“No,” she said. “He was hoping to catch you.”
“He’s becoming a master of the ambush,” I say under my breath.
“You two were close,” my mother says, like she hasn’t heard me.
“Yeah, we were.” I busy myself with a counter display of dangly earrings.
“Are you seeing anyone else?” she asks.
The question startles me, and so does Astor’s face flashing across my mind without warning. To Claire’s disappointment I didn’t give him my number. In my defense, he didn’t ask. I had a feeling if I offered it he would have said something like If it’s meant to be, we’ll see each other again. But we haven’t. Not in the last four days, anyway. It’s just that he keeps showing up in my head unannounced.
“No,” I say. “It’s not like Kensington is crawling with great guys.” That’s true, too. Who am I going to date? Tripp? Even he is taken.
My mother raises her eyebrows. “I think there are a lot of fine young men at Kensington. Some of the best—”
I hold up my hand. “Mom, I’d rather wear gingham for the rest of my life than date someone named Archibald. Or Walter. Or Harrington.” I swear, every guy I know has a name that makes him sound like he could be my grandfather. Well, not my grandfather, but a grandfather. You get what I mean. And I guess, really, Astor is no exception. Except something about him felt like an exception. Something about him felt different. “What’s wrong with gingham?” For a moment I think she’s made a joke, but I’m wrong. She legitimately wants to know.
“Let’s just go to lunch,” I say.
“You’ve never been to LA?” Claire screeches when I pick up my cell to check in. They’re probably not getting married anytime soon, but it doesn’t seem like she’s in any immediate danger. I decide to hang up and face lunch head-on.
There is this restaurant, Phoebe’s, on East Sixty-seventh, that my mom has been going to for years. Phoebe’s never ceases to depress me. For one, the food is terrible and yet the place is always packed. Sometimes the line for a table spills out to the sidewalk. For another, no one eats there. Not really. They have this caprese salad that tastes like rubber, and their sandwiches are sand infused. I’m not sure why it’s so popular, but it is, so people go. That’s the thing about the neighborhood I live in: Rarely does anyone stop to question why they’re doing the things they’re doing. It’s a good enough reason if everyone else is.
When we get to Phoebe’s, Abigail is seated at a table with Constance and Samantha. Unsurprising. They are always here on Sundays.
“Mcalister!” Abigail calls out when she sees me. My mother slides her sunglasses up on top of her head and gives me an eye. Abigail is never this friendly to me in public. Even my mother knows that.
“Hey.” I wave at them, searching desperately for a table on the other side of the restaurant. Too late. Abigail calls us over with her hand, and my mother, God help her, goes. I drag my feet behind.
Abigail air-kisses my mom and then turns to me. “What are you doing here?”
“Lunch?” I say. “The meal before dinner?”
Abigail misses the sarcasm, but not my mother. She tucks her arm around my waist and pulls.
“Are you girls doing International this year?” my mother asks. She’s talking about the debutante ball that’s held at the Waldorf Astoria every other year. She’s been trying to get me to agree to it since before I can remember. I don’t see the point in putting on a big white dress and strutting around people I can’t stand, but my mother thinks it’s more important than a wedding. We’re in negotiations.
“My mom wants me to do Junior Assembly,” Abigail says. “Which means I might wait until next year—but I’m so ready!”
“Mayflower,” Constance says. “Vera is already fitting me.”
“Maybe you can help me convince this one?” My mother looks pointedly at me and then at Constance.
Abigail sighs. I notice she’s wearing an orange dress that clashes wildly with her red curls. She looks like a surrealist painting, the kind you sometimes have to step away from to see what the hell is going on. “Honestly, Caggie, it’s unheard of not to come out.”
“By who?” I ask. My mother’s hand pinches my waist.
Constance rolls her eyes. “Everyone?”
“I’ll work on it,” Abigail tells my mother, like even the thought is exhausting. “Speaking of, we were just discussing some school politics.”
“Super,” I say. “We really should—”
“The new boy,” Constance says, piping up. She has a cardigan draped over her shoulders like she’s afraid of catching cold. It’s 101 degrees outside.
“What new boy?” This from my mother. I swear her ears perk right up with her eyebrows.
“A transfer,” Samantha says. “We hear he’s from Dubai.”
Abigail snorts. “He is not from Dubai,” she corrects. “He’s been living in Venice.”
“He went to jail,” Constance says.
“He speaks five languages,” Abigail adds.
“That’s quite a lot of things,” my mother says.
Abigail adjusts her headband like she’s looking in a mirror, but instead she’s looking straight at me. “I think I might make him my boyfriend.”
“Oh?” I say. “I thought things were good with Tripp.”
Abigail inhales. “He just isn’t coming around the way I want him to.”
She lowers her eyes to her hands. My mother reaches out and gives them a sympathetic squeeze.
“Right,” I say. “So listen, we really should—”
“I think Caggie could use a distraction,” my mother announces. She’s still holding me by the waist, and she tugs me closer again.
Abigail’s eyes light up. “Oh, yes,” she says.
“It’s been a long summer, right, sweetie?” my mother continues.
I close my eyes, briefly. I resist the urge to run screaming from this restaurant. “Two and a half months,” I say. “Pretty standard.”
My mother ignores this. “Maybe you girls could see if the new boy has any friends.” She winks at Abigail. I want to crawl under the table and just evaporate.
“Done,” Abigail says. “Maybe I’ll have a back-to-school party,” she continues. “We could invite him.” She looks at Constance, who takes out a notebook.
The thought of any party of Abigail’s makes my bones feel like they’ve turned to lead. Kristen—her tiny, breakable frame—replaces Astor’s image. My mother releases me, claps her hands together. “I’ve always adored you, Abbey.” I snort. It’s almost enough to make me forget the possibility of another Abigail Adams soiree. She doesn’t let her hatred of her nickname show now, though. Instead she just stands and air-kisses my mother again, once on each cheek.
“All right, darlings,” my mom says, passing a hand over the table in an arched wave. “We’ll leave you be.”
“I’ll call you,” Abigail says, although it’s unclear whether she’s referring to me or my mother.
“See you tomorrow,” I say.
As we leave, I hear them drop their voices, probably discussing my wardrobe choice or the size of my mother’s diamond ring. I’ve never known girls like that to be too kind in private.
“That was fun!” my mother says. I can tell she really means it, and I don’t say anything to correct her. The truth is my mom doesn’t find much fun these days, not since Hayley. So if Abigail really revs her up, who am I to shut that down?
“I always liked that girl,” she continues. “I think you guys should be friends.”
“We are,” I say. At least Abigail thinks so.
Over lunch we talk about Peter (he should break up with Felicia), Claire (I should stop “running downtown” to see her; it takes me out of my life), and Dad (she’s not sure when he’s coming home from his trip; I feel like adding “if,” but don’t).
Abigail & Co. blow us even more air kisses as they leave. They glide by in their stilettos and wedges, bags clutched in their hands, sung
lasses fixed on their faces. I wonder if their internal dialogue would surprise me. If they ever think things they don’t say. I kind of doubt it.
I take a sip of my lemonade and watch as the ice cubes play bumper cars in the glass. “Peter said you’re selling the house,” I venture. I don’t know why I choose now to bring it up. I don’t blame my mother for not telling me, not exactly, but I still want to talk about it. I know it wasn’t a group decision. It’s not my house; it’s my parents’. But I still feel like it’s not right to sell it off. She’s still there, in a way, isn’t she?
My mother sets her chardonnay down. “Yes,” she says, folding her hands on the table. “Why?”
I give my lemonade a shake. “I just figured someone might have mentioned something, that’s all.”
“Your brother was kind enough to volunteer to pack up,” my mother says, her tone crisp. “There isn’t really anything to say, Mcalister.”
“I would have gone,” I say. I’m surprised that I say it. I was mad at Peter for being out there all summer; I considered it a betrayal. My mother looks at me and I see something hard in her eyes. Something that is, now, familiar. “That wouldn’t have been a good idea,” she says. I know what she means. I know what she’s referring to.
But it still makes me feel cold. Like I’ve swallowed all the ice cubes in my glass in one swoop. The last time I was at the beach was the night Hayley died.
I was the only one with her that night. We weren’t supposed to be out there, but I had planned a weekend with Trevor, and if all went according to plan, no one would find out. My parents had some benefit and Peter was in the city, spending the weekend with Felicia. Hayley was supposed to be home with the nanny, but the nanny had gotten sick at the last minute and couldn’t make it into the city. Hayley begged to come with me. She loved the beach, even in winter. Especially in winter. She would sit outside, all bundled up in scarves and sweaters and coats, and she would paint, her little hand shaking from the cold, from being the only piece of skin on her body exposed besides her nose.
I said yes. To her coming with, I mean. Trevor was going to take the train out Saturday and maybe Claire, too, if she could pull herself away from whomever she was dating at the time. One of her dad’s assistants, I think. An up-andcoming rock-and-roll photographer with a name like Craw or Sebastian—I can’t remember.
Hayley and I drove out together Friday night. We listened to Bob Marley in the car. Hayley said it made her feel like it was summer even though the roads were icy and frost kept forming on the windshield. She played with this bracelet the whole way up. It was an evil-eye bracelet Trevor had given me for our one-year anniversary. Blue glass beads all around. “It’s protection,” he told me. “So you’ll always be safe.” I had let her have it. Not permanently or anything—it didn’t even fit her yet—but I let her wear it that night. She kept spinning it around, running her little fingers over the tiny black dots in the centers of the blue beads.
I remember we talked about her field trip. She was upset that her class was going to the New Museum downtown. She thought a field trip shouldn’t count if you stayed in Manhattan. She wanted to know whether I’d help her make a petition. She wanted to inform the school and see how many people she could get to sign. That’s the kind of kid Hayley was. She was always speaking her mind, letting people know how she felt. She’d say anything. She’d tell people she loved them every time they left the room.
We got to the house and she started carrying in her suitcase. It was just a little duffel with her initials stenciled on it, but it was hard for her. Hayley was tiny. Barely four foot two, and bone thin. I remember her struggling with it a little, but I didn’t help her. I had my hands full, and besides, I reasoned, Hayley wasn’t complaining. She would have gotten mad at me too, if I had taken it out of her hands. She was like that. She thought she could do anything.
But she couldn’t swim. She hadn’t learned how.
Hayley was afraid of the water; I’m not really sure why.
When she was a baby she would scream whenever anyone tried to bathe her. She took showers and everything, that’s not what I mean, but she never wanted to go in the ocean. Even when she was little, she would stay way up on the sand dunes. She would build castles and lie around with her shovel and bucket, but she never wandered down to the edge.
I used to try to get her to tell me, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She was like an adult who had had a scarring experience and didn’t want to rehash the past. I sometimes thought it was funny. She was just ten, after all; what had traumatized her so much? But that’s the thing about kids that’s so interesting. It’s true about Peter and me and it’s true about any child who has ever been born to parents. Hayley was who she was. It didn’t much have anything to do with what had happened to her in her short life. Maybe people can be afraid of the future if there’s nothing in their past to frighten them. Maybe she saw what was coming.
I blink and look at my mom. She looks tired, older. I can see the lines around her eyes stretching like highways on a flat-pressed map. Roads well traveled.
“I’m going to go have a rest,” she says. “Will you stay out or come home?”
I glance down at my watch: two forty-five. If this was last year, I’d be crossing the park. I’d meet Trevor on Sixty-sixth and we’d pick up Starbucks and go for a walk, or if it was really hot, too hot, we’d go back to his apartment, close all the blinds, and turn the AC on full blast.
“I have some homework,” I lie. “I’ll come back with you.” We walk in silence. Sometimes this happens without warning. Like the magnitude of the past—of all that has happened—creeps into the space and inflates. One minute it’s this little thing—contained, pocket-size—the next minute it’s a creature. With legs and arms and scales. That’s how grief works. It’s there even when you forget about it. It doesn’t disappear, but just morphs, changes form.
Hayley might have screamed, but I didn’t hear her, so I don’t know. She probably did, but our house is on the water, and it’s windy outside at night most of the time. Sound gets swallowed.
It was fifteen minutes before I found her. I was opening the door to call her inside. Fifteen minutes was too long to spend outside in January. It was freezing. But Hayley liked to look at the moon. She’d say things like “I’m getting inspired,” so I hadn’t immediately stopped her when she had opened the sliding glass doors. It would have been a fight. She was sweet, but she was also stubborn. I called her but she didn’t answer. Then I stuck my head out. I had taken my coat off, and the wind hit me—sharp as knives. Something dropped in my stomach then, like a coin in a slot machine. I swear I heard it rattle. This wasn’t right.
It was too biting cold for her to have stayed out this long. I started calling her name madly, like those frantic mothers you see in malls who have lost their toddlers. “Hayley!” “Hayley!” I screamed it.
I turned on all the lights. I ran around the back and stared down at the ocean. I turned around and tried to see into the dark house, the living room, the kitchen, down to where our bedrooms are. Nothing.
And then I saw it. My bracelet. The evil eyes winking at me from the bottom of the swimming pool, five tiny fingers trailing next to it, a fist unclenched.
There was a lot of explanation later. About cold-water drowning and the brain dying and hypothermia and the difference between six minutes and ten. It had been fifteen. Fifteen full minutes that I did nothing. Fifteen full minutes that I loaded boxes of macaroni and cheese into the kitchen cabinet and turned on the television. They told me there was nothing I could have done, those were their words, but the research said something else. Their medical voices said something else. I could have. I could have realized my little sister was gone. I could have caught her when she fell in, trying to fish out my bracelet. My stupid, meaningless bracelet. I could have pulled back the pool covering so she wouldn’t have been caught in it. I could have rescued her in the first thirty seconds. The first minute. The first six. I could
have stopped her from dying.
You see, now, why I do not want to talk about May. Why I’m telling you out of sheer necessity. To cover the truth, I have to lie, but it’s the guilt that is the worst. It’s heavy, thick. It doesn’t let me breathe. How can I claim responsibility for saving anyone when I let my sister die?
CHAPTER SIX
I recognize him immediately. His pink oxford and blazer with the Kensington crest stenciled on the front. The way his hair parts to the side, styled down that way. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.He’s the new guy?
Astor is standing at the gates to school, one foot on the sidewalk of Fifth, another on campus, like he isn’t committed to either world just yet. He’s weighing his options. My pulse jumps a little when I see him, I’ll admit it. I keep imagining him, envisioning his face at the bar, the memory of his glass clinking mine. It’s embarrassing that I keep calling up his image. Especially because now he’s really here.
I secure my book bag on my shoulder and walk over to him. Better to just nip this in the bud. Deal with it head-on. “Look who it is,” I say. I try to play it casual, cool, but something about him rattles me. Even my voice shakes a little.
He turns around. He’s flicking his lighter off and on. His eyes travel from the flame up to my face. “You following me, Caulfield?”
I shake my head. “Nice try, but this is my turf.”
“Mine too.”
He smiles at me, and it all begins to make sense, like the last chapter of a book where the mystery is explained. “You didn’t choose not to go to college; you got kicked out of high school,” I say.
“So quick to jump to conclusions,” Astor says, clucking his tongue and dropping the lighter into his pocket. “Maybe I simply want to further my education.”
“Have to further your education,” I correct. “My guess is you got busted for something, your London school said sayonara, Daddy wrote a big fat check to Kensington, and they agreed to take your tail for a repeat of senior year.” I put my hands on my hips, triumphant. He cocks his head to the side and looks at me. “Does it get hard?” he asks.
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