Even in Paradise

by Chelsey Philpot

  It was only after I grabbed a flute of champagne that I saw Bradley standing by himself on the side of the porch where Cordelia and I had been folding napkins. He had a glass of ice and dark liquor in his hand.

  “Young lady, are you old enough to be drinking that?”

  His sternness sound so authentic that I put the flute down on a nearby table.

  “Really, Charlie. You thought I was serious?”

  I picked it back up, shrugging. “I’ve got to say, Bradley, your old-man act is pretty good. What age are you now? Thirty? Forty-five?”

  “Touché.” He mimed touching a sword to his nose and bowing. “Nice dress.” He glanced at the silk dress Julia had bought me the weekend before.

  “Thanks. It’s new—”

  “Pink.” He spoke like he hadn’t heard me. “I wouldn’t have pegged Charlie Ryder from New Hampshire as a pink girl.”

  “Well, normally—”

  “So, Sport,” he said, making his voice tremble like an old man’s. “I’m glad I got you alone for a moment. Cause I’m gonna tell ya a little secret before the evening gets away from us. And because it’s my goddamn party and I just sold a company, that makes me much, much wiser than you, so you have to listen.” He braced himself against the railing in a poor imitation of someone leaning on a cane.

  “You’re a good kid, and you know what?” He gestured for me to bend down to his level. “You’ve been good for the lot of us.” He straightened and drained his glass, setting it down on a nearby table with enough force to make the ice cubes jump onto the porch.

  “Bradley, are you ever ser—”

  “Hey, Charlie.” He rested a hand on my shoulder, gripping it tightly enough so I could feel each of his fingers. “I am serious. You’ve been good for all of us.” He gestured behind him toward the crowd gathered on the lawn.

  “Now.” He smoothed down the front of his blazer and made a motion like he was straightening a bow tie. “Tell me how handsome I look.”

  “You’re very handsome.”

  “The best-looking one here? Better-looking than Sebastian?”

  “Well . . .” I tapped a finger against my chin.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Okay.” He hopped over the rail, landing just to the left of a rosebush. “I’m off to get so drunk I forget my name and pass out in a lawn chair with just my boxers on.”

  “Sounds like it wouldn’t be the first time,” I shouted after him, but if he heard me he didn’t turn around.

  After he left, I stood pressed against the railing, watching the guests weave around one another like tropical fish in a tank. Watching dusk turn to dark. Watching the bubbles rise in my flute and the smoke from the fire pit hover over the whole scene like the remnants of a dream.

  I would have been happy to watch all night, but Cordelia dashed up the porch, a swirl of blue linen and chocolate-coated fingers, and insisted she had to teach me the best way to make a s’more.

  Julia found me just as I was pulling a marshmallow that looked as chewy and crisp as charcoal from a stick.

  “Merde!” she exclaimed. “Are you trying to give the kid cancer?”

  I shook my head at a little boy in seersucker pants as he handed me two graham crackers. “She’s just kidding.” Nonetheless, after I scraped the marshmallow onto the crackers, added some chocolate, and handed it to him, he ran off toward a tall black man with the same wide eyes and shoved the s’more into his hands instead of eating it himself.

  I turned back to Julia. “Where have you been?”

  “Shhhhhhhhh,” Julia said, swaying on her heels. “It’s a surprise.” She stuck a finger in front of her lips, missing the center.

  I sighed and plucked the remnants of the cancer marshmallow off my stick with my fingers and stuck it in my mouth. It tasted like burned toast. “On a scale of one to ten, how drunk are you?”

  “Oh.” Julia broke a piece of chocolate off from one of the bars melting on the wooden bench near the pit. “How little you know me after all this time. I’ve been keeping a steady buzz since the first clowns piled out of the first car.” She shoved the chocolate in her mouth, licking her fingers.

  “Maybe you should ease up.”

  “Oh, dear, sweet Charlie.”

  “And the money. What’s the gift?”

  “What kind of magician would I be if I gave away the surprise before the big finale?” She patted my arm, leaving a smear of chocolate near my elbow, and walked away, disappearing into the tent on the other side of the lawn.

  The fireworks were amazing—until they weren’t.

  When the first one went off, I didn’t even turn around. Sebastian had his arm around me as he chatted with one of Bradley’s investors. From time to time he would squeeze my side, as if to say, “I know. This is boring me to death, too.” I would squeeze him back to let him know I was okay. I was content with entertaining myself by trying to squint just enough so that the swirls of women’s dresses and the candlelight blended together into an abstract painting.

  I heard a low rumble, even felt it course through my body, but I didn’t turn around. I thought it was the ferry making its final run for the night, sounding its horn as it pulled out of the wharf. Or I thought it was an old car passing on the road, or any number of reasonable things.

  But by the second firework, she had figured out how to launch them properly. The second one soared off the dock, splitting the sky into shards of red and orange with a crack before dripping down like the branches of a willow tree. I saw all of this in the reflection of the investor’s glasses. Already his neck was craned back, his small mouth slightly opened.

  All it takes is one explosion and people expect a show.

  “Pip,” Sebastian said.

  I nodded and turned around, looking skyward with the rest of the party. “Your mom is going to kill me.”

  A third firework exploded off the dock: green and blue sparkles, glitter thrown in the air. A woman near the bar clapped, and the kids by the fire pit woke out of their sugar-induced stupors to clap as well.

  We heard a fourth bang, but no light.

  A fifth firework: a purple starburst.

  A sixth: yellow splashes of paint thrown against a black canvas.

  A seventh, eighth, ninth. The bright colors made the upturned faces and the huge tent glow green, red, and blue.

  “I didn’t give her that much money,” I said to Sebastian. “How’d she get them all?”

  He pulled me back so I was leaning against his chest. “It’s Julia. She can be very charming when she wants to be.”

  By the fifteenth firework, we could smell the smoke. It was the rotten-egg stink of sulfur, but it was also the smell of a bonfire: damp, old wood protesting before catching flame.

  “What’s that smell? Is somethin’ on fire?” slurred a woman with short red hair standing just to my left.

  “Shit.” Sebastian let go of me and started jogging toward the shore. “Julia!”

  He was halfway to the boathouse by the time my brain caught up with my feet and I ran after him. The fireworks had stopped and the guests had begun to pace like nervous cats. I reached him just as the flames began to crawl over the top of the roof, reflecting off the water like they were beneath the waves instead of in the night sky. If it hadn’t been terrifying, it would’ve been beautiful.

  “Julia!” Sebastian shouted.

  “Would she have gone in to try and put it out?” I said.

  Through the curtain of smoke, I saw that the flames weren’t just red and orange. Like the fireworks that had given them life, they were blue, white, gray, and purple.

  The heat swept toward us in waves, riding the wind that whipped the flames even higher. Out of this haze, Julia stumbled toward us, her arms clutched against her chest like she was cradling a doll.

  “Julia, Jesus!” I ran toward her. “Are you okay?”

  “I think I burned it.” She looked into the night over the ocean, where the light from the fire didn’t reach. Her eyes were unfo
cused, and her lips hung open slightly as if she was a fish gasping for air.

  I put an arm on her lower back and steered her toward the house. One glance was all it took to see that her arm was red and blistering. As I sat her on the front porch steps, Bradley rushed down from inside the house, holding a fire extinguisher. When he met Sebastian, they both sprinted toward the burning boathouse, where some partygoers had gathered and were using their cocktail glasses to throw seawater at the flames.

  I held her gently and rocked her against me, making the same soothing sounds I made whenever I picked Sam or AJ up after a fall.

  Despite Sebastian’s and Bradley’s efforts, despite the martini glasses of water and the shouting, the fire spread, creeping from the boathouse to the dock, and then, finally, to the little red sailboat. The same sailboat I had seen in the picture in Julia’s room over a year before. The same sailboat that was in the photos in the room where no one was allowed to go. Gus’s sailboat was engulfed in minutes. There was nothing to do to save it. I pushed Julia’s head down on my shoulder, hoping that she wouldn’t see.

  By the time the fire truck roared onto the lawn, I was as dazed as she was. Within an hour, the fire was out and only a smoking black skeleton remained of the boathouse.

  The party broke up after that. Guests drifted to their cars like refugees tramping across the desert, whispering among their small groups.

  Sebastian trudged toward us. His once crisp shirt stuck to him in patches, and he had lost his tie. Julia had begun to shiver, but she had stopped whimpering.

  “She needs to go to the hospital,” I said.

  His face had streaks of soot on it and glowed with sweat. He nodded and helped Julia to her feet.

  I was still sitting on the porch steps, clutching my head in my hands, getting ready to follow them, when Mrs. Buchanan found me.

  “Did you help her buy those things?”

  I nodded without looking up.

  “Charlotte. Why would you do this to us? After I asked you . . . I trusted—”

  “I didn’t mean . . . I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.” My head ached. My eyes stung from the smoke, and Mrs. Buchanan’s words made my heart hurt.

  “Teresa, calm down,” Boom said as he jogged down the porch steps. He hugged her to him. “It was an accident. What matters now is that we get her to the hospital.”

  Mrs. Buchanan turned into his chest and mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

  “I know. I know,” Boom said in return. He looked at me over her shoulder. “Charlie, you and Sophie will stay with Cordelia?”

  I nodded as I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, as if getting rid of my goose bumps would somehow stop my chest from feeling like it had caved in on itself.

  They walked over to where Sebastian was easing Julia into the passenger seat of an SUV with rust on the bumper and dented doors. It was the car we used to drive on the beaches and the dirt roads of the nature preserve—outings that suddenly felt like they happened lifetimes ago. Bradley was already at the wheel. Sebastian held the door for Mrs. Buchanan before sliding in after her.

  I was left standing alone on the lawn, looking up at that magnificent house. Not even on the day that Sebastian first brought me to Arcadia did I feel so acutely how much that world—where a home could be lit up like a beacon, like a chandelier—didn’t belong to me.

  Much later that night, as I lay sleepless in what I had come to think of as “my room,” I heard the sounds of a car turning into the drive, the front door opening, and then Sebastian’s voice drifting up from the base of the stairs.

  “Doctor said . . . just watch her . . . blame . . . fine.”

  I heard the steps creak as someone helped Julia up to her room. I heard Boom clear his throat, Sophie saying something in French, and Mrs. Buchanan softly crying.

  And when I finally heard only the normal night sounds—the waves on the shore, the flap of the flag against the pole, the occasional wail of a foghorn as sad and lonely as a solitary bird—I saw a shadow outside my door.

  The shadow hesitated, shifting left, then right, then left again, but eventually disappeared.

  Not long after dawn, I did, too.

  I went into Julia’s room, first just standing in the doorway and trying not to cry at the sight of her thin arms wrapped in layers of gauze so thick it looked like she had wool mittens on. I set the note I had written her on her bedside table and then snuck downstairs and out through the kitchen door to Sophie’s cottage. She was up. Her red-laced eyes made me wonder if she had slept at all.

  Sophie grabbed her car keys with a nod, knowing what I needed without me even asking.

  We were silent during the drive to the ferry, but when I opened my door to get out of the car, she grabbed my arm.

  “Just give them time, chérie. Sometimes they forget that the world is not against them.”

  “Will you tell Mrs. Buchanan I’m sorry?”

  “Oh, darling girl, je suis désolée . . . je suis désolée pour ton cœur brisé.” She kissed the palm of my upturned hand and let me go.

  I sat on the upper deck for the two-hour ride to Hyannis, letting my phone ring and ring until I shut it off completely.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. But the only people I wanted to hear me were already miles of ocean away.

  I’M SORRY

  Julia,

  I wish I was strong enough to stay, but I’m not. I don’t know how to face your family after I messed up so badly. I messed up, and you got hurt, and I don’t expect them to forgive me for that.

  Love,

  Charlie

  PHONE CALL #2

  “Charlie, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Where the hell are you?”

  “Hyannis. Waiting for Rosalie to pick me up.”

  “Why did you leave like that?”

  “Will you tell your mom I’m sorry? I’m so sorry. I couldn’t see her this morning, Sebastian. I couldn’t.”

  “Oh, Charlie.” I knew he was running his hand through his hair, pacing, drumming his fingers. “Whatever she said, she didn’t mean it. She was upset and Julia having to go to that hospital again just brought back a lot of bad feelings. My mum loves you. You know that.”

  “I didn’t know she would get hurt.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re the best friend she’s ever had. Anything Mum said last night, it wasn’t about you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “She might not be back on campus for a few days.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Sophie arrived to pack up her things two days later. Julia never came back to St. Anne’s at all.

  THE END

  Non est ad astra mollis e terris via

  (There is no easy way from the earth to the stars)

  —Seneca the Younger

  TWENTY-NINE

  JULIA’S ABSENCE SUCKED ALL THE meaning from graduation.

  It was as if nature had predicted my mood and decided to coordinate. The sky was heavy with the threat of rain—the clouds like gray water balloons that had been filled to the point of near-bursting. The air was as sticky and suffocating as a pond of melted licorice.

  I sat through the depressingly predictable speeches, trying not to scratch at the polyester robe that clung to my skin and twisted through my legs no matter how many times I rearranged it. The valedictorian, an earnest Yale-bound girl, gave a speech that was full of sayings from all the right poets, philosophers, and pop stars. The alumna guest offered sage advice on how to succeed in life without really trying, and Dr. Mulcaster’s talk about not wasting our potential felt like it was directed right at me.

  I sat still until my name was called. I threw my soggy cap, the cardboard square thing at the top bent at the edges, with the rest of my class. It was a small victory that I had only turned and searched the folding-chair-perched crowd two dozen times during the ceremony.

  I hated my weakness. I hated my hope. I
hated that I still thought just maybe, maybe I would see him casually leaning against the giant oak at the back of the quad, her near the fringes of the crowd, or Mrs. Buchanan and Boom standing with Cordelia, Sophie, and Bradley somewhere, anywhere.

  When it was all over, I didn’t search for my dad, Melissa, and the boys—they knew to meet me at my dorm—or anyone to say good-bye to. Amy, Jacqueline, and I had made our good-byes the night before, sitting on the half-packed boxes in my room, talking long past lights out. Rather, they talked and I listened. I didn’t have the energy to giggle and wonder about college. But I was glad to watch them. Glad to not be alone with only my regrets for company.

  Rosalie would find me later, after she packed up her car. She had agreed to give me a ride. I’d been a bad friend to her, and she was being a good one to me. I didn’t know why, but I was grateful.

  I sat beside the side door of what used to be my dorm on top of one of my cardboard boxes and waited. The rain that had held up the sky all afternoon finally started to come down in pinpricks of drizzle.

  I was so caught up in staring into nothing that I heard the click of Piper’s heels before I saw her coming toward me. She had taken off her black robe and seemed not to care that the blue dress she wore was getting ruined by the rain. She gestured for me to move over, and once I had, she leaned against my box next to me.

  “You’ll recover, you know? From the Julia hangover, that is.” She spoke without looking at me. She was close enough that I could see the mascara smudges hidden beneath the foundation around her eyes. She either hadn’t had time to wash her makeup off from the night before or just didn’t care. I guessed the latter.

  My hands tightened around the edge of the box. I was having a hard time pretending to be interested in looking at the Dumpsters behind the science center.

  “Is that a known medical condition?” I said. “A Julia hangover? I’ll have to look it up later. In the meantime, my dad’s going to be here any moment. He’ll be driving a truck, so you might want to leave just in case someone you know walks by.”