by Natasha Boyd
I LOOKED FORWARD to my workdays and went above and beyond everything that was asked of me. I desperately hoped Marjoe would give me more hours.
Miss Geechee was up and about, stalking Big Jake for food, before scurrying back to pick up her rambunctious kittens, who were now boldly trying to escape and explore their surroundings. It was a familiar sight to see her trotting across the sandy clearing back toward the shed, a small furry body dangling from her mouth. I checked regularly that my little guy was still there.
The chilly weather dragged on. Every day that felt a bit warmer and closer to spring would be stamped out by an arctic breeze the following day until it felt as though we would only make it there in fits and starts and by a strong will of the mind.
I got to know a few more of the island residents. They were an interesting cast of characters made up of retirees, artists, writers, and the odd fishermen who stopped in. I learned that at one time there’d been a thriving oyster business on Daufuskie Island, but the arrival of a paper factory on the Savannah River had poisoned the waters, and within a matter of only days the industry had folded. Now the only local oysters were harvested farther north on the May River. Which was apparently more of a tidal estuary supplemented by a few small creeks than a river. What a difference a mile could make.
Tyler came in each day I was working. My meds were dwindling, and I agonized over whether to ask him if he could get me some.
Back in Atlanta, it had been an easy choice. I knew I was going to leave and needed to stock up beyond what my doctor had written out for me. Call me motivated, but I’d engaged in some activities I’d rather forget.
I knew a guy from school, Jamie Riggs. He was on the football team, played center, and had a girlfriend in my social studies class, Lindsay Kearns, with light brown hair and plump lips. They were a good-looking couple, but I was sure all the guys on his team could only think of blowjobs when they looked at her. It didn’t stop him asking me for one too, though. He drove a grey pickup with dark tinted windows, and rumor had it he was the go-to guy for people who needed help. Steroids for training, Ritalin during midterms, whatever. He rarely dealt in weed. When I slipped him a note asking him to meet me behind the Brookhaven McDonald’s, I didn’t have one ounce of concern he’d show up. He looked at me the way most of the guys at school did, with disdain that barely concealed the lust, and I wasn’t exactly revolted by him.
The McDonald’s was close to my house, so I could walk. It was the start of a beautiful friendship that included a lot of compliments like “You’re sexy as fuck” and “I won’t tell anyone, just keep doing that.” And best of all, “No one needs to know.” Of course not. It was revolting, but it was the only way I could stock up on my medication. And at the time part of me enjoyed seeing him weak; it made me feel strong. Was that really so bad?
Now, I was starting to weigh cost. As Tyler and I became better acquainted, and I knew he was days away, or less, from asking me out, I had a choice to make. I didn’t want to hang out with him, even if he was good-looking. But it was beginning to look like I might have to.
The following morning, Tyler was back for his third visit since I’d started working. After another sleepless night, I broke down and told him I needed some pills, citing some vague references to a sleep thing I had, and then named two of the meds I wanted. To his credit, he didn’t even blink, immediately telling me about his contacts in resort housekeeping who regularly had access to the prescriptions tourists left out while vacationing.
Before I left work that day, Big Jake pulled me aside and handed me a bucket of paint. “This here’s for yo’ shutters,” he said. “Don’t right know why there ain’t no haint paint on yo’ house, but Tommy tol’ me I could make y’all some.”
Confused, I took the paint can from him. “Not sure I understand, but thank you.”
“You jus’ give that to Tommy. He’ll know what to do. And I tol’ ’im, me and JJ can come hep. Don’t let de hag git you.”
I gave Big Jake a bland smile and lugged the paint all the way to the cottage, my fingers screaming with the weight of the can, and left it out on the porch.
There was a note on the table. Tom’s handwriting was painstakingly neat.
Gone to Savannah.
I sighed.
The box of condoms was gone too.
AT ABOUT FIVE the next morning, having given up on sleep, I got up and made coffee, pouring myself a large cup. Humming The Funeral by Band of Horses, I pulled out my grandmother’s recipe book, followed the directions for brownie brittle and popped it in the oven.
Then I stepped quietly into Tom’s room, as if I didn’t want even the cottage to know I was there, lest it should tell on me later.
Since the first time I’d snuck into his room a few days after I’d arrived, I almost yearned for the moments when Tom would leave the house. It was the only positive aspect to his absence. I’d sneak in and read his latest pages. Sometimes when I was awake in the night I could hear him typing away and printing things out. If I woke before the nightmares but still had the irrational bands of anxiety around my chest, I’d listen hard, the soft clacking calming my racing heart. I’d hear the printer burping out pages, then hear him curse softly, scrunch up paper, and ping it into the trash can.
I didn’t know why he didn’t just delete the pages, why he needed to print them out first and then throw them away, but I wondered if the things he threw away were the things that were the most true.
He wrote beautifully.
He wrote of loss and of grief. He wrote of a golden-haired girl who desperately wanted to get into heaven, she went through all the things in her life she felt she’d done wrong that could be preventing her from getting there.
I wished I had access to the Internet so I could search and see if he’d published anything. Apart from that first time when I’d thought he’d left his laptop even though I never found it, he’d always taken it when he went to the mainland with Pete. Even if he’d left it, I knew now I wouldn’t touch it. I was too nervous of being found out. It was enough that I snooped in his bedroom.
I’d asked him what he did and where he went when he wasn’t helping Pete, and he’d shrugged and said, “Around.”
Placing my cup of coffee down on the edge of his desk, I saw there was some new trash. I mentally brushed aside the niggling feeling of how much I was invading his privacy and how I’d feel if he did the same to me. Smoothing the papers out, I learned that the girl, Aislyn, had exhausted all her explaining and reasoning and had teased out all her memories. She was emotionally exhausted, scared, and still not able to work out why she was being denied access.
She had just met another being. I suspected he was a fallen angel though I wasn’t sure. She was so drawn to him, and I wondered if it was something about him that made her confide in him or the fact that she had no one else to trust. Zaek his name was. A mangled form of Ezekial?
“It’s not about Heaven, sweet Aislyn. Heaven is a mirage, a simplistic ideal, a yearning, a carrot dangled above all souls to make them strive for more. It’s simply about belonging somewhere, anywhere. You haven’t found a place you belong.”
“Are you telling me Heaven doesn’t exist?”
“Oh, of course it exists,” said Zaek. “In the same way that an exclusive country club exists on earth, and those who are members must extoll its virtues and exclusivity endlessly, becoming blind to its restrictions and prejudices, simply to justify the expense.”
“But what expense is there to Heaven?”
“So many, so many,” he mused. “But for one, the inability to fully explore all aspects of your humanity. And you have so many facets—some good, some… not so good. But tell me, why did God give you such complexity if you are not allowed to fully experience it?”
What an ass. I huffed. I’d never been particularly religious, but I found myself growing angry that Aislyn was buying this crap. I knew Zaek was going to try and turn her against Heaven. I’d been enjoying her purity, her na
ïveté, her hopeful romanticism. Zaek was going to crush her spirit. I knew it. I reached the end of the pages. Damn. Sighing, I crumpled them back up and tossed them in the trash. Keeping them would give me away.
Looking around, I drained the last of my coffee. Apart from these pages I furtively read, there was nothing in this room to give me a clue about my mysterious housemate. No pictures, no keepsakes, not even a speck of mail. God, I’d take junk mail at this point just to know something more about him. Getting up, I went to the armoire. Inside were haphazardly folded jeans and shirts, but with some fairly high-end labels. Interesting.
At least he folded like a normal person. I realized I would have been nervous if everything in here had been perfectly neat and tidy. Perfectionists freaked the hell out of me. I closed the door and leaned against it.
A soft trilling sounded. The phone. I stood abruptly, my cheeks burning, my belly feeling faintly nauseous, and bolted guiltily out of Tom’s room.
I grabbed the handset and pressed it to my ear. “Hello?”
There was silence, and for a split second I wondered what the hell I was thinking answering the phone. It never rang. What if it was my parents?
“Olivia?” Tom’s voice. Hearing it made my throat close with the surge of guilt over my snooping. But damn, I was relieved.
The acrid smell of burning chocolate reached my nose. Shit! The brownie brittle. “Hang on,” I gasped and dropped the phone. I grabbed the dishcloth and yanked open the oven door. Smoke poured out, hitting my eyeballs and the back of my throat. Coughing and waving it away from my stinging eyes, I managed to get the pan out. No! I’d been really looking forward to that. Disappointment flared and I scraped the burned crispy flakes into the sink. What an annoying waste. What had I even been thinking? I hated baking. Hated it.
“I hate baking!” I yelled at the top of my lungs and wedged the front door open to get the smoke out. The kitchen was a disaster and I was worse. I started laughing at myself, and it was so damn funny it took me a while to remember to get back to the phone.
Putting the receiver to my ear, I sniffed and gasped out the tail end of a hysterical laugh. “Sorry.”
“What the hell is going on there?” he asked, his tone amused.
“I was trying to cook. Turns out I can’t bake worth shit. And I’ve used up everything in the kitchen, so you need to get more eggs and stuff.” I looked behind me at the mess I’d made, and the smoky haze. “Sorry,” I added.
“No problem. It’s… good to hear you laugh.”
I waited a beat. “Soooo, this is weird. You calling.”
“I know.” There were a few moments of excruciating silence. Phones were the absolute worst. They should be fucking outlawed. Texting only, please. I missed my cell phone something vicious.
“I’m bored,” I huffed, more to fill the silence than anything else. “God, what do you do out here day in, day out for years on end?”
The silence hung again. I twisted the cord around my finger and heard him exhale in a long sigh.
“There’s not even any music to listen to,” I went on, further lamenting giving up my phone. My music. “And I’ve read those fairy tales, like, fourteen times. Ugh,” I said into the awkwardness, conscious I was the only one talking. “Never mind. What did you call for?”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, was thinking of staying here another night.”
I frowned. Disappointment dropped like a stone in my gut. And dread. I dreaded waking up in the night without him here. Like last night. And where did he spend the night when he was gone? Images of him bare-chested and with a woman flitted through my mind. Using the condoms lubricated for maximum pleasure. Twelve of them.
“But then I wanted to see if you were okay. If you needed me to come back.”
“I’m fine,” I clipped out. “Why would I care if you stayed away?”
There was another long pause. “Okay. I got the impression you slept better when I was there,” he said, seemingly unfazed by my childish tone.
I swallowed at the truth of that. How did he even know?
“I know your meds are running low. But if you’re fine…”
“I’m fine.”
“No worries then. See you tomorrow.”
“Wait—”
A dial tone hummed in my ear. I smacked my head against the wall and put the phone back on its cradle.
Why did I do this? Why was I like this with him? Just when he was trying to be thoughtful, I acted like the most juvenile form of myself possible. God, he’d done nothing but be caring, even if he sometimes hardly uttered a word, and I was such a stupid little bitch every time. I couldn’t even call him back to apologize because I didn’t have his number.
Shit. I didn’t have his number. What if something went wrong? I’d burned the brownies. I could actually start a fire. My chest tightened.
The phone trilled again.
“I’m so sorry,” I said breathlessly as I picked it up, meaning the apology with every fiber of my being.
“Olivia?”
“Who is this?” My mind scrambled to identify the male voice.
“Oh, hey. It’s Tyler. You okay? You sound out of breath.”
My shoulders sagged. “Tyler. Hi.”
“Don’t sound so excited, babe.” He laughed.
Babe?
“Sorry, I just burned something in the kitchen. It’s fine now. What’s up?” I asked, injecting as much enthusiasm as I could into my voice to mask the disappointment that it wasn’t Tom. Wait. “How’d you get my number?”
“Tommy’s number is listed.”
“But, how’d you know I live here?” He’d never asked me once in all of our interactions at Mama’s.
He laughed. “You do know you live on a small island, right? So listen, some friends and I are heading over to Hilton Head to hang out tonight. You want to come party with us?”
Did I want to party? On the one hand, partying was my comfort zone. Staying out past my curfew, taking a few illegal substances but nothing too crazy, and enduring my parents’ shocked and disgusted looks when yet another random guy dropped me home. No matter how they tried to threaten, ground, or control me, I wouldn’t be stopped. But that was part of the joy, wasn’t it? That and the moments when the guy I was with made me feel something besides the cloying numbness that was otherwise only broken by panic and anxiety. Here, I had no parents waiting up for me here, no shocked or even resigned faces to look forward to. Where was the joy in that? Why bother?
Not even Tom would be awaiting my return tonight. No, because Tom was off doing whatever the hell it was he did when he left this Godforsaken island prison. The kitchen clock ticked loudly. I wondered what Tom’s reaction would be to me going out with Tyler.
“Sooo?”
“Yes.” I jolted back to the present. “Sorry, yes. Would love to. What time and where should I meet you?”
He laughed. “Phew. Totally thought you were gonna say no.”
You probably should have, a nagging voice told me.
“You know the dock at Mama’s restaurant? We’re leaving from there around six. It takes about an hour. Wear a jacket or something, it’s colder than a witch’s tit on the water.”
“Okay,” I responded. “See you then.”
“Wait. You got a fake ID, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. See you later then. Oh, and I got a few of those things you were looking for.”
Meds. Thank goodness. “Oh, thank you,” I said casually.
“You can thank me later, babe.”
Yep. And that’s how it went. I could thank him later.
I rummaged around for my skinny jeans and my push-up bra and headed to the bathroom armed with my makeup bag and a cheap plastic razor.
I knew Tyler was the worst choice possible, but I had to get out of this cottage.
And frankly, I felt like kissing a boy.
I WALKED TO the dock by Mama’s and waved to Marjoe, who was carrying a box aro
und the side of the restaurant.
She nodded and then scowled when she saw Tyler leaning up against the piling on the jetty, fingers of one hand stuffed into the front of his jeans, the other holding a cigarette to his lips. His dark hair flicked down across his forehead.
Tyler’s mouth curled up into a grin as he exhaled a plume of smoke, the scar on his lip making it a little cruel and a little sexy. He perfected it in the mirror, I’d bet. He was exactly the type of guy I went for. Had gone for. Whatever. He was good-looking, slightly seedy, and perfect for my needs. Although I wasn’t all that clear on my needs anymore.
“I can’t wait to see what you’ve got on under that jacket, babe, but those jeans are smokin’,” he called out as I neared him.
He flicked his cigarette away and pushed from the piling. Walking up to me, he grabbed my head, his mouth coming down on mine hard. His taste was smoky with a slightly sour undertone, and I flinched and then froze under his wet tongue as it pushed into my mouth.
“Damn, you taste like sugar,” he said, pulling away, thankfully making the onslaught brief.
I felt like rinsing.
“Did I say you could kiss me?” I struggled not to let my disgust show. I really hoped Marjoe hadn’t seen that.
Tyler’s eyes widened a fraction, then he grinned. “Feisty,” he hissed. “I like it. Well, babe, just letting my buds over there know not to mess with ya.” He motioned behind his shoulder with a flick of his head.
I looked over and saw two rather sketchy looking guys in the boat, both looking at us.
We walked over to them and climbed onto the small skiff. “This here’s Twitch,” Tyler said, motioning to a huge guy with a shaved head who was pulling on a beanie. Twitch nodded at me, and then busied himself untying the ropes. “And this is Cal. This, boys, is Olivia.”
Cal, tall and skinny, definitely had a few years on us all. With pockmarked skin, he had a crucifix tattooed in faded green ink on his right cheek. He gave me a slow and appraising smile, revealing a yellowed set of teeth, a front one chipped. His eyes traveled down the length of me then back up to my face.