Page 15 of Dead of Summer
Satisfied by what she’s done, she returns to her bedroom. Orla braces herself and twists the handle on the closet door.
It opens into a long crawl space lined on one side with rough wooden shelves. The space inside smells of must and mildew. On rainy dayswhen they were young, it had been Orla and Alice’s secret fort. Orla’s hand grasps to the right, her muscle memory helping her quickly find the flimsy string that pulls the light on. A yellowy bulb illuminates a set of long shelves containing a variety of tattered boxes, plastic bins, and stacks of board games. The edge of an old cigar box catches her attention. It is decorated with an assortment of bright stickers. Curious, she reaches up and pulls it down.
Her chest tightens as she flips open the lid and looks down at an assortment of treasures she’d long since forgotten. A string of glass beads barely clinging to a threadbare cord. She remembers the way it lay on her sun-freckled wrist. How she couldn’t stop touching it, running a bead back and forth along its cord. There is a selection of shells and small rocks she picked up on the beach, their edges chipped. None are particularly special, except for when she found each of them. One for each time she saw David Clarke.
A childhood crush was all it really was. Though it felt like love at the time. Their connection was intense for how young they were, Orla had thought then. But winters were long and gray on the island. They had a way of distorting things. The Clarkes’ return each summer gave Orla something to look forward to, something to cling to all those cold empty months.
As soon as late June rolled around, Orla would begin her torturous wait. When the Clarkes’ driveway filled with fancy cars, she knew David’s first visit of the summer would be imminent. It could take a few days or sometimes just hours for David to free himself from his father’s iron grip and come to find her. She never could quite picture what he was doing in the Clarke mansion before he showed up at her house, sometimes on a new bike, or once with a boat. Always in a way that let you know that David wasn’t any old neighborhood kid, he was a Clarke.
That last year, before everything went to shit, she’d had to wait longer than normal for David to show. Days had passed since the cars had arrived in the drive. Orla became so morose that she was difficult evenfor Alice to be around. “He’ll come, don’t worry,” she’d said, but Orla grew more inconsolable with each passing hour. She didn’t even want to leave home in case he should arrive. Exasperated, Alice eventually abandoned her, leaving on her own for the beach while Orla moped inside, her eyes always at the windows.
She had to wait an entire agonizing week before she finally heard the honking in the driveway. It was an unfamiliar sound, and because of this she knew right away it was him. She fled the kitchen, where she’d been restlessly watching her dad make rose hip jam and bounded out onto the front lawn. The Bentley was silver and stunning and so foreign to Orla that David may as well have arrived by spaceship. Alice must have heard him first somehow, and by the time Orla got there, Alice was already outside, leaning against the car like she and David had been talking awhile.
“Look who’s here,” Alice said, her voice teasing. Orla gave her a hard stare, telling her to shut up. An anxious lump formed in her throat as she looked to David. But he seemed not to notice.
“Orla! Aren’t you going to get in?” he called when he saw her in the doorway, smiling that mischievous half smile of his.
“Going into town with David,” Orla yelled through the screen door to her parents, not bothering to wait for a response.
“You take the front,” Alice said with a wink, jumping into the back seat.
Orla skipped down the steps and slid into the passenger seat. The car was one of his dad’s, David explained, showing Orla how the top moved up and down with the flick of a button. He was sixteen to her fifteen. A whole year ahead. It meant a lot as a teenager. Each year was so precious, a large percentage of your life when you only have fifteen of them under your belt. David looked different that year. He’d filled out in some ways but slimmed in others. His cheeks looked narrower than before, his jawline more defined.
“What’s been happening since I was last here? Give me all the Hadley gossip.” His voice had changed too, grown deeper. There was somethingabout it that gave her a queasy feeling in her stomach, the same way Alice’s talk of the future did. It scared her.
“There’s a new owner down at Mint Ship. And the storm in February tore up the beach, they had to bring in sand from the mainland to fix it,” Orla started, but Alice had interrupted her.
“Nothing. Nothing ever happens on Hadley,” she’d said, sounding hard and angry enough to stop Orla from continuing.
“Where are we going?” Orla asked, trying to change the subject.
“Hidden Beach, of course,” David said, reaching an arm across to playfully ruffle her hair. “Where else?” Orla willed herself to relax. She leaned back and let the air stream through her fingers. David looked over at her, dropping one hand from the steering wheel and draping it over the back of her seat. She watched as his eyes lingered a moment on her bare shoulder. She realized then that he felt it too. As they sped toward the beach, Orla knew suddenly and surely that this was going to be the summer that changed everything for her.
In the closet Orla snaps the lid of the box closed, her heart thumping. She shoves it back onto the shelf.There’s no use for any of it now, she thinks bitterly. She’ll toss it in the trash, and everything else back here, too, before she puts the house on the market. The closet air grows warm and stale. The list of obligations grows in her mind as she turns back toward the closet door, her hand already reaching for the light pull.
Orla stops dead in her tracks when she sees the drawing. It’s large and sprawling, a mural covering the plaster wall on both sides of the doorframe. She’d completely forgotten about it. Orla and Alice made it one rainy afternoon when they were in sixth grade, inspired by a book they’d read in school about a secret treasure map. Orla marvels at it now, tracing her finger along the thick lines of paint that depict all their favorite places on the island. There is Danny’s Market and Hidden Beach, their name for the small patch of rocky cove between their houses and the Clarke mansion. Farther up by the doorframe said mansion standsabove a wild swirl of waves. A depiction of David out on the edge of the lawn. And above the door, Alice and Orla, running through the water hand in hand.
Orla had almost forgotten how good an artist Alice was, even at such a young age. You can tell which lines belong to each of them. Orla’s waver, tentative, afraid for her mistakes to become permanent. But Alice’s are dark black and unafraid. Orla had learned so much from her. She can only imagine how good Alice would have become.
When Orla steps back into the bedroom, a bank of thick gray clouds has rolled in, low and ominous above the water. She picks up a basket of old sheets to donate and looks out the hall window. The waves are choppy now, their crests topped with frothy white. A fat drop of rain spatters the window and then another, like long fingernails tapping on the glass. A low rumble of thunder shivers through the atmosphere.
“Shit!” Orla yells, remembering the clothesline. She drops the basket on the floor and races downstairs, flying out onto the lawn just as the downpour begins. She yanks the wet sheets and blankets off the line, bunching them in her arms and sending clothespins flying into the grass. She pulls down the last quilt, an old one her late grandmother made for her as a girl. As it falls off the line, the backyard comes into full view. The air rushes from Orla’s lungs. A slim figure in a black jacket stands in the middle of the lawn. The hood is pulled down over their eyes. Wet tendrils of dark hair cling to the slender shoulders.
Orla’s body jerks back, clutching the wet blankets to her chest. The person also stands still, the rain splashing off the shoulders of their jacket. They waver slightly between the trees on the back edge of the lawn.
Orla blinks raindrops out of her eyes. She raises a hand from the blankets in a tentative wave. “Hello?” she tries to call out, but her voice comes out as a thin rasp.
The figure moves suddenly, sending another shock through Orla’s system. It’s a woman, Orla thinks, as she watches the black coat dart across the lawn and down toward the water, disappearing onto the slopeof the beach. Over the rain Orla can barely hear the engine of a boat starting up. Now she breaks free from her trance, flailing and tripping over the soaking blankets as she races back into the house. She leaves a trail of dirty wet footprints on the freshly mopped floors. It is not until all the doors are bolted shut that she yanks the curtain aside, looking down over the bending branches toward the water. But all she can see is an empty beach getting battered with waves and beyond it through the creeping mist, the almost invisible outline of the Rock.
FAITH
By morning the weather has turned stormy. Dense clouds gather above Faith as she walks along the shoulder of the road toward town. The seagrass whips into her legs, and as she passes the beach a foghorn bellows. It seems like a bad omen, but Faith couldn’t bear spending another day waiting around for David in the giant house with its sterile air and quiet hallways. As luxurious as it is, something about being there has started to make her feel uneasy. A strange creeping sensation prickling along her spine, like she is being observed. She’d sat on the side of their bed for a while staring into space and then before she could change her mind, she’d texted him,I’m going into town.
Always having somewhere to be and someone to go with is something she’s taken for granted these last few years in New York. It’s only been recently, since falling in with Elena, that Faith has been constantly around people, but she’s gotten used to it quickly. She tries to remember the ring instead, glittering in its tufted box. Waiting for her.
The electricity in the air makes her pick up her pace until she reaches a bend in the road and Port Mary comes into view, a small strip of low buildings along the churning shoreline. Their bright colors look garishin the gloom. Faith hadn’t had any destination in mind when she left, just a desperate need to get out of that house.
The town is more low-key than pictures online indicate. She’s halfway through it in a few minutes. She finds herself at the ferry dock, looking out at the ocean. Waves knock at the boats moored out in the harbor, sending their masts swirling like bath toys. From here she can see the back decks of the restaurants she’s read about. They are empty now, but their tables are set for dinner. Faith wonders if David will manage to bring her to one of them tonight or if she should prepare herself for another awkward family meal at the house. There is something deeply unpleasant about Geoffrey that she wasn’t expecting.
