It’s not you. It’s Aaron.
Ebon ran.
This was a mistake. It was all a mistake. He shouldn’t have told Aimee how lost he felt after Holly’s death, how he wasn’t sure what to do with his life. It had been tantamount to asking her if he could come home, if “home” truly was where the heart lived. He’d known full well what she might offer; they’d been chatting for months and growing closer by the day. He’d sought her out just for kicks. She’d found him randomly one day when he’d been least expecting it. They were close enough by then. She’d been talking about fixing up Richard’s house since he’d died, and had mentioned it even before he was gone. For years.
He should have stayed in the city. His apartment was thick with memories, and had been even after he’d purged it of Holly, moving everything she’d owned or loved or touched (save the journal, which he’d found at the bottom of her end table drawer) into storage to sort later. He simply couldn’t deal with her yet; his feelings about his longtime girlfriend and short-time wife were too conflicted. Did he love her? Did he hate her? Did he miss her, or did he finally feel free?
The island was pushing him away. It knew what he’d done, how he’d made a decision without meaning to make it by fleeing. Aaron wanted him to go home. To face what could only be met eye-to-eye. To cull Holly’s belongings, force himself to remember all of her. The touch of her long-fingered, often colorful-nailed hands on his chest in the mornings. The scent of her hair. The way she looked when she first woke, before insecurities sent her into hair and makeup for an hour, to make her “presentable.” She’d always looked the most raw, the most naked and vulnerable to him then. Without the dark eyeliner, the foundation, and the lipstick — with her hair a mess, as if she didn’t give a shit — she’d always been a different Holly. Ebon’s Holly: the one he didn’t ever, ever have to share with the world.
This was insane. He must be losing his mind.
Ebon reached the fence at a sprint. He groaned as he grasped it, certain that a predator was about to catch him. But as he clawed the links in panic, he glanced back to see nothing. The rides were dead and still, the games stalls unoccupied. The ticket booth was home to a giant roll of admission tickets, coated in dust that lifted in a harsh ray of sunlight. In one concealed corner, there was a clutch of empty bottles and a condom wrapper. Your average abandoned pier carnival that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
One foot up. The other foot up. For a manic second, as Ebon swung his foot over and straddled the fence, he was sure the tines on the top would dig into his crotch and snag him, leaving him to dangle by the testicles, wounded where it hurt most, because his past had yet to release him. But he cleared it easily, and a moment later found himself panting outside the locked fence, looking at the same no-help sign: Closed. And Ebon added, … due to lack of existence.
But Aaron’s Party wasn’t going anywhere. It was solid as a steel beam, maddeningly real, maddeningly shut and abandoned, maddeningly sad. He wanted to touch the Closed sign again as a reminder of the place’s corporeality, but he was already half-convinced that his earlier memory — the one he’d seen from Redding Dock — had been manipulated. How long ago had that been? He couldn’t remember. Had it been a few days? It felt like longer. But if he couldn’t even remember when he’d seen the pier empty, why was he so sure he’d seen it at all?
The woman holding the sign by the side of the road: I’m for rent.
Bullshit. He was remembering correctly this time. He’d made millions since he’d last seen Aaron, and he owed it all to remembering the details. He saw life in color, every hue a waving flag in his mind. The last time he’d been to Frankie’s Restaurant there had been a woman at the next table wearing an aureolin shirt, too bright for the room, especially against her slate-gray slacks. The water glasses had carried a slight azure in their glass bellies, ice cubes catching cobalt, scarlet, and celadon from diners’ wardrobes as waiters passed them. Even their lives carried their own signature hues. Aimee’s was an adventurous emerald green. Holly had lived a fire-engine red. And Ebon’s own life was the faded blue of a chambray work shirt.
And the pier, as seen from Redding Dock’s muted crimson planks, had consisted of faded grays and tangelos, like a jut of earth springing toward the water. Concrete stanchions below had been the gray of ashes. He’d seen the wash of planks from a distance, places where the rides had once been — where the decking was brighter, once protected by machinery.
“It’s fine,” he said, staring at the Closed sign in defiance. “It’s all fine.”
He took a few steps backward, keeping his gaze through the fence. Just before he turned to walk (too fast, too panicky) back to the beach, he saw a teen girl, her hair a mess, standing at the foot of the Danger Wheel. Behind her was a big man with reddish-blond hair, his solid hand on her shoulder.
Ebon ran. Down the sloping beach, through a stubborn patch of weedy beach grass, past the pillars that held the pier (The empty pier? He didn’t want to look up and find out) aloft. He just wanted to reach Aimee’s cottage. He wanted to repair the kitchen electrical circuit. He wanted to paint the new studio upstairs. He wanted to fix the bad patch on the roof. He wanted to do anything other than think about Aaron’s Party. Gone or dead, there was no reason to return. He’d had his times at the seaside carnival, but they were over now and weren’t going to return. He never needed to wonder about this place again. He could forget it, except that the problem was Aaron, rather than its Party.
You shouldn’t have come.
Or perhaps the problem was Holly. Maybe you could run … but never from yourself or your baggage.
Ebon felt his chest heaving. He wasn’t used to running, and he wasn’t conditioned for it. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and in barely passable shape. He looked down, watching his feet, trying to keep them moving. Then they splashed in water, and when he looked up he saw nothing but the ocean ahead. The waves were rolling, despite the calm day. There was no breeze, and yet whitecaps were forming. He’d turned toward the ocean somehow, now the waves were shoving his feet — not to push him away, but like bullies toying with a weak target.
He turned back down the beach, toward Aimee’s. Again at a run. Out of breath, feeling lightheaded. His head sagged, and again Ebon felt his feet splashing. He looked up, felt the push, and backed away. But this time when he tried to steer himself back toward Aimee’s, Ebon realized he wasn’t even on the west beach. He was at the lighthouse on the island’s south end, near Aaron’s proudest landmark.
He looked up.
The opposite of New England nautical, the lighthouse was all struts and girders like an Eiffel Tower, its sloping risers covered with something durable and white, as if the famous French structure had been dipped in icing and left to dry. Ebon, his lungs panting, knew there was a staircase in the thing’s middle, behind a locked door. At the top, above the massive light, was an iron shape that looked like a script letter T, looping circles at each of the letter’s three ends. Looking down, Ebon realized he was standing on rocks rather than sand.
He spread his arms, angry at the lighthouse, at the water, at the beach, at the island, at the ghosts that dogged him.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” he yelled.
Water swelled. The waves were insistent. A breaker crashed into the boulders and sprayed the air.
“Just let me go home!”
Another wave, this one larger. Ebon backed away, but not in time. The spray flattened his hair, made his shirt stick to his skin. The wind was picking up, clouds taking their place in front of the sun.
He looked at the lighthouse, seeing the tangle of trees and brush behind it. There was no way through; he knew that from years past. To reach the lighthouse, you had to walk along the western coast, climbing boulders and spanning deserted beaches. The eastern coast this far south, open to the ocean, was a suicide march with no clear path. It was the west coast or nothing. But as Ebon watched, larger waves mounted and became like a storm surge, driving ha
rd against the rocks, burying the strip of beach, licking the trees and impassable tangles of growth. He could stand where he was, in a relatively flat area. But he couldn’t leave.
Bullshit.
Feeling both brave and stupid, Ebon went in his only possible direction: into the water. If he couldn’t walk out of here, he’d swim, and dare the ocean to stop him.
He knew it was a mistake the second he hit the water. A riptide yanked him away from shore down below while the roiling of the surface shoved him toward it, stretching him like salt water taffy. The water became fathomless too fast. He lost his footing and found himself adrift, kicking or flailing becoming his only options.
He tried to swim along the shore, parallel, as they taught you to when grabbed by a current. But the waves were too large and oppressive. He could struggle above them when they didn’t break, but more often than not they did, slamming the rocks to one side. The wind increased; the troughs and peaks of the waves grew farther apart.
Ebon lunged. It was swim or die.
There was a stretch of beach ahead, fifty yards or less. Farther north, away from the cross currents that came at the lighthouse, waves were smaller. If he swam hard, gulping for air as the waves tossed and rolled and submerged him, he might be able to make it. The sun was on the sand there, looking like an oasis in the eye of a storm. And as he came closer, he saw something too strange to be false: two people sitting on the beach, a man and a woman, their legs long and their arms propping them upright, staring out at the ocean. They looked late fifties, the man wearing a hat like Captain Jack’s, the woman in a large straw bonnet. Loose clothes, the woman’s shirt long, as if she both craved and feared the sun.
Ebon yelled, but it was as if they couldn’t hear him, or maybe couldn’t even see the inexplicably rough section of surf as they gazed across the relatively calm one in front of them. It was as if they heard only the music coming from a small radio, like a CD boom box, on the blanket beside them.
“Hey!” Ebon screamed. “Help!”
They couldn’t hear him. They couldn’t see him.
He swam, harder and harder, defiant. The surf would relent. He could make it to the calmer section. He could flee the wind, get out of the overcast pall. Into the sun. He could allow the waves to wash him up like a fish, and then the people on the beach could act as his anchor. They could tell him where he was, could look at the rough surf and verify its reality — the ocean that wanted to kill him and shove him back ashore as a carcass. The people could call for help if he needed it. They would be able to reach Aimee. It would be embarrassing to ask them to walk him home, but he could do it. He would do it. If he could only get there.
“Help!”
This time, the people heard him. They turned. Below their sun hats, the fronts of their heads were smooth pink ovals with no features to mar them.
Ebon kicked and stalled.
Then the waves dragged him under.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Exit to Your Left
EBON SURFACED, BATTING AT THE THING that had been holding him down. Eventually his oppressor relented, and Ebon was able to blink, wipe the salt water out of his face, and spit. Then he bobbed next to the big blue raft, his feet gripping sand and shells, wondering if he should climb onto the raft and dry off. If he did, maybe Aimee would notice the way he’d been lifting his dad’s weights in the basement over the winter. Or, if he didn’t want to do that, he could pay Aimee back and dunk her too.
“You really shouldn’t hold someone under water, you know,” he said.
Aimee answered Ebon by splashing him in the face. She didn’t do it halfway; she used both hands and shoved hard. He had to wipe again, blink again, and spit again.
“You really shouldn’t be a wimp, you know,” she answered.
“What if you’d drowned me?”
“I know CPR,” she said, as if an ability to resuscitate would excuse temporary murder.
“Oh yeah?” It wasn’t the right response, but she’d disarmed him. Ebon didn’t know CPR, but he knew it involved hands on chests and mouth on mouth. Maybe he should pretend to drown, or drown her so he could place his hands on her chest. Except he probably didn’t need to fake drown to paw Aimee’s chest. She’d told him, in her numerous letters over the past year, how she’d been letting guys feel her up in the past months. It always sounded so casual when he read it in her looping script, and so not-a-big-deal that she was writing to him (a boy — in theory anyway) about her chest. Ebon was fascinated with it all, and not just stymied by unfulfilled temptation. He wanted to ask how long a girl’s boobs kept growing and other such indelicacies, but never found the nerve. Aimee was only fifteen; he figured the answer was “a while longer.” Given that after today he wouldn’t see her for most of a year (or maybe longer), he’d probably have a delightful surprise waiting next summer. Two delightful surprises, to be accurate.
“Yeah,” said Aimee.
Ebon climbed up onto the raft, trying to flex his arms and hold in his stomach as he did. He knew it was a joke. His stomach was flat because he was practically a preadolescent skeleton and his bulked-up arms were actually still twigs. Fortunately, he had even more years to grow than Aimee. He was thirteen, and plenty of his friends were getting armpit hair. Maybe next year he could boast a proper beach physique.
Once he was up, Ebon began subtly sliding toward Aimee. She was at one corner of the raft, running a hand over her hair, clearing the excess water. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, careful not to be distracted by her somewhat loose swimsuit top, and tensed his legs under him. But when he leapt for her, she proved again that fifteen was wilier than thirteen, or at least that Aimee was wilier than Ebon. She was ready for his supposed sneak attack and dodged easily, leaving him to roll in the water without more than a glancing brush of his hand along her side.
“Nice try.” She laughed.
“I wasn’t trying to get you,” he said. “I just wanted to splash you.”
“Sure.”
“Seriously,” he said, insistent. She was right; he’d definitely been trying to wrestle her under and had been outfoxed. But the urge to lie was born from her being bossy and annoying, just as she’d been last year.
Between the two of them, Aimee had always been in charge. She’d been in charge for last year’s summer months, and she’d been just as in charge for this year’s. Over the intervening fall, winter, and spring, she’d managed to stay in charge, flooding Ebon’s mailbox with handwritten letters that read like diary entries. Ebon had read them all with edgy giddiness, memorized every word, then composed a single short letter in reply that carried none of her suggestive overtones. This would give her permission to send him another dozen letters — or one letter of epic proportions — in which she’d again confess entirely too much.
Ebon, even though he’d never really understood girls, had figured out one thing: The letter-writing was much more about Aimee than it was about Ebon. They were friends, but she mostly wrote because it gave her a thrill. Richard would throttle her if he knew that she was writing so much to Ebon and what she was writing to him (lots of kissing boys, some groping, some experiments in self-exploration that should probably be kept private), and she always had to write them furtively and sneak downtown to mail them herself in secret. Much of what she wrote was so mundane as to be boring, but the few too-honest tidbits were worth poring over again and again. They were worth memorizing and making permanent inside him. Sometimes Ebon suspected that she put those things into the letters (which were otherwise droll and rambling) as another way of pushing him around from a distance, and proving yet again that she knew lots of things that Little Ebon Shale didn’t know at all.
“I’m bored with this,” she said. “You want to go inside and draw or something?”
“I don’t like drawing,” Ebon said.
“Okay. You wanna go inside and not draw, while I draw?”
“No.”
She rolled her eyes, then began walking back tow
ard the beach. The raft was anchored; it wouldn’t go anywhere as long as the bay stayed calm. In all probability, she’d forget it entirely and be yelled at to wade out and bring the raft in come nightfall, but by then Ebon would be gone. He had maybe six hours before he had to be back to his grandparents’ cottage, and an hour after that before he’d be on the ferry home.
It was a sobering thought, knowing he wouldn’t see Aimee tomorrow. At the end of last year, she’d just been a fun beach friend to him, and someone to miss. But over the winter she’d become something more, and by the time they’d seen each other again three months ago she’d become a third thing — this one best of all, and yet most troubling. He’d been telling himself all summer that he had all the time in the world to spin last year’s straw into new gold, but so far he’d wussed out as he always did. It should have been simple: She was a girl, she did stuff with boys, and Ebon was a boy. But he was too young for her, too different. All summer he’d been imagining what her lips must feel like, but tonight he’d leave without knowing. Three full months of chances wasted.
“Wait,” he said, moving after her.
She reached the beach well before him — a head start met with legs that had grown impossibly longer during his absence. She picked up her towel and began to dry herself off. Ebon willed himself to look away. All last year, she’d worn a juvenile one-piece suit like something his little sister would wear. This year, she’d switched to a two-piece. Talking to her was hard when she was wearing it.
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