Page 92 of High Season
Hannah nods, slowly. Apologetically.
“I told my mum and dad not to forward them to me, when I left,” she says. “I didn’t want to see them. I wanted… I wanted to leave it all behind me. That summer. You.”
A moment of quiet passes between them and, for a second, Josie could almost believe that they are teenagers again. How many summer nights, exactly like this one, have they spent together? How many secrets have they told each other beneath these stars, the words unfurling in the darkness, never to be spoken again?
“Hannah,” Josie says. Her voice is quiet now. Serious. “After I was arrested, I waited for you to come forward and back me up. To tell them that you were at the party, too. Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Hannah shakes her head. Her face is strained, like she is holding something back. As though, if she speaks, she might burst into tears.
“I know you were there,” Josie says. “I saw you there. Why did you lie?”
Hannah lets out a sound like a sob; a fast, desperate exhale.
“Hannah?” she says. “Did you see something? Did they threaten you? Did—”
Her voice catches then.
“Did you hurt Tamara?”
Hannah is shaking her head rapidly now, face tilted down toward her hands.
“Say something,” Josie says. “Please.”
Hannah stills. Swallows. Tries to compose herself.
“I didn’t say anything,” she says. “Because I didn’t knowwhatto say.”
She lifts her head then. Finally looks Josie in the eye.
“The problem is,” she says. “I don’t remember what happened. So when the police asked, the only thing I could do was lie.”
THIRTY-ONE
2004
SIX DAYS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
On the fifteenth of August, Josie turns sixteen.
Tamara always remembers the date, even though she never went to any of the birthday celebrations that Josie’s mum threw every year. Even though she felt a hum of jealousy when Josie showed her photographs of her and Hannah, their arms around each other’s shoulders, grinning over a piped lilac birthday cake.
They celebrated both their birthdays on the fifteenth of August. It was a tradition that had started when they were younger, and Tamara bought a set of friendship bracelets for Josie’s thirteenth birthday, a thank-you for the sunrise swims.
“This is cool,” Josie had said, jangling her wrist. “Because we both get one, so it’s kind of like a present for both of us.”
Tamara had flushed, not wanting Josie to think that she was making Josie’s birthday about herself. She had spent ages picking out the bracelets, woven blue threads looping around a delicate silver heart with the wordfriendsengraved in its center.
“When’s your birthday?” Josie had asked.
“December.”
“This is perfect then.” Josie shook her wrist so that the heart swungto and fro. “You’re never here on my birthday, so it makes sense that we both get a present today. We should always do this. It can be both our birthdays today.”
For the next three years, they had stuck to their tradition. They exchanged gifts and made up silly rituals. A midnight swim, to mark the fourteenth turning into the fifteenth. Tamara convincing Patricia to bake a cake for increasingly farfetched celebrations during her shift at the pink house—Tamara getting her first period, international left-handers day. They would take the cake with them to their midnight swim and eat the entire thing with forks, giggling at how carefully Patricia had piped a relevant message for whatever occasion they had invented. They would sit out until the sun began to brighten at its edges, their own secret, special celebration before Josie’s real birthday began.
Last year, Tamara had missed the celebration. Barnaby’s parents had rented a place in Miami for the summer, and Blake and Tamara had been invited out for a week. Tamara had felt a twinge when she had seen that the dates fell over the fifteenth of August, but she hadn’t been able to think up a good enough excuse to say no.
When she got back, she went down to the beach early, and waited to see if Josie would show up. She never did, and Tamara had felt the crack that had been forming between them splinter and break. Things had not been the same since then.
