What I Thought Was True

  Why don’t I have any representation in the cabinets and refrigerator? There isn’t even any sugar or flour . . . and absolutely nothing left over from my baking spree.

  Mostly, I acknowledge, because I really don’t care. I love food, but shopping for it is one chore that Mom and Grandpa and Nic do that I am happy to hand over to them.

  But that means there’s nothing to drown my sorrows in. I mean, sure, I like vegetables, but who sits on the couch in their robe and eats half a dozen pickling cucumbers and a tomato?

  Grandpa chuckles at the rapt expression on Emory’s face as Peter Pan duels with Captain Hook. He scrapes the bottom of his grapefruit clean and prepares to fill it with Raisin Bran.

  “Girls talk too much,” Peter complains on screen.

  “You think so, Peter? Maybe that’s because boys never explain,” I say back. “So we have to talk because they’re too busy being idiots who give us the silent treatment.”

  Grandpa shoots me an amused look. Then he grins in that same “those young people and their silly antics” way Mrs. Ellington did.

  I stomp into my room, throw myself face-first on my bed. Which really isn’t built for that particular cliché and shudders under me, letting out a squawk. Next thing you know I’ll be sliding down the wall of our shower, sobbing and singing depressing pop songs into my shampoo bottle.

  I scrub my face with my hands. Maybe Spence Channing has the right idea. Maybe “just sex” is the safest way to go. Because these . . . feelings . . . hurt. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, but I felt like something had changed. That Cass and I had finally moved beyond . . . well, just beyond. Whether it was smart or not.

  And it probably wasn’t smart.

  No, it definitely wasn’t.

  Not when I don’t even know which Cass is true.

  My first mistake after the Polar Bear Plunge was coming in Mom’s Bronco. The Bronco is old—like only a year younger than me. The rear hatch is battered from where we got stuck in the deep sand once and had to be pushed out by a bulldozer. There’s something wonky about the underbody, so when you drive there’s this rattling sound as though major car parts are about to drop off. When I pulled into the Somerses’ driveway that night, it was filled with pretty little sporty cars—the Bronco loomed over them the way I tower over most of the girls at SBH.

  Some of them were still getting out of the cute cars and sauntering delicately across the gravel of the driveway. Bringing me to my second mistake.

  Clothes.

  I didn’t think, I didn’t “plan my outfit.” I knew I should. Viv kept pulling clothes out of my closet and holding them up to me, frowning, saying things like, “Did you even try this one on before you bought it? Mall run!” But doing that seemed so deliberate, like we were preparing . . . staging for . . . I’m not sure what, but I couldn’t face it. So I was just in jeans and a black V-neck (okay, low V).

  I also opened the door of the Bronco without shutting off the music, so, since I was distracted while driving over and didn’t turn off Emory’s CD, it blared “Baby Beluga in the deep blue seeeeeeea.” I hastily flipped the key in the ignition and shoved it in my pocket. From farther up the path, I heard muffled laughter, which probably had nothing to do with me, but I still wanted to turn and run.

  I held my wrist up, looked at the neat blocky boy handwriting, the carefully drawn map. “Saturday. 8:00. Plover Point.”

  And I headed in.

  Unlike most parties I’d gone to, the music was not at top volume. There was some sort of hidden sound system, but it was muted, background music.

  Everything was so clean, though. And white. Cream-colored couches, ivory walls, pale straw rugs . . . pristine. For Cass’s sake I hoped this wouldn’t turn into some drunken bacchanal, because those rugs would be almost impossible to get vomit out of, not to mention red wine if there was any and—

  And I was thinking like the daughter of a cleaning woman.

  Just for tonight I wanted to put that aside. I wished I’d shopped for an outfit. I wished Viv and Nic had come, instead of laughing not-so-mysteriously and saying they had “other plans.”

  Then I saw Cass, who was standing at the kitchen island, taking people’s car keys and putting them in a wicker basket. He was wearing a buttery yellow oxford shirt untucked over his jeans. When he saw me, his face split into his most open, unpracticed smile, the one that grooved his dimples deep and crinkled the corners of those blue eyes. He leaned forward, elbows on the counter.

  “You came. I didn’t think you would.”

  I fanned out my hands, presenting myself, game show-hostess style, suddenly more at ease.

  He took me in, head to toe, then said in a mild tone at odds with the intensity of his glance:

  “You’re trustworthy, right? I don’t need to snag your keys?”

  “Totally reliable,” I said, looking around. I knew most of the kids at the party—from the hallways and the cafeteria anyway. But in this elegant atmosphere they seemed alien creatures transported from some A-list universe. Boys I’d never seen in anything but jeans and T-shirts were wearing black or dark blue button-down shirts, and the girls were in all that was tight and clingy—and yet classy. A line I’d never managed to walk successfully.

  I shivered, twisting my hair into a coil at the back of my neck.

  “You okay, Gwen? Not still cold from your historic rescue, are you?”

  “No. Completely recovered.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder, succeeding in whacking Tristan Ellis in the face with it.

  “Hey, watch it,” he said, palms raised as though I’d chased him with a machete.

  I gave myself a mental shake. “This is so . . . glamorous,” I murmured to Cass.

  “Give it about twenty minutes to fall apart. Let me take your coat.”

  I didn’t want to hand over my tired navy peacoat, which, I now noticed, had bristly golden fur all over it from Fabio. So I stepped away from his outstretched hand, clearing my throat. “To be honest, I didn’t know this was going to be so dressy. Maybe I should go.”

  His voice, already deep, went huskier. “Gwen. Stay. You’re not intimidated by—” He glanced around the room, then pointed to some kid who was squirting shaving cream on the face of someone who had apparently already passed out. “That, are you?”

  The shaving cream guy shouted “Boo!” and the other kid woke up with a jolt, his hands flying to his face. There was the quick zzzzt of a camera phone as someone took a picture.

  “No. Of course not!” But I took another cautious step away.

  He moved forward again, reaching for my sleeve, gesturing for me to unbutton the coat. I shook my head. He pulled again on the sleeve so that we were sort of playing peacoat tug-of-war.

  “This coat seems very important to you. Is there something I should know? You are wearing a shirt under it, right?”

  “I am,” I said, unbuttoning.

  “Damn.”

  I hated it when guys talked about me with my top off. Even guys like Dad’s age did it—and once one of Grandpa’s friends, who didn’t know I knew some Portuguese. Then Grandpa said some words to him I didn’t know and he apologized for about half an hour. But the thing is . . . I didn’t hate it when Cass joked about it. There was no ick factor. Just this buzz of warmth and cold skating over me. Then, something more recognizable. Panic.

  “I’m not the one who’s always shirtless!”

  Cass looked pointedly down at his shirt.

  “I seem to be fine now. I don’t remember ever coming to SBH topless either. Is my memory going? Or are you talking about while swimming? Because, last time I looked, all the other guys on the team weren’t wearing shirts either. Why am I the one breaking the Gwen Castle dress code?”

  Oh God. I might as well have borrowed his Sharpie and written “You’re the one I look at!” on my forehead. I needed a muzzle. Or a drink. No, that would have an anti-muzzle effect. Plus, I’m not good with that and I’d wake up with shaving cream all over my face. br />
  I didn’t know why I’d felt so comfortable with him in the car and was such a basket case now. Because we weren’t alone? Shouldn’t I be more nervous about being alone? Shouldn’t I be wishing more people would crowd into the kitchen so that I wouldn’t grab him and push him up against the Sub-Zero and—

  I spotted Pam D’Ofrio across the room, waved as though I hadn’t seen her in five hundred years rather than five hours, thrust my coat at Cass, and headed off.

  He let me go, but every time I turned around, I met his eyes, as if he’d been waiting for me to look. After about twenty minutes, he came over, took my hand. “I’m going to show Gwen the house, Pam.”

  He led me through, pointing out rooms, a long curving staircase, down a paneled hallway. “Jake’s old room. This was Bill’s, but he’s married now with a daughter, so he doesn’t come to stay very often. Mine’s down this way.”

  I expected him to take me to his room. Of course I did. So I wasn’t surprised when he opened the door, flipped on the lights. The first thing I was struck by was how relatively clean it was. Bed unmade, maybe a half-dry towel or two tossed around, but no piles of smelly abandoned clothes. The next by how perfect it was—pale blue walls, darker blue sheets, a dark blue coverlet with dark green stripes, curtains to match. There was a big, well-stocked aquarium, blue lights flickering.

  On the wall was a mirror that looked like the portal of a ship. The bed was big, made of oak, with old-fashioned dolphins carved into the sides, and the walls were covered with maps. Some were framed, and looked like something a little kid would draw, on construction paper, with x leading to pirate treasure. Some were just on big sheets of white thick paper. Almost all of them were hand-drawn.

  Cass, who’d been silent while I studied my surroundings, finally spoke up. “Just so you know, I had almost nothing to do with this room. My mother hired some decorator while I was away at camp two years ago and he went all ‘carrying the nautical theme through the house’ . . . There was also a wooden marlin on the wall and a statue of some guy in a yellow raincoat with a pipe. I ditched those because it was like sleeping at Red Lobster. I kept expecting to wake up and have somebody ask me whether I wanted tartar sauce with that.” Cass was talking a little fast. He took a deep breath and glanced at me.

  “So no crusty old Sailor Man watching over you in your sleep?”

  “Buxom mermaid, maybe. Old sea salt, no way.”

  I’d come up close to one of the maps now, close enough to see that it was the coastline nearby, the mouth of the river, the bridge to Seashell. In the corner, tiny, were the initials CRS.

  “This is all your work? You drew this?’

  “Most of them. I like maps.” Cass shrugged. He’d sat down on the bed now, elbows on knees, hands dropped between them. Casual pose, but he kept flexing and unflexing one hand.

  I was waiting, at this moment, for The Pass. I wasn’t as experienced as everyone believed, but let’s face it. I was in his room. He was on the bed. But he was just sitting there, staring at his hand. Now we were both doing it. See Cass’s hand flex. See Cass’s hand unflex. Maybe I’d totally misread him. Maybe he was gay? But then I looked over and saw his eyes. Alert, intense, full of something that made my throat catch. Nope. Not gay. Besides, there was that kiss . . .

  Another quick look in his eyes, and I had to turn away again, try to get back the thread of what we were talking about . . .

  This was ludicrous. I spent most of my time around boys. The island guys. Dad, Nic, Emory, Grandpa. The swim team. The largely male staff at Castle’s during the summer. I wasn’t some convent-educated virgin who fainted at the sight of facial hair.

  I cleared my throat, sat down on the bed next to him, tossed my hair back again, this time without endangering anyone. “So . . . what is it about maps? I mean—why do you like them?”

  “Uh. Well, I’m not really good at putting this into words. I guess no one’s ever asked.” He paused, looked up at the ceiling as though the answer might be there. “I like the way you can represent the terrain of something curved or bumpy on a flat surface. I like the way you can chart all these different directions, so you can look at all the possibilities, from every angle. I like to just get in the car and pick an area, see if I can map it . . .” He shook his head, looked down. “It’s just kind of my weird thing, what I do when I need to think.”

  I glanced down at the map on my hand. So did Cass.

  “You didn’t wash it off,” he said, smiling.

  “It’s been a day and a half. You used a Sharpie. I’m not going to never wash this hand again or anything. Like you were the Pope or something.”

  “I’m definitely not the Pope,” Cass said. Now he rested farther back on the bed, on his elbows, and looked up at me through his long lashes, very still. I edged a little closer.

  He smelled so good, like beach towels, a pool in the sun. Sharply clean.

  I was smelling him now? Also, I had not tried very hard to get the Sharpie off my hand. What was happening to me?

  Before I did something else creepy and random, the door opened abruptly and Trevor Sharpe stuck his head in. We both startled back. “Sundance, where’s the second keg? Please tell me there is one. We’re seriously low on ice. Tell me there’s more of that too. Channing says we really need to change up the lame music. It’s killing the vibe, man.”

  Cass shook his head, sighed. “The keg’s in the garage. Ice too. Tell Spence to do whatever the hell he wants about the music.”

  Trevor muttered something I didn’t hear that made Cass say “Shut up,” in a surprisingly angry voice.

  When the door shut, he flopped back on the bed, laced his knuckles behind his head. “I didn’t really think this party through. I wasn’t too keen on multiple kegs, but . . . Do you want the rest of the tour or—do you want to tell me what weird thing you do? After all, I showed you mine.”

  His breath caught, as though he hadn’t expected to say that. He disentangled one hand, pulled at his collar, then jiggled his foot back and forth.

  “Well, um, for starters, I have an unnatural attachment to my peacoat. We’re very close.”

  “Good to know. So it was a big deal that you allowed me to take it off you.”

  “Huge. A milestone.”

  “That so?” His voice dropped lower, so I leaned forward to hear him better. I mean, of course that was why I did it. “And besides that?”

  A loud chorus of “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” erupted from downstairs, then a hammering on the door. “Sundance! One down already! Mitchell threw up on the rug in that gray room.”

  “Clean it up,” he called without looking away from me.

  “No way, man. Your house.”

  I almost offered to go clean it. Really.

  Then Cass’s cell phone rang and he answered it, lowering his voice and turning slightly away from me. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got it handled. This is a bad time, but it’s all under control.”

  If his buddies were going to use his cell to get his attention, it was only a matter of time until they barged in again. I stood up, twirled my hair into a knot, let it go loose.

  “Any more?” Cass pressed. “The peacoat can’t be it.”

  Abruptly I pictured the words on the girls’ bathroom wall after Connie Blythe caught her boyfriend pushing me up against the lockers to kiss me freshman year. But Cass wouldn’t have heard of that—this was his first year at SBH. “Oh, I have no secrets. Everyone knows about me.”

  That came out in a way I didn’t intend, sadder, more ashamed, and Cass gave me a sharp glance, then stood up quickly. “Hey . . . d’you want to head out to the beach? Take a walk?”

  The beach. Okay. That was good. The beach was my home, my safe place, evened the playing field. Which I desperately needed leveled, because as we walked through the house again, I kept, despite how pointless it was, cataloging all the differences between Cass Somers’s life and my own. At our house, we have stacked blue plastic milk crates to hold Mom’s lov
e books and Nic’s training manuals and Em’s brightly colored children’s books and my . . . whatever. This house had glass-fronted cases with low lights and leather-bound editions. Our paint is dinged, and where we have wallpaper, it’s faded and peeling. They’d had an interior decorator and a “theme.”

  But the beach, with the sand and the familiar sigh of the ocean, the beach was an equalizer.

  It was a full moon shining across the water. Freezing. Hardly any stars. Cass exhaled a puff of white, chuckling silently as we crunched over leftover snow. When I looked back, I could see several intertwined silhouettes on the porch. Evidently the music hadn’t completely killed the vibe.

  Cass was walking purposefully. It suddenly made me falter. Maybe there was a guest house. Maybe that’s where this had been intended to go all along. He was silent and the sound of nothing but our footsteps clomping along was making me nervous. Each step seemed to say a different thing, like when you pull the petals of a daisy. “He really likes me, No he doesn’t, This isn’t about a hookup, Yes it is.”

  “Do you know,” he said softly, “the first maps were all of the sky, not earth? The ones on cave walls? I always thought that was cool.”

  “Why were they?” I ask. “Do you know?”

  “Not for sure. I’ve made up explanations—like that back then they thought the earth was too big to map, but they thought they could see the whole sky—didn’t know it was reversed.”

  It isn’t about a hookup, I thought. It can’t be. That’s not a line. That’s nothing like something Alex would say. Or Jim Oberman.

  “Sorry about that back there. Like I said, I underestimated the party thing. I just had one . . . so you would . . . um, come.”

  I stopped dead. “You did not!”

  He shrugged, smiled, his ears going pink. Or maybe that was just the cold.

  “You couldn’t have just asked me on a date?”