Summerland: A Novel (26 page)

He had thought she would hit the brake. Of course she would hit the brake.

At South Beach there was a group of people gathered around a bonfire. Jake stared at them from a distance. Another beach, another bonfire, the other side of the world. He didn’t recognize anyone there, of course; they were all strangers. Ferals. They were kids his age or a little older with dreadlocks and tattoos, they were drinking, and Jake smelled weed. This was most certainly not the place for him. But he was freezing now despite his sweatshirt, and the idea of being next to the fire was too tempting to resist. He would go check it out.

“Hey, man.”

One of the ferals stood. He was bare-chested, wore brown swim trunks, and had a bush of bronze-colored hair. He was so tan that
the overall effect was of a continuous column of color—hair, skin, trunks. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Hawk,” he said. “Welcome.”

“Hey,” Jake said. This was a cult or something for sure. Regular people weren’t this friendly.

“What’s your name?” Hawk asked.

“Um, Jake,” he said.

“You American?” This was asked by a girl sitting a few people away from where Hawk had been sitting. She had long tangled hair and wore a white bikini top and a white eyelet skirt. How were these people not freezing their asses off?

“Yeah,” Jake said.

“Come sit,” Hawk said. “Join us. Warm yourself by the fire. You want a beer?”

Now would be a good time to excuse myself, Jake thought. Someone else, across the fire, asked, “You want a toke?” And everyone else laughed.

There was some tribal drumming music in the background, which gave the whole scene the feeling that someone was going to be sacrificed here tonight. Probably him, the newbie whose sweatshirt announced him as a punky American high school student.

“No, man, I gotta go,” Jake said.

“Go where, man?” Hawk asked.

“Sit,” the white-bikini girl said. “Have a beer. I’ll get it.” She ran through the sand to a big blue eskie. She pulled out an ice-cold Emu and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” Jake said. He had been craving a beer. He would stay for just this one. “Who do I pay?”

“ ‘Pay’?” Hawk said. “We all chipped in, man, you want to throw some in the pot, go right ahead.”

Jake pulled ten Australian dollars out of his jeans pocket and handed it to Hawk.

“Thank you!” Hawk said, holding the money out for everyone to see. “Have a seat, my friend. Have a seat.”

One hour, three beers, and two hits of marijuana later, Jake had handed over his remaining sixty Australian dollars, as well as two hundred of his three hundred American dollars, to Hawk, securing himself a place in Hawk’s van first thing in the morning. They were traveling across the Nullarbor Plain toward Adelaide, where some people would get out and some different people would get in, and then they were continuing east to Sydney. From Sydney Jake would use the credit card to book a flight back to the States, or he would jump on a container ship and cross the Pacific that way. His parents could chase after him, let them do that, or maybe they would realize how serious he was about returning home and they would do the wise thing and let him live with Zoe and Hobby for his senior year. Or he could live with the Castles. Once he reached Nantucket, it would be harder for his parents to make him return to Australia. Possession was nine tenths of ownership, after all, or something like that.

Two hours later Jake had had six or seven beers and another toke of marijuana, which had been a lot stronger than the first two hits. In one of his remaining cogent moments he wondered if it actually
was
just marijuana, or if it was something else. He remembered stumbling toward the ocean to take a piss, and when he returned to the circle, the fire was dwindling, and so was the group of people around it. The girl in the white bikini top was still there; he asked her what her name was, and she said… but he didn’t hear what she said, he was too busy noticing that her feet had a sort of black rind on the bottom of them, as thick as the sole on a pair of shoes. The next thing he knew he was falling, he tried to grab for the silken rope of Penny’s voice, but he missed it, and his head hit the sand with a thud that sounded like it hurt, but he barely felt it.

The other people around the fire were moving in a strange way. It looked like they were dancing. Jake had last danced with Penny
on stage.
Grease. Chang chang chang chang doo wop. We go together.
Winnie Potts, he didn’t love Winnie Potts, he didn’t even
like
Winnie Potts, but she had put herself in front of him like a dish to taste, and he had momentarily forgotten Penny, just say it, he’d been
glad
she’d left the party so he could let loose for a minute and experience the freedom that was due every seventeen-year-old boy. I’m sorry, Penny, he thought. It could have just as easily happened to you with Anders Peashway or Patrick Loom or any other one of Hobby’s friends who were always flexing their muscles for you. And if you’d told me about it, I would have understood eventually. I wouldn’t have thought the world was over. The world wasn’t over, Penny. I should have told you myself. I should have told you myself!

Jake woke up at dawn, convulsing with the cold. His mouth was filled with damp sand, and he could barely lift his head.

Willow, he thought. The girl in the white bikini top. Her name was Willow.

But when Jake sat up and looked around, neither Willow nor Hawk nor anyone else was around. The beach was deserted, the fire pit cold ash. When he managed to get to his feet, his head felt as heavy and dense as a stone. He turned to look at the parking lot behind him: there was one silver Cutlass in the lot, dark and unoccupied, and nothing else. No van, no Utes, no ferals.

Jake’s duffel bag lay gaping open a few yards away. His stomach heaved, and he gagged and spit in the sand. He checked his pockets: no money, no credit card. He searched through the bag. They’d taken his camera and his running shoes. And the Hemingway. So they were literate thieves, he thought. He felt so stupid, so ashamed; he felt like a young, vulnerable idiot.
Lean on me. When you’re not strong.

They had left him the picture of Penny. He picked it out of the
bag. It was a picture of her at the Tom Nevers Carnival, the summer between their sophomore and junior years. She was eating pink cotton candy, her bluebell eyes round with anticipation:
This is going to be sweet!
she mimed. He kissed the picture and felt a surge of gratitude. They had at least left him that.

It was still pretty early, though he had no idea what time it was because his iPod was gone too. The sun was a pink smudge in the sky. He hefted his bag, now nearly empty, and trudged through the sand toward home.

He had thought he might make it back before his mother woke up. That would be best, though he was going to have to tell his father about the credit card anyway. He might be able to claim that he’d lost it somewhere. But really, he had been drugged, and then robbed. He had been a human sacrifice after all.

Jake opened the side gate to the house silently and tiptoed into the garden. He winced as his feet crunched on the gravel. He needed a big glass of water and seventeen aspirin, eight hours of sleep, and then a big breakfast. Just the thought of his warm, soft bed was so enticing that it nearly made up for the ugly realization that he was never going to make it back to Nantucket.

He smelled smoke and turned around. It still wasn’t fully light, but he could see the glowing orange ember at the end of his mother’s cigarette. She was sitting on the back steps alone, in her pajamas and a long sweater. As she exhaled, he saw her taking in the sight of him—what must he look like?—and his duffel bag.

“Jake?” she said.

“I need my bed,” he said. He resisted the urge to run to her, he resisted the urge to cry. He resisted the urge to say to Ava—for only Ava would appreciate it—“It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

S
he no longer dreaded waking up in the morning. Her alarm went off at six-thirty, and in a flash she was out of bed, brushing her teeth, taking three ibuprofen, drinking an extra glass of cold water. She was putting on cargo shorts and a T-shirt, socks and work boots. She was taking a few shots off one of the bottles that she kept in her closet. Her collection was growing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Al was at work and Lynne Castle was at spin class at the health club, Demeter would make herself a cocktail, either a cup of coffee with cream and sugar and a shot each of Bailey’s and Kahlua or a screwdriver using the orange juice that Lynne squeezed fresh twice a week.

She took two water bottles to work with her every day, one filled with actual water and the other containing vodka, tonic, and lime juice, which she chilled secretly in the garage fridge.

She was, she had to admit, nearly always drunk. That sounded bad; it sounded like she was on her way to becoming the subject of an intervention reality show. But the thing was, she was happy. Finally
happy
. She loved going to work buzzed, she loved weeding and watering while she had a glow. She loved the strategy involved in hiding her condition from everyone around her: Nell, Cooper, and Zeus on the team, Kerry at the start and the end of the workday, and her mother and father at home. Her life was a game now, a game that balanced the scary thrill and fear of getting caught with the comfort of knowing that she was too smart to let that happen.

She had enough alcohol hidden in her closet now to last her the rest of the summer. She had been stealing a bottle nearly every day.

The stealing was bad, there was no denying that, but the stealing was also good because the stealing was what made the days pass so quickly. After Zeus pulled up to a job and Coop started
mowing and she and Nell went off in their separate directions to weed or mulch or deadhead or water, Demeter would immediately apply herself to the task of figuring out how to get into the house. If the owners were home, forget about it, she didn’t steal, except in the case of Mr. Pinckney on Hulbert Avenue, who lived at home by himself even though he was a hundred years old and couldn’t hear or see a thing, or Mrs. Dekalb out in Quidnet, who had broken her leg while ice skating at the rink with Dorothy Hamill and who sat in front of the TV all day with her leg elevated, watching reality shows and drinking tequila sunrises. When Demeter first happened upon Mrs. Dekalb—poking her head in to see if she could “use the bathroom”—Mrs. Dekalb had been so bored and wanting for company that she’d actually invited her to stay and join her for a cocktail.

Demeter had said, “You’re very kind to ask, ma’am, but I’m on the clock.” She offered to fetch a refill for Mrs. Dekalb, however, and while she was doing so, she snatched a bottle of Mount Gay. Then she wrapped the bottle in the flannel shirt that it was too hot ever to wear, and carried it out to the truck, and stowed it in her bag.

At houses where no one was home, Demeter used one of two ploys: either the bathroom ploy—she had perfected a facial expression of
extreme urgency,
though she used it no more than once a week with Nell—or the complete sneak, where she entered the house, grabbed something from the liquor cabinet, and got out of the house (all of which took her less than two minutes) without anyone’s seeing her.

Zeus had once come looking for her when she was exiting a house, but she saw him through the window and made it back to the truck in time to deposit the bottle safely and pull a bottle of Visine out of her backpack. When Zeus found her, she claimed to be battling an allergy.

“It’s the roses, I think,” she told him.

The stealing was bad, but it was also good. She was taking stuff that didn’t belong to her, yes, but the people she was stealing from had
so much
that they would never even notice.

Demeter was nearly always drunk at work, but because Nell and Coop and Zeus had nothing to compare her behavior to, she seemed completely normal to them. The alcohol made Demeter work faster and with a smile. She put on her iPod and danced as she clipped back roses in Sconset; every day was a party. If she and Nell were working in close proximity, they would banter back and forth, and it didn’t take long for this banter to develop into real conversation. Soon Demeter was hearing about Nell’s problems. Nell was in love with her boyfriend’s roommate. The obvious answer to this conundrum was for Nell to break up with the boyfriend, but she was afraid that if she did, she would never see the boyfriend’s roommate again. Demeter took Nell’s quandary very seriously and, after a few swigs from her special water bottle, came up with some reasonable-sounding advice: Nell should break up with the boyfriend as soon as possible, otherwise the roommate would get the idea that the two of them were in a committed relationship. Get out first, Demeter said, and worry about arranging a meet-up with the roommate second. Time should pass, Demeter said. A week or two. And then Nell should plan to “bump into” the roommate on neutral turf.

“Yes!” Nell said. “That’s perfect! You’re a genius, Demi!”

So many things about these exchanges pleased Demeter. She felt like a bona fide
relationship guru,
even though she had never been on a proper date herself. She liked how Nell had started calling her Demi, as in Demi Moore, which in itself was a much sexier name than Demeter Castle. Plus, Demeter had never had a nickname other than “Meter,” which was what kids had called her in preschool. Now she was “Demi.” Coop and Zeus and Kerry all started calling her Demi too. And finally, Nell was the first friend
that Demeter had ever made on her own rather than through connections of her parents.

Nell told Demeter things about the guys on their crew. Coop was a stoner, she said: he and a few guys from other landscaping teams got high before each workday, then again at lunch, and then
again
at the end of the workday. Zeus had a wife and five daughters back in El Salvador, but he regularly went to the Muse on weekend nights to hit on women. Demeter promised to keep these tidbits of information “in the vault”—a phrase always accompanied by a gesture of locking her lips. Demeter had no one to tell, but just knowing these things gave her a certain comfort. Everyone had secrets. She was hardly alone, and her sins were hardly the worst.