Shane smiles. His braces are off.
Whaaaa? Maia thinks. She knew Shane had the orthodontist but she didn’t know he was getting his braces off. Unfair! He looks hotter now than he did before by, like, a lot.
Lillibet squeals and gives Shane a side hug and Shane leans into her.
They all head deeper into Par Force and wander through different rooms until they come to what must have been the kitchen—there’s a giant fireplace opening. There are a bunch of piles of bricks that they can sit on.
Shane turns to Maia. “Are you surprised the braces are off? What do you think?”
She shrugs. She isn’t going to fawn all over him like Lillibet.
Lillibet is touching the columns, poking her head through the window openings. “This place is sublime,” she says. “What’s it doing here?”
“This was the main living quarters of the family who owned the sugarcane plantation,” Maia says. She gives an ironic laugh. “So two hundred years ago, someone who looked like me would have been working in this kitchen as a slave.”
Everyone is quiet. Maia has made her friends uncomfortable, but oh, well—the history of the Virgin Islands is uncomfortable.
Lillibet says, “Maybe we should meet somewhere else? Do you want to pick a different place, Maia?” Her voice is concerned without being patronizing, and the benefit of the doubt resurfaces. Is Lillibet nice?
“It doesn’t bother me,” Maia says. “My mom brought me here.” She hopes that mentioning Rosie will lead them into the kind of soulful conversation that they had on Frank Bay, but nobody is paying attention to Maia except Lillibet.
“Shane told me that your mother was killed in that helicopter crash on New Year’s,” Lillibet says. “I felt so bad for you. And honestly, you’re kind of famous at Antilles now. I knew Shane was your friend, so I asked to meet you.”
Lillibet is here because of Maia? This sounds like a compliment, but it also makes Maia feel like a circus sideshow. Famous at Antilles? Because she tragically lost her mother?
“It’s too bad we can’t meet at the villa in Little Cinnamon,” Shane says. He turns to Lillibet. “Maia’s dad…it was your dad, right? Your real dad that nobody knew about? Yeah, he was really rich and owned this huge villa with a two-story pool. Maia gets to hang out there whenever she wants.”
“A two-story pool?” Lillibet says.
Maia feels like her heart is being stung by a swarm of bees. She has confided a lot to Shane, but the things she told him were private, and here he is, telling everyone.
Maia shrugs. She isn’t about to admit that the villa has been seized by the FBI. She can’t afford to be any more “famous” at Antilles than she already is.
Colton and Bright are watching a YouTube video of surfing in Portugal on Bright’s phone, and Joanie joins them. Maia nearly says, I thought we said no phones, but she doesn’t want to sound like a teacher or a parent.
“I have no service,” Maia says—to no one, because Shane is now telling Lillibet the gory details of getting his braces off. Maia could join in and say, That sounds like medieval torture, but she knows three’s a crowd. She takes a minute to study Shane and Lillibet together. They’re just two kids talking, right? Or does Shane like Lillibet? They move on to the topic of their math teacher, then to something that happened at morning meeting the day before, and then Shane relates all the near-death experiences he’s had taking the shuttle to Antilles from the Red Hook ferry. Maia smiles to herself, pretending to be deep in thought. If Lillibet is here because she wanted to meet Maia, then why is she talking only to Shane? Maia doesn’t go to Antilles. She wants to, but her mother said not until ninth grade.
Maia wonders if there will be enough money to pay for Antilles, or college—Irene had said she’d handle it, since Russ was gone, but now Irene has no money. What if Huck hasn’t saved enough and Maia can’t go to college in the States like she wants to?
She feels like demanding everyone’s attention so she can bring up this monumental issue—her entire future hangs in the balance—but looking around, she realizes no one will care. Colton and Bright are engrossed in the video; Joanie is shamelessly hanging over Colton’s shoulder (later, Maia will suggest Joanie stop being so obvious). Lillibet and Shane are talking, and maybe they’ve inched closer together, maybe Lillibet is flipping her hair for Shane’s benefit.
Here is the group the five of them created because they had no one to talk to about the important stuff, and Maia still has no one to talk to about the important stuff.
She sits unnoticed for five minutes, ten—then the boys’ interest in the video ends and Colton says, “This clubhouse sucks. There’s nothing to do.”
Maia can’t help herself. “We were supposed to talk,” she says. “Remember?” Remember crying on the beach about your parents and remember who was there to listen?
Lillibet checks her phone. “I’ve got to go,” she says. “My dad’s coming to get me in our boat in twenty minutes and I have to get down to the beach.” She looks at Shane. “Do you want a ride back to Chocolate Hole? It’s on our way.”
Shane raises his eyebrows. He seems like a different person without his braces. Older. Out of Maia’s league.
“Can you take…” he starts, casting his eyes around.
“I live in Coral Bay,” Joanie says. “Wrong direction.”
“It should probably be just you,” Lillibet says. “My dad knows you.”
Say no, Maia thinks. She and Shane can hike back up to the Centerline together. She’ll share her sandwich with him, her banana. They can help each other up the steep parts. It’s frightening how bad she wants this.
“Okay,” Shane says. He stands up and gives the rest of them a wave. His eyes linger on Maia and she looks down into her lap. She knows
