We Were Never Here (19 page)

“I hear you,” Stella said.

“I can't go back to that. That feeling. Being sick again.” I tore some paper towels from the dispenser and then wiped my hands and stood up straight and looked in the mirror. It was my actual face now. No steroid hair and freakish round face. My regular Birdy hair. Me. I bent in. I wiped my red eyes with the harsh paper towel. “I'm okay,” I said now, backing up from the mirror and again facing Stella.

“You're more than okay. You're a survivor,” she said. “This is just a little reminder of that fact.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said.

“No need. A survivor. Don't you forget that.”

“Okay.” I threw out the towels.

“And now, we're friends.”

I smiled a pathetic little smile. “Poor Samantha,” I said.

“Yeah, let's get out of here.”

I followed Stella out of the bathroom and toward the door. I looked back with a pang of guilt for not having cleared our table: two hot chocolates still covered in cream, barely sipped at. Two girls whose outsides were so different from their insides. All girls. All kinds of scars. All kinds of ways to keep our secrets safe. My secret was safe. Safe, with Stella B.

My parents didn't end up going anywhere with Zoe because Zoe decided she didn't need to see any more schools in Virginia and that, after she took the new round of SATs, which would surely put her at near to perfect, she was not going to want to stay in Virginia anyway.

“That is so snotty,” I said. To everyone. I was momentarily panicked. It was 8:30 a.m. and I had a plan to carry out. I needed to get myself to Annapolis. I needed to pack whatever a person takes to this kind of thing. All of a sudden I realized this plan, like the last one Connor had hatched, was fraught with the possibility of mishap.

My father was the one who spoke. “There are amazing schools here, Zoe. And publicly funded, which is nothing to sneeze at. College is very expensive!”

Zoe crossed her arms. “I have not worked my ass off for four years to end up staying here. I mean, if I have to go, if I get in nowhere, if you guys won't send me anywhere else, then I have no choice anyway, and so why even look?”

“William and Mary and UVA are not
here
. They are fantastic schools, and I was looking forward to the trip,” my mother said, all dejected.

I looked hard at Zoe, eyes wide, and even though she didn't know my plan, she could have seen my cry for help and acted on it. If she saw me, she made no effort.

“Tim and I have plans.”

“Oh yeah?” my mother said. “Plans to do what?”

“Well, to study, for one.”

“Yes,” my mom said. “And . . .”

“And he's making me dinner, okay? He's been reading up on all this cooking stuff and he's making paella! He even bought fresh octopus!”

I tried to stifle my laughter. And then: paella. From Spain. That was supposed to be mine.

My father exhaled. “My God, Zoe. It's one day! Fine.” He held his hands up in an
I'm unarmed, don't shoot
gesture. “I give up.”

My mother shook her head and went into the den. “You think you might have told us ahead of time, Zoe?” she screamed out. “I made time to do this.”

“He just got the octopus yesterday,” Zoe said softly. She looked at my dad. “I really don't want to go to a local school.”

“Oh for Christ's sake, Zoe. Enough's enough. Your mother is right. Have some consideration for others.”

“I am,” she said. “I'm not making you go.”

My dad shook his head. The disappointed head shake.

My mom came out of the den. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “Where is Tim going to school?”

“He's waiting to hear early decision,” she said. Which meant he'd been studying with her for hours upon hours and he didn't even need to
take the SATs again
!
“Columbia.”

“And where are you applying? Your first choice,” my mom asked.

“Yes. There. As I've mentioned, it's important for me to be in a city.”

“Zoe,” my mother started. “You know what? Forget it. I just really hope you remember: life is long. We'll just have to see how this all pans out, won't we?”

Wasn't life, in fact, short? This was another Nanaism. Live now, life is short, right? It can't be both.

“Well I'm going to Stella's.” I realized just then that this didn't have to affect me negatively, per se. “For the night.”

Everyone turned to me.

“That's wonderful!” my parents said at the same time.

“Wait a minute.” He ran his hands through his hair. My poor dad. He was trying so hard to keep up. “Who's Stella?”

When Stella pulled up in her white Ford Fiesta at 9:30 a.m. I had everything ready to go. Well, what was everything exactly? What would I ever take for an overnight with my . . .
boyfrien
d
? It was extra bags and non-itch creams, some bonus clasps because, dear God, I was not going to let that bag come undone again, but if it did, I was going to be ready. And it was also,
pajamas
. And face cream. Where were we even going to be . . . sleeping? Would we be sleeping? I had no idea what was about to happen. It was like everything before. Wait for the answer. Wait and see.

“Bye, honey!” My parents stood at the front door waving, like I was bravely going off to war. In a way, it had been a war. There had certainly been carnage.

I ducked my head like I was blinded by the sun. Or their love. “Bye.” I waved and hopped into Stella's car.

Bob, bob, went the dog head. Hula, hula, went the girl's straw skirt. “You are the most honorable soldier, superhero, pretty as a cat,” another unfamiliar voice in Stella's phone in its dock sang.

“Okay.” I put my palms on both knees. “Here we go. Who's this?”

“Kate Nash!”

“Okay,” I said.

“Kate Nash!” she said again.

“I heard you!” When would the music shaming cease? It was getting tiring.

She gripped the wheel and pitched herself over it, like an old lady looking for an address in the dark.

“Are you stressed out?”

“I don't know. I feel all this
pressure
,” I said. We were headed toward the highway.

“What are you guys even going to
do
?”

I giggled. “I have no idea.”

“Are you, like, prepared?” She was on the ramp now.

“Stop it. You sound like my mother. Or like my mother would sound if she knew what was happening right now.”

“I'm just saying. When I first did it with Jared, it was bad. It got better. But the first time was not a lot of fun.”

“I don't even know if that is happening!” I said. “Like, I honestly don't think it will. Remember the thing that keeps me from people? That thing that came undone. That could happen. Can you imagine?”

“Jesus. That's an extra layer of fear. But also? That thing brought us closer,” she said. “It made us friends.”

I leaned back. She was not wrong.

“Here we go,” Stella said, merging onto the highway.

And there we were, on our way.

I can't say I was 100 percent excited. I guess I was . . . trepidatious. Is that a word? I know it's a feeling, and also there was the fearful feeling, and I felt them both when Stella B turned into the marina in Annapolis. It was a marina, by the way. I'd seen a lot of water when I'd mapped it, but for some reason it still surprised me. And yet here we were, boats moored and rocking in the near distance, a bunch of piers, pools, a white napkin place to eat. The place was
posh
.

“Will you look at this place?”

“I know. Crazy,” I said, opening the car door. I felt like it was this massive effort to get out. Like I had to pitch myself onto the pavement.

“I'll wait here,” she said. “Just here, in this car. Waiting.”

“Don't,” I said. “It's fine. You've wasted so much time on me already.” I was out of the car with my bag and leaning in her open window. “I'm okay!”

“I'm going to wait.”

“Okay,” I said, a little relieved. I have never felt like I fit in somewhere less. Truly.

When I turned around, I saw him. Connor.

He took my breath away. There he was. On a sailboat. Standing between two sails. At the end of the pier. Waving to me.

Stella craned her neck to look through my window. “Holy hell, is that him?” she said.

I waved back at him.

“For real?” she said. “Is your life real? You are such a fun friend to have! The dramz.”

I turned to Stella. “I know.”

“You are so finished,” she said.

“I know,” I said again. I gathered up my strength. To go to Connor on his boat.

“That boy will slay you! With his bow and arrow he will slay.”

Campers, put down your bows and arrows. That's what I thought: how before that moment arrived, my life was headed somewhere so different. “Thank you, Stella,” I said. “Really. For everything.”

For a moment I wondered if I was leaving forever. I turned from her car and walked slowly, heart pounding, but somehow without falling over, toward the pier.

There he was. Strawberry-blond shock of hair swept to the side. Cinnamon spray of freckles. Bluest eyes, squinting, hairline fractures at the corners already. Dark jeans. Gray Vans. Frayed blue oxford. Down vest. Hello, Connor Bryant. Smiling—no, beaming—at me.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, Connor,” I said. I didn't recognize my shy voice.

“It's a pretty perfect day for a sail.” He reached out his hand to me.

“What is it with you and boats?” I said. I turned to wave good-bye to Stella, a signal that she could go.

Then I took Connor's hand and carefully stepped in.

The boat. Picture a sailboat: it looked like that.
Sea Fever
was painted across the side in indigo-blue script. Two sails, crisp white triangles, the jib and the mainsail, white, white. Remember: I went to camp! I knew when the boom was heading my way. I knew there was a rudder and a till and a hull and a bow and a stern and standard and port side, and once I'd sailed a Sunfish on the lake, all alone. But my experience ended there. This was a big boat! And Connor was on it. On the
bow
.

After he helped me in, I stood there sort of dumbly for a moment. What were we supposed to do? We hugged
very
awkwardly. And then the awkwardness melted away and we hugged for real. We had never done that before. I had always been so breakable. There were a million firsts already.

We broke apart. “First of all, this is yours, right?” I said, sitting down on a cushioned bench, port side. Connor seemed completely different at every turn. Nana had a prism on a string that sat on this table in her hallway, and in the late afternoon it would catch all this hazy light. You picked it up and the light jumped off the glass top of the table and hit the walls and the ceiling. You spun it and the light shot to another wall, another part of the
ceiling. That was Connor, a prism catching light. Where would he be refracted today? Might he have stolen a sailboat? I didn't
think
so, but he kept surprising me, and not always in a great way.

“Well my family's, yes.”

“And how did you get here? Are you allowed to even be here?” I imagined he was in some kind of lockdown facility. But maybe it was really just a school with a retro sound system.

“It's the weekend,” Connor said. “We can leave on the weekend. I drove down last night.”

I was dubious. I had several friends from camp at regular boarding schools. There was not a lot of freedom involved in their weekends at all. “Oh. So you have a car at school?” I was starting to not want to have this conversation, but somehow I still felt compelled to bring it up. Everything around me was blue. On the outside. Blue sky, blue water, Connor in his sky-blue shirt, his blue eyes. “
That
car?”

He laughed. “Yup. The one thing that my mother didn't get rid of.” He was undoing the rope tethering us to shore. What was that? A
lanyar
d
? A
halyar
d
? “Are you cold?”

I can't imagine having kept that car. Every time I got in it, I'd think about the accident. But wouldn't I think about it every time I got in any car? “A little.” I rubbed my arms. I had on a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, a light cargo jacket over those. How did I know I was going to be
sailing
?

Connor went down below and came up holding a sweater. “Wear this.” He threw a fisherman's wool sweater, big and soft and stretched out at the waist. I took off my jacket and pulled it over
my head. You know how you can buy boyfriend sweaters? Well, this was an
actual
boyfriend sweater. This was the inspiration for an entire
line of clothing
. I was already thinking how to get it home with me so I could wear it every day for the rest of my life.

“Suits you,” he said.

I looked down at it as if I couldn't believe it was real.

Then there was a lot of checking of the sails, the devices along the dash. I tried to let myself just . . . be. It was hard to let not knowing what was about to happen be a good thing. But I tried it out. Being in the moment. Not in the past or in the future. In this moment now.

“Connor Bryant, you never cease to blow my mind.” I shook my head in mock disbelief.

He looked up. “I aim to please,” he said, winding the line and placing it on deck. “You. I aim to please you.”

“Your work is done here,” I said. “This is just insane.”

And then we were off.

And then we were at sea.

So what can I say? We sailed—no,
Connor sailed us
—across the Chesapeake Bay, where once I had gone on a field trip to learn about estuaries.

This is what he did: He walked around. He lowered the boom. He manned the sails. He tied and untied knots. He caught the wind. He told me to watch my head. He let me steer. He checked compasses. We looked out at the water, our hair blowing wildly in the wind.

He sent me down into the galley for grapes and crackers and cheese, all on a platter in the little fridge, and Diet Cokes.

It was a little house down there. A lounge area with cushioned couches built in. And behind that was the bedroom, which came to a point just above the headboard. I leaned in the threshold and wondered how many people had slept there. And who they'd been. And who they'd slept with . . .

It actually made me a little seasick, and after spotting the bathroom, I walked back up with this tray of food and set it on the table, which was nailed down between the two sets of benches lined with pillows, life preservers stored inside.

I watched Connor at the wheel. He was every memory I'd
ever had of him at once, all the good, all the times he came in to see me when I was sick and didn't know what was happening to me. Once in a while I slipped: as he looked out at the water and away from me, I couldn't help but think of him in that car, at the wheel in the Beamer, hand on some girl's knee, stoned.

“Hey,” I said, picking grapes off the stem and popping them in my mouth. “Does anyone know you're here?” For my part, no one knew I was even gone. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't where anyone would expect to find me. Off the leash: exciting and terrifying.

He nodded. “Sure.”

“No one knows I'm here,” I said.

He grinned at me and looked back out to the water.

I looked at Connor looking out to sea. “Look!” He pointed out, just beyond our boat.

I shielded my eyes with my hand and looked out. Three gray bodies arced in the sunlight, and I could see the flash of gray fins dipping in and out of the water, three faces shaped like smiles. Dolphins. They dove and swam beside us for several moments before they were gone, far out to sea.

“This is just amazing.” I turned to Connor. “Isn't this just amazing?”

“I know. Sometimes they play by the boat. I like to think it's always the same ones.”

I was disappointed for a moment that Connor had seen these dolphins—had seen
this
—before, but I shook it off. “Wow,” I said.

“Incredible,” he said. “A good omen, I think.”

I nodded. I turned to face him. “It is!” I said.

He smiled.

“Okay,” I said. “Where are we going, anyway?”

We ended the trip at a marina—no! a port of call—on Kent Island. We got off the sailboat and onto a dock and walked up this grassy hill to what turned out to be
Connor's house
, which was large and white with blue shutters, little anchors cut out of them, and set against the trees, the leaves turning these spectacular colors. When we got closer, I could tell the house was, I don't know, falling down a little? Eaten and beaten down by weather, maybe. There was a wraparound front porch with worn wicker chairs, some frayed reeds sticking out from the legs and arms, and two wooden bench swings you could imagine drinking cold lemonade on if it was summer. But it wasn't summer anymore, and when Connor opened the screen door and walked us across the porch and then into the living room (did I mention the seahorse door knocker?), the house felt old and drafty.

“Is anyone here?” I asked Connor.

“Just us,” he said.

“Does anyone know we're here?”

“Yes? My parents were like, go ahead, bring your girlfriend to our house on the bay and stay the weekend! No, stay the week!”

“I see.” He said
girlfriend
. Which went great with my boyfriend sweater. Which was better than my name after a sentence. “So, no.”

“No one knows where you are,” he said, making his hands into wolf paws. “Grrrr,” he said.

“Stop!” I was happy to finally be alone with Connor, but that he was playing with me creeped me out a little.

We stood in this large room with huge windows and Persian rugs in all colors of brown and beige and gold thrown about. Old stuffed couches were strewn with tapestry-covered pillows. It smelled a little like hay in there, and it looked just effortless and like all the couches, pillows, rugs, curtains, framed photos, and vases just somehow ended up there.

I placed my bag on the floor and looked out the window facing the water at the dock where the boat was moored.

“So this is it.” He reached his arm out to encompass the room.

“Yeah. Amazing.” I watched the boat rock gently in the water. “What's
Sea Fever
?” I asked.

“A poem. My father likes these sea poems.”

“I like it,” I said. I had seen some awful boat names.
Master Baiter. Buoy, Oh Buoy. Dock-a-Dent
. This is what happens when you live near water.

I followed Connor into the kitchen, all yellow and open to the light, shelves stacked with multicolored ceramic bowls and plates, a long wooden table with uneven planks of wood. Beneath the window seat that faced the bay window, looking out to the backyard, were baskets overflowing with board games and candles and old blankets.

“This was my grandparents' place,” he said. “Great-grandparents? I can't remember, to be honest. But it's been in the family. Old-time Maryland. That's us!”

“How cool,” I said.

Another shrug. “Well, it is cool for my parents, because it's
a pretty short drive from DC. So they can come and go easily.”

It was all so beyond my realm. Last year we spent two weeks in Cape Hatteras. We ate hush puppies and crawfish more times than I could count. So there was that.

“Once it was all so grand,” Connor said. “This life.”

“Seems pretty grand now,” I said. I felt teeny and lost, but Connor didn't fill up the space much either. The grandness didn't seem to have much to do with him.

“But once”—he looked up at the chandelier, covered in dust—“once this was all brand-new.”

The being-alone and no-one-can-reach-me part turned out to be sort of great. We sat swinging on the porch bench and watched the sunset, holding hands beneath a horse blanket Connor pulled out from under the window seat in the kitchen.

And then, when the sun went down and it got very cold and we got hungry, Connor found some oatmeal in the cupboard. He made that and added brown sugar and raisins and maple syrup, and it might have been the most delicious dinner I'd ever eaten ever.

Soon it got very dark and there were stars everywhere. We went out on the lawn, blanket around our shoulders, and looked up at them. Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Cassiopeia; it was like a planetarium out there. We walked down to the rickety dock and watched the dangling moon, like it was suspended by an invisible string.

“Hey,” Connor said, bringing me close. It was warm beneath the blanket, and I felt him all around me.

“Hi,” I said. I let go. I was in the moment.

The blanket dropped and he pushed some hair out of my face. “Birdie,” he said. He traced my eyebrow—one and then the other—with the side of his thumb. “Bird.”

I hugged him tighter.

“I love you,” he said. He kissed the top of my head.

The shivering. From the cold, from that kind of kiss. I was silent.

“Do you? Still?”

“Still,” I said.

“I'll take it,” Connor said. “Hey, you're shivering.”

“It's cold!”

“Let's go in,” he said. And then, turning, he held my hand as we walked up the lopsided stairs. “So. Want to see my room?”

I giggled. “Yes,” I said, and followed close behind.

Well, being in the moment was swiftly behind me. Because now I was going into his room and I had to contend with what would happen in that room. I do not see how people stay in the moment. People who say they do this—what,
Buddhists?—
they have to be liars. All of them.

Also? I was always following Connor. In the hospital hallways, out to the rowboat at Fletcher's, up those stairs.

“Bathroom?” I said, opening a door, stacks of neatly folded white towels, the smell of insects and dust. “I need the bathroom.”

“Linen closet,” he said. “Here's a bathroom. If you need it. Whenever. This can be just yours. I'm the last door on the left.” He pointed down a long hallway.

I went in and shut the door, waited for his footsteps to recede down the hallway. I was trembling. Trembling from fear and hope and worry and happiness but mostly from fear.

I checked to make sure everything was okay and that I would not humiliate myself in a terribly obvious way, and I tried not to think about what it would be like for someone else—for Connor—to see it. Did he have to? Was there a way around it? Maybe we would only talk, I thought, as I left the bathroom and padded down the hall, my arms out, fingertips brushing the cool walls. Who knew what I wanted or what would happen, I thought, as I stopped, unsteady, at the last door on the left. Connor's room.

Then I went inside.