East Coast Girls (ARC)
Page 19
don’t get to ruin our good time.”
But Blue wasn’t fine, couldn’t shake the look in the man’s
eyes. She’d never been that close to pure hatred before, the way it bored into her, black and parasitic, hunting for a new host.
They’d been on the road only a minute when Blue noticed
Hannah glancing in the rearview mirror.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing.”
Blue turned. Saw two pinpoints of light stabbing the dark-
ness, growing bigger, coming faster. She knew it was them
even before the beat-up car came into view. She could feel
the darkness, darker than the night around them, spilling to-
ward them. “Oh my God.”
Hannah sped up. Much too fast for the road. Almost miss-
ing curves in the darkness.
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Soon the men were beside them. Swerving threateningly
into their lane. Nearly pushing them off the parkway.
The light ahead turned red.
“Run it!” Blue shouted.
“I am!” Hannah yelled as the car shook with too much
speed. “Which way?!”
“Make the next left!” Maya said. “I think.”
“You think?!” Blue said. “What street?”
“Whipple or… I don’t know… Whitehall? Begins with a
W…maybe… I don’t…she was talking so fast!”
“You didn’t write it down?” Renee said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Blue said.
“Everybody shut up!” Hannah said.
Blue frantically checked her phone for cell service.
Renee screamed as the car pushed back up behind them,
riding their bumper.
“You guys…” Hannah said.
Before she’d even gotten the words out, Blue understood
by the tremor in her voice that they would be bad.
“We’re running out of gas.”
Now as Blue scanned the parking lot, she felt the way she al-
ways did when she remembered that night—that dark, disori-
enting descent, a scuba diver in murky waters, losing her sense of which way was up. How quickly that blackness could engulf
her, steal even the direction of light. She thought of her unfin-ished second drink inside the restaurant, missed it like a limb.
Hannah and Renee approached, grim faced.
“We looked everywhere,” Hannah said.
Blue pulled out her emergency cigarettes, shook one out of
the pack and lit it. That night was so close to her now, the thin East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 190
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veil between past and present dissolving. Bright, useless moon, the guttural bark of a dog, Renee, help! She needed something…
she needed… She inhaled slow and deep, studied the ribbon
of her exhale as it curled and drifted and finally disappeared.
Smoking was meditation and forgetting. A few drags were all
that was necessary to suffocate the feelings.
Hannah was hugging herself, rubbing her arms like a child
self-soothing. Renee looked pale, her hairline damp and curl-
ing with sweat.
“Should we call the police?” Renee said.
No one moved. Their eyes met, wide and spooked. The
awful unspoken thought pulsing between them once more:
Jesus, not again.
The roar of a bike broke the pall of dread, a single head-
light zooming toward them.
“Please tell me that’s not her,” Blue said.
“I hope it is,” Hannah said. “It’ll mean she’s still alive.”
“Right,” Blue said steadily, “but then I’ll have to kill her.”
It was all stirred up in her—everything, all of it. That night, this night, the burden of loving people.
The bike skidded to a stop in front of them with a little
fishtail flourish. Maya, on the back, wearing a man’s jacket, took off her helmet and flashed a big smile. Beside her some
random dude with slicked-back hair, a wet T-shirt clinging
to his chest.
“Did she pick up a stripper?” Renee whispered under her
breath.
“Hi!” Maya said, scrunching her own wet hair. “What are
you guys doing in the parking lot?”
Blue wanted to punch her. Her fists were balling as if she
might. She was relieved too. Of course she was relieved! But
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her whole back was soaked with fear sweat and her heart
wouldn’t calm and all she had wanted, all she’d freaking
wanted, was a quick getaway with her friends, with Maya
and Hannah only. And just maybe to have a little tiny ro-
mance, just for a few days, to be kissed for freaking once, just one more time in her stupid life. And instead here she was, the walking credit card, dealing with other people’s BS as usual, terrified that Maya had been murdered. She might as well be
back at work fixing the mistakes of all the Wall Street bros
who outearned her while underperforming her.
“Andy,” Maya said. “This is my fr—”
“You’re dead to me right now,” Blue said with the con-
trolled menace of a cocked gun.
Maya flinched with surprise, recovered. “Oh! I am? Okay,
well, can I not be dead until Monday? Because I haven’t even
had a day at the beach yet. Or a last meal, for that matter.
Plus, we’ve already had one loss.” She pulled out the box of
ashes from Andy’s jacket pocket. “This is…well, was… Indy.”
Blue scowled. No one spoke.
“All righty, then. Guess you’re not dog people,” Maya said.
“You’re such an asshole,” Blue said.
“Should I…ah…” Andy thumbed toward his bike.
“No,” Maya said. “Just wait over there a sec.” She mo-
tioned to the edge of the parking lot, and he dutifully headed that way.
“What were you doing?” Hannah said as soon as he was
out of earshot. “We were seriously worried.”
“We thought you’d been kidnapped or something,” Renee
said. “Think of where our minds went.”
“I went swimming! I wasn’t gone that long.” She paused,
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glanced at Andy and back to them. “I mean, come on, did
you see him? What choice did I have?”
Blue was so mad she thought she might stroke out. “What
choice? Oh gosh, I don’t know. You could’ve chosen not to
scare the crap out of your friends, I suppose. You could’ve
chosen to be considerate. You could’ve… I’m just spitballing
here… not gone.”
“Could you possibly overreact more? Excuse me if I didn’t
want to share in the misery party you guys were having.
Maybe if you weren’t fighting—”
“Oh, right!” Blue threw her hands up. “It’s our fault. You had no choice but to run off with some random drifter you
met in a bar.”
“You could’ve at least told us you were leaving,” Renee said.
“You guys would’ve stopped me!” Maya said. “Whatever.
I’m not going to apologize for trying to enjoy my vac
ation.”
“Your vacation?!” Blue said, “Okay, hold on, everybody, let’s all take a minute to remind ourselves that we are on Ma-ya’s vacation and we should not interfere with her fun if she wants to take off and abandon us to bang some loser on a bike! ”
She saw Andy turn, look dumbfounded. It gave her a sick
pleasure to know he had heard.
“Real mature, Blue,” Maya said.
Blue gave her the finger.
Maya gave her the finger back.
A young couple hurried their children past.
“Okay, you guys…” Hannah shook her head.
“Blue’s right, Maya,” Renee said.
“Thank you,” Blue said.
Blue and Renee exchanged a look, realized they were on
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mad at two people at once and right now her fury at Maya
trumped everything. “You know what? To hell with this. I’m
out of here.” She started toward the car.
“Excellent plan,” Maya said. “This is stupid. Let’s go fight
it out with a dance-off at the Talkhouse.”
“I mean back to the city,” Blue said over her shoulder.
“You’re absolutely right. This trip is miserable.” She stopped, turned. “And by the way, how about giving Hannah back the
Xanax you stole from her.”
“What are you talking about?” Maya said.
Blue just stared.
“I didn’t take it!”
“Oh, really? It’s just a coincidence that for years you’ve
been going on about how she needs to stop, and it’s a crutch, and now—poof—it’s gone, when you were the last person to
have it?”
“Wait, what?” Hannah said, wounded. “That’s really what
you think of me, Maya?”
“No!” Maya said. “Okay, yes. No. It’s complicated. I’m
sorry. And I did take it. I’ll give it to you as soon as we get back to the house.”
“You stole her medication? Seriously?” Renee said incred-
ulously. “Jeez.”
“I was only trying to help.”
Hannah and Renee looked at each other, started toward
the car.
“It was a mistake, okay?” Maya said.
Blue walked back to her. “Give me the keys.”
“All of this because I met a guy? It was nothing! Just a
laugh.”
Blue extended her hand.
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“But—”
“Keys.”
“Whatever,” Maya said, lobbing them at Blue. “Leave, then!
What do I care?”
“We are,” Blue said.
She hit the remote key with flare, unlocking the car doors.
Hannah and Renee exchanged glances before climbing in.
“No, wait!” Maya cried.
They all turned.
“What about the beach? The sunsets? The happy hours? Just
screw it all? Forget the friendship? See you later? The whole point of this stupid trip was to fix us! To go back to the way things were before everything got all messed up. And we were
happy. And normal. And best freaking friends! Remember?”
Blue opened the driver’s door. “Sorry,” she said, “but your
plan didn’t work.”
“You didn’t give it a chance.”
“It never had one.”
“Look, I apologize, okay? I shouldn’t have left without tell-
ing you! I admit it!”
It wasn’t enough. Even if Blue wanted it to be, it just wasn’t.
“Tell me what you want me to do to make you stay,” Maya
pleaded.
I want you to have kept your mouth shut that night, Blue thought .
But that wasn’t fair. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame Maya.
“You know what I want?” she said instead. “I want you to
grow up. I want you to consider people. I want you to keep
a job for more than three months. I want you to pay me back
the four thousand six hundred dollars and twenty-five cents
you’ve borrowed from me over the last ten years .”
“You kept a tab?”
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“I did. But no more. The days of me bailing you out are over.
You need to act like a responsible adult for once in your life.”
“Fine,” Maya said. “Consider it done. All grown up. I’ll be
so mature I won’t even laugh. I won’t even smile. Okay? If I agree to that, can we just try—?”
Blue got in the car, slammed the door shut. Renee and
Hannah joined her.
“You guys,” Maya called.
Blue gripped the steering wheel, stared straight ahead. The
anger was out of her. Now all she wanted was to drive away.
From everything. From all of it. Just go and go and go until
nothing felt hard anymore. It seemed like she’d been want-
ing to do that for so long now. Even before that terrible night.
But who was it she wanted to leave? Her parents, yes. Herself, probably even more so. But not her friends. They were what
had kept her sane, possibly even kept her alive. But that was before. When they weren’t so damaged and life so complicated. When they didn’t hurt her. Not in a real way.
And yet it tugged at her. Those things she tried so hard to
deny—her love, her dependency. That endless devotion to
her old friends that she sometimes wished she could cut out
of her heart and toss away. It hurt to stay. It hurt to go. In equal measure.
She sighed, rolled down the window, motioned toward
Andy. “Him or us,” she said.
Maya looked sadly at Andy, back at Blue. “But—”
“Five seconds to decide,” Blue said.
Maya didn’t move.
Blue started the engine.
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HANNAH
Hannah sat in the back seat, momentarily away from the noise
and the tension and the cavity of night sky. She was exposed
wire, a downed telephone line, spewing high-voltage elec-
tricity. She couldn’t believe Maya took her Xanax! Not that
it mattered now. Between this and the call from Vivian, she
was so out of there. Henry needed her. Or she needed him—
she wasn’t sure.
“I seem to remember much less fighting last time we were
here,” Renee said dryly.
“Yeah,” Hannah said. “And more fun.” They both stared
wistfully ahead.
Outside the car Maya stood stubborn and conflicted.
Blue honked and she jumped a little, glared into the head-
lights. “Do you think she practices being a pain in the ass?”
Blue asked.
“Yes,” Hannah said.
“I think it comes naturally,” Renee said.
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Hannah pulled out her phone, pulled up Google to search
for train and bus schedules. She wondered which would be
more likely to be the target of a terror attack. A bus, she bet.
She decided to go with the train.
Blue lit a cigar
ette.
Renee discreetly rolled her window down.
Hannah pulled up the train schedule. Checked the times. It
was too late to go tonight. But she could take the first one out in the morning to Penn Station, a second to DC. She swallowed. Weirdly her throat no longer hurt. Just in time, now
that she was leaving.
Blue shined her high beams on Maya. “Should we just leave
without her?”
Before Hannah or Renee could answer, Blue backed up,
steered left, let the car roll forward without Maya in it.
“Wait! Don’t,” Hannah said. “Even though she probably
deserves it.”
Blue sighed, stopped the car.
Maya marched up to the window. “Let me just say good-
bye,” she said and stomped off to the edge of the parking lot where Andy stood.
“I almost feel bad,” Renee said. “He was pretty hot.”
“She’ll find another one in ten minutes,” Blue said with
a shrug.
They watched as Maya and Andy embraced.
Blue honked the horn again, and Maya’s middle finger shot
up behind Andy’s back. Finally Maya returned to the car,
climbed in beside Hannah, slammed the door shut.
They pulled out of the lot, and Maya turned to wave good-
bye with an expression that Hannah had never seen on her.
It almost looked like longing. Hannah hated longing. It hurt
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in such a physical way, like your heart was reaching outside
your chest, came just short of its desired target. But no, she was probably projecting. Maya never got attached to men.
They drove in silence, not even the radio to camouflage
the strife, and everything had a lonely quality to it like the howl of a wind. Hannah scanned the side of the road for deer
that might bolt out in front of them. It was so dark out here, the night.
“So that’s it?” Maya said. “We’re all just going to hate each other and be miserable for the rest of the weekend?”
“No one hates anyone,” Hannah said.
Blue cleared her throat.
“Am I seriously the only one who cares about fixing this?”
Maya said.
“Some things are past fixing,” Blue said as she pulled up
to a stop sign.
Hannah felt this in her chest. She felt this in her life.
“Do you believe that too?” Maya said to Renee.
“I don’t know what I believe,” Renee said.
They turned onto Montauk Highway. The air near the
beach was salty with sea and the stir of memory. It was as if summers lay dormant in the body, awoken again by that smell.