Safe Harbor (2 page)

“Very.” Shelley sat on a corner of the blanket
and opened her backpack, from which she pulled a towel and a bottle
of suntan lotion. Sooner or later she was going to have to remove
her T-shirt and shorts, but she stalled by searching for her
sunglasses. “What was Diana doing while you were slaving away on
the deck chairs?”

“You wanna know what she was doing?” Kip rolled
onto his side and propped himself up on one arm. “She was down in
Old Harbor, flirting with this college guy who’s got a job renting
mopeds at Aldo’s for the summer.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. She says she’s in love.” He
smirked.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” Shelley said, although
she felt a little disloyal taking Diana’s side. Diana was three
years older than Kip and Shelley, and summer after summer they’d
snickered over her adolescent moods, her taste in clothes, her
coquettish hip-swaying walk and her melodramatic sulks. But during
the past winter, Shelley had experienced a few intense sulks of her
own, and she’d started experimenting with new fashions. She hadn’t
fallen in love, but she’d spent an awful lot of time squealing with
her girlfriends over assorted pop musicians and dreaming about
Danny Clayburn, a gorgeous senior at her high school who didn’t
even know she existed.

“If what Diana’s in is love,” Kip joked, “I
hope they come up with a vaccine before I come down with it. She
just sits around sighing all the time. When she’s not sighing she’s
working on her tan, and when she’s not doing that she’s bitching at
me.”

“You probably deserve it,” Shelley teased.
Having exhumed her sunglasses from her pack, she’d run out of
delaying tactics. The moment of truth had arrived. Taking a deep
breath, she unzipped her cut-offs and slid them down her legs.
Before she pulled off her T-shirt, she discreetly adjusted the bows
of the skimpy straps that held the bikini bottom on her hips. Then,
acting as nonchalant as possible, she peeled off her shirt and
braced herself for Kip’s response.

He didn’t whistle. He didn’t blurt out, “What
the hell have you got on?” He didn’t say, “What a coincidence! I
spent the past winter growing a beard and a smattering of chest
hair, and you spent the past winter turning into a foxy
babe.”

He would never say that--not only because she
hadn’t turned into a foxy babe but because Kip didn’t seem to be
into boy-girl type stuff. Like Shelley, he was fifteen, and
everybody knew boys matured later than girls. If he could ridicule
his sister’s infatuation with a summer employee at Aldo’s, he
undoubtedly had no idea what infatuation was all about. His full
ration of hormones hadn’t kicked in yet.

Which was fine, Shelley decided. She herself
had just started dating this year, and so far she’d found the
experience to be more hype than pay-off. It was nice having some
guy take you to the movies, and it added to your stature at school.
But kissing was a pretty messy business, all in all, and anything
beyond kissing generally led to her shoving the guy’s hands away
and the guy whining that all the other girls do it, or that after
he’d blown all that money on the movie he’d earned the right to paw
her, or—the ultimate insult—that if she didn’t like it there must
be something wrong with her.

Maybe what was wrong with her was that she
could barely fill a B-cup. If she had bigger breasts, she’d
probably have more nerve endings and being touched would feel more
exciting.

In any case, while she wanted Kip to think she
was a knock-out, she didn’t want him to kiss or her try for a feel.
That would spoil their friendship.

He might have at least noticed the bikini,
though. He might have at least said something like, “Hey, you got a
new swim suit.”

What he said, after the grand,
anxiety-producing unveiling of her bikini, was, “The water sure
looks great today.” Then he pulled off his sunglasses, hoisted
himself to his feet and jogged down to the water, splashing through
the shallows until the waves were lapping his thighs and then
taking a clean, graceful surface dive into the gently rolling
surf.

Shelley glanced down at her body and shuddered.
The tan lines left by her other swim suits emphasized how
sickly-pale her belly was. Her chest was truly an embarrassment,
revealing only the faintest shadow where a more fortunate girl
would have cleavage. With a small groan, she folded her shirt and
shorts in a neat pile and then stood and picked her way down to the
water’s edge.

The tide was low. Kip had surfaced and was
standing a good thirty yards from shore, where the waves reached
only up to his waist. His skin glistened with drops of water, and
the newly sprouted hair on his chest looked darker and less curly.
“Come on in,” he beckoned, slicking his hair back from his face and
waving to her. “It’s not too bad.”

It was icy, but Shelley hadn’t come to the
beach to squeal and snivel and act like a coward. Certainly braving
the chill waters of Block Island Sound wasn’t as daunting as
stripping off her outer clothing had been just a minute ago. She
filled her lungs with air, then raced headlong into the water,
refusing herself the opportunity to stop. Once the water was at her
hips she dove under, feeling her scalp contract and her skin erupt
in goosebumps. Before she emerged she ran her hands briskly over
the triangular cups of her suit to make sure they were still
covering what they had to cover. Reassured that everything was in
place, she bobbed up to the surface, felt for the smooth, sandy
ocean floor with her feet, and let out her breath.

“It’s freezing,” she complained, just for the
hell of it.

“Is not.”

“You could build a snowman out
here.”

Kip laughed, then vanished under the surface
again. In less than a second Shelley felt his hand around her
ankle, giving her a sharp tug. She barely had time to take a breath
before she tumbled backward and the foaming water closed over her
head.

She and Kip had wrestled in the water more
times than she could count. They had dunked each other, raced each
other, splashed and tickled each other. This time, though, the
horseplay seemed different. His fingers felt so strong on her leg,
and when she floated back up and felt him behind her, his chest
brushing up against her bare back, it was...well,
different.

“What happens if I do this?” he asked, toying
with the bow that held her bikini top on.

“You die,” she said simply, spinning around and
slapping his hand.

He was laughing. “In that case, I’ll stick to
the safe stuff.” Before she could stop him he dove underwater
again, wrapped his arms around her knees and gave a jerk. She
grabbed his shoulder, holding him down as she went under. He poked
her ribs, she prodded his stomach with her knee, he shoved away and
shot back up into the air a split-second before she did.

“You’re a creep,” she scolded. This wasn’t as
much fun as it had been last summer—or as recently as last Friday.
For one thing, she was afraid of his accidentally pulling off her
bikini. For another, she was afraid of his pulling it off not by
accident. Maybe he thought there was something silly or affected
about her wearing a swim suit she had no business wearing. Maybe he
resented the fact that she could get herself up in something sexier
than usual, even if it didn’t look particularly sexy on
her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. He was standing
solidly, his hands on his hips, his chest heaving as he caught his
breath. His dark eyes peered at her through water-spiked lashes. He
had lost his playfulness; obviously he could sense her
anger.

Suddenly she was ashamed of herself. What a
narcissist she was, to be so obsessed with a stupid bikini.
“Nothing,” she said apologetically. “I just...I’m a little tired.
I’m going out.”

Kip accompanied her, slogging through the water
until they reached the beach. Shelley gave herself a quick wipe
with her towel, then dropped onto the blanket, slipped her
sunglasses on, bunched her towel into a pillow and stretched out on
her stomach.

Kip spent a bit longer drying himself before he
donned his sunglasses. “You want me to put some suntan lotion on
your back?” he offered.

“No. I’m too wet. Maybe later.”

He shrugged and stretched out beside her,
cushioning his head on his crossed arms. “Are you okay?” he
asked.

“Never been better,” she said tersely. She
didn’t like lying to Kip, but since she honestly wasn’t sure what
was bothering her she figured she might as well not go into
it.

He stared at her. She closed her eyes, but she
could still feel his gaze on her, assessing her. “Have you got your
period or something?”

Shelley laughed. She couldn’t imagine
discussing something like her period with any boy back in
“America,” but with Kip she felt perfectly comfortable talking
about things like that. When she was eleven he’d told her he’d seen
Diana buying tampons at the general store, and he and Shelley had
snuck into Diana’s bedroom, found the box in the closet, and stolen
a tampon. Carrying their loot up to the cupola, they had unwrapped
the tampon, examined it, and decided that the very concept
underlying such an object was gross. The following summer, when
Shelley had begun menstruating, Kip had questioned her on why she
didn’t get grumpy the way Diana did, and whether the cramps hurt as
much as Diana claimed they did, and whether she used
tampons.

Shelley had answered all his questions
honestly. She knew he’d reciprocate. When she’d asked him what a
“wet dream” was he’d told her. When they’d overheard a couple of
crude guys down at the harbor using the term “beaver” in reference
to a woman, Shelley had asked Kip what that meant and again he’d
told her. It was part of the magic of the island—the magic of her
friendship with Kip—that they could talk candidly about
things.

“No,” she said now. “I don’t know what’s wrong
with me, Kip. I think...”

“What?” he coaxed her, lifting a wet strand of
hair that had unraveled from her braid and tucking it behind her
ear.

“I’m upset about my father.”

“Oh?”

A warm, soothing wind swirled around the cove,
bouncing off the cliff behind her and dancing across her shoulders.
She twisted her head so she could view Kip. “You won’t tell, will
you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well...I think something’s wrong with him,”
she confessed. It felt so good to put her feelings into words.
She’d tried to raise the subject with her mother last night, as
they’d nibbled on salads and watched a Sixty Minutes rerun on the
tube. Her mother had immediately cut her off, insisting that
nothing was wrong with Shelley’s father other than his being
overburdened with work.

“Is he sick?” Kip asked. He shifted so his head
was closer to hers on the blanket.

“No, nothing like that. It’s just...” She
exhaled. Maybe her mother was right; maybe she was imagining
things. “He didn’t come to the island ‘til Saturday morning,” she
said. “Last summer he always came Friday afternoon, but this summer
he doesn’t come ‘til Saturday--if he comes at all.”

“He only missed one weekend,” Kip reminded
her.

“Your father never misses a
weekend.”

Kip shrugged. “If he missed a weekend, my
mother would miss her weekly bee shot. He’s got to come.” Last
spring Kip’s mother had gotten stung by a bee and gone into
anaphylactic shock. As a result, she was on a regimen of
desensitizing bee-venom injections. Since there was no pharmacy on
the island, Kip’s father had to bring her weekly dose with him when
he came down from Boston.

But Shelley knew that wasn’t the only reason
Mr. Stroud came without fail every weekend. He came because he
wanted to be with his family. She and Kip rarely saw each other on
the weekends because Mr. Stroud wanted to spend as much time with
his son as possible—even if all they did was paint deck
chairs.

The Stroud family was wealthier than Shelley’s,
and unlike her family their wealth went back several generations.
But they weren’t zillionaires; Mr. Stroud worked for a living. Yet
Shelley suspected that even if things were difficult for him at his
real estate management firm he would never miss a weekend on the
island with his family.

“Has he said anything?” Kip asked. “I mean,
about how come he can’t come on Fridays?”

“Just that he’s got too much work to
do.”

“Well, there you have it,” Kip said. “He’s
working.”

She wished she could accept her father’s vague
explanation as easily as Kip could. “I don’t know. There’s
something about him. He seems so wired. When I talk to him about
the stuff we’ve been doing all week, he just nods and says, `That’s
nice.’ He’s distracted all the time.” She paused, searching Kip’s
deep-set brown eyes and finding in his sincere gaze the courage she
needed to continue. “He and my mother fight.”

Kip absorbed her declaration. “You mean, like,
physically?”

“No—they argue.”

His lips relaxed into an easy smile. “Big deal.
All parents argue.”

“I bet yours don’t,” Shelley
contended.

“Of course they do.”

“About what?”