Wrecked (3 page)

“Yeah, the guys I remember from pre-school were really hot,” Miranda joked. That was one of the things about Whym: unless you were born there, you’d always be considered an outsider on some level, no matter how many years you’d lived there or how many ties you could claim to the island. Miranda was technically a sixth-generation islander, but because her mother had dared to move and have children elsewhere, she’d never been fully embraced as a local, even though she’d moved here full-time more than ten years ago.

“Ya’ll know I haven’t been back since I was five. Besides, wasn’t the point the tarot-reading thing?” she asked as she hugged her knees to her chest and pulled her giant Calhoun Academy soccer shirt as far as it would go down her legs. Despite the fire, she was freezing. Still, she didn’t want to break up the moment and suggest they head into the pool house.

After all, this was the last summer the Whym Island seniors—the Ferries, as they’d been annoyingly dubbed back in first grade, when their parents (or, in Miranda’s case, grandmother) had all had to sit down and create a chaperone schedule to get them all to the mainland to school at Calhoun Academy. The Ferries were the progeny of the Whym Island elite: The kids who’d never attended Whym Public, the tiny redbrick school house on the other end of the island that held kindergarten through
twelfth grade. Whym Public was for the sons and daughters of the fishermen, housekeepers, gardeners, and clerks who worked year-round to keep the island in its postcard-perfect condition. Calhoun was a private school founded in the seventeenth century that had always catered to wealthy Carolinians. That was what made it weird to be a Ferry: They didn’t really know the other Whym kids, and most of the Calhoun kids lived on the mainland, fifteen miles of ocean away.

And now, none of them could imagine it any differently. Sure, some of them had awkward romantic histories with each other, some of them never quite forgave others for excluding them from seventh-grade sleepovers, and some of them hardly came to parties in favor of hanging out with mainland kids, but all of that seemed to be forgotten in summer—especially this year. So far, the routine had been perfect: Spend the day at soccer practice, at the beach, or doing SAT prep, and then at night, head down to the two-mile stretch of beach in front of the O’Rourke house.

Sometimes, Miranda couldn’t help but wonder whether her own mother would be proud or appalled. Miranda’s mother, Astrid, had hated the island, and had only begrudgingly come back during the summer to allow her mother, Eleanor Ashford, to get to know her children. It was a good island for kids—it had pristine beaches with fine white sand, when the tide was out. The ocean was gentle and sparkling blue, and the ride on the ferry was a guaranteed way to effortlessly entertain a
child on an otherwise sweltering day. So that’s why every summer, Miranda’s mother Astrid and her father Hank would pack Miranda and her younger brother, Teddy, into the car and drive down from New York City to set up house in the sprawling mansion Astrid had grown up in. After a week or so, Astrid and Hank would leave, eager to enjoy a temporarily kid-free existence of downtown parties and concerts. For the next two months, Teddy and Miranda would play under the watchful eye of Miranda’s grandmother, Eleanor.

As a four-year-old, Miranda had felt like an outsider. Always shy, she noticed all the other toddlers on the beach at Whym had friends to build sandcastles with and chase in and out of the water. She didn’t. She only had Teddy, Eleanor, and Louisa, the nanny Eleanor hired each summer.

Until the night when Miranda was five and Teddy was two. They’d been listlessly playing with Teddy’s trucks on Eleanor’s screened-in porch one evening after dinner. Louisa was rocking back and forth in a rocking chair, fanning herself with her hand and reading a gossip magazine. It had been storming, and Miranda remembered watching the way bolts of lightning would illuminate the sky. A roll of thunder struck, and Teddy began sobbing. At that point, before Louisa could scoop him up to console him, Eleanor walked in, her face white.

“Teddy and Miranda need to go upstairs,” she’d said, circling her wrist with her opposite hand, as if she were holding onto a banister.

“I was just gonna give them their bath,” Louisa had said guiltily, sure she was about to be chastised for letting them stay up so late.

“Now,” Eleanor whispered.

The next morning, Miranda’s whole world had changed. Now, although she remembered the moments leading up to Eleanor’s announcement perfectly clearly, she didn’t remember the next morning: Who told her, how it was phrased, why their car
possibly
could have driven off the bridge on Johns’ Island, en route to the dock, where they’d been coming from an afternoon festival. All she knew was that she wasn’t going back to New York City. Not at the end of the summer. Not ever. And her parents were dead.

In her new life on Whym, she was to wear a dress at all times, call her grandmother and all her grandmother’s friends “ma’am,” and play with the dolls that Eleanor bought her, even though she’d repeatedly told her that she only liked stuffed animals. She’d soon learned to never, ever talk about her parents in front of Eleanor, since doing so tended to cause her grandmother to get a faraway look in her eyes, then disappear into the master suite with a headache, for hours at a time. What she hadn’t known until she got older were all the rumors surrounding Astrid and Hank’s deaths: That they’d been seen drinking at the festival, they may have been smoking pot, that maybe it had been something they’d
meant
to do, a suicide pact for a couple that had been too out there, too passionate, too
much
for the island.

Of course, none of that could be proved. After a cursory investigation, the police department had deemed the crash to be a accident. And yet, there were so many unanswered questions that nagged at Miranda even more as she got older.
Had
they been drinking? Had they had some type of suicide plan? And, in those final moments, had they known that Miranda and Teddy would now be bound to the island forever?

The questions had started only once she got to school and realized what being an O’Rourke meant to other Whym islanders. And she’d never asked Eleanor about them. Instead, she distanced herself from her grandmother, preferring to spend time by herself or with Teddy. She’d never realized she was lonely, until she found herself being forced to sign up for a sport on her first day at Calhoun Academy in seventh grade. She’d chosen soccer, and had actually been good at it, which had been the catalyst that had caused the Ferries to befriend her. Before, they’d been friendly enough, but wary, as if they could sense she didn’t want to be on the island. But the fact that she could score a goal in the last thirty seconds of a game outweighed her outsider status. Slowly, despite any apprehensions, Miranda began getting invitations to sleepovers and birthday parties. Over the past five years, the Ferries had taught her everything she needed to know about the island, from how to build a fire on the beach, to how to sneak from one end of the island to the other without ever hitting the main roads. Now, heading into senior year, she was being watched by soccer
scouts from around the country and had spent the past year dating Fletcher King, the most sought-after boy on the island. It was a Cinderella story come to life; a sign that fairy tales did come true. And yet . . .

“Aren’t tarot cards, like, dark magic?” Gray asked, taking a dainty sip from her Poland Spring bottle and interrupting Miranda’s thoughts. Because Gray was only a second-generation summer islander, and her grandparents still lived in a pink mansion on Charleston’s Battery, Gray had taken Miranda’s position as a Whym Island newbie, even though her family had moved to Whym full time five years ago. And even though she was always invited, she tended to treat impromptu bonfire evenings on the beach as ever so slightly beneath her, and often reminded everyone of her Charleston debutante ball coming up later in the season.

“Yeah, because we live in Salem in the seventeenth century and I’m forming my witch coven.” Genevieve rolled her eyes. “No, it’s just a fun way to figure out what might happen. I promise it’ll be fine. Way less risky than playing ‘Never Have I Ever,’” Gen picked up the deck of cards and shuffled them on her lap. “Now, who wants to go first?”

Lydia Banay shrugged and took a big swig of the cranberry juice and vodka mixture she’d concocted at home and smuggled into her water bottle. “I will. What the hell do I have to lose?” She asked rhetorically, as the rest of the girls murmured sympathetically. Lydia had just gone through a bad breakup with Brad
Carmichael, the Calhoun Academy All-State soccer star who’d just started at Clemson University two weeks ago. On his first night there, she’d received a text at 2 a.m. that featured a photo of a skinny blonde girl in a halter top, along with a question from Brad:
Would you hate me if I told you I’m about to cheat?
The next day, he’d begged forgiveness, citing too much alcohol and “too many temptations,” but the damage had been done and Lydia had been devastated. Even tonight, Miranda could see her eyes were red and her face was puffy from crying.

“Okay, sugar,” Genevieve said, closing her eyes and shuffling the deck. She picked out a card from the deck. The card had a photo of a skeleton on it.

“Ew!” Gray shrieked.

“Am I going to die?” Lydia giggled, but her face looked terrified.

“Maybe it just means Brad’s hooking up with some Skeletor skank,” Darcy said, taking another large sip of her own vodka soda as she absentmindedly tightened her auburn ponytail at the crown of her head. Darcy was the youngest of four sisters, and always seemed slightly bored when discussing boy drama, most likely because she’d heard it all at home.

Genevieve turned the card over in her fingers. “It doesn’t mean that. It’s symbolic, no? It means a
part
of you is going to die.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Lydia asked nervously.

Genevieve sighed, as if she were a kindergarten teacher
explaining the rules of addition to an exceptionally slow six-year-old. “It’s like, maybe the part of you that loves Brad will die, because you’ll meet someone new,” she said, enunciating each word.

“Okay . . . ,” Lydia trailed off. “Or maybe it means that if I do find out he’s hooking up with a skeletor skank, I’ll kill him. Do someone else. Get me out of my misery.”

“Anyone?” Genevieve glanced around the group of girls.

Miranda shifted in the sand and leaned back against her elbows, trying to pay attention, even though her mind kept wandering. Maybe it was just nerves for the soccer sectionals showcase on the mainland tomorrow. And even though Coach Devlin had told her not to worry, that the Stanford coach had seen enough videos of her that all Miranda had to do was get on the field and have fun, she knew it was only natural to be nervous. But it was more than that. It was a sense that no matter what the cards said, it felt like their destinies were already becoming more and more etched in stone with each passing day. Genevieve would move to New York. Miranda would play soccer at Stanford. Darcy and Lydia would most likely stay in South Carolina and get married to cute Carolina guys. None of these paths were bad exactly, it was just . . .

“Guys, this is ya’ll’s future. Don’t you care?” Genevieve called down to the guys who were hanging close to the tide-mark. Earlier, they had been hanging out around the fire as well, but obviously, they’d gotten bored with the girls’ sprawling
conversations and had drifted off to do their own thing: Jeremiah Black was playing his guitar; the same four chords of “Free Fallin’” over and over and over again, while Alexa Madden watched adoringly from the edge of the circle. Alan Osten and Fletcher King were tossing a Frisbee back and forth. Occasionally, Alan would overshoot and the Frisbee would land in the water. Fletcher would eagerly run in to get it, reminding Miranda of an eager golden retriever.

“Miranda!” Genevieve snapped, and Miranda glanced away guiltily. Despite the independent vibe Genevieve projected, Miranda knew how much Gen wanted to be part of a couple, and she knew that in Genevieve’s mind, sharing a possibly-fictional kiss with a cute Columbia boy was nothing compared to the fact Miranda and Fletch were steadily dating. “I’m doing your tarot reading, in case you care,” Genevieve said, slapping the cards down on the piece of driftwood in front of her. The light from the fire flickered on the overturned card. It was a man and a woman, their arms intertwined in an embrace.

Genevieve rolled her eyes. “Of course, this figures,” she said, scooping the cards back up and shuffling the deck.

“Wait, what was that?” Miranda asked, genuinely curious. At least it hadn’t been the skeleton.

“The lovers. It means that you’re about to find the love of your life. Or you’ve already found it.” Genevieve laughed, but the hurt look spreading across her face made it clear how much Genevieve wished
she
was the one in the relationship.

“Lucky!” Darcy exhaled, smiling encouragingly at Miranda. Darcy loved the idea of being in love, and had already served as the bridesmaid at two of her sisters’ weddings. Her two older sisters had both met their now-husbands in high school, and Darcy was sure Miranda was on the same track.

“Yeah, you’re lucky. The question is, would Fletch agree?” Gray smiled so it seemed like she was teasing, but Miranda could read the subtext. It wasn’t so much that Gray liked Fletch, as that Gray liked to always have the best of everything. In her mind, Fletch was the ideal boyfriend, and Miranda sensed from the chilly way Gray had greeted her for the past few months, that Gray felt she, not Miranda, deserved him.