The Islanders (12 page)

TO ZOEY'S SURPRISE, NEITHER JAKE
nor Lucas was on the four-o'clock ferry home. In fact, only Nina and Benjamin rode the ferry with her. Aisha had been roped into seeing Christopher about soccer. Claire, Zoey figured, could be waiting to take the water taxi home with her father. After all, they could afford it. Jake had probably decided to catch the later ferry, or arranged for his dad to pick him up in their boat.

As for Lucas, who knew? Zoey was not going to concern herself any further with Lucas Cabral. Jake was her boyfriend, and she owed him some loyalty and support. Obviously, this whole thing with Lucas had been difficult for him. She should have seen that and tried to help.

The trip home went peacefully, twenty-five minutes of gossip about the first day of school, teachers, classmates, and in Nina's case, a lengthy diatribe on the soul-crushing nature of school.

Zoey said good-bye to Nina and walked the rest of the way
home with Benjamin.

“Nina said something about Mr. Geiger wanting to pay your way through college,” Zoey said. “Or was she just exaggerating?”

Benjamin shrugged. “He did say that. I think he's hoping I'll marry Claire someday. He figures I'll be easier to control than some other potential sons-in-law.”

“Doesn't that kind of piss you off?”

Benjamin smirked. “You think I'd really be easy to control?”

Zoey chuckled. “Not hardly.”

“I don't take it seriously,” Benjamin said.

When they reached the house, Zoey said a quick hello to her father, leaving him to cross-examine Benjamin about school, and went up to her room.

She sat down at her desk in the dormered window and closed her eyes. What a day. Not bad enough that it had been the first day of school, no, it had to start with a fight between her boyfriend and . . . some guy she barely knew.

Lucas. Why had she sided with Lucas? The obvious answer was because he wasn't the one who had started the fight, and he
was
the one who got hurt. That was the obvious answer. But was it the whole truth?

What
did
she feel for Lucas? And what did she feel for Jake?

She pulled out a yellow pad and wrote
JAKE
at the top on the left side,
LUCAS
on the right. Then she drew a line down the middle of the page, creating two columns.

She thought for a moment, then, under the name
JAKE,
she wrote
Known him for years.
Since she was just a kid. He was the first guy ever to kiss her. He'd taught her to water ski. He had believed her when she'd denied the rumor going around that she was seeing Tad Crowley. (She'd only kissed Tad once at a party, that was it.)

Under
LUCAS
she wrote
Barely know him.
Strictly speaking, she'd known him since she was little, too. But he'd been away for two years. Things changed a lot in two years.

And then, not to be crude, but if you put the two of them side by side wearing little Speedos like those bodybuilders on ESPN, it would be no contest. And why shouldn't she think that way? Guys did.

Under
JAKE
she put
Great body.

Not that Lucas had a bad body. Not at all. He was tall and lanky. He had long legs and broad shoulders. Seeing him in a Speedo wouldn't make her want to run screaming from the room or anything.

Under
LUCAS
she wrote
Okay body.

So far, Jake was out in front. She went on, line after line, noting that Jake was a great kisser, while Lucas was an unknown
in this category. You could hardly count that one little kiss two years earlier. He hadn't even moved his lips.

The further she went, the more obvious it was that Jake was totally superior in every category to Lucas.

After filling half the page, she wrote
Jake makes me feel
. . . She hesitated. What did Jake make her feel? She imagined the many, many times they had lain together, out on the beach by a blazing campfire, or just on the couch in the family room. She could feel his big arms wrapped around her, holding her close.

. . .
safe.
That's what Jake made her feel. Like nothing could ever harm her when she was in his arms.

And Lucas?
Makes me feel . . .
she wrote.

She remembered him on the breakwater, waves crashing around him. And she remembered the queasy, unsettled, disturbed feeling after he had lifted her hand to his lips.

She quickly crossed out the line. She added the fact that Jake clearly had a very excellent chest, all smooth, tan muscles, while Lucas probably had a tattoo there.

Then she looked down the list. It certainly was one sided. A person looking over this list would reach only one conclusion. Obviously, Jake was the right choice.

Still, maybe she had been slightly unfair to Lucas. He did have better hair than Jake, in her opinion. Even so, it was no contest.

“Of course it isn't,” she said aloud. “Jake is your boyfriend. Jake loves you. Jake does not have a tattoo.”

She hid the pad in her drawer and stood up. She would go to Jake, apologize, make some good excuses, and then, as Nina and Aisha had suggested, go to lip lock.

And life would be back to normal.

Her eye settled on the Post-it note bearing the quote.

She took it down and crumpled it, letting it drop in the wastebasket. What did Goethe know about life on Chatham Island?

 

 

“Yes, I did have an interesting dream,” Claire admitted. She leaned back against the cool leather, enjoying the crackling sound it made. Dr. Kendall raised her eyebrow expectantly. Dr. Kendall loved dreams, Claire had discovered. Unfortunately, most weeks Claire had no dreams to tell her psychiatrist, at least none that she could remember.

“As usual, I don't remember it perfectly.”

“Do the best you can.”

Claire smiled coyly. “I'm afraid there's no kinky sex or anything in it.”

Dr. Kendall just nodded. Claire knew this was because Dr. Kendall believed
everything
was something psychological. If Claire sat up straight, that meant something. If she slouched, that meant something, too. If she yawned, it couldn't just be that she was tired; no, it had to be something of a deep-seated psychological nature.

She'd been seeing the shrink since her mother had died. About the time of the accident her father suggested she might want to drop the sessions, but by that point Claire had gotten used to it. It was a familiar ritual, comforting, sort of like some people said church was.

“Well,” Claire began. “It was in the car again.”

“
The
car?”

“Uh-huh. Only it was a lobster. You know, a four-wheeled lobster with a stick shift.”

“Go on.”

“Lucas was there. And Wade. And we were skidding around but laughing just the same. All three of us.”

“Yes.” Dr. Kendall nodded wisely.

“That's about it. Except that we started to crash, and Lucas was trying to grab the wheel out of my hand.”

“Lucas was—”

“I mean, I was trying to grab the wheel away from him, only my hands were slippery.”

“I see. And then?”

“Then we crashed. And I woke up.” Suddenly an image flashed in Claire's mind. A sharp, clear picture. She shook her head angrily.

“Is there something else?”

“Nothing. Just that I suddenly had this weird flash of Benjamin, standing by the side of the road after we had crashed.”

“Benjamin? This is your male friend, right? The unsighted one?”

“The blind guy, yeah. He was staring at us, very solemn, and it was his actual eyes, not his sunglasses. I mean, it's like in my dream he could see or something.”

Dr. Kendall nodded.

“So?” Claire asked, dismissing the lingering effects of the dream image. “So what's it all mean?”

“It could mean any number of things,” Dr. Kendall said.

Claire rolled her eyes. Well, there you had it: the perfect shrink answer. “Come on, I have the kind of weird dream that my sister Nina has every night—and sometimes during the day—and it doesn't even mean anything?”

Dr. Kendall smiled her noncommittal smile. “Dream interpretation can be tricky. Perhaps you simply ate a lobster and remembered it in your dream.”

“Actually, I did.”

“There you go.”

“Well, I'm disappointed. You ask me for dreams and I finally bring you one loaded up with twisted imagery, drivable lobsters the size of Volkswagens, blind guys who can see . . . I don't really think I can get much crazier than that.”

“We don't use the word crazy, Claire. And in any event you are an extremely sane person. For your age, one might even say you're abnormally sane. Apart from the fact that you don't remember certain events surrounding the accident, you appear to be quite well adjusted. In fact, you show great self-awareness and excellent coping skills.”

“Are you telling me I shouldn't keep coming?”

Dr. Kendall looked at her thoughtfully. “Claire, you may never remember. It may simply be physical, and not in any way psychological. You did suffer a concussion in the accident.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Certainly you can keep coming here, if you feel you need someone to talk to, if you're lonely.”

“I'm not lonely,” Claire said quickly, dismissively.

“No?”

“No. Of course not. I'm just … solitary. A loner.”

“There's nothing wrong with being solitary,” Dr. Kendall said with a reassuring smile. “Still, if you'd like to schedule another session for next week—”

Claire felt an unfamiliar pang of confusion and doubt. “Maybe I . . . maybe I should.” Claire shrugged. “You know, sort of taper off slowly.”

“We could make your next visit in
two
weeks.”

“Okay.” Claire stood up. “Well, I have to catch the ferry.” She reached the door, then hesitated. “You know, though, if I come every two weeks, I'm bound to forget whether I'm supposed to come or not, so maybe we should just keep doing it every week. You know, just because it's easier.”

Zoey walked from her house down to Dock Street where it ran along Town Beach, feeling nervous and a little annoyed for
some indefinable reason. Yes, yes, she knew she had to go and work things out with Jake, but still, it was annoying. It wasn't like she'd committed some big crime.

From the point where Dock merged into Leeward Drive she could look up and see Jake's house, brightly lit so that even in the black of a moonless night, you could see the red of the cedar.

She walked on, the agitated waters of the bay on her right, a breeze rustling the pines on her left. High, thin clouds like gray lace scudded overhead. The skyline of Weymouth glittered brightly, the office buildings no doubt full of hardworking types catching up after the three-day weekend.

She climbed the twisting, steep driveway to Jake's house and cut along the well-known path around the side and down to the flagstone patio.

She peeked tentatively around the corner. After that last visit she didn't want any more sudden revelations. Through the sliding glass door she could see Jake, wearing only a pair of shorts, leaning back on his bed, watching TV and throwing a football up into the air while he tried to catch it with his left hand.

Standing there in the dark, she knew she was invisible.

“See?” Zoey reminded herself. “Great body.”

She stepped forward into the pool of light and tapped on
the glass. He looked at her, seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then, with a show of reluctance, got up and opened the door.

“Hi, Jake.”

“Hi, Zoey,” he said in a voice several degrees colder than hers.

“I thought we should talk.”

“Do we have something to talk about?”

“I think we do,” she said. She slid past him into the room. He closed the door behind her but remained standing, still holding his football, while she sat on the edge of his bed.

“Let me just get this out right away,” Zoey said. She took a deep breath. “I'm sorry if what happened this morning made it seem like I was choosing sides against you.”

“That's what it was,” he said.

“No, it wasn't, Jake. I . . . I just can't stand violence. My first reaction was to help Lucas because he was hurt. I don't think that makes me a bad person,” she added plaintively.

“He wasn't hurt,” Jake growled. “If I'd really wanted to hurt him . . . well, I could have if I'd wanted to.”

“His nose was bleeding,” Zoey said.

“He had it coming.”

Zoey suppressed an urge to point out that it was Jake who had picked the fight. That wouldn't help. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“I thought you were—” To Zoey's amazement, Jake's voice actually broke. “I thought you were, like, being interested in him. You know?”