by Luanne Rice
“I loved her since first grade,” he said. “We grew up on the beach together, rode the school bus all those years. When my grandfather taught me to fish for lobsters, he taught her, too.”
I pictured them at Hubbard’s Point, at the beach, out on the water.
“Through middle school and freshman year—all that time. My mom loved her, treated her like a daughter. They were practically best friends. We’d take the ferry to Block Island, or head into New York to hear jazz or just walk around, and Helen always came.”
Helen was the blond girl in the photos on their kitchen wall, in Billy’s room.
“And her parents were like my parents. Her dad took me surfing at Misquamicut. He gave me a board for my fifteenth birthday. Helen and I got wetsuits, and we surfed all year, even on New Year’s Day. She was my girl.”
Those words stung worse than anything. She was my girl. I stayed silent on my side of the truck, looking out the window.
He drove without speaking for so long, I thought that was all he was going to say, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask more.
But twenty minutes later, driving through the dark with the latest college radio station crackling in and out, here in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t stand not knowing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“My father happened,” Billy said. “He came back after being away from us for so long. And when he needed to run, he took me along.” He paused.
“Took you?” I asked, not getting it. “You mean kidnapped you?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“You went with him? After what he did?” I pictured that bleached stain on the floor.
“He’s my dad,” Billy said. “I didn’t really have a choice. We threw out our cell phones, ditched police all along the way. He had a scanner, and he could always figure out where they’d be waiting. He showed me exactly how to hide, how to cover my tracks. But I never wanted to be like him, be that person.”
“You’re not him,” I said.
“Helen thinks I am.”
“How could she? Doesn’t she …”—I hesitated because it felt so weird to say the word in front of him—“um, love you, too?”
“She said she did. We both felt that way since seventh grade. I already told you, she was Pat and I was Fort. Patience and Fortitude. We had that for each other, we were each other’s lions. We were going to be together.”
“You mean married?” I said, my stomach tightening.
“I thought so. Down the road. So that’s what I mean by you can’t trust people. I would have trusted her with anything. With everything. She broke every promise we ever made.”
“How?”
“I called her from the road, with my dad, and she turned me in. I told her where we were, and she told the cops. They found us and arrested my dad that day.”
I stared at him.
“And they arrested me, too,” he said. “That’s what you don’t know about me. I didn’t just end up at Stansfield. I wasn’t just a poor orphan. That jail we passed on the way to Hubbard’s Point? I was there. They held me for a week, trying to figure out who killed my mom, him or me—they actually thought I might have done it, or else why would I have run? My lawyer said my father forced me to go with him, that I was just a kid and couldn’t say no. He basically said I was kidnapped.”
“But you weren’t,” I said.
Billy took a deep, ragged breath. “At first, well, he told me I had to go with him. But like I said, he’s my dad. I could have gotten away sooner than I did. My lawyer wouldn’t let me say that.”
“He was your advocate,” I said. “That’s what lawyers do.” I thought of how I’d been appointed a lawyer of my own, a guardian ad litem, during the divorce, after I’d told everyone I wanted to live with my mother. I’d wanted her to get custody. It just hadn’t worked out that way.
“My lawyer said stuff like ‘Stockholm syndrome,’ that my dad brainwashed me into helping him, stuff that got him even more years in prison,” Billy said, his eyes on the road. “Because he took me across state lines, that was an interstate kidnapping charge. But that’s not what happened—I just … went with him.”
I stayed very still while he talked.
“They were my parents, I loved both of them. He pled guilty—I think so there wouldn’t be a trial, so I wouldn’t have to testify against him. He took twenty-five-years-to-life. He’s not getting out before he dies.”
My mind spun. What should I say to that? He deserved it if he killed Billy’s mom. “But he did it, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I was up in my room and heard the crash.” He stared hard at an oncoming car, as if the image of what had happened was too hard to picture, as if he wanted to burn it away in the car’s high beams. “I ran downstairs, and there she was. Broken on the floor, you saw the spot.”
I nodded, picturing the horrible white blotch again.
“I keep thinking, if I’d paid attention I could have saved her,” he said.
“How, Billy?” I asked, as gently as possible. “If he’d really wanted to do it?”
“The prosecutor said it had to do with money. He was always broke, and he drank, and he kept leaving us. My mother worked hard to support us.”
“What did she do?”
“Teacher’s assistant. She didn’t make much, and my grandparents helped. They weren’t rich, either. The prosecutor said my dad wanted her ‘inheritance.’ As if it were more than an old lobster boat and a couple of cottages they could barely afford to pay taxes on. The prosecutor said my dad made it look like an accident so he’d inherit the house and the money my grandparents had put in trust for her and me.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“I wanted to believe they’d had a fight, and it got out of control. And if I’d been awake, I could have stopped it …” He trailed off, shaking his head. “But the prosecutor said my dad waited for me to be asleep. And did it then, so I couldn’t help her.”
I pictured that beautiful place Billy had lived—the bright colors in the kitchen, the view of the beach, his grandparents right next door, the Molloy compound. He got torn away from all that. “Then you went to Stansfield.”
“Yeah. No one wanted me—who would? My grandparents hated me by that time, and Helen …” He shook his head. “I actually thought her parents might take me in, let me live with them. We were that close, practically family. But the last time I called, she wouldn’t come to the phone. Her father answered and told me never to call again.”
“But why? They know you, the way you really are.”
“Everything changed,” he said. “You’ll see. That happens in life. You’re going along, everything’s great, and then it collapses. The person you trust most turns into your enemy. Even people in love betray each other.”
“You can trust me,” I said.
“We hardly know each other, if you think about it. Let’s drop it.”
I was shaking. I had to wrap my arms around myself, just to keep my insides from flying apart. I felt shocked, devastated. I could feel the hostile energy pouring off him, a force field that kept me away.
We passed through small coastal towns with long stretches in between them. A sign loomed in our headlights: GRAYSON. The atlas said we were almost to the Canadian border, but we were both on edge and too tired to keep going. Billy drove toward a beam of light that pierced the sky.
The town of East Grayson was just ahead. When we got close, we saw its red-and-white-striped lighthouse on a granite ledge at the edge of the ocean. Billy parked the truck out of sight from the road, close to a stand of pine trees that seemed to grow straight down into the sea.
He left me in the truck and walked, then ran, to the edge of the rocks. The ocean was turbulent, the sea spray so strong it seemed to wrap him in a cloud. He leaned out, looking down. Seeing him this way reminded me of kids I’d met at Turner, of ways they’d talked about wanting to end their lives. I got out of the truck and tore over to Billy,
slipping as I ran, skinning my knee and tearing my jeans, then lunged and grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” I said.
He must have seen the panic in my eyes. “I’m not going to jump,” he said.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Listening to the lobsters, what else?” he asked, his lips turning up in that enigmatic half smile of his. But he sounded sarcastic.
He glanced down at my leg.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“It’s no big deal,” I said.
“We should clean it off,” he said.
I kept thinking of how he’d said we barely knew each other.
“I’m fine,” I said sharply.
The rocks were slippery under our feet, from the wild waves and a fine film of black seaweed. We headed toward the lighthouse. It had a cottage attached to it, but all the windows were dark. I knew that lighthouses were automated now, run by machines and computers, that it was too expensive to pay for lightkeepers to live there.
The beam made the sea glimmer and illuminated our path. Billy tried the door in the striped tower. Someone had left it unlocked. We walked inside and the space was narrow and round. A cabinet with a big red cross was attached to the wall. Billy reached in and pulled out a first-aid kit.
He eased me down onto the bottom rung of a spiral staircase. There was hardly any light, just enough to see him pouring some hydrogen peroxide on a gauze bandage.
“This might hurt,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. It stung like crazy, but I wouldn’t let him see. He gently pushed aside the torn edges of the hole in my jeans, swabbed away dirt and blood from my scraped knee, rubbed on ointment, and covered it with a bandage.
He glanced upstairs, toward the flashing light.
“Should we check it out?” he asked. “Nothing could be as nice as last night, sleeping in a junkyard.”
“I guess,” I said. After what he’d said earlier I couldn’t even fake sounding happy; I couldn’t kid around. My knee was really sore and stiff, but I limped up the circular stairs for what felt like ten stories, just ahead of Billy. At one point I felt his hand on my back, giving me a little push up.
At the very top, we stood inside the light room. The rotating Fresnel lens looked like magic, beautiful beyond belief, as if made by a wizard and not by humans. Rows of prism crystals formed a six-foot-high cylinder, throwing rainbows onto the dark ceiling and sending a beam into the sea, to protect mariners.
The lens produced white light every fifteen seconds, and I knew from sailing that it was called an occulting flash. That seemed appropriate because this place felt like a zone of enchantment. And I needed some enchantment, because inside I was completely torn up.
Billy stepped close to me. I felt stiff, unable to get the bitterness he’d shown me out of my mind. What had I done to deserve his attitude?
We were almost touching. He put his hand under my chin, tilted my face up. A thin beam of light fell between us. I heard him breathing. He bent toward me, his lips half an inch away from mine, holding me so hard I felt his ribs pressing into me, and I thought my head would explode. But I was so hurt and mad, and this wasn’t how I’d dreamed a first kiss should be, so without even thinking, I gave him a shove.
We both stepped away so quickly, his eyes flashed pain. Shards of light spilled from the lens, glittering all around us.
I half wanted to start over, have him kiss me for real, but I felt totally dazed about the whole night. I tried to think of something to say, but he turned away and took his sweater off.
“We’d better get some sleep,” he said. He put his sweater on the floor, gestured at it.
“What?” I asked, feeling more confused than ever.
“Our pillow,” he said. He lay down, facing away from me. I settled beside him. Our heads were nearly touching on his sweater, but our backs were to each other. Even with a foot of space between us, I felt heat from his body.
Outside, the ocean crashed against the rocks and a bell buoy clanged. The lighthouse made creaking noises. My body was stiff, and my skinned knee ached, but that was nothing compared to how I felt inside: hurt and misunderstood, the worst turmoil in the world. Maybe I should never have let Billy come along in the first place. Real life was disturbingly different from the fantasy of staring up the hill through binoculars, keeping watch from a distance, having a crush.
“Maia?” he asked after a while.
“Yes?”
“Good night,” he said.
I waited a minute before answering.
“Good night,” I said back.
A long time later I fell asleep to the sounds of the waves and Billy breathing beside me.
Just before dawn we woke up next to each other. Awkward. The lighthouse floor was cold, and the sea air was colder. I shivered and was sure my lips were blue. It was still dark, a very faint gold loom on the eastern horizon hinting that the sun would eventually rise above the ocean.
We eased apart and Billy gave me a hand to pull me up. We felt our way down the pitch-black circular stairs.
Outside there was dew on the grass, a low layer of mist on the ocean. The waves crashed against the rocks, white spume flying up like a geyser near the spot where we had stood last night.
“I’m sorry,” Billy said. “For what I said last night. And for lumping you in with Helen.”
“I’m not like her,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I really know that. I wouldn’t have told you about her, about everything, if I didn’t trust you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry, too.”
“You don’t have to be. You didn’t do anything.”
This was our fourth day on the road. In some ways it felt like forever, and in others it seemed we’d just left.
A coiled hose lay beside the lighthouse. We hadn’t had showers since leaving, so we decided to take turns. Billy walked away so I could go first. I was so nervous and shy at the idea of taking off my clothes while he was nearby, I kept glancing at the spot where he’d disappeared. Then I turned on the hose and took the fastest shower I ever had, gasping at the ice-cold water. When I was done, I ducked behind the truck to dry off with the T-shirt I’d been wearing and change into clean clothes. I heard Billy turn on the hose and whoop from the shock, and I couldn’t help laughing. What a relief—we were clean, we’d spent the night in a striped lighthouse, we weren’t mad at each other anymore, and the blue-black waves glittered in the light’s beam.
And I’d had an almost–first kiss.
When Billy was done washing up, he came over to me. We smiled and gave each other a little nod at the fact that we were basically twins in fresh T-shirts and jeans. Billy looked around, scanning the sea wall.
“One thing we have to do before we leave,” he said. As soon as I saw the ground covered with stones tossed up by the sea, I knew. We walked over together, began collecting the best rocks. They were mostly blue-gray, and I compared them in my mind to the sand-colored ones at Hubbard’s Point and the rusty-green ones on the beach.
“We’re leaving a trail of cairns,” I said.
“We are,” he said.
It felt like a continuation of our sand dollar pact: a promise that we were in this together. We made the tallest tower so far, an homage to the lighthouse and celebration of the fact that we were so close to Canada.
Once we got in the truck I realized that, for the first time since we’d left, I’d forgotten to take my medication. Our luggage was jammed just behind the seat. I could have reached into my duffel, palmed my pills, and secretly popped them into my mouth just as I’d been doing all along.
In spite of our talk, of opening up to each other, I still felt too embarrassed to have Billy see me do it.
Then I had a brilliant idea: Why take them at all? The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. A list of reasons why I shouldn’t continue to take the meds formed in my mind:
1) The slipping feeling—it was gone.
2) Being with Billy.
3) Our almost kiss.
4) The cairns and sand dollar.
5) Most of all: I felt happy. I was going to see my mom.
I scanned myself and realized I felt better than ever: more alert, awake, and alive. Taking antidepressants made me feel contained, as if I had plastic wrap on my emotions. They stopped me from getting the terrible lows, but they also blocked the soaring highs.
I closed my eyes and thought of last night, the lighthouse lens sending sparkles around the tower room, the feeling of heat pouring off Billy, his lips so close to mine. The moment had been so intense, but what would it have felt like if I hadn’t been dulled by meds?
That was it, decision made. Day one, pill-free!
“Today, the border,” Billy said as we started driving again. “I know we said we’d try for one of those remote spots on the map, but now I want us to go through customs here, the right way, officially.”
“Here?” I asked, looking at the atlas. The Canadian border was just a couple miles away and the International Bridge would have taken us to Campobello Island, which I knew had been the summer home of Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt.
“No, up to Calais.”
Where Darrah had said. The girl who couldn’t be trusted; I hid a smile.
As we drove an hour north, I started wondering what would happen when we faced the customs agent. Would Billy and I be on a list? Did the Canadian authorities get the same bulletins as the U.S.?
We passed the Calais Free Library. It was a gorgeous yellow brick building with a turret and a spire, and a brownstone block above the arched doorway that read PUBLIC LIBRARY 1892. I felt a twinge, thinking my dad might have responded to my email. I wondered if there’d be any clue about where they were looking for us.
The border came up fast. One minute we were on the open road, next we saw a sign: FERRY POINT BORDER CROSSING. We joined the line. It was surprisingly long for so early in the morning, and I guessed the cars and trucks were full of people going to work, making deliveries. The sun was still below the buildings. The big clock on the station read 5:30 a.m.
Now that we were actually at the customs post, my heart raced so fast I thought I might pass out: I was positive as soon as the authorities looked at my passport they would stop us.