasty, it doesn’t suit you.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Why are you being so unpleasant? What has Conrad ever done to you?” My mother shakes her head in dismay.

  “Fine. But only if Jonas comes, too.”

  “I told you. It’s a family day.”

  “Mum. Seriously. Think about it. If we capsize in the bay, Conrad will be useless. I won’t be able to right the boat by myself if the water gets remotely choppy. So, either you, me, Leo, and Conrad squeeze into the boat, in which case it will definitely si
nk, or I need Jonas to help me sail.”

  “Fine,” she says. “It’s too beautiful a day to argue.”

  In the driveway, Conrad and Leo are trying to hitch the boat trailer to the car, but it keeps slipping out of their hands. I watch them belly-laughing at their own ineptitude, transfixed by the strangeness of normality, the flat line of the everyday.

  “Never ask a sax player to do a man’s job,” Leo says when he sees me standing there. “Come give us a hand with this. Conrad, you hold it in place while Elle puts the pin in.”

  I hesitate, trying to think up some excuse, but nothing comes.

  “Any time now, Elle,” Leo says. “This trailer isn’t going to hitch itself.” He hands me the metal pin. “Hold this while Conrad and I lift.”

  “Okay, kiddly-winks.” My mother appears, smiling. She throws a cooler into the back seat.

  Conrad and Leo slot the trailer into place. As he stands up, Conrad accidentally knocks the trailer pin out of my hand. He reaches down to get it for me. “I’m sorry, Elle,” he says, his voice so quiet I barely catch it.

  * * *

  —

  Jonas is waiting for us at the end of his driveway, sitting on the verge of the road. He looks relaxed, shirtless as always, but there is a wariness in his eyes, a knitting.

  “Hop in, Jonas,” Mum says. “Conrad, you squeeze over.”

  Jonas gets in beside him, leans his body away against the car window, pretending to watch the trees go past. I have never seen Jonas look away from anything, never seen his body blanch. And I know it is because I have tethered him—taken away the whitetail dart, wild green-leaf spring of his marrow: forced him to collude, to carry my lie. It’s as if I have stolen his virginity.

  “We may need to use the spinnaker,” I say to him, “so we can run in front of the wind.”

  * * *

  —

  It was lovely and calm in the woods—only the perfect luff of a breeze—but when we get to the bay, the wind has picked up. Waves crisscross the harbor, chopping at boats on their moorings. There’s almost no one out on the water.