the bed with his head resting in his hands.
“Don’t say anything,” he says when I sit up, “or my head will split open.”
I put on my clothes, which I realize I cuddled with all night, and I get out of the bed. I’m thinking about how he said I want too much, and I’m desperate to get out of there, to prove him wrong, even though I’ve just proved him right.
“Do you need a ride?” I ask as softly as I can.
“I’ll get Jeff to take me home.” He doesn’t even look at me. I wait another second, but he doesn’t say anything else. For a brief moment, I see myself as though from a distance: my wrinkled clothes, my mussed hair, mascara smeared beneath my eyes, waiting for something from this boy who is done with me. I am pitiful, wretched even. I need to end this for myself. But in the same instant, the vision is gone. I wonder now if I had been able to maintain that perspective for maybe a few moments longer, perhaps I wouldn’t have kept going down this path. Perhaps this would have been the turning point, the place where I learned my lesson and found a way to love myself. But my desperation was too strong. It was like a tidal wave, pulling me deeper into its current. And the rest of me was not strong enough to fight it.
6
That summer, my dad rents a house on Fire Island off of Long Island. Fire Island is a small beach community made up solely of boardwalks, docks, and water taxis. No cars are allowed. In the summer, the towns on Fire Island come to life. Wealthy Manhattan families take ferries there every summer weekend, many of them leaving the children with nannies for the week when they have to head back to work. Two towns are renowned for being a gay mecca, where men can meet each other and have sex along the forested boardwalks, no one wagging fingers or turning their eyes in horror. Our house is in Dunewood, a family-oriented community with only a small grocery store and a kids’ recreation center. We have the house for July. I’m excited both to be on this beautiful island and to spend the month with Dad and Nora. She’s become a second mother to me, kind and generous and thoughtful of my feelings, the mother I always wished for. I like the way she makes light of things, such as telling us men are good for three things—paying, carrying things, and sex. Later, she’ll amend this, adding “waiting” to the list. She calls Tyler and me her “almost daughters.” She’s joking, but it means a great deal, to have her think of us this way. One evening when I was feeling lonely and dejected because none of my friends were available, she rounded up my dad and took us for Chinese and a Mel Brooks marathon playing downtown.
“Everybody needs New York when they’re feeling glum,” she told me during dinner, “and what’s more New York than good Chinese and Mel Brooks?”
“You make it sound like being a New Yorker is the solution for everything,” Dad said, serving himself sesame chicken. Nora shrugged and gestured for him to put some on her plate. “A lot of times it is. We have the best of everything here, food, museums, music, shopping. Listen,” she said when Dad looked doubtful, “you’re lucky I even talk to you. You’re from New Jersey.”
I laughed. Even feeling blue, Nora always gets me to laugh. Dad allows me to invite a friend to Dunewood for the month. The Jennifers are busy with their own family vacations in Europe and St. Barts, and this makes me nervous. I still live in constant fear the Jennifers will exclude me, or forget me entirely if I’m out of sight for too long. Since I can’t invite them, though, I invite Ashley. Ashley, who was with Liz and me at that gas station so long ago. Ashley, who tried so hard to keep me innocent that night, but to no avail. Even though we’ve been at different schools, we’ve stayed loosely in touch, and she still feels like a sister to me, sometimes more than Tyler, to whom I rarely speak. Nora’s like another mother, Ashley’s like a sister. The truth is I go through my life trying to piece together the family I want, the one I didn’t get.
On the ferry to Fire Island Ashley and I are giddy, in great moods. Dad, Nora, and her daughter, Miranda, are down below, away from the wind, but we opt to sit up top, our hair whipping around our faces. We can see the island in the distance, a beacon. There’s something about the summer, tanned skin, bare feet, the ocean air. We smile knowingly at each other. The thing with Heath hangs over me like a winter coat, and I am eager to shake it off. I heard that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. That’s exactly what I intend to do.
Our first day, Miranda makes friends with a few girls, and Ashley and I go with them to the beach, where the kids in town hang out every night. I meet a nice-looking guy, Ace, who attends a prep school back in the city, and before the night is through we head off together into the tall beach grass and have sex. The following night we do the same. And then he leaves Fire Island for the summer. I haven’t spoken with Mom in almost a month, and I like it that way, keeping her at arm’s length. I could do without the guilt, without the need to always think of her feelings, and to protect my own from her needs. Times with Dad and Nora are so different, so much more me. I don’t have to keep up my guard. Like today, in the Dunewood house. Nora walks past the sliding screen that leads onto the deck. She’s in flip-flops and a sarong, a white wine with ice in her hand.
“That Giuliani,” she says, shaking her head and gesturing toward the paper Dad’s reading. “He’s ruining New York.”
“Most people would say he’s making it better.” Dad smiles at her. He sits beside me on a patio chair, the paper unfolded on his lap. I’m on a chaise, rubbing SPF 8 on my legs.
“I’m with Nora,” I say.
“That’s my girl,” she says.
“I mean, it’s nice not to have to put on my wipers every time I come to a light so the homeless guys won’t start cleaning my windshield,” I continue, feeling adult enough to comment on this now that I drive. “You know what’s weird, though?” I say, after a moment. “Where did all those guys go?”
Dad laughs. “You do have to wonder. Maybe now there’s some island in the Hudson teeming with men carrying liquor in paper bags. They’re all looking at each other between blackouts like, ‘Where the hell are we?’”
Nora laughs too, but then she gives a fake pout. “I don’t want a nice New York. I want my grungy, dangerous, graffiti-ridden one back.”
“It’s not the real thing unless you have to hide your jewelry inside your clothes on the subway,” Dad says.
“And split your money into different pockets, so in case you get pickpocketed you still have some cash,” I add.
“And avoid Times Square like the plague.” Nora laughs. We join her.
I love hanging out with them.
There is another boy, Justin, who Miranda and her friends covet. He is adorable. He has shocking blue eyes and sun-kissed hair, skin the color of beach sand. I can tell he finds me attractive. At the dock, after a day of tanning and swimming, I smile at him. He smiles back. He is two years younger than me—a baby. I can feel Miranda and her friends watching our exchange. They are jealous, impressed. I relish this, so different from the powerlessness I felt when Heath and I were breaking up.
“You’re Kerry,” he says when he comes over. I tuck my hair behind my ear. I know I got some color today, and I feel pretty. “How do you know my name?”
“Your little sister told me.”
Miranda. I smile that she called me her sister even though our parents aren’t married, that she feels this way about me.
“You’re asking about me?” I say.
“Is that OK?”
I purse my lips. Up close, he’s even cuter than I thought. His wavy hair falls into his eyes and he brushes it away with a hand. I imagine kissing him and immediately my heart starts to flutter.
“I suppose it’s all right,” I say.
He smiles and goes back to his friends. Ashley, who heard the whole thing, grabs my arm.
“Jailbait,” she says, and we both start laughing, remembering the night at the gas station so many years ago.
But as I watch Justin now as he walks off with his friends, that old anxiety creeps up. Having talked to him
