Page 26 of Reckless Girls
Brittany nods back, but to her surprise, the girl actually gets up from her seat, crossing the crowded little café to come over to their table.
“Hiya!” she says brightly, and then she’s offering her hand, a faded, fraying string bracelet around one slender wrist. “I’m Chloe.”
A small moment. But that’s how it starts.
Dear Mama/Pop/Sis:
Greetings from Paradise! Me and the boys landed a real sweet assignment and find ourselves on [CENSORED]. It’s so pretty, I wish you all could see it. Like that book I made Pop read every night when I was twelve,Robinson Crusoe.There are palm trees everywhere, coconuts, too. One of the fellas, [CENSORED], even made a pet out of a monkey! We call him Barnum, and [CENSORED] trained him to take peanuts right out of our hands. It really passes the time, but it makes me miss home and Shep even more. He still doing good? I know he’s getting old, but tell him he’s gotta hang on til we’re done whooping these guys!
Today, I went for a walk by myself for a bit just to get some quiet, and even though the guys say this place is spooky, I think it’s peaceful. I guess there’s some story about a [CENSORED] here back in [CENSORED] where some guys ended up killing each other for food, but luckily, we got a whole box of supplies, so things shouldn’t get that bad for us. And looking out at all that ocean makes me think of being back home, seeing cornfields all the way to the horizon. I miss you all, but getting to see the world like this counts for something. You really get that every place is the same in a way. The guys say it’s boring here, but I tell them they should come to our farm in the winter, see how quiet it gets!
So no, I don’t mind being out here on [CENSORED]. It’s not a bad place, just a lonely one, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Will write again soon.
Your son/brother, L.
—LETTER HOME FROM PFC LEONARD AMES (1923–MIA 1943, DECLARED DEAD 1950)
NOW
TEN
“What do you think their deal is?”
Last night had been fun. Almost too much fun, if my dry mouth and aching head are any indication. Despite the hangover, all I can think about this morning is all that food, all that wine. The diamonds in Eliza’s ears.
“Jake and Eliza?” Brittany asks now, and I nod. We took the dinghy over to the beach with Amma, while Nico stayed behind on the boat.
Brittany shrugs. “They’re rich, obviously,” she says. “But they seem cool. And laid-back. Which is kind of surprising because I assumed most rich people were uptight.”
So it isn’t her money funding this trip. I’d wondered, because if they’re willing to hand Nico $50,000, money is clearly coming fromsomewhere.And they’ve been traveling for, what? Months now?
Brittany flashes me a smile. “But then again, I don’t really know any. Do you?”
Nico.
We don’t really talk about Nico’s family, the life he led before he chucked it all to go sailing. And Nico never really acts like a rich person. But every once in a while, I’m reminded that he and I grew up very differently.
Once, he’d come to pick me up from work at the Haleakala, driving up to the front of the hotel rather than the back entrance, and even though he’d been wearing his usual shorts and ripped T-shirt, the valet had immediately assumed he was a guest. Nico had told me about it later, laughing, but I’d wondered what it was about him that exuded that aura that he belonged.
Or maybe I was overthinking it.
Amma snorts. “Rich people are just people,” she says. “Some are cool, some are assholes.”
She’s wearing a simple black bikini that emphasizes the pale smoothness of her skin, and she’s not quite as tense as she seemed yesterday. But she’s still in a mood, clearly.
“That’s true,” I tell her. “When I worked at the Haleakala, we sawalltypes, trust me.”
Amma gives me a smile. “You must have seen some fucked-up shit, working at a resort like that.”
“Oh, you would not even believe,” I assure her, and then I launch into the sex toy story. By the time I’m done, all three of us are laughing, the sound echoing loudly along the empty stretch of beach.
I realize again just how quiet it is here. Last night, I’d lain on our cushioned table and listened to the surf crashing against the shore in the distance. That sound, that constant murmur in the background, had been there in Hawaii, too, of course, but never this close. Besides—out here, there are no other sounds vying for your attention. No traffic, no voices, no music. Just the wind and the surf, the call of birds, the gentle creaking of the palm trees.
Next to me, Brittany bumps my hip with hers. “This is everything we promised, right?”
I look out at the bright turquoise sea, stretching out in every direction, and nod. “And more,” I assure her, reaching out to take her hand and squeeze it. It’s the kind of easily affectionate thing I used to do with girls back home. I hadn’t realized how much I missed having female friends.
