The Islanders (5 page)

HALFWAY UP THE BLEACHERS, CLAIRE
set the can of diet Coke on the plank in front of her and dropped her books beside her. Discreetly she began wiggling out of her pantyhose. If the weather was going to insist on being boringly sunny, she might as well get a little late-season tan.

She balled up her pantyhose and stuck them in her purse. Then she leaned back, stretched out her legs, hiked the hem of her skirt a few inches, and kicked off her shoes.

On the grass-and-mud field, the football team was going through a set of stretching exercises. They were dressed in bulky uniforms, with their helmets on the ground beside them. Jake seemed to be moving with the elaborate care of a person with a bad hangover.

He might not have noticed yet that she was there, Claire knew, but he would sooner or later.

He'd said little when she'd caught him in the hallway between classes and handed him a hastily transcribed version of
Zoey's notes. But he must have read them because later, in class, he'd correctly answered the teacher's question. And he hadn't seemed overly panicked by the snap quiz that had followed.

Claire saw him lie back on the grass and rub his eyes with the heels of his hands. Claire had been seriously drunk exactly once in her life—on the night she drove into a tree. Since then, alcohol had held no attraction for her. And as far as she knew, Jake had never been into booze, either. His sudden interest had come immediately after the dredging up of all the events surrounding his brother's death.

“Hey, Claire.”

It was Aisha, climbing the bleachers nimbly with her long legs, almost making a dance of it.

“Hi, Aisha. What are you doing here?”

Aisha flopped down beside her. “Same as you—acting like a dumb female throwback who wastes her time watching guys strut around and act macho.”

Claire smiled despite herself. She searched the field, then, in a far corner, spotted Christopher, who helped coach the ragtag intramural soccer team. “You can barely see him from here.”

Aisha nodded. “I don't want him to think I'm here just to watch him.”

“Oh.”

“He has plenty of ego already.”

“Then why be here at all?” Claire asked reasonably.

“Because he works about twenty different jobs, so if I don't see him while he's working, I don't see him at all,” Aisha said, suddenly vehement.

“That's what happens when you go out with guys who are out of school, I guess,” Claire said, not really very interested. Jake had just glanced over at her, hesitated, then looked away.

“Are you two together again, or still, or whatever the right word is?” Aisha asked, looking at Jake as he put on his helmet and formed up with the rest of the team.

“Me and Jake?”

“No, you and Zac Efron. Of course, you and Jake.”

Claire shrugged. She disliked being asked about her private life. Especially the parts of her private life she didn't entirely understand herself. “I'm not exactly sure.”

“I just assumed since you're here watching him practice. . .”

Claire shifted uncomfortably. “I'm getting my legs tan.”

For a while Aisha didn't say anything, and at last Claire turned around to see what she was doing. It turned out she was staring at Claire with a speculative, thoughtful expression. “What?” Claire demanded.

“Nothing,” Aisha said defensively. “I was just thinking this is kind of an unusual situation for you.”

Claire was determined not to ask Aisha to explain what she
meant, but her resolve gave way to annoyance. “All right, spit it out, Aisha.”

“I'm just saying that as long as I've known you, it's been guys chasing after you, looking at you all lovesick. Not the other way around.”

“Don't ever use a term like
lovesick
to refer to me,” Claire said frostily.

“How about
unrequited,
as in unrequited love?” Aisha asked.

“Are you trying to annoy me? Because you're doing it pretty well.” She settled a hard glare on Aisha.

“You shouldn't worry about what I have to say,” Aisha said, unabashed. “You have bigger things to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“Like here comes Jake.” Aisha batted her eyelashes dramatically.

Claire snapped her gaze back and saw Jake trotting across the field toward her. Her hand went instinctively to her hair, swooping it back over her shoulders.

“I will back off to a discreet distance,” Aisha said. “But not
too
discreet.” She moved up several rows and a dozen feet to the left.

“What are you doing here?” Jake demanded as he came within shouting range. He took off his helmet and gave her a cold look.

“It's a sunny afternoon,” Claire said. “I'm getting some sun.”

Jake pointed his index finger at her. “I don't want you here. The guys on the team are getting the wrong idea.”

“What wrong idea is that, Jake?”

“Look, Claire, it's over. You and me? Over. You think I can just go on with you now that I know the truth?”

Claire considered the question seriously. “I think you can do whatever you want to, Jake.”

“Why don't you go pick on some other guy?” He waved his arm back toward the team. “There are two dozen guys who would gladly go out with you. Lars over there would sell his mother to Vladimir Putin for a chance with you. Or else go back to Benjamin, not that I would wish that on Benjamin because he's a good guy. Just forget about me, all right?”

“No,” Claire said.

He bounded up the bleachers to stand over her, his big body blotting out the sun. “What is it? You think you have to take care of me, compensate because you killed my brother?”

“I didn't kill Wade,” Claire said softly. “We were all drunk. Any one of us could have been driving. If I hadn't gotten behind the wheel, Wade would have. Then who would you blame?”

Jake didn't explode the way she expected. Instead he just laughed cruelly. “That's not what you said when everyone
thought Lucas had been driving. You said he deserved to go to Youth Authority for two years. And when he got out, you said he should be kicked off the island.”

Claire cringed under his attack. She drew in her legs and hunched over, avoiding his gaze. “I know. I was wrong.”

Jake laughed out loud. “That's what is so great about you, Claire. You can just instantly change what you believe so that no matter what, you're always somehow in the right. So long as you get what you want.”

“I've just learned a few things, Jake. Maybe I'm smarter than I was.”

“Very convenient.”

“So I'm a hypocrite. Call me what you want. I'm in love with you.”

Jake took a step back in surprise. “In love with me?” He paused for a moment to compose his face into incredulity. “That's a nice touch.”

She met his eyes. “It's true.”

For a second he wavered. His expression softened. But then he steeled himself. “Even if it is, I don't care.”

“Yes, you do,” Claire said.

“I don't need you to watch over me when I want to get drunk, Claire, and I don't need you covering for me when I don't do my homework. And I just plain don't need you,” Jake
said. He turned and walked away across the field.

“Yes, you do,” Claire said again, this time to his retreating back.

Nina found the box in the storage room, a waterproof gray plastic tub with an airtight fitted top. She carried it up the stairs to her room and set it on the end of her bed.

She made sure her door was closed, then located a cigarette and popped it in the corner of her mouth. The top of the box came off easily and she peered down at the massive jumble of photographs. These were all the shots that hadn't made it into one of the family's two big leather-bound photo albums. Those pictures had all been carefully chosen, but none showed what Nina wanted to see.

She took a big handful of photos and spread them out on her bed, some color, some very old grainy black-and-whites with scalloped edges. Some weren't photographs at all, really, but postcards from people she knew vaguely, from places she'd never been.

Most of the pictures were of people she did know. She found several of her mother and father at the Grand Canyon, so young they almost looked like a pair of very uncool teenagers. Nina sifted through the photos, making a small pile of pictures of her mother, ranging in age from childhood to just before she died.
It was strange, but the more she looked at the pictures, the less they reminded her of her own faded memories of her mother, and the more they reminded her of . . . someone else. Someone she couldn't quite place.

In pictures of her father alone, he always seemed very serious. In his army uniform, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his creases like knife edges, his lieutenant's bars just so. Or in a business suit, or even later, wearing a white shirt and slacks, his casual look. It always looked like the photo was being taken against his will. Only when he was in a picture with Nina's mother did he smile and appear to be having fun. There was one shot in particular that caught Nina's eye, showing both her parents, separated by two little girls apparently punching each other out on the floor. Neither was looking down at the kids, but there was an expression between the two of them, both cocking their eyes at each other, identical looks of love mixed with amusement and maybe a little pride in the two brats at their feet.

Nina set that picture aside.

But she still hadn't seen what she was looking for. She dug out another pile, more shots of Claire, looking as solemn as their father, even as a tiny child—serious, thoughtful, aloof.

“Haven't changed, have you?” Nina said, smiling wryly at Claire.
Did you stand out in the yard staring up at the clouds even
then? Did you manage to look down on everyone around you when you were just two feet tall? I'll bet you did.

Then, from the pile in Nina's hand, one picture fell out. A skinny, gray-eyed girl with braces on her teeth, wearing a dress that revealed long, knobby legs, one with a Band-Aid on the knee. She was twisting a hank of hair around one finger. Nina turned the picture over. A note in ink said
Nina. 11th b'day.

She leaned back on her pillows, holding the picture before her with both hands.

“So. This is what Benjamin thinks I look like.” Nina smiled ruefully. “You ain't exactly Karlie Kloss, kid,” she told her image.

Eleventh birthday. Just two months before her mother died. Had her mother been there that day? Or had she been in the hospital? Nina couldn't remember.

She focused on the eyes in the picture. They were cocky, challenging eyes. “You think you own the planet, don't you?” she whispered.

If only that little girl had known what lay ahead. It would be only months until her mother died. Only a little while longer than that till she would be sent away to stay with her aunt and uncle.

For her own good.

“If only you knew, little Nina,” she whispered.

She got up and walked over to the full-length mirror on the back of her closet door. She faced it and held the picture up beside her face.

Nina looked at her own present reflection and the small reflection of her past.

“You lost the braces,” she said. “Filled out a little, which you never thought you'd do. The legs aren't quite as much like toothpicks, but now you have to shave them.”

She realized the unlit cigarette was still dangling from her lips. “And you picked up one or two bad habits since then. Of course, you got rid of the Barbie dolls, so I guess it evens out.”

She gazed into the eyes of five years ago. And back to the eyes in her mirror. Still challenging, still a little cocky, she noted, smiling wryly. She hadn't changed so much since then.

Then the smile faded and disappeared. “Only right now you look a little sad, Nina,” she said.

She tucked the picture into her nightstand drawer. She would take it out and look at it the next time she had one of those dreams.

 

Here's the dream I call dream number two.

First of all, you have to get that dream feel, if you know what I mean. Where cause and effect aren't quite as clear as they are in real life. Where things can be sudden or very, very slow. Where you know things without knowing how you know.

It's always very gloomy in this dream. Like watching an old black-and-white movie on TV and turning the brightness knob way down. I see myself as if I'm some other person in the room. I see myself younger, at least at first, and my mom is squatting down, fussing with my clothes, trying to straighten this ridiculous bow on the front of a ridiculous dress, wiping my face clean, telling me to smile and stand up straight.

And while she's doing this, the little girl is tugging at her clothes, undoing all the straightening. She's playing with her hair, leaving it tangled and wild. And she's whining something about not wanting to get all dressed up. I don't want to, she says in a little boohoo voice.

Then the little girl is older, but still wearing the ridiculous dress with the ridiculous bow. She advancing uncertainly
across a darkened room, toward a corner where all that she can see are two intense, staring eyes. She's afraid, but she can't stop because the eyes are telling her to come closer.
Come here. Come here and give me some sugar
.

And then, once more, the girl—the girl that is me—is somewhere else. She's lying in bed. And it's like maybe she's wet the bed because the sheets are warm and damp. She feels guilty; what if someone finds out? She plays with the ridiculous bow and pulls the covers over her head. The bow is magic. It can make her invisible.

And then I wake up. I feel guilty and ashamed. I also feel some lingering sense of undefinable pleasure, and that's the worst feeling of all.

And then the feelings fade. After a while I fall back to sleep and dream no more dreams.