take her right there, unzipping his jeans and pushing up inside her in less than a minute while their kisses turned violent with urge, and it felt so great. It felt so spontaneous. And she’d get wetter and hold onto him and nothing else in the entire world mattered. They managed to completely snap away from all burdens. When he was done with her there, and done meant fucking her, turning her over and taking her from behind, getting on his knees and inspecting her all over, they’d retire to the bedroom upstairs and have sex again and again. He thought…he thought he’d kept her satisfied in every way a man could a woman.
But then the storm happened. Then the other man happened. Then nothing happened. Funny how endless nothing could be.
Phillipe stared up at the roof of his house in a woodsy area of The Hamptons. There was a very violent storm a few weeks ago and a tree had fallen and now there was a huge hole in the roof that allowed sunlight to pour down on a part of the house where they used to lounge in the afternoon and talk and read and just be happy in each other’s companies.
Phillipe had no desire to patch up the hole.
4
At 8:55 pm Sophie stepped outside. It was so quiet and the moon was trying to present itself from under a passing cloud, turning the dark grey cloud a bruised blue.
Sophie stared at it for a minute before she noticed three fireflies lighting up over by the cherry tree. She slipped her shoes off and picked up the bug jar and ran over to them. Her father had just mowed the grass and the sweet smell of it was so vibrant, along with the honeysuckle, and barbeque a few doors down.
Sophie liked to walk barefoot, she liked to feel the ground beneath her feet. She just liked to feel something.
She heard her dad come out of the house and get in his car and leave. She heard her mother crying from the kitchen window. She took the lid off the jar and placed the glass jar down in the overgrown grass for a minute. A firefly was so close to her it was almost on her nose when it lit up. She laughed for a minute before capturing it in her hands.
“Come on, firefly buddy,” she said, placing him in the jar. He plopped down and moved about in his restricted environment in confusion before he flew to the top of the jar, hoping to get out. His entrapment didn’t prevent him from lighting up however.
She caught a few more so he’d have some friends before screwing the cap back on and carrying it over to the carport.
“Okay!” she shouted gloriously as she pulled the shed door open. “Waittaya see this!!!” she exclaimed. She put the jar down on
her father’s work shelf. She had to be extra careful in here because it was crammed with rakes and shovels and gardening tools. There were things everywhere waiting to hurt her.
Sophie had built a house out of wood and construction paper for the fireflies. It was about the size of a dollhouse. She’d made little bars for the windows out of toothpicks. There was not enough space between the bars for them to escape, but plenty for them to breathe. She placed the jar under the wooden shelf where she’d made a flap for a door, and unscrewed the lid so the fireflies could fly up into house. She closed the little door and stood back and the smile on her face enlarged as the fireflies lit up.
She did a little celebration dance, her shoes slapping against the dirty carport. She was going to tell her mom tonight. She’d been waiting to tell her, waiting until there were enough fireflies inside the house to make it completely light up, and now there were!
“Mom!” Sophie called out as she flew across the yard, up the steps to the porch and into the kitchen. Her mother stood at the kitchen sink, finishing up dishes. Her mood terribly grim.
“What?” she groaned.
“You HAVE to come see this,” Sophie alerted. “I made something – I want to share it with you. It will cheer you up!”
“Sophie, not now,” she said, wiping her hands on the dish towel.
“Just come, real quick. It won’t take long,” Sophie insisted.
Her mother gave her a cold stare. “Your father left, did he say anything to you?”
“No,” Sophie said. “Come!” she tugged on Dorris’s hand. Dorris reluctantly followed her outside. She did not want to go beyond the back porch.
“Sophie I don’t have on the proper shoes for this,” she fussed.
“I don’t have on ANY shoes!” Sophie shouted, pulling her mother along across the tall secretive grass to the oil-stained carport where worms had drowned in the oil and died. They were dried up now and felt like pieces of sticks.
“Wait till ya see,” Sophie smiled, pulling on the screen door. Her mother stared at the glowing box on the shelf. It took her a minute to realize what it was, what those little yellow lights were that constantly flickered.
“It’s a firefly house, mom!” Sophie proudly announced. She looked back at her mom. “I started it in June, I have about twenty living in it now!”
“Sophie, why would you do something like this?” Her mother sounded disgruntled.
“To give them a house to stay in – they’re always looking for each other. They are. That’s why they light up, mom, to show their friends where they are. Now – now they can all be together.”
“Does your father know about this?” Dorris snapped.
“I don’t know…”
Her mother studied the house closer. She noticed a few pages from her Avon booklets glued on the inside.
“What did you do…what did you use my books for!”
“Wallpaper…”
“Sophie, this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.” Dorris yanked Sophie by the arm, pulling her back. The she picked the house up and smashed it to the ground.
“NOOOOOOOO! What are you doing?” Sophie tried to grab the house but it was already ruined, with one side of it smashed. Dorris held Sophie back and started stumping on pieces of the house, smashing the fireflies to death in the process.
“MOM NO!!!” Sophie’s screams were bloodcurdling. “NOOO!!! WHY WOULD DO THAT, WHY!” Tears ran down Sophie’s cheeks. A light in the neighbor’s house turned on and someone peeked through the window.
“NO!!!” Sophie squawked. Dorris turned around and clamped her hand down around Sophie’s wrist, pulling her towards the house. Sophie pulled her wrist away, breaking free. She looked down at the ruins of the firefly house. Her wrist hurt, but the most painful thing was to see what she’d been building now a mess. To see those little insects – some half dead but no longer able to fly – on the ground.
“I hate everything,” she sobbed. “I do.” She shook her head and continued to cry. She wiped her hand wet with tears on her dress. “I hate it…I hate everything…I HATE EVERYTHING!!!” She screamed so loud her throat hurt. “I HATE EVERYTHING!”
“Come inside this house, Sophie,” her mom called from the porch, calculatingly. “Or you will be locked out.”
Sophie was despondent. A few minutes later she pulled the shed door open and went inside. She pulled the screen door shut and stood as still as a statue, staring out at her mother. Her face was blank.
5
“You’re leaving today,” Dorris informed as she shoved some things into Sophie’s duffle bag. Sophie stood there, staring at the things her mom was placing in the bag.
“Everything is set. You’ll be taking the train to The Hamptons and Vanessa will pick you up.” Dorris crammed a t-shirt into the bag and tried to zip it up but she’d put too much stuff in it. Sophie had no idea what kind of crap her mother had packed for her.
“Does your back hurt?” Dorris asked. When Sophie didn’t answer, she went on. “I can’t believe you spent the whole night in that shed. What is wrong with you? Seems like everything I do to try and raise you into a proper, well adjusted person has the opposite effect.”
Sophie still did not speak. She’d spent the entire night in that shed, part of it standing and staring out at the house, wishing she could start fires with her eyes like Drew Barrymore in Firestarter. When that didn’t work, she huddled over
in a corner and managed to fall asleep.
“You should go or you’ll miss the three o’clock train,” Dorris informed.
Sophie stood by the door, looking at her mom and wondering why she was so mean. Then she tried to grasp good thoughts – Leslie had a pool, she had an amazing, huge TV to watch Detective Travis on. The house was enormous and secluded. It might be nice. It had to be better than this.
One solid thought ran through Sophie’s emotional state like a black thread – she was never, ever, ever coming back here. Ever again.
Sophie stuck to the script for now. She went to the Long Island Railroad Station, which was almost as big as an airport. She had two-hundred dollars for the whole month, collected from monthly allowances and a little bit of spending money her father gave her. Two-hundred dollars had about a fifty dollar value in New York. She splurged on a bracelet at a cute little jewelry stand at the station anyway. It was blue pearls and seashells. It was twenty-five dollars but fit perfectly. It was pretty and new and it made her feel hopeful…it even made her feel like a new person for about five minutes in a dragging old world.
Her back hurt from having spent half the night standing in that shed, but she carried on. Anger had turned into adrenaline. Anger had turned into determination. And she was never, ever going back home again.
As the train made its way from Montauk to The Hamptons, the scenery didn’t really change that much. Maybe the houses were nicer, the