“Why would I be mad? What did you do?”
“It just happened,” he said, palms up, like he was trying to explain a shattered vase. “We didn’t plan it or anything.”
I jerked my head, scanning as far as I could see into the foliage. “You did not. You fucking did not.”
He grinned.
I pushed him on the chest, and he stepped back, laughing. “What the hell were you thinking?”
He raised his hands, trying to distance himself from me, from what he’d done. From what they had done. “It’s not my fault! She’s single, I’m single, she’s been flirting with me all week...look, don’t make it into a big deal. It wasn’t that great.”
“You asshole,” I spat. “She’s my friend. Is nothing safe around here? Is everything that moves fair game?”
“Don’t say anything,” he said, grabbing my shoulder. “I promised I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I wish you hadn’t!” I shoved him again. “You are such a—I don’t even know the word. How could you do this to me?”
He did manage to look at least a little bit contrite. “I know, I feel bad already. Look, I promise, it was a onetime thing. But we’re adults. We can handle it. Nothing has to change.”
“Bastard,” I said, my mind reeling. “Of course it changes everything.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, flicking the end of my braid so it whipped over my shoulder. And then he had the gall—the fucking gall—to whistle as he disappeared down the path, back to the beach.
Megan
I don’t know how I made it into the house, or how I made it up the stairs, or how I was suddenly sitting on the closed toilet seat in the bathroom next to the room I shared with Lauren. I was shivering, rocking back and forth, trying to form thoughts. Get out of here. Call the police. I didn’t have a cell phone, but there was a landline in the office. Could I call 911 from there? Would the police come out from the mainland? Was The Island even in their jurisdiction, or was it somehow outside geographical boundaries? I couldn’t imagine police arriving here, docking at the pier, shining flashlights up the path, searching the gazebo for evidence—would there be evidence, other than scattered pine needles, the swirls of dirt and dust that had been trampled by our feet?
I tried to think. The evidence was on me, inside me. Go to the hospital. After what had happened with Kat earlier in the week, I knew there was a hospital in Yarmouth. There someone could do an examination and contact the police for me. This much I knew from watching endless Law & Order marathons with my dad, a million years ago. Someone would swab for evidence and that would trigger an investigation, and then I would...
Okay, think. I could call my mom. Even if she dropped everything to come, it would be a full day or more before she arrived. I could call one of the Sisters, although I didn’t know their home addresses or if their parents even had listed numbers. And there was Miriam, five hours away in Scofield. If I could get her home number, she would do something, I was sure of it. She would take me back with her, feed me and hold me while I cried. But then I would miss the start of my seminar at Harvard—unless she could smooth that over for me, make some phone calls.
Just get off The Island, then. Get off the fucking island.
Was I safe with Michael nearby? Was he done with me or waiting outside the door for another opportunity to catch me off guard, drag me down the hallway to his bedroom, stuff a pillowcase in my mouth and tie me to his bed with the sheets? No—he wouldn’t. Yes—he might.
Someone was going to have to take me to the hospital, or at least get me off The Island. I would have to tell Lauren. I would have to just come out with it: your brother raped me. That was the right word. It was the word I would have to tell the police. I would have to tell her everything, too—how he came up behind me, how he’d forced me to the ground, how he’d pulled down my shorts...
For the moment, I had to wait. Lauren was still down at the beach. Michael was probably there, too, helping to shoot off the last of the fireworks. For the moment, I was safe, then. For the moment, I could think.
Someone knocked on the door, a soft rap of the knuckles. I watched as the knob turned. Michael. He had come back for me, and I hadn’t even had the good sense to lock the door.
“Stop,” I sobbed, but the door opened anyway.
It was Mrs. Mabrey, a blanket from one of the downstairs couches draped over her shoulders. “I thought I heard someone come in,” she said, and we stared at each other. She looked slightly off center, and I realized she was wearing a wig, a bit askew on her scalp. Of course it was a wig—she must have lost her hair with the chemo and radiation, but this whole summer, not one of the Mabreys had mentioned it.
I could see my reflection in the mirror over the sink, so I knew that my face was smudged with dirt and streaked with tears, and that my right arm was red at the elbow, where Michael had slammed it into the wood planks. My arms and legs were scratched, and a few pine needles were still attached to my filthy shirt and shorts. Semen had dried on my thighs in a sticky trail.
Here was my chance to get help. Talk to a responsible adult. Wasn’t that what I’d been taught, all the way back in elementary school, in those lessons about “stranger danger”? I needed to say something. I had to ask for help. I whispered, “I was outside by the gazebo... I was walking back...” It wasn’t the way I should have started; it wasn’t the way that made sense because where I was and what I’d been doing weren’t the important part of this story.
I didn’t want to have to say it. I wanted her to see me and understand what had happened to me. I wanted a surrogate mother who would put her arms around me and promise that it would be okay.
But Mrs. Mabrey’s face was expressionless. “We may have our faults as a family,” she said, the words coming out dry and raspy, as if from a voice that hadn’t been heard in a long time. Her gaze moved from the scratches on my arms up to my face. “But in the end, we always support each other.” She pulled the door closed in a way that felt final and definite, like screwing the lid on a jar, or slamming shut the pages of a book, or telling me that no one would ever believe what I had to say.
Lauren
I was shaking when I reached the house, furious with both of them. Megan was my guest, my friend. Didn’t that mean something? Wasn’t she obligated to act like a guest, to follow the basic courtesies and expectations that came along with being a guest? At the top of that list was “don’t sleep with my brother”—right? It was one of those obvious things that didn’t need to be spelled out to any decent human being.
And Michael. God. He was such a pig. If she had the working parts, he was interested. Apparently, he had no moral quandaries, either. She was my friend, my roommate, but there were unwritten rules for siblings, too. There were just as many thou shalt nots.
From the den, I heard my mother’s voice. “Who’s there? Michael?”
I almost laughed then, realizing the full effect of what they’d done. Imagine if my mother knew. Dad was another story—he would shake his head and say he was disappointed and that would be the end of it. Mother would—what? Make Megan pack her bags and dump her on the wharf in Yarmouth in the middle of the night? Forbid her from ever contacting anyone in the family again? Megan might have been my roommate, but this would solidify the fact that she wasn’t Mabrey material, not at all. Forget Keale, forget the program at Harvard. There were a million other ways she didn’t measure up.
My mother was lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Her wig was tilted at a strange angle, exposing part of her scalp.
“Where’s Megan?” I demanded.
Mom didn’t look at me. “Upstairs.”
Something didn’t feel right. Did she already know about Michael and Megan? Had she sniffed them out, the way she’d always sniffed out the trouble I got myself into?
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?”
I took a step closer, and she screwed her eyes shut, like a child pretending to be asleep. “Why are you acting so weird?”
The screen door slapped behind me, and I turned around to see Aunt Sue dragging Annabelle by the hand. Annabelle’s shorts were wet at the crotch, and her cheeks were tear stained. “Someone had herself a little accident,” Aunt Sue said, and the two of them disappeared into the downstairs bathroom, the soles of Annabelle’s shoes squeaking on the hardwood.
Mom ignored them, still staring up at the ceiling fan, practically catatonic.
* * *
I stormed upstairs and found Megan sitting on her bed, arms wrapped around her body, rocking back and forth. She stopped to look up at me. “Lauren—” she began, and then she seemed stuck, as if there was no way to continue. That was fine with me; I wasn’t interested in her version of the story. I didn’t want my brother to be an anecdote for her future stories. This one guy, this one time. I didn’t want to know the particulars, the whats and the hows. I was going for the bigger question.
“Just tell me. Why did you do it?”
She blinked, surprised. I noticed then how dirty she was, as if she had been rolling around in the bushes. Which was probably what had happened, one of the specific details I didn’t want to know.
I unwound the strap from my neck, set my camera carefully on top of the dresser and closed the door. It was too late to go back to the beach; the fireworks were done by now, and I didn’t trust myself not to scream at MK in front of everyone. “I know what happened, okay? I ran into my brother, and he told me everything.”
“He told you everything?” Her question came slowly, as if she were sounding out the words.
I shook my head. “I guess not. He spared me the salacious details, which I’m just fine not knowing, thank you very much.”
Megan bent forward at the waist, head over her knees.
“You’re not going to tell me why you did it? I trusted you.”
She didn’t say anything.
I began undressing, stepping out of my shorts and T-shirt, sliding off the bathing suit I’d been wearing since before breakfast. My pajamas had disappeared into the day’s laundry, so I chose a pair of too-warm flannels and a tank top. I heard movement from Megan, and when I turned around, she had her duffel bag out, the zipper gaping open.
“What are you going to do?” I demanded. “Cut and run a day early?”
She didn’t answer.
“I don’t blame him,” I snarled. “I mean, you are female and you are alive and you did cross his field of vision. I just can’t believe you fell for it. Jesus. He’s my freaking brother.” I shuddered from a brief vision of the two of them together, MK’s lips pressed against Megan’s.
“You blame me,” she said, like a robot programmed for repetition.
I rolled my eyes. “God, Megan.”
She opened her dresser and pulled a clean shirt and shorts from the top of two neatly folded piles. As she changed, she turned her back to me—surprising modesty, I thought grimly, for someone who didn’t have qualms about sleeping with my brother when his family was literally within earshot. She wasn’t even wearing underwear, I realized, turning away in disgust.
“Can I use this?” she asked a moment later, holding up a plastic bag that had been sitting on top of my dresser for weeks. It held a trinket I’d bought in one of the stores by the wharf, a sand globe with purple lettering that read Maine 2002. “Just the bag,” she clarified.
I shrugged, watching as she wadded up her dirty clothes and placed them in the bag. She tied the ends and shoved the plastic bag into her duffel, then began transferring the rest of her clothes. She seemed remarkably calm for someone who had just upset the whole order of our friendship.
“How long have you been planning this?”
She whirled around. “What?”
“I know that you kissed him that New Year’s Eve.”
Her eyes were wide. I’d surprised her, for once. “How did you know that?”
I laughed. “I was there, remember? I was the one who invited you to stay with my family—just like this time.”
“You were sleeping.”
I shook my head. “I woke up in time for the main event, I guess.”
“Then you know that he kissed me. It’s an important distinction.”
I shrugged. “You were both flirting. You could have stopped it.”
Again, a blank stare. Then she turned her back to me, removed her books from the shelf next to her bed and placed them inside her duffel bag, sliding them into the gaps left by her clothing. All summer she’d handled those books so reverently, highlighting lines in clean yellow streaks, making precise notations in the margins with the fine point of her mechanical pencil. She was packing for her trip to Harvard, of course. That had been coming all along, the expiration date looming on our summer together. But doing it tonight, in front of me, made the act feel more final.
The bag packed, she heaved it off the bed and onto the floor. Finally, she turned to me again. “I think it would be a good idea if I left in the morning.”
“Seriously? That’s dumb. Everyone’s expecting you to be here tomorrow.” Tomorrow was the Fourth of July and all our festivities, the real hurrah of the summer. Maybe tomorrow, she would see what she had done wrong. Maybe tomorrow, I’d realize that I’d blown things out of proportion.
She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at me. “Did he tell anyone else?”
I rolled my eyes. “I very much doubt it. My parents wouldn’t exactly be thrilled.” Then I remembered Mom downstairs, the strange way she was staring at the ceiling. What did she know? “Seriously. You’re staying at my house. On a tiny island. Did you think no one would ever find out?”
She didn’t answer. She was sitting stiffly on her bed, hands on her knees. I felt bad for her, almost. If it hadn’t been my brother, I would have sat next to her and hugged her and told her that we all make mistakes. But Megan hadn’t considered my feelings, had she? She’d hardly even talked to me over the last few days, ever since I told her—
“Wait,” I blurted. “Is this because of Joe?”
She straightened like a puppet controlled by an invisible string. “Is what because of Joe?”
My head spun. I’d told her that I was sleeping with Joe, her ex-whatever, and just a few days later, she slept with my brother. It was a twisted kind of payback. At the time, her reaction had seemed too strange, so un-Megan-like, so reserved and nonchalant. But now it all made sense. Should I have seen that coming? I felt uneasy now, sick to my stomach. “Did he really mean that much to you? You never mentioned his name to me, not once.”
Megan’s hand was on her knee, her fingers tracing a thin red line that ran up and over her kneecap and coming away, faintly pink with blood. “Well, then,” she said. “I guess we must be even now.”
And then her hand reached over for the bedside lamp, plunging the alcove into darkness. The mattress creaked for a moment as she settled into it, and the room was quiet.
Bitch, I thought, still fuming when I slipped between my cool sheets a moment later. It was earlier than I normally went to bed, but I didn’t want to go downstairs and run into MK or deal with my sugar-hyped cousins. It was best to let the exhaustion take me, to close my eyes and be done with this day. Only that morning, Uncle Patrick and Aunt Sue and the kids had arrived, and Kat had been discharged from the hospital. Already those events seemed distant, etched into the long-ago past. In the present were Megan and MK, and tomorrow the nuclear fallout, the half-life of what they’d done.
Maybe I wouldn’t fight her if she wanted to leave a day early. Maybe, I thought, the reflection of the moon playing across my closed eyelids, it was best to just let her go.
* * *
The first scream came just after midnight, waking the whole house. There was no d
oubt this time that it was Katherine. A moment later, Lizzie was screaming, too, a high-pitched, relentless Mom-my! Mom-my! that stung my ears. I met Peter in the hallway, still wearing the clothes he’d worn down at the beach for fireworks. He rushed past with a handful of towels, barking “Call the hospital” in my direction.
“What do you mean?” I asked, following him toward their bedroom. Annabelle and Lizzie were both awake, crying in the doorway. “Peter, what’s happening?”
Mom and Dad were at Kat’s bedside, trying to reason with her. I caught snatches of their conversation around the girls’ sobbing. We have to get you out of here. You need to see a doctor.
But the worst was Kat herself, repeating in a controlled voice, “It’s just a little blood. I’m not having a miscarriage. It’s just a little blood. Just a little blood.”
“Okay, we’re going to get you downstairs,” Peter said. He and Dad made a sling out of their arms and hoisted Kat, with much grunting and swearing, down the stairs.
Mom came into the hallway, clutching the formerly white bathroom towels now stained dark with blood. She dropped them into a heap on the floor. “We’re going back to the hospital. You and Megan need to look after the girls while we take care of this.”
I nodded numbly and held out my arms for Lizzie, who stopped midshriek, her mouth open, too stunned for sound. I held out a hand for Annabelle. “Let’s go get your mom.”
“I don’t know where my shoes are,” she whined.
“That’s okay. You don’t need shoes for this.”
MK came in, shirtless, running a hand through his hair. I could hardly look at him. “What’s going on?”
Mom said, “Kat’s having a miscarriage,” and pushed past him, her nightgown trailing on the stairs.
Lizzie screeched in my arms, and I turned her away from the faint impressions of bloody footprints in the hallway. Where was Megan? She would be able to handle this better than I could. Balancing Lizzie on one hip, I peeked into our bedroom, wondering if Megan had somehow slept through the chaos. Her bed seemed to be empty. Not just empty, I realized, flipping on the light—the sheets were tucked in, the comforter folded back, the pillows neatly stacked. The duffel bag she’d been packing earlier was gone.
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