The Deep Blue Sea for Beginners (21 page)

Walks on the winter beach, coffee in a candlelit café on the wharf, kisses in the far stacks of our boarding school library in grand, gilded, haunted Blackstone Hall. Travis and I fell in love. Then, right after the holidays, a trustee of Newport Academy decided to reward the football team for a winning season. He funded a trip to Toronto during February break.

Impossible! Travis going away for five days. He didn’t want to leave, but the team had just voted him captain for senior year. I couldn’t bear to part with him because I was head over heels. A whole lifetime of doing the right thing suddenly felt like the biggest obstacle ever. All I could think about was stowing away in his duffel bag.

My friends came to the rescue. Logan Moore had a car—a Range Rover, to be precise. Her mother is Ridley Moore, the film star, and I’m pretty sure the phrase “spoiled Hollywood brat” was invented for Logan—I say that with adoration and sympathy, because she is a sponge for love. Cordelia St. Onge, of the Boston St. Onges, her father the head of neurosurgery at Bay State General, came along.

We told school that we were heading to Logan’s mom’s film set. Ditto the St. Onges. We told Logan’s mom that we were going to South Beach. She gave us George Clooney’s number, said he was shooting a movie there with Robert Pattinson, said they’d be happy to take us out for mojitos. The fact we are nowhere near twenty-one didn’t faze her. The only people who knew where we were really headed were Lucy and Beck, and they cheered us all the way.

The drive to Toronto took all day, into the night. The team was staying at the King Edward Hotel, downtown. Lovely and old, it was graceful and centrally located for the boys to visit the alum’s office—he owned businesses, a minor-league hockey team, and was trying to start an American football program for Canadian youth.

Logan, Cord, and I checked in to the King Edward. We had to take care not to be seen by the coach or chaperones, one of whom was Stephen Campbell, our math teacher and Lucy’s guardian.

After dinner, when the team returned to the hotel, I was hiding in the lobby. Well, I was in plain sight, but shielding my face with the
Globe and Mail
. The guys didn’t notice me; the coach and teachers headed into the bar. I saw Travis, Ty and Chris hesitate outside the bar’s entrance; maybe they thought they’d head in, have a soda or something. That’s when I made my move. I lowered the newspaper.

Travis and I have antennae for each other. He must have felt the tingle I was giving off, because he turned and saw me. Didn’t even say a word to his friends, just walked straight over.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?” I asked.

He must have been shocked by my behavior. I was a little stunned myself: me, perfect girl, rule follower, the one who’d kept him at arm’s length all through the fall, so he could get over Ally, had driven to Canada to be with him.

Travis took my hand. Instead of taking the elevator, easier to be seen there, we climbed the stairs. He was sharing a room with Chris, so that was out. I led him instead to my floor, and we let ourselves into my room.

The maid had been by—turndown service. The heavy silk curtains drawn tight over the windows, radio playing low, one lamp casting a warm glow, queen bed neatly turned down, chocolates on the pillows. We stuck the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob.

We lay down together.

Kissed, so slowly but with everything we had. Alone in a hotel room. He tasted so good, the boy I had been falling in love with all year. All my good behavior, my holding myself back, afraid to give myself, so fearful of being hurt or left or of letting someone down, it all dissolved. We were together, Travis and I.

Our hands unbuttoned our shirts, slid off our jeans. I’d never felt like this, my skin against a boy’s skin. The air was cool, our bodies were hot. We scrambled under the covers, and we kissed more deeply, he was hard and I was soft, the down quilt held our heat beneath it and we warmed up fast. We said each other’s names over and over, because we wanted to be sure we knew what was going on.

Travis, Travis.

See, we loved each other. Our bodies were proving it, showing it. This was a new way. Words didn’t say what we had to tell each other, we had to find a new language. His eyes never left mine.

We fell asleep, held each other all night long. My legs were wrapped in his, his arms were around me, our mouths kept finding each other. Soon gray light spilled through the narrow space between the curtains. Day had come.

“I don’t want to go downstairs,” he said. “I want us to stay together all day.”

“Okay” I said.

We didn’t laugh; it wasn’t a joke. What else in life mattered but this? I came alive that night-into-day. I swear, I did. I’d been a good little grownup for so long, always doing my best, anticipating what was expected of me, for the difficult situation otherwise known as life, but not then—then, with Travis, I lived without thinking. I just let my heart pull me along. The tide had me, and I couldn’t fight it.

Of course we got in trouble.

Logan got drunk. No George Clooney/Robert Pattinson mojitos, but she got some guy to buy drinks for her and Cord, and Stephen Campbell caught them both the next morning, hungover out of their minds, Logan so sick she threw up right in the lobby.

Questions were asked, my name was spilled, the front desk consulted, and soon the phone in my room began to ring.

I answered—vestiges of my vigilance, worried that maybe Lucy needed me—and heard the solemn voice of my dad’s old friend, and our math teacher, Stephen. Only at that moment he was Mr. Campbell.

I tried to protect Travis—not let on that he was with me. But he took the phone, wouldn’t let me be in trouble alone. When we returned to school the next week, Ted Shannon, our headmaster, gave us a stern talking-to. He said that strictly speaking we hadn’t broken any school rules—if we had, we’d be expelled.

But Stephen said we’d used poor judgment. Travis was about to be football captain; I was a shining star, daughter of his dear friend Taylor. He mentioned Lucy, how much she looked up to me.

He put us on unofficial probation—which basically meant that we were off the hook, as long as we didn’t get in trouble for the rest of junior year. We didn’t.

Because that’s Travis and me—in spite of the passion we have for each other, the desire to be together, we are ultimately who we are, Travis Shaw and Pell Davis: good kids. We can’t help ourselves.

I would have sworn that was true, until earlier tonight.

Kissing Rafe, as if there were no Travis. That’s all it had been, a kiss—but a long one, a minute. And the way I’d felt. Animalistic. All need. Plus, in there somehow, a crashing thrill of being bad. Like, take this, universe.

My father, my role model, has let me down.

So I did something awful in return: I betrayed the boy I love.

Travis, Travis Shaw.

Travis
, I whisper now, knowing he is on the way here.
I’m sorry…
.

Eighteen

R
afe thought of the very first time he’d seen Pell stepping off the boat; the feeling had started then. Her long dark hair, wide blue eyes that took everything in, a gaze that made you feel you wanted to know her, and be known by her. He’d been so hungry for a friend, for company, for someone to love. The empty place left by Monica had felt unfillable. But then Pell had come along.

Getting to know her, then today: on the boat, seeing her so tense and upset, knowing something was eating her up. He’d shown Pell the seahorses and in that instant—when she first saw them—she’d lit up with such happiness, he’d thought,
Okay, yes, I can make her smile, we actually have something
.

Now, standing on the steps in the rain, he looked up at Lyra’s house. There were lights on. Which one was Pell’s? Did it matter? He wanted a chance to redo the ending—they’d been having such a good, quiet time. He’d felt good about bringing her back to the boathouse, so she could pull herself together and go home.

He’d gotten up the courage to kiss her. Led her over to his bed, and eased her down, and he’d thought they were good, that everything was going to be great. He’d felt her wanting him—he knew about girls, arching backs and pressing and murmuring. And to have that kind of sexual heat with Pell, along with her singular depth and intelligence and kindness, he’d been ecstatic. And then she’d pulled herself back, yanking her arms away.

So hard. Jumped off the bed, pacing, saying, “What have I done?”

“Nothing, Pell, I just wanted to kiss you, I thought I could help.”

“Travis,” she’d said. “Oh, my God, Travis.”

Travis, her boyfriend.

What had Rafe done wrong? He felt frantic himself, not understanding. He’d thought something special was starting between them. Had he misread her signals so badly, or had he just been blind, yearning to replicate what he’d wished for with Monica? He wanted to talk to Pell now, try to explain. Lyra wouldn’t let him back into the house, he was sure of that. And Pell herself seemed unable to get away from him fast enough. Rain poured into his eyes, and his clothes were soaked through.

He might as well go get the boat out of the grotto, tie it more securely to the dock, in case the storm got worse. Or he could drive it to the marina. It was midsummer, the height of the action on Capri. Boats in from the States, Spain, the south of France. Docks full, bars packed. Young people looking for each other. Rafe’s familiar old cravings kicked in, worse than ever.

He wanted to get Pell’s eyes out of his mind. It wasn’t their beauty that was killing him now; it was the despair and disgust he’d seen in them after he’d kissed her. She felt sick for betraying Travis. And Rafe suddenly admitted how lost he felt without Monica.

The problem with loving drugs was that it kept you from loving everything else. Life became a series of forgettable pleasures. Then, after they wore off, you hated yourself and whoever you were with.

At rehab there was a rule against getting involved with other clients. His last rehab, in Malibu, the rule was strongly enforced; get caught in a compromising situation, and you were out.

You were supposed to concentrate on your own recovery. “Keep the focus on yourself” was one of the slogans. You had to learn to recognize the whole spectrum of feelings. The average person might think that was no big deal, but addicts lumped them all together, got high whenever anything got too intense, good or bad. There was actually a wheel—a big pie chart on the wall—every wedge a different feeling: happy, sad, nervous, doubtful, excited, tired, hungry, lonely, angry.

“HALT can be a trigger,” the counselor was saying. “And make you want to use. So don’t let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. We have to learn to take care of ourselves in a whole new way.”

Rafe had heard it all before. The acronyms, the quaint sayings, the hopeful cheerleading. He felt worn out—why wasn’t that on the chart? What good did any of this do? Across the classroom was a girl with a pixie haircut and huge green eyes, skinny in a pink T-shirt, black jeans, with a huge linen scarf-shawl thing wrapped around her neck. When the counselor started in on the feelings wheel, she’d glanced at Rafe. He’d happened to be looking over, and they started laughing.

Her name was Monica, and she came from Santa Monica, just a few miles south of the rehab’s Malibu location.

“Your parents named you for your town?” he asked.

“Even worse,” she said. “Santa Monica Boulevard. I was conceived in a parked car outside a pizza place in West Hollywood.”

“But how does that make you feel?” he asked, and they laughed. They walked through the rehab grounds smoking cigarettes.

“Is this your first time in rehab?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Third. Yours?”

“Also third.”

“Maybe three’s the charm.”

They walked and smoked, aware of the staff watching. No fraternizing with the opposite sex. Groups were okay, one-on-one was frowned upon. Rafe didn’t ask her her drug of choice. Another rule, one he didn’t mind keeping. Once you started talking about what you took, you wanted to take it. And hearing what someone else once used, realizing you never tried it, could plant a seed in your mind for when you got out.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“New York.”

“Where’d you go before?”

“Wernersville, Pennsylvania. Antigua. Now here.”

“Nothing but the best,” she said.

“How about you?” he asked.

“I always come back here,” she said, smiling. “Feels like home.”

They’d gotten to know each other over the stay. Walks around the campus, supervised hikes into the Malibu scrubland, Friday night movie excursions. They talked about their families; her parents were divorced, her mom a screenwriter now married to a director, her dad an actor who’d stopped working to shoot heroin.

Rafe told her about his mother. Monica listened as if she cared. When he told her about his first Christmas after his mother had died, how he’d asked the elevator man in his apartment building to take him to the roof, so he could leave her present up there, closer to heaven, she’d cried.

His father had stopped visiting. The first two times in rehab, he’d shown up on family day, and for family counseling. But this time was different. Rafe’s father was finished with him—not just because he kept relapsing, every rehab stay costing him thousands of dollars, not to mention legal bills for the Central Park arrest—but because of what had happened on Capri.

Because of what Rafe had done to his grandmother. His grandmother, who’d never been anything but wonderful to him, all he’d had to do was stay with her for an hour. An hour. Sitting on the lawn, Pacific Ocean gleaming blue on the horizon, Rafe told all that to Monica.

“That’s why you have to stay clean now,” she said, staring at him with enormous green eyes.

“It’s why I don’t think I can,” he said. “She took care of me when I was little and would visit her, and all she needed was one hour—keep her safe, from falling and hurting herself, and I couldn’t even do that. I keep seeing her face looking at me. And I just want to block it out.”

“Don’t you know you can’t?” Monica asked. “For as long as you live? All you can do is find a way to live with it.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“What was her name?”

“Christina Gardiner.”

Looking up, Monica stared at the sky. “Christina,” she said. “Please help Rafe. Be with him, and help him.”

Rafe had a lump in his throat. It was as if Monica knew his grandmother, realized she was the kind of woman who
would
help him if she could, would watch over him. Who would forgive him.

At the movies a month before he left rehab, he’d sat next to Monica, watching
The Lost Pawn
. There, in the dark, he’d felt her elbow touch his on the armrest. Then she’d taken his hand. They’d clasped hands all through the film; he’d barely seen what was happening on the screen.

“Did you like it?” she asked afterward, standing on the sidewalk under the marquee.

“I loved it,” he said, wanting to kiss her in the warm California night air, aware of the counselor watching them.

“I meant the film,” she said, smiling.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, it was good.”

They smiled, walked to the van. Something stirred in Rafe that night. He wanted something—or someone. Lying in his bed back at rehab, he thought of Monica. He wondered what life would be, having a woman to love, wanting to get up in the morning because you didn’t have to feel so alone. She didn’t hate him for what he’d done—she understood addiction, knew she’d almost lost her own soul along the way.

People were allowed to contact each other once they were discharged. Rules were strict inside the rehab gates, but it was a free world outside. Rafe had every intention of getting her address and phone number, contacting her when they were both released.

The suggestion was “no major changes during the first year,” including relationships. But something between them had already developed over the months together; wouldn’t it be an even more major change if they left each other’s lives? He had planned to wait a month or so, to make sure he could stay clean. Then he would call her.

Rafe never got the chance. One day he went downstairs, and she was gone. No one could tell him why—confidentiality. He heard that her insurance had run out, that her mother wasn’t willing to pick up the difference this time around. Rafe knew the despair and frustration of three-time-rehab parents; his father had told him this was the last chance. But he wished she’d left him her number.

When he was released, he called information first thing. Her stepfather’s number was unlisted; her mother’s office wouldn’t even take his call. He’d kept waiting for Monica to search him out, but how would she find him on Capri? Had he even told her that’s where his grandparents’ house was?

Now, staring up at Lyra’s house through the rain, the lights shimmered and blurred. He blinked, hoping Pell was okay. The sound of her saying “Travis” haunted him—not just because she felt so bad, but because it woke Rafe up to his own heart. He should have been saying “Monica” with as much regret, grief. She was in him, as much as he’d tried to think it didn’t matter.

“Rafe?”

Hearing his grandfather’s voice, he turned.

“Hi, Grandpa,” Rafe said.

“What are you doing, standing here? You’re soaking wet. Come up to the house with me.”

“How’d you know I was here?” Rafe asked.

“Lyra called to tell me you’d seen Pell home. I assumed you were down at the boathouse. I don’t want you staying there tonight.”

Rafe felt frozen in place. He’d lived in the boathouse these last four weeks. Going to the villa made him feel raw, too close to his grandmother and what he’d done.

“Come, Rafe,” his grandfather said, reaching for Rafe’s hand.

Rafe flinched—he felt undeserving of tenderness, of his grandfather’s love, and the touch of the old man’s hand threw him back to childhood, when he’d still been good, before he’d caused so much destruction.

The slope was wet, the stone stairs carved into the rock slippery, and in that instant Rafe let out a huge yell as his feet went out from under him. His grandfather clutched at him, trying to hold on, and all Rafe could think of was stopping the fall, keeping his grandfather from crashing down the rocks, and he went backward into darkness.

Lyra heard a shout; the voice echoed off the hillside, dissolving so fast, she wondered if she’d imagined it. She stepped outside to investigate.

A steady drizzle was coming down. She shielded her eyes with one hand, peering into the dark. Rustling sounds came from the stairs, then a groan. Moving cautiously, Lyra inched her way around the cypress grove to see who was there, what was going on. Through the mist she saw Max with one foot on the stairs, one over the side, planted in the wild scrub.

“Max, what is it?” she called.

“Lyra, thank God!” he called back, and she saw his shoulders straining as he bent over trying to haul something heavy out.

Running over, she saw that it was Rafe. By a quirk or miracle, Max’s grandson had fallen not into the abyss, but onto a narrow strip of crumbling soil, old branches, and brambles clinging to the rocks. Blood poured from Rafe’s temple, trickling away in the rain; his eyes were shut. Her heart seized; for a moment she flashed back to Christina’s fall.