Family Storms (38 page)

Sometime just before morning, I fell asleep and slept so late that Kiera came rushing with panic into my suite.

“You're still in bed?” she cried. I groaned and turned over to look up at her. She was already dressed in her boating outfit. “It's after eight! Get up. Get dressed. Get ready. I'll be back in fifteen minutes. You know my mother will make a big deal of us having a decent breakfast. C'mon.
And don't forget to take your pill,” she said, ripping the blanket off me.

I ground the sleep out of my eyes, sat up, and then, still half asleep, jumped into the shower to shock myself awake with cold water. I was just putting on my boat shoes when Kiera returned.

“Let's go,” she said. “My mother is already wondering if you're sick or something. If you don't look good and full of energy, she'll find a reason to stop us. C'mon,” she urged.

I hurried out after her.

Mrs. March was in the dining room waiting for us. “Are you all right?” she asked me immediately.

“Yes.”

“She just stayed up too late doing her homework. You know how she is about her homework, even on weekends,” Kiera said.

Mrs. March looked at me suspiciously but said nothing. I had to eat more than I wanted so she wouldn't think something was wrong with my appetite. At least, Kiera did most of the talking for us both, describing the day that lay ahead in Catalina and reminding her mother how much fun they'd had there when her father had taken them. She made the point of reminding her that Alena was alive then and loved the day.

“Never mind all that. You'd better make sure both you and Sasha are wearing your life jackets on that boat,” her mother warned.

“Oh, of course. Ricky follows all the regulations to a T. What are you doing today, Mother?” she asked to throw her off.

“I'm meeting Deidre's mother for lunch at the Ivy,” she
said. “It's a lunch meeting we've both been looking forward to for a while now.” She made it sound as though they were meeting to discuss her and Deidre.

“That's nice,” Kiera said without missing a beat.

“I want to hear from both of you periodically,” Mrs. March said. “You both have cell phones, and this time they're not to be forgotten or turned off. Is that clear?”

“Of course, Mother. It's when we go on excursions like this that they come in most handy. We need to be excused now so we can both do last-minute things. Boyd will be here in ten minutes.”

“Don't make any more mistakes, Kiera,” Mrs. March warned. “There's no room for any more mistakes.”

“That's all in the past, Mother. I'll let someone else make mistakes.”

“Don't belittle what I say, Kiera.”

“I never do, Mother. Sasha?”

I stood up and looked at Mrs. March. If she would or could ever see the hesitation in my face, she would see it now, I thought, and maybe she would forbid my going, but her mind was somewhere else. She nodded and looked down. Kiera tugged me, and we headed back up to our rooms. I was still brushing my teeth when she cried from my doorway that Boyd was there.

“Hurry up,” she said, “before my mother finds some reason to stop us. Believe me,” she continued as we went down the hallway, “she wishes she could.”

“Why wouldn't she want us to have fun?”

“It's a long story, but it's because she had such a boring childhood. She's just jealous.”

I shook my head as she descended in front of me. How could a daughter think her mother was jealous of her? Mothers wanted their daughters to have better lives than they had, didn't they? She certainly wanted a better life for me, even if it was just to ease her conscience. Besides, I couldn't believe Mrs. March had a boring childhood. Kiera just had a definition of “boring” that was different from most people's.

Deidre was waiting for us in the car with Boyd.

“The others are meeting us at the dock,” she said. “Hurry up.” When we drove off, she turned and leaned over to whisper, “Ready for VA day?”

Kiera pushed her to turn around. “Don't spook her,” she said. “She's nervous enough.”

“Nervous about what?” Boyd asked.

“Being on the same boat with you,” Kiera said.

“Yeah, right. You have nothing to worry about as long as I'm there, Sasha,” he said.

Ricky's boat was impressive. He had told me it was a seventy-five-foot Hatteras motor yacht. While everyone else waited, he took me on a tour to show me the galley, the salon, the master stateroom, and the guest stateroom. After that, he brought me up to the pilothouse, where I was to remain with him as he got us under way. Despite the conflicts going on inside me, I was very excited. When he started the boat and we were bouncing over the water, I couldn't help but squeal with delight. He let me steer for a while, too. Boyd started whining about not being permitted to do half the driving, as Ricky had promised, so he let him come up with Marcia, and he and I went down to join the others in the salon.

Kiera looked pretty cozy with Ruben Weiner, and
Deidre was practically on Tony Sussman's lap. Margot was sprawled on a sofa with Jack Martin. The way everyone was smiling at us gave me the jitters. Did all of the boys also know what was supposed to happen on the boat?

“Looks crowded in here,” Ricky said. “Come on. We'll go to the front of the boat, and you can feel the wind and sea spray.”

He took my hand and led me out. It was more exciting at the front of the boat. He pointed out Catalina and some of the other boats traveling to and fro. Because it was so bumpy, he held me around the waist, and we stood like that for a while. Afterward, we returned to the salon. I saw that Margot and Jack Martin were gone.

“Margot and Jack are in the guest stateroom,” Kiera whispered. “You have the master, of course.”

I glanced at Ricky.

“He already knows he's been chosen,” she said.

Whether it was the prospect of really going forward with this or because this was my first time on a boat at sea, I don't know, but I felt the blood drain from my face and a wooziness come over me. I faltered for a moment as my legs turned into jelly beneath me.

Ricky saw it coming and had his arm around my waist again. “Whoa,” he said, and scooped me up to carry me to the sofa.

“No,” Kiera said, seizing his arm. “She needs to be in the bed.”

He nodded and carried me to the master stateroom.

“I'll get Boyd to slow down. That will help,” he said after he lowered me to the bed.

I closed my eyes. My stomach was doing flip-flops.

After he left, Kiera came in.

“Perfect,” she said, as if I had planned it all out and was pretending. “We'll wait until the boat is docked.”

“I'm not fooling,” I said. “I feel sick.”

“You'll get over it,” she insisted. “Rest a little.”

“But you said the pill would prevent this from happening.”

“Everyone's different, Sasha. Don't be silly. I was hoping it would work for you, but I guess it doesn't. Next time, we'll get you to wear one of those patches to prevent seasickness. Relax. The best is yet to come.”

“I don't want to,” I said. “I don't feel good.”

“What are you talking about? We go through all this effort to make it easy for you, and you want to back out now? Relax. You'll feel lots better after we dock, and that will be the best time for your initiation. Besides, you don't want to disappoint the girls after they voted to include you, and you especially don't want to disappoint Ricky,” she added. “I'll be back in a few.”

“I think I'm going to throw up.”

She stood glaring at me for a moment and then sighed and shook her head. “Okay. If you have to throw up, go into the bathroom. I'll see if Ricky has anything onboard that will help,” she said, and left.

I closed my eyes and kept my hands on my stomach while I fought back the urge to vomit. No one else was this seasick. I was embarrassed. The feeling didn't pass. I was about to get up when Ricky and Kiera returned. Kiera was holding a glass of something with a blue tint.

“We called Ricky's father, and he told us where this was in the galley,” Kiera said. “You drink it all down as fast as you can.”

She came to the bed. Ricky helped me sit up, and I took the glass. It didn't look like anything anyone would want to drink.

“Drink it fast,” Kiera emphasized, “and you won't mind the taste.”

I looked at Ricky. His face was so serious, his eyes intense. Was he that way because he thought that somehow this was his fault and he felt sorry for me?

“If she has a bad time, I'll never stop hearing about it from my mother,” Kiera told him.

I looked at the glass again, took a deep breath, and gulped the contents. Kiera took the glass back immediately, and Ricky lowered me to the pillow again.

“Just rest. We're almost at the dock,” he said.

Kiera was looking down at me in the strangest way. After a moment, they both left. I closed my eyes again and listened to the hum of the engines. I felt the boat slowing down, but I never felt it being docked. I fell asleep, I think, or maybe it would be better described as passing out.

The first thing I realized when I opened my eyes was that I was naked, and everyone was standing around the bed looking down at me, but their faces were going in and out of focus. Was I dreaming?

Then I saw the top of Ricky's head. He was moving between my legs and lifting them at the same time. Faces continued to go in and out and then diminished, as if I were looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.
When I felt him pushing into me, I was sure I heard a soft chanting that sounded like “VA, VA, VA.” I know I cried out. My whole body was shaking.
It's really happening,
I thought.
This isn't a dream.

I don't know how long it lasted. Minutes seemed to float into each other. I wasn't even sure how many times Ricky was there. At one point, as if they were all suddenly bored, they filed out, and I was alone with him for a while. Then he left, too.

When I woke up again, I was dressed. I could feel the boat moving. I sat up. The stateroom spun and then settled. My stomach was still woozy but not as bad as it had been. I called for Kiera. I could hear them all laughing. There was music, too. I struggled to get to my feet and opened the door. Everyone but Ricky was in the salon. They were drinking vodka. I saw the bottle on the table. Deidre noticed me first and called out. They all stopped talking and laughing and looked at me.

“I hope you're feeling better, Sasha,” Kiera said. “I can't bring you home seasick. My mother called, and I told her you were on the island. She tried your phone next and then called me back, and I told her you left it on the boat. Remember to say that,” she added, and sipped her drink.

Everyone continued to stare at me.

“I want to talk to you,” I said.

“So talk. We don't keep secrets from each other, remember?”

Everyone laughed.

I started to cry. “I want to talk to you,” I insisted.

She groaned, finished her drink, and stood. “Will you
all excuse me? Babysitting duties call,” she said, and came to the stateroom.

I closed the door.

“What?”

“What did you give me to drink?”

“I don't know. Something Ricky's father had on the boat.”

“I don't know what happened to me. I think … was I raped?”

“Raped? You were initiated, Sasha. Don't think of it as being raped.”

“But I think everyone was there.”

She smiled. “No one was there but Ricky.”

“I … it was like a rape.”

“I told you. Don't think of it as a rape.”

“What should I think of it as?”

She thought a moment and smiled. “Think of it the way you would think of a toothache. Now it's over,” she said, and walked out.

30
Lies

I
kept to myself for the remainder of the trip. No one tried to get me into any conversations, anyway. It made me feel like yesterday's news. Even Ricky was aloof and indifferent. He never asked me how I felt. When we docked in Marina Del Ray, Kiera called to me to hurry along. She was anticipating another call from her mother any minute.