Page 35 of The Change
“You been out on his boat yet?” Jamie asked, her voice low and serious.
“No,” Amber said. There was no question Jamie meant Rocca. Other than softball, the boat was all he talked about.
“He’ll ask you soon,” Jamie said. “Don’t go.”
“What do you mean?” Amber asked.
“Are you dumb?” Jamie demanded. “Just don’t go, okay? And don’t tell anyone that I said so.”
It seemed so preposterous. Why would Rocca invite her out on his boat all alone? What would his wife say? What about her parents? They would never agree to something like that.
Two weeks later, Rocca stopped her family as they walked to their car after another winning game.
“This Monday is the beginning of spring break,” he said. “You folks want to come out on my boat to celebrate our perfect season?”
Her parents couldn’t, of course. They both had to work.
“Then would you mind if my family and I take Amber out for anhour or two? She’s been working hard. She deserves to have some fun. What do you think? Would that be all right?”
Her parents thought she was lucky—and said so. Amber wasn’t so sure. She could still see Jamie’s face in her mind. What should she have said? What magic words might have freed her? Twenty years later, she still didn’t know.
That Monday, she walked the three blocks to the marina where Rocca’s boat was moored. As she drew closer, he appeared alone on deck.
“Where’s everyone else?” she asked as dread rose inside her.
“The boys came down with something last night,” Rocca said. “Juliet had to stay home to watch them. Don’t worry. It’ll be more fun without them, anyway.”
For the first twenty minutes, everything seemed perfectly normal, and Amber almost relaxed. Once they were out on the ocean, with only the tip of Culling Pointe in sight, Rocca brought the boat to a stop and stepped away from the wheel. He’d slipped his penis out of his pants. And Amber realized there was nowhere to go.
He let her keep her virginity. He’d save it for another boat ride. From that day forward, oral sex always made her seasick.
Going to the police didn’t seem like an option. Quitting the team would mean giving up on her future. But she couldn’t go back out on the boat. Then a solution occurred to her—a way to rid herself of the bad luck once and for all. The night after the boat ride, she snuck out of her house at two in the morning and walked the three blocks to the marina, clutching the gas can her father used to fill the family lawn mower. She poured the gasoline out on the deck of the boat, lit a kitchen match, and tossed it over the rail. She’d never set anything on fire, of course. She had no idea the explosion would be powerful enough to singe her eyebrows and wake the neighbors.
Amber couldn’t prove what Rocca had done, and Jamie refused to talk. But two witnesses had seen Amber sprinting out of the marina that night, and the police found her father’s plastic gas can floating in the sound. It was more than enough to send Amber to a juvenile detention facility for the remainder of her high school years.
The lobsters around Mattauk had been dying in droves, and countless businesses had been dragged under. One afternoon when Amber was in the second year of her incarceration, her father jumped over the side of his boat and swam out to sea. Unable to pay the mortgage after her husband’s suicide, Amber’s mother lost the house later that year. Six months after that, she moved in with an abusive boyfriend, who knocked out her front teeth and introduced her to meth. The old woman Amber had interviewed died a few weeks before Amber was released from jail. Amber likely never would have known if a shocking discovery inside the woman’s house hadn’t made the news. Two bodies were found in the basement—both men. One was the old lady’s uncle, who’d vanished when she was fourteen. The second was the woman’s first husband, who’d supposedly run off the year she turned thirty.
Two decades after the fire, Amber still fantasized about what might have been. She’d decided long ago that if she could do it all over again, there was only one thing she’d change. She would still go out on the boat with Rocca. But as soon as they were far enough from shore, she would push the motherfucker over the side.
She’d had her chance, and she’d missed it. There was nothing she could do now. The bad luck had found her, and now it stuck like glue.
They Walk Among Us
It was late when Jo finally made it back home. No one was up, but her family had left the living room light on for her. Lucy’s schoolwork was spread out on the coffee table, with a half-empty glass of milk and a bowl of Goldfish cracker crumbs serving as paperweights. The handmade throw Jo had purchased from a boutique in Brooklyn had literally been tied in a knot, and the giant television was paused on a scene fromBob’s Burgers.Jo had no trouble reconstructing the evening’s events. At some point well past nine, Art had yelled down to Lucy that she should have been asleep a long time ago. Lucy ignored him until he made an angry appearance at the top of the stairs. Threats were issued, but never seen through. Teeth may have been brushed—though probably not. Lucy definitely pouted and asked when Mom would be back. Art would have kissed her forehead and said he didn’t know.You’ll see Mom in the morning,he’d have told their daughter, as if there were nothing more certain. As if mothers and daughters always came home.
Jo rode a wave of panic all the way up the stairs. She rushed past the dimly lit room where her husband was snoring and threw open the door at the end of the hall. A girl in striped pajamas lay curled up on the mattress, the bedsheets and blankets all kicked to the floor. Awake, Lucy played the role of a miniature adult. She sassed her mother and cursed like a sailor when her father wasn’t around. Only when Lucy was sleeping could Jo see how small she still was—and how easy it would be for someone to hurt her.
Jo lay down beside her daughter and pulled Lucy into her arms. Their world always seemed so safe and predictable. But the truth was, they’d just gotten lucky so far. Jo cried for Mandy Welsh and the mother who hadn’t been able to protect her. And though she didn’t often pray, Jo begged any god that might be listening to grant her the power to keep her own child safe.
She woke the next morning with her arms still wrapped around Lucy. The covers had been lovingly tucked around both of them, and she could smell oatmeal cooking. Jo peeked in the bathroom mirror and rubbed away the mascara smudges under her eyes before heading downstairs.
Art was at the stove, stirring frozen blueberries into a pot of bubbling oatmeal. She didn’t interrupt him. She wanted to watch. There was something so comforting about seeing him there in his bare feet and boxers, his hair still sleep-tousled and a streak of blueberry juice on his shirt. But she’d barely come to a stop when Art turned straight toward her, as if he’d felt her presence. “You going to be okay?” he asked.
“I don’t have a choice,” she said.
“Why don’t you take the day off?” he suggested.
“I’m not going to the gym today.”
