here!” Henry said, gesturing toward the police officers sil-
houetted in the living room window.
They helped Blue to her feet, the four of them dashing and
stumbling across the night, Renee out in front as always; she could’ve run laps around them, she was that fast, even drunk.
The beam of a flashlight swept over them. The cops had
breached the backyard. Blue turned, pointed. “The po-po.”
She threw her hands up. “I didn’t do it! I’m innocent!”
“Oh my God,” Hannah said.
“Please shut up, Blue,” Henry said, but he was laughing as
he said it; he could not stop laughing as he ran.
Hannah was laughing, too, and trying not to, because it
was taking the air she needed to flee, but she wasn’t really
scared, or rather only scared enough for it to be fun. The sense of pursuit reminded her of childhood—of playing games like
Manhunt and Kick the Can on hot, summer nights, life in
her lungs, every game an excuse to be chased.
Down the too-dark road they flew to where Hannah had
parked her car and Henry his.
“Wait! Where’s Maya?” Hannah said, and then they heard
a voice shout “Here!” and there was Maya running up behind
them, waving her bra in her hand, her shirt on inside out,
breathless with the uncharacteristic exertion. Henry looked
to Hannah and burst out laughing all over again. He loved
her ridiculous friends so much.
Hannah glanced back at the house. The cops were preoc-
cupied with other partygoers. They were in the clear.
Henry kissed her. “You all right to drive?”
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KERRY KLETTER
“Totally sober,” she said.
“You can come back to my house if you want. My parents
won’t be home until late.” He wiggled his eyebrows and she
laughed.
She looked back at the girls. She’d hardly seen them all
night. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“Be safe,” he said.
“Always,” she said.
She hadn’t known it was a lie.
Now standing in the parking lot as Blue walked impatiently
toward her, Hannah wanted to scream back to the teenagers
they once were, Stay at the party! Don’t leave! Turn yourselves in to the police!
If only.
If only.
If only.
Hannah blinked and blinked.
“I have weed back at the house, if that helps,” Blue said as
she neared.
“I really need my Xanax.” Just having the bottle in her hand
could sometimes soothe her nervous system.
“Where was the last place you saw it?”
“Maya had it.”
They exchanged a knowing glance.
“I’ll help you find it when we get back, okay?” Blue said.
Hannah nodded. Blue’s uncharacteristic gentleness made
her throat swell with that particular kindness-induced grief.
She wished she could tell her about the memories, seek com-
fort in the shared experience. Instead she pushed her thoughts into the present. The glow of restaurant lights and the long, East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 150
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rocky arm of the jetty stretching into the bay, the happy va-
cationers that would be dining inside, her friends nearby. It’ll be fine, she told herself. I can do this.
“Sorry you had to come and get me.”
Blue shrugged. “Spared me five minutes with Renee.”
“Sorry about that whole thing too.”
“Yeah. Not the trip I was hoping for,” Blue said.
“Story of my life,” Hannah said, and their eyes met and they
both laughed and for a moment Hannah really did feel better,
she felt recognized. She could tell Blue did too.
They went inside, the restaurant all shiny beer-colored
wood and thick white tablecloths, windows on all sides over-
looking the shimmying water. Families everywhere wearing
lobster bibs and sunburns and smiles. Instinctively Hannah
went to sit next to Maya—a mistake; Blue would be stuck
beside Renee. Blue lurched in front of her as if the seat next to Maya’s was the last in a game of musical chairs.
Renee folded her napkin into her lap, stared out at the bay.
Hannah slid in beside her, looked at Maya. “The Xanax wasn’t
in the car.” Her palms started to sweat just saying that out loud.
“I’m really starting to freak out. Are you sure you didn’t—”
The waiter materialized, red faced, with a bread basket.
“Can I start you ladies off with drinks?” he asked with an
Irish accent.
“Four vodka tonics, please,” Maya said.
“Oh no, I just want water,” Renee said.
Maya frowned at her, turned back to the waiter. “Three
vodka tonics—” she pointed to Hannah “—and make hers a
double. She lost her drugs.”,
“Sorry to hear that,” he said, flipping his order pad closed.
“Coming right up. And, uh… I may know a guy…”
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“Thanks, I’m good.” Hannah smiled politely.
“I might hit you up later,” Blue said to him.
Hannah turned back to Maya. She didn’t know how to im-
press upon her how necessary her Xanax was.
“Wait!” Maya called to the waiter, dodging Hannah’s gaze.
She surveyed the table. “Do we want to order appetizers now?
Let me answer that—yes. Last time we had that amazing cal-
amari, right?”
“Actually, I don’t eat squid anymore,” Renee said. “Darrin
read that they’re really good at problem solving, so…”
“Is that right?” Maya said. “Well, until they figure out how
to stay off my plate, I’m eating them. An order of calamari
and some crab cakes, too, please.”
“I just want a salad,” Renee said, placing her napkin in her
lap. “No tomatoes. Or actually if I could trade tomatoes for
grapes, that would be wonderful. Dressing on the side, please.”
Blue lifted her gaze to the ceiling. Hannah sensed that her
high might be wearing off.
The waiter nodded and retreated again.
“Please focus, Maya,” Hannah said. “You gave me a pill
in the motel room and then…what? Where did you put the
bottle? Did you throw it away? Did you put it in your bag?
Think!” She could hear her voice rising against her efforts to maintain self-control. The flashbacks hunting her, ready to
seize her again without warning. “It’s really important.”
Maya opened her mouth to answer just as Hannah’s phone
rang.
Hannah looked down at it. Then up at the girls. “Oh, no.”
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MAYA
Maya watched as Hannah barreled out of her chair with wide,
worried eyes and disappeared onto the patio. Christ, was it too much to ask to have one thing go right on this trip?
“Probably Vivian,” Blue said.
The table was quiet for a moment.
“He is,” Maya said. She wasn’t concerned. She was frus-
trated. The last thing Hannah needed right now was a call
from Henry’s mother.
“By the way,” Blue said, “did you take Hannah’s Xanax?”
Maya was indignant. “What? No. Why on earth would I
do that?”
Blue shrugged. “Seems like something you would do.”
Maya was about to protest but of course it was something
she would do, because she did do it. And she should’ve just admitted it. She was very bad about fessing up. Always had
been. She blamed her crap childhood for that. It was pure surEast Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 153
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vival mechanism—hiding mistakes that could be used against
her. But she was thirty now and should probably get around
to fixing that little character flaw.
Still. All she wanted was to help Hannah and, okay, now she
could see it was wrong to take her Xanax, just like maybe it
had been wrong to invite Renee, but her intentions had been
good! That had to count for something, right? She planned
to sneak it back into Hannah’s purse as soon as they got back from dinner. Even though she didn’t want to believe it was
a mistake. What she wanted was for Hannah to see that she
didn’t need it, that the world wasn’t as frightening as she believed. And she wanted Blue and Renee to be friends again.
She wanted everything to go back to the way it was. This
was her family. Didn’t they get it? She needed them. She also wanted a loan from Blue so she could save her house but that
was a whole other self-inflicted headache. The sudden thought of it, of being homeless—not out on the street—but without a
home, was a peek into some interior darkness, a kind of bot-
tomless falling.
In the past she’d always just borrowed from Blue, no prob-
lem. Each time she genuinely believed she would eventually
pay it back. But this was different. This was a catastrophic
screwup. She didn’t even want to say the number out loud
because then she’d have to sit in it, and frankly, she didn’t like sitting in bad feelings, especially about herself. But perhaps she could mention it and hope that maybe Blue would
offer to lend her the money. She knew Blue would be pissed, but then again, it could be argued she was giving Blue an opportunity to look like a big shot in front of Renee. To swoop in as the hero. Show off how successful she was. Technically, Maya decided, she was doing Blue a favor.
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“Is it terrible that sometimes I think it would be better if
something did happen to Henry?” Blue said.
“I think that often,” Maya said. “If it was me, I’d want you
guys to yank the hell out of that plug. It’s not a life.”
“For either of them,” Blue said.
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Renee said. “They could
find a cure tomorrow. He’s still young. And technology is
advancing.”
Maya saw Blue’s jaw set. She locked eyes with her, tried to
discourage what she sensed was coming.
“Just out of curiosity, Renee,” Blue said, as Maya slunk
lower in her seat, “when was the last time you saw Hannah?
Or Henry, for that matter?”
Renee opened her mouth, said nothing.
Blue folded her arms, pinned her with a steely look.
“Right,” she said.
A seagull swooped down just outside the window, snagged
a bread crumb someone left on the railing, flew off.
Renee watched it go, shook her head. Finally she turned
to Maya. “I told you this was a mistake.”
Maya sighed.
In the distance a night fishing boat glided by, its white
lights shining like little moons on the black bay. Maya imag-
ined jumping fully clothed into the water, swimming out to
it, drifting away like a lazy afternoon. Perhaps a cute captain on board. Destination unknown and irrelevant. She loved
this thought—that an entirely different life was one crazy
leap away.
“Hey, remember when we went fishing at the lighthouse?”
she said, scrambling for a way to keep the peace. She hadn’t
thought about that in so long.
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That was their first summer out here together, before boys
mattered too much and alcohol was a few years away and they
were all still trying to discover what they loved to do.
“None of us wanted to go,” she said to Blue, “except you.”
The rest of them thought it would be gross and dull and way
too early to wake up. “But then Renee saw how important it
was to you, so she made us.” They’d laughed at Renee when
she came downstairs that morning all ready to fish in platform sandals and a white summer dress like she was headed to the
Bridgehampton polo classic.
They’d tiptoed out of the house and down to the beach.
The predawn sky was an electric violet—the color lightning
makes in a nighttime storm. The sand was soft and cool.
They’d been out there only a few moments when the sun
began crowning out of the sea, igniting a fiery road of light across the water. It seemed as if they could walk right out and touch its glowing head.
“Look,” Hannah had said. “It’s the sunrise highway!”
“I love it,” Blue had replied. “It totally is.”
They cast their lines and watched the swimming sun and
stood shoulder to shoulder inside the stillness of that ocean light. After about ten minutes Maya decided she was bored and soon after Hannah, too, was complaining. Renee was clearly
suffering in silence. Blue tried to teach them that this is what fishing was, patience and quiet and reflection.
“It’s dumb is what it is,” Maya had said. “I’m over it.”
“Wait!” Renee yelped. “I think I have a nibble!” The line
pulled again. “Oh my God, what do I do?”
The fish was tugging hard. Blue rushed to help, shouting
orders about when to reel and when to let, adding her own
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hands to the pole when the fish gave a vigorous yank. Sud-
denly they were all excited.
“It’s probably a tuna,” Blue said. “And a big one, the way
it’s pulling. In fact, I’m certain of it, a bluefin, I bet—over fifty pounds for sure!”
Maya was impressed with Blue’s depth of knowledge.
“I think it’s a shark!” Renee kept saying. “It’s going to pull me in with it!”
“You’re going to need a bigger boat,” Maya quipped.
There was a great deal of carrying on. Hannah had her cam-
era at the ready while Blue and Renee engaged in the tire-
some struggle. Maya left after twenty minutes and returned
with doughnuts just as Renee managed to reel it the last few
feet to shore. They whooped and cheered as Renee gave one
last tug of her pole. Then suddenly they all went quiet.
&
nbsp; “Wait.” Maya said. “What is that?”
It took a split second for it to register and then she laughed so hard she choked on her doughnut as Renee pulled from
the sea a man’s rubber fishing boot. She ran out to it, held it up. “It’s kind of cute and maybe my size. Do you think you
can catch the other one?”
They’d all dissolved in giggles then, calling Renee Cap-
tain Ahab and suggesting they phone the local papers to re-
port the impressive catch. They even brought it to the pier
and weighed it on the fish-weighing scale. Somewhere there
was still a picture Blue had taken of Renee proudly holding
up that rubber boot and grinning ear to ear. When they re-
turned to school in the fall, the story of that “fish” grew and grew. By the time they graduated, it was a five-foot mako.
That was the same year Blue had made a sign in her shop
class and then nailed it above the door of Nana’s house the
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following summer. It was a big wooden arrow pointing to-
ward the ocean, and in hand-painted letters it said, “To the
Sunrise Highway.”
Maya smiled now, remembering. “That was so great, right?”
Renee sighed.
Blue flagged down the waiter. “Can I get a shot of tequila,
please?”
“Me too!” Maya said. “And those problem-solving calamari
as soon as possible.” She looked between her feuding friends.
Wished they would just get over this stupidity, remember all
the good. Reminding them didn’t seem to be working, so for
now it was probably best to try a new tactic, direct the heat onto herself. “So…a funny thing happened on the way to paying my property taxes.”
Neither of them looked at her or acknowledged that she’d
spoken. Both had disengaged entirely, were staring off in op-
posite directions, stewing in their own silences.
“Hello!” Maya said. “Anybody home?” She threw up her
hands. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going to the bathroom.”
She grabbed her purse, marched off. Nothing was going as
planned, and she felt suddenly light-headed and floaty, pre-
carious as a balloon in a child’s hand.
Just outside she could see Hannah on the patio, clutching
the phone to her ear as she paced between the white plastic
tables. Maya skipped the bathroom and made a beeline for
the bar. Several men turned as she entered. She zeroed in on
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