by Taylor Hale
After he didn’t say goodbye to me, it wasn’t surprising, but God, it still stings. It really, really stings. Because West was the strongest person I knew, and I’d thought our friendship—on at least one level—meant something to him, even with our problems. Not accepting my stupid request was the final nail in the coffin.
“West is . . . actually, my parents kind of disowned West,” Miles says. “I haven’t spoken to him in a while. But I’m sure he’ll say hi if you see him.”
Miles obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t press, but disowned is such a strong word. I have no idea what happened with West and his parents, but it doesn’t take much to fill in the blanks of what went wrong with him and Miles—mostly because their relationship was never “right” to begin with.
Somewhere down the shoreline, in an inlet where the rapids are calm, there’s a floating dock off the beach where we used to play Pirates and Mermaids as kids. Miles, West, and I always went out on days when the sun glistened like crystals off the ocean and the sky was clear and blue. I would be the mermaid in the water; West the evil pirate king on the dock, and Miles the prince I needed to save. The battle always ended up between me and West. If Miles was on the dock, West was winning. If Miles was in the water, I was winning. It was more Pirates of the Caribbean than Peter Pan.
But one day, after West had grabbed him, Miles threw a tantrum on the dock. I climbed on, my limbs constricted by my life jacket and floaty wings. Other kids were involved, too, so when Miles started screaming, the dock quickly filled up, mostly with boys in West’s grade. Miles and I were eight, so West would have been ten.
“It’s not fair,” Miles sputtered, boogers dripping from his nose, his big blue-green eyes filled with tears. “You guys always decide everything. I’m going to be the pirate king this time! This game is stupid.”
“No way, you little freak,” West spat, his black hair spiked in wet blades over his forehead. “I’m the pirate king and you’re the wimp. That’s just how it is.”
“I’m telling Dad you said that!”
“If you do, I’ll ruin your life!”
“You already do!”
Then Miles directed his anger at me—maybe knowing he couldn’t take his big brother—and shoved me into the water, making me cry. West gave him a wedgie and booted him in after me. Miles screamed that he hated both of us, then cried and paddled to the beach, where the parents had already gathered as they noticed the conflict on the water. Then, because of Miles’s crying, they called everyone back to shore. I crawled out of the water, West at my side. Miles and Faye were attached to their mom’s hip.
“It’s Olivia’s fault!” Faye exclaimed and pointed at me. “She did it, she made Miles cry!”
“What? I didn’t do anything!”
“That’s right,” West agreed. “Miles is being a baby. If he can’t play by the rules, then he can’t play with us.”
“Exactly!” I said. “West is right!”
I was angry at Miles for pushing me in the water. I stood my ground, but the sight of Miles whimpering behind his mom’s leg was enough to make me question whose side I should be on. He was my best friend, after all. West was just his older brother. Yet whenever West was around, I felt this unearthly need to impress him.
Faye kicked sand at me with her pink flip-flop. “If you love West so much, why don’t you marry him? Come on, Miles, you don’t need those jerks.”
But Miles ignored her. “It was all West, Mom,” he said.
“It was not!” West shouted.
“That’s enough,” Beatrice snapped, and we all fell silent. She had that effect on every kid, even West. So when she snatched West’s forearm and dug her nails into his skin, I said nothing, despite the warning bells that clanged in my head. My mom had never grabbed me like that.
“Your father will deal with you, Weston,” Beatrice said and pulled him away.
“Stop!” West’s feet dragged through the white sand. “You’re hurting me!”
She tugged harder until his legs went limp, and I wondered if this was all my fault—that if I wasn’t there, Miles wouldn’t have pushed me in, and then maybe West wouldn’t have pushed him, and he wouldn’t have ever gotten in trouble.
My parents soon found me through the crowd, but I was already crying. That was probably one of the last times we ever played like that together. It didn’t take long for West to think of us both as “little kids” and stop hanging around with us in favor of the boys from Scouts. He left me in the past.
But the older I get, the more that day bothers me. I never told my parents about the way Beatrice grabbed West because somehow, in my childish mind, I thought I’d get in trouble.
Still, even with their dysfunctions, I imagined Miles and West would grow older and figure out their relationship. Maybe it’s not my place to feel sad that they don’t talk anymore; maybe I never understood their family at all.
“Hey, don’t worry about West, Liv.” Miles nods toward the window. “He’s not dead or anything. He’s working right over there.”
The sun blares over downtown. At the auto body shop across the street, a guy with dark hair wipes his blackened hands on a rag as he ducks from under the hood of a rusty pickup truck. I don’t recognize him at all.
3
By the time night falls, murky clouds stripe the sky like undulating seaweed. We’ve been walking the path to the beach for five minutes, and the waves lap against the shore. Brine and salt fill my nose as a pit forms in my gut.
Earlier, Keely picked up a few bottles of soda, dumped half of each one out, and filled them with the vodka from her backpack. She sips hers like water. I can’t find the courage to tell her I don’t drink due to my prescription of sertraline, the new antidepressant Dr. Levy has me on, so I nurse the bottle of vodka and cream soda I have no intention of drinking. I wish I could.
Cool, damp sand seeps into my shoes at the shore. A row of docked boats extends into the sea—some houseboats, some with tall masts and shrouded sails that flap in the wind. Silhouettes of bodies dance behind the white-curtained windows of what must be our destination. Bass-heavy music reverberates through the night. The Rebirth is written in cursive along the white, glossy exterior. It isn’t a cruise ship or anything, but it’s bigger than I thought it would be. Maybe that’s a good thing—I might feel more leveled in a sturdy vessel like that. Still, part of me wished the walk here would last forever.
“Beauty, isn’t it?” Miles says.
A lump forms in my throat. I haven’t been this close to the shore since my fall. The boat doesn’t bother me so much; it’s the finality of the ocean behind it. The waves that devour each other the same way they devoured me all those years ago. Up the coastline, the rocky cliffs are topped by pines that reach into the sky, camouflaged by a hazy nighttime fog.
“You still up for this, Liv?” Keely asks.
“Not a hundred percent sure . . .”
Miles throws his arm around my shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll check it out, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, we can leave, okay?”
Breathe. You’re not going in the water, just near it. You can do this.
“Okay,” I mumble. “Let’s go.”
The next thing I know, I’m looking past my feet at water through the cracks of the rickety dock. It’s three feet wide, but I wobble over it like it’s a tightrope, arms stretched out and everything. Breathing deeply distracts me from the fear. Keely glances over her shoulder, and her dark curls fall down the back of her crop top. A sun pattern is weaved into the cotton fabric. I focus on that, and not the erratic rhythm of my heart.
“You going to be okay, Liv?” Keely asks.
“I’ll make it.” Hopefully.
“She’s fine,” Miles says from behind me. “Liv’s always been a champ.”
Not so sure about that.
Keely hops
onto the deck of the boat and extends her hand. Swallowing my nerves, I steady my balance with the cold metal pole. Keely whips open the door, and the boyish smell of aftershave and soap wafts into the warm night.
Carter Bonnet’s fake-tanned face peers out of half the pictures on the mahogany walls, mostly him on golf courses wearing pale-green polos. There’s a lot of old money in Caldwell. The Hendricks and the Bonnets rival each other in community fundraisers every year, holding extravagant parties and barbeques at their opulent estates. As a kid, that world never made sense to me: why Miles’s parents would dress him and Faye up and present them to the local media like show pets. West was always left out of those things, but he told me once he wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit and bowtie, anyway.
Even though there’s a lot of space in here, it’s nauseatingly hot and stuffy. Two guys funnel beer into another guy’s mouth in the saloon while some others play beer pong on a wobbly table, unsurprisingly dropping cups all over the floor. The whole structure sways. Music pounds my skull. I don’t know what to expect—will people make a big deal out of me being back, or will they even care? But as I pass Bailey, June, and other girls I recognize from Instagram, someone says, “Is that really Olivia? I heard she was back for the summer . . .”
I keep my head down, just as a guy in a white T-shirt bumps into us and spills his beer on the vinyl floor. He steadies himself by gripping Miles’s shoulder, and the pickaxe-shaped scar on his forehead shines pink under the dim light. His tanned cheeks are flushed, his eyes glazy and red.
“Whoa, Olivia Cathart?” he says. “Keely said you were coming into town, but damn, didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
“Hey,” I mumble.
“It’s me, Dean, Dean Bowman. You didn’t forget me, did you?”
“No! Of course I remember you.”
I do, but we were never friends as kids. Dean is a year older than me but he was held back a grade. He was always the guy who lived around the corner from the house I grew up in, who drove my dad nuts by blocking the street off with road hockey.
“Damn, you got hot,” he says.
“Thanks . . .”
“Heard you moved away and became a city girl. How’s that working out for you?”
Back home, I’m from the middle of nowhere. Here, I’m a city girl. Guess that means I don’t belong anywhere. “It’s okay.”
“Anyway, Hendricks, you’ve got to see this.” Dean grabs Miles’s arm.
“Wait, Miles!” I shout.
As Dean drags him into the crowd, Miles yells, “I’ll catch up with you in a bit! Promise!”
“Wow,” I say to Keely. “We just met up and he’s already gone. Keely?”
Turns out I’m speaking to no one, because Keely’s already on the other side of the boat, leaning up against someone who I’m pretty sure is Dean’s cousin, Shawn Watters. I wasn’t sure what to expect everyone to be like—sure, I had a window into their lives through social media, but being here in person is totally different. I can’t expect Keely to stick with me all night. She’s moved on with her life.
The floor shifts, and bile rises. Crap, I’m not going to make it. My arm sticks to another girl’s as I slip past her. Vomit on my tongue, I stumble outside, land palms-first on the dock, and hurl into the water.
“Damn it.”
No one’s out here to see me wipe my mouth, but embarrassment is hot on my face. It is so like me to throw up without even drinking. Leaning over the dock, blackness flows beneath me. Vertigo makes the world wobble as I stand on shaky legs and hold tight onto the side of the boat. Catching my balance, I head for the shore, and once on land, my breathing slows.
There are so many boats out here that the crowded waterfront adds to my suffocation. A short walk up the beach will bring me to a small field, and then, the cliff. The place I came back here to confront. In a sick way, I want to see it again, to experience the place that has existed only in my nightmares for so many years. Pins and needles numb my legs, but soon the sand becomes grass, and I’m sloping up the hill that leads to the cliff. I don’t know why, but I look up.
The lighthouse.
It reaches into the starry sky like a never-ending tower. I’m still far back, but close enough to see the texture in the chipping paint. Cold air swirls around my body as the trees flutter nearby. I stand there, frozen, and stare at it like a weirdo tourist. All I can do is hear. Hear, and remember.
“Liv, stop! Seriously, were going to get in trouble!”
The door to the lighthouse cranks open and cuts my flashback short. A man exits and locks the door behind him. I should get out of here, but then he says, “Olivia?”
My name is husky on his tongue, and my hair stands on end. I look at him. He wears a twisted expression, and my jaw drops.
“West?”
He jogs down the hill as a gust of wind whispers through the grass. A certain scent engulfs me—like earth and cologne—and catches me off guard.
“No shit,” he says, “is that really you? I heard you were coming back, but . . .”
“Yeah . . . here I am, back for the summer,” I say, awkward as hell.
He steps into the moonlight. A square jaw; strong, thick brows; the faintest stubble. Those are new. But the dimples, the messy black hair, the olive-toned skin—that’s West. He’s always looked different from his pale, blond-haired siblings. All they have in common are those eyes: deep, sea blue with feathers of green and yellow.
“It’s been a minute, Mermaid Girl.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say and try to keep my cool, but seeing him again—hearing how the years have made his voice masculine and gravelly—creates a static charge in my veins. His eyelashes are long and sooty, like they were when we were kids, when I thought of him as my friend. I wonder if he thinks I grew up to be pretty—then curse myself for being so dumb.
“Why not?” he asks. “You used to love it. All those mermaid necklaces, keychains . . .”
“That was before the ocean tried to kill me.”
“Tried to. But it failed, right? You were stronger than it.”
“I don’t know about that. Roger was stronger, that’s for sure.”
When I shut my eyes, the waves whoosh around me, rain sticks in my ears. For a moment, it’s nostalgic—but then I’m sinking into the depths of blackness until I can’t breathe. I snap the elastic on my wrist and I’m back on the cliff with West, not dead. My life didn’t end that night. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am stronger than it.
“I never saw you after you fell.” West slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Part of me wants to say, “You’re five years late, West,” but I don’t. “What were you doing in the lighthouse?”
“I do some work for the town sometimes. Just some extra cash in my pocket to go up there and make sure the light’s working okay. It always is.”
“Your family is loaded, I never thought you’d have to do odd jobs.” Right, Miles said he was disowned . . . why did I say that?
“Things are different now.”
Of course they are. A million questions rush through my mind, but mostly I wonder why he and Miles aren’t on good terms anymore. Sure, they fought and all, but they’re family. The longest I’ve ever shunned either of my parents is like, three hours. Maybe I don’t get it because I don’t have siblings.
But I can’t blurt all that out, so instead I say, “You never accepted my follow request on Instagram.”
“What?”
“I tried to follow you. Like, years ago. And you never accepted.”
“Oh . . . yeah. Sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Why wouldn’t I notice?”
“I don’t know.”
“That kind of hurt my feelings, West.”
He laughs. “You haven’t changed.
Still not afraid to tell me how you feel, huh? Look, sorry. This probably sounds dumb, but my Instagram’s kind of private. I didn’t accept the request because I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. I didn’t think there was a point.”
Old feelings of rejection resurface, and it’s hard to look at West now and not think of him as that same jerk who didn’t even say goodbye to me. But he’s being nice. The years have changed us both, given us height and experience. He must be at least six foot one now. A loose-fitting black shirt hangs off his defined arms, and the V of his hips pushes through it. Heat touches my cheeks, and I tear my eyes from his torso.
“Hey,” West says. “It really didn’t mean anything. Me ignoring you on Instagram, I mean. It doesn’t mean I didn’t . . .”
This is all too heavy to drop on him within five minutes of meeting again. “It’s okay. Sorry, I’m not trying to be dramatic.”
“Don’t worry.”
The ocean stretches beyond the cliff’s edge, the smell of sulfur strong in the air. Normally I’d be terrified, but I’m so far back from the edge. I’m safe. That’s the thing about PTSD: it’s in control. It decides when and where it flares up. Sometimes a shower will trigger me. Other times, apparently, I can stand in the exact spot it happened and be totally fine. It’s a strange sensation, to be at peace with the one thing I fear the most.
“You see my brother yet?” West asks.
“We were at some boat party down the shore earlier. Keely too.”
“Yeah?” West kicks up grass with his boot. “What took you so long to come back to Caldwell?”
“I was scared. But . . . I’m seventeen now. I’m seventeen and I’m scared of water. You know, I bet I don’t even know how to swim anymore.”
“You came back to what, get over it?”
“I guess.”