“Oh. Right.” Grant’s voice is flat. “Out here, you mean to Camp Hero?”
“Yeah, one of his clue-finding missions.”
“Why do you keep agreeing to do that, since you’re a nonbeliever?” Grant won’t meet my eyes.
“Her grandfather thinks she still believes,” Hannah says.
“Really?” Grant finally looks at me. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d hide something like that, Lydia. It doesn’t seem like you.”
I shrug, uncomfortable. “It would really hurt him if he knew how I felt, or if I stopped coming out here to look for proof that the Montauk Project exists. Besides, I like spending time with him, even if I don’t always like what we do.” I glance out into the forest around me. Every shadow seems to be moving, every small noise twists through the trees. I turn to Hannah. “Look, can we get going? I’ve had enough of Camp Hero for now.”
“I’ve been ready to go since we got here,” she says.
Grant gestures at the party behind him. “I drove like four people so I should get back there. But are you free on Sunday?”
“I totally am,” Hannah answers. She winks at me. Grant looks like he wants to strangle her.
I try not to laugh. “We can all do something. And sorry I can’t hang tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Grant smiles. “I kind of wish I was coming, walking around here and looking for stuff. Who knows, maybe you’ll find the truth this time.”
“I doubt that,” I say. “If there was anything weird going on at Camp Hero, my grandpa would have discovered it long ago.”
The next morning I wake up late and lie in my bed, staring at the white ceiling of my room. The paint is starting to peel in one corner, and cracks spread out in thin, intersecting lines. My room is sparse and organized: a dresser, a brass bed, a bulletin board with my most recent stories attached in neat rows. I thrive on order. Hannah says it’s because I’m an Aries, that I have a thing about control.
I tell her that she needs to get a new hobby.
As dust floats through the morning sunlight, I think about Grant standing in the dark woods, his face filled with hope. I like Grant, I always have, but the thought of kissing him fills me with a vague sense of revulsion. Not that I have much experience to go on. I’ve only kissed a total of three boys in my life and none ever blew me away. I’m still waiting for that perfect kiss, but I know that Grant isn’t it. It would be like kissing my brother.
I sit up, pulling my long, tangled red hair over one shoulder. The heavy waves have knotted and I run my fingers through them as I slide my feet down to the floor.
“Lydia? Are you up?” I hear my mom yell from the kitchen.
“Yeah, I’m up!”
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Why is everyone so goddamned loud in this house!” my dad calls out from the vicinity of the living room.
“Because we know you love it so much! Lydia, French toast or pancakes?”
“French toast!” I stand up, stretching my arms over my head, the hem of my old-fashioned silk slip riding up my legs. I don’t bother getting dressed yet, just pull a robe around myself and wander out into the hall.
The stained-glass window at the end of the hallway spills light and color onto the hardwood floor. I walk past my grandfather’s bedroom on my way to the stairs. “Lydia,” he says through the open door. “Come here.”
“What’s up, Grandpa?” I step into his room. It looks like it always does: cluttered and comfortable, with solid, dark wood furniture and a braided rug on the floor. He’s sitting in a straight-backed chair facing his desk, papers strewn across the top. The warm scent of his pipe hits me as I cross the room.
I take a seat on the wide bed, the same one that’s been in this room since he was a child. When I was a little girl, my family used to live in a condo near Amagansett, but my grandmother died when I was five and my grandpa didn’t want to live alone. So we moved into this house, with its faded, blue-gray cedar shake siding, large windows, and wide front porch.
Grandpa still sleeps in his childhood bedroom, the same place where he listened to his mother crying through the walls after her husband disappeared in 1944, the same place he inherited after her death when he was only twenty. This house is in his bones, and I know that he will eventually die here, never having spent more than a few nights in another bed.
“Mom wants us downstairs for breakfast,” I say. He turns his head to smile at me, his face pale and wrinkled, round glasses covering his green eyes—the same deep-sea color I inherited from him.
“I heard. We’ll go down in a minute, but I wanted to talk about our trip today first.” He taps the pipe out into an ashtray and starts sifting through the piles of papers on his desk.
I cross my legs, swinging my foot impatiently from side to side. I want to go eat French toast, but I try to give Grandpa my full attention. I might not believe his theories, I might even worry about him sometimes, but I’d never let him see that.
My small family is close in its own way, though it can sometimes feel distracted. Mom and Dad are always busy. They value their independence, and they’ve always encouraged me to do the same. I like to spend time alone, and the thought of having someone else in my space for too long makes me itchy and claustrophobic.
But if there’s one person I rely on, it’s my grandfather. He helps me with my school projects, drives me places when I don’t have a ride, and still makes me dinner most nights. He’s
