Chapter 9
9
NOW
AFTER DINNER, I TOOK MY usual place washing dishes at the left-hand kitchen sink. (We had two of them, of course, because what wealthy family can get by with only one sink?) My feet carried me automatically there, as if three days had passed since I last visited the island, not three years.
Unfortunately, I didn’t consider the fact that the same could be said for Manuel.
Twenty seconds after I arrived at the sink to wash, he appeared at my side, rag in hand, ready to dry.
“Hi,” he said, one side of his mouth curving up into a tentative smile.
“Uh,” I said eloquently back.
He held up the rag. “Shall we?”
“I should…” I glanced around the kitchen, searching for a way out. It appeared to me in the form of two unopened cans of baked beans. I snatched them off the counter and waved them in Manny’s face. “Put these away!”
Then I turned around and sprinted toward the pantry before I could hear his response.
The pantry was a huge L-shaped room lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves of canned and dried goods. Sacks of flour sat in one corner. Crates of wine in another. Around the bend and just out of sight were not one but three freezers, in which we kept all manner of frozen meats and vegetables and ice cream. The giant room was just another reminder of how excessive my family could be.
I slipped quietly inside and darted over to the left-hand wall, sliding the cans onto a free shelf. Exhaling softly, I stepped forward and laid my forehead on a cushion of cereal spines. It was only then, half-ready to fall asleep upright with nothing but a box of Rice Chex for a pillow, that I heard my sister’s voice.
“…that you have to tell her eventually,” Karma was saying, her voice hushed. From the sound of it, she was just around the bend, standing in front of the freezers. “She has a right to know.”
“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” came the response. It was my mother’s voice, speaking at full volume—though she probably thought she was whispering. “We only just got her back.”
I stiffened, my eyes flying open. Are they talking about me?
Karma snorted. “We’re on an island , Mom. What’s she going to do, swim back to New York?”
Yep. Definitely me.
“That’s not the point,” Mom insisted. “I’ve worked so hard to make this a perfect week for Taron and Helene. Why do you want to spoil that with meaningless drama?”
“Meaningless drama,” Karma repeated flatly. I could just picture her face: eyebrows raised, lips pursed, staring at Wendy with the bemused disdain she reserved only for incompetent bakery interns and our mother. “I think Caleb would take serious offense to that.”
Caleb? What the hell were they talking about?
“This isn’t about Caleb. It’s about making sure that everyone has a nice time up here. And we can’t go telling Eliot something like this right after she got here.”
“But everyone else knows,” Karma said. “How do you think she’ll feel when she finds out that she was the last one to know?”
Wendy sniffed. “She’s the one who chose to disconnect from our family.”
“I know, but—”
“Catherine,” said Mom, and I didn’t have to see Karma to know she was wincing. She hated her real name. “Please. Let’s just keep things nice this week, okay? I don’t want to spoil Eliot’s time here with bad news. You know how she is.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Oh, don’t give me that look, Catherine. I’m just stating a fact: Eliot isn’t like you and the others. You’re all so strong and hardheaded. But Eliot is quieter. More emotional. She’s…”
“Weak,” said Karma. “That’s what you were going to say. She’s weak.”
“You don’t have to be so crass about it,” said our mom. “I’m just being honest, since you won’t. We need to protect her. We only just got her back, and I don’t want…”
But I didn’t stick around to hear the rest of their discussion. I’d heard enough. I’d heard more than enough. I turned around and slipped quietly out the pantry door before either of them even knew I was there.
—
HAVE YOU HEARD OF AN Irish exit ? That’s what it’s called when someone slips out the back door without saying goodbye. That’s what Henry did. That’s how he exited life. So that’s what I do, too. In stressful situations or at events where I’m no longer enjoying myself, I say I have to go to the bathroom and slip out the door when no one is watching. It saves me from those painful conversations, the ones no one wants to have—where the host has to pretend they care that you, one guest in a dozen, are leaving, and the drunkest ones in the group try to convince you to stay, and you have to think of thirty different polite ways to say no. Nobody has thirty different polite ways to say no. It’s torture. So I avoid the whole thing. It’s brilliant. The technique has saved me countless times in New York—from dull conversations, from two a.m. tequila shots, from coworkers’ drunk college roommates. It’s my move.
Irish twins, Irish exits.
While everyone else set up for a game of poker, I made my Irish exit. Just as I placed my hand on the back doorknob, however, I made the mistake of peering over my shoulder.
Which is how I came to lock eyes with Manuel.
He was seated at the card table, staring right at me. I froze. His eyes were narrowed dangerously. He knew exactly what I was doing, and I saw the entire ACCA pass across his face. I swear to God, I did.
ACCA is another copywriting template. It stands for Awareness—Comprehension—Conviction—Action. I learned the template after it , that night, during the month of feverish copywriting research that followed. In the most basic sense, ACCA is a way to get a new customer from “What is this thing?” to “I need this Self-Mixing Pocket Margarita? more badly than I’ve ever needed anything in my life.”
The technique works as follows:
AWARENESS of product/service
COMPREHENSION of said product/service (This is key: lots of advertisers assume you can drop something brand-new in front of a consumer without explanation and the consumer will want it. Then they wonder why sales in their Shopify account hover just above zero.)
CONVICTION that the consumer needs this particular product/service
ACTION—Open your wallet and give us your money. Please.
Now. Let’s pretend for a second that Manuel is a new product/service. Better yet—Manuel is an old product/service that recently released an updated edition. Now let’s perform an ACCA.
AWARENESS:
Introducing: the fully upgraded Manuel? 2.0!
COMPREHENSION:
The Manuel? 2.0 is the very latest in cosmic justice technology. Built with all the features you love about the original Manuel?, the 2.0 also includes souped-up anger and the ability to hold a grudge.
CONVICTION:
You are not forgiven. You are not forgiven, and your best friend is not here to celebrate your brother. He’s here to give you the punishment you deserve.
ACTION:
The only way to make it through this week alive is to turn away. Turn away and walk out the door.
Tearing my burning cheeks away from his gaze, I slipped out the back door and darted across the patio. I was making for the stairs that led from the patio down to the rocks below. The whole way there, words from the conversation between Karma and my mom echoed through my mind:
She’s weak. That’s what you were going to say.
I’m just being honest.
The words bounced like sharp-edged rocks about the corners of my mind, ricocheting off its soft, fleshy interior, leaving behind little gashes and trickling blood.
I’d been so foolish. So unbelievably stupid and naive. It didn’t matter that I’d moved to New York by myself, that I’d gotten a job, that I’d never once asked for help. To them, I would always be sensitive, emotional Eliot. The baby.
She’s weak.
Just as I reached the top of the stairs, a small, shadowy figure stepped in front of me, blocking the way down.
I jerked backward. “What the—”
“What the hell is going on with you and Manuel?” Karma asked. She was tiny but terrifying in the shifting shadows cast by the lights inside the cabin.
“Nothing is—”
She advanced, pointing a finger in my face. “Don’t nothing me, Eliot Beck. He’s your best friend, and the two of you are acting like estranged cousins.”
I rubbed at my forehead, wondering if the cereal boxes left a crease. “I mean…it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other. Things are—”
“Is that so?” Karma crossed her hands in front of her chest. “How long, exactly? Tell me—have you visited him in Boston even once?”
I shuffled backward. “That’s none of your business.”
“ Bullshit it’s not my business.”
“It’s not,” I snapped. I could feel my temper slipping away—the first time it had done so in almost three years. “This is my friendship, not yours. Maybe try butting out, for once.”
Karma’s dark eyes narrowed. “Manny might be your friend, but he’s like a brother to me. He’s part of this family, and I reserve every right to ask what the hell is going on with my family.” She paused. “And, yes, by the way. To answer your earlier question. We do text.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The first time was just a few months into his freshman year. He wanted to know if I’d heard from you since you got to U of M. Imagine my surprise to learn that your best friend didn’t even know where you lived .”
My temper strained at its ever-fraying leash. “I’m not having this conversation with you.” I pushed past my sister and started down the stairs.
“Have you found a therapist in New York, Eliot?”
I paused halfway to the bottom. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just answer the question.”
I turned all the way around. “Yes. I have a therapist in New York.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. Good. ” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Because God forbid batshit-crazy Boose goes off the rails again.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”
“Do I? Then, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” She trailed off, looking out at the lake. To my surprise, all the aggression was gone from her face. “It’s just…you’re so far away now, Eliot. I don’t know how to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
She looked back at me. “You’re my little sister.”
“I’m fine .”
“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just…” She scratched behind one ear. “It was scary, you know?”
“When I moved to New York?”
“No, no. I meant…when Mom and Dad first told us about your OCD. It was scary.”
I raised my eyebrows. “It was?”
“Yes. Not because we were scared of you,” she said quickly. I understood what she meant. My siblings did this often: switch to we without saying what they really meant, which was everyone in the family but you . “It was scary because we had no clue. Truly. None. You were always the calm child. Serious. Mature. Never yelled, never got your feathers ruffled. After…you know…” She swallowed. “After Henry died, you didn’t even cry.”
My fingernails dug into my palms.
“And to find out that, all that time, you were suffering so badly on the inside. It…it nearly broke Mom and Dad. God…it nearly broke me .”
“Yeah, well,” I said flatly. “Good thing that’s all over now.”
“Is it, though?” Karma asked, taking a step forward. Her face was oddly pleading. “Because you can tell me, you know. If you aren’t as okay as you’re pretending to be. You can tell me.”
“Can I? Or would that just make me look weak ?” I snapped before I could stop myself. “Oh, wait.” I laughed harshly. “I forgot. I already do.”
Shock flashed over my sister’s face.
Before she could respond, I spun around and jogged the rest of the way down to the rolling waves of granite.
“Eliot, wait—”
I ignored her, jogging sideways down the hill. The rocks sloped down a good thirty feet, flattening out to a long pebble beach. When I reached the bottom, the pebbles wobbled and crunched beneath my shoes. At the end of the beach was a secluded entrance to the boardwalk. If I made it there, I’d be home free.
But halfway across the beach, a hand hooked around on my elbow and jerked my body backward.
“Hey!” I said, spinning around. “I told you I—”
I swallowed the rest of the sentence. It wasn’t Karma behind me.
A black hole of a face towered above me, unspeakably handsome features blotted out by the glare of the light shining from Sunny Sunday’s windows.
“Stop avoiding me,” Manuel said. The words floated up from the black pit, flat and steady like a metronome. Light wrapped around his head like a halo.
“I’m not avoiding you.” I tried to yank my arm back, but he held on. “I’m just tired.”
“Right. I’d be tired, too, if I had spent the last three years running away from everyone who loves me.”
“I didn’t run .” (Running was exactly what I did.)
“What did you do, then?”
“I grew up,” I said. “Got a job and an apartment. I made a new life, all by myself. Maturity. Adulthood. Independence.”
“You mean solitude.”
“I like being alone.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bull. Shit.” He leaned in close. “I know you, Eliot. You hate being alone.”
“You haven’t seen me in three years. You don’t know what I hate.”
“Don’t know what you hate.” He laughed. His breath was warm and sweet. Red wine and summer air. “Eliot Beck. My best friend for a decade. I don’t know what she hates. Right.” He leaned even closer. That empty hole where his face should be. “Eliot Beck hates being alone. Eliot Beck called me every day after school for eight years because she had too much to say, too much that couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning. Eliot Beck begged me to sneak onto the roof at sleepovers, even when I didn’t want to. Eliot Beck talked my ear off, sunup to sundown, and a little after that, too. Right up until she passed out. Said she was afraid of the dark. But I knew the truth. She wasn’t afraid of the dark; she was afraid of the emptiness that comes with it.”
I stepped back, his words so accurate they felt like a slap across the face. “I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“You know exactly why I’m here.”
“Right,” I said. “For revenge. Because I disappeared, and you hate me for it.”
“Is that really what you think?”
“Yes. I’m not stupid. And I don’t even blame you, okay? I’ve been a bad friend. A horrible friend. But…there are things you don’t understand, Manuel. Reasons I had to leave. I couldn’t…” I inhaled. I couldn’t say more. Not without telling him everything. “It’s okay if you hate me. Really.”
For a small eternity, Manuel was silent. Then, quietly: “I don’t hate you, Eliot.”
I paused. “You don’t?”
“No.”
“Well, you should.”
“Should I.” He said it flatly. No question mark.
“Yes.” You have no idea how much you should hate me.
I am not a good person.
I looked out at the waves. I wished suddenly that I were out there in the chop, not swimming, not skiing, not floating in a tube—just bobbing, letting the waves toss me about like a buoy. Hollow, light as air, no effort needed to stay afloat.
“You know,” said Manuel. “You can be really self-centered sometimes.”
I turned back to him. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not criticizing you. I’m just stating a fact. You spend a lot of time in your own head.”
“You more than anyone should know that…”
“I know, I know. The OCD. It traps you up there. I know. But Karma and I both agree—”
“That’s the other thing.” I kicked a loose rock. “Since when are you and Karma so close? Since when does she know about your exams and girl problems and parties at the Spree?”
“The Spee.”
“Whatever.”
“Right. Whatever. Whatever that you don’t know the name of the place I spend every weekend. Whatever that you don’t know anything about my life whatsoever.” Manuel bent over. Swiped up a handful of pebbles, sifted through them. Let the round ones trickle back through his fingers, leaving only the flattest. “Did you know,” he said, “that you haven’t even asked me about my parents yet?”
The stones lie belly-up on his palm, thick and dark, like tattoos.
“Yes, I…” But then I stopped, because he was right. I hadn’t. “Oh.”
As I stared at the rocks, I remembered a different moment on this beach. A moment from when Henry was still alive. Dad showed us how to check skipping stones for bumps and ridges, then spin them just so. His flew like frisbees and bounced once, twice, three, four, five, six, seven times before tumbling gracefully into the water. Henry and I copied his form. With a few tries, my brother managed two or three skips. I couldn’t get even one.
I said, “How are they, then?”
“Busy.”
I waited for more.
When he said nothing else, I asked, “Have you ever considered that the reason I don’t ask you about your parents is that when I do, you give me cryptic answers like that? Answers that make it seem like you have no interest in talking about them?”
He ignored me. He’d found the rock he wanted and was turning it over in his fingers. “Is it really that hard to believe that I’m close with Karma?” he asked. “I mean—God. I didn’t ask to be adopted into this family. You basically forced it onto me. So sue me for wanting to stay in touch.”
“But you have a family.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“I’m serious. You have parents. You have Valentina.” I almost sounded like I was pleading. “You have ten thousand aunts and uncles and primos in Colombia. That’s your family. That’s your real family. Not us.”
I was lying. Flagrantly. Violently. Manuel’s parents are best friends. Their lives are each other; their son is a mildly entertaining afterthought. I know this fact better than anyone. He knows I know.
“And what about you, huh?” Manuel asked. “Independent Eliot, all alone in her apartment. How does that feel, really? Does it feel good? Or does it feel like nothing at all?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? You used to be fun , Eliot. You used to drag me to parties and football games and all that other American bullshit I had no interest in doing. That was your idea. And now what? What do you do in New York? Anything? Do you even have friends?”
“Of course I have friends.”
“Oh, really? Name one.”
His words cut dangerously close to truth. In New York, the only people I go out with are my coworkers, and only when dragged.
They’re a different breed, my coworkers—the type of pseudo adults who snorted Xanax off their parents’ coffee tables in high school. They grew up in New York or Connecticut. They eat sixteen-dollar bowls of rice for lunch and their principal interest is which bar they went to the weekend before. They’re named Matt, Matt, or Matt. I tried eating with them my first two weeks on the job, but I learned quickly to steer clear. Their conversations, their competitions, the judgment and insecurity—the breakroom fogs up with it. It gathers in sweaty droplets at the lip of my water bottle. It chokes me. Leaves me with nothing to say. In high school, I ate lunch with the same person every single day. We said everything to each other, or we said nothing. It didn’t matter. But not in New York. In New York, nothing that came out of my mouth sounded like me. My voice was too loud, my words too juvenile. Better not to risk it. Better to stare wordlessly at the neon light of the vending machine and never open my mouth, not once.
So, no. I didn’t have many friends in New York. But I wasn’t going to tell Manuel that.
I hardened my voice, tried to keep it from shaking. “I hurt you, Manuel. I hurt you as hard as I possibly could. I ignored your calls. I ignored your texts. I pretended you didn’t exist for three whole years. Yet here you are. And you can pretend all you want not to be angry with me, but you are. I know you are.”
His eyes turned to almond flames.
“What do you want me to say, Eliot?” He stepped closer. “Do you really want to know how much it broke me when you cut me out of your life? Do you want me to tell you how I was depressed for months? How I had to hide from my roommates, to put on flip-flops and a bathrobe and walk down the hall to the communal bathroom just so I could sob my stupid, foolish, pathetic eyes out? How I ran to your sister for comfort because she was the closest thing I had to you?”
No. I didn’t want to hear it.
“Or maybe you’d rather hear about how fun college is. All the friends I’ve made. The parties I’ve been to, the girls I’ve fucked. Maybe that’s what you want to hear.” He stepped back. His large frame wobbled. “You know what? So what if I’m here for revenge, huh? Shouldn’t I be? Don’t I deserve it, after all this time?”
“You’re drunk.”
“Maybe I am. But am I wrong?”
I said nothing.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “You can avoid me for now, Eliot, but not forever.”
“You’re right,” I said, the words equal parts anger and slippery desperation. “You should hate me. Okay? In fact, you shouldn’t even trust me. I’ve given you no reason to. So just stop. Stop talking to me. Stop trusting me. Trust me, it’s better that way.”
Manuel turned and walked away, an upright ship sailing slowly into the night.
I stumbled up onto the boardwalk. Rounded the oak tree and started down the other side of the hill. By then, we’d been in Sunny Sunday for hours, leaving the boardwalk wide open and available for spiders to build their webs.
This island is covered in spiders. They swing from tree trunks, dangle below branches, perch in wait on webs as thick as wool. Orb weavers. Sheet weavers. Wolf spiders. Cellar spiders. Long bellied, star bellied. Hammock, garden, grass, hacklemesh, and—of course—the ever-present daddy longlegs. They build cobwebs and hide little yellow sacs filled with thousands of unhatched babies in places you don’t expect to find them—inside wakeboard gloves or between the folds of a wet towel. They coat this island, every inch of it. There’s no nook into which they cannot creep.
The winding path of the boardwalk, which zigs between boulders and zags around bushy trees, is the perfect place for spiders to build cobwebs. While the island sleeps, the spiders weave—just a strand at a time, thin as fishing line, pulled tight across the boardwalk. Sticky, silky, invisible to the naked eye. A thousand trip wires waiting for the unlucky first to rise.
They truly outdid themselves, that night. Didn’t settle for a few isolated embellishments. They decorated the whole damn thing. Door-to-door security. I kept running—down the narrow boardwalk, through the tunnels of trees, around the edge of the lake, gathering cobwebs the whole way.
Was Manuel right? Was keeping a secret impossible when you were keeping it from a person who knows you better than you know yourself? Was it all going to come spilling out, dragged by the sheer gravity of closeness, despite my best efforts, despite the fact that telling him would almost certainly sever him from my life forever? Would earn me nothing but his disgust, his revulsion. Would perhaps even end with him reporting me to the police.
That was why I did what I did. Why I cut myself off from my family and best friend. Because seeing them brought me back to my old life, to the self-torture and self-loathing I worked so hard to eliminate. To the person I finally stopped being when I moved to New York.
Work was my saving grace. Goals and schedules and assignments turned in far too early—those were the branches to which I clung, white-knuckled, until at last they dragged me free of the river in which I had for so long been drowning.
I knew what I had to do this week: I had to plaster a smile on my face, to show my family just how A-okay I really was. Not only to prove that adulthood was going just swell for me—that I’d earned my spot with the grown-ups—but to protect myself, too. To shield me from my Worries. Because they might have been silent for now, but their memory remained; they lingered at the edges of my consciousness, like the little flare-up of obsession over a piece of spit at dinner, a silent reminder of the power they once held over me. A voice that could, at any moment, come roaring back to life.
And I was afraid that if it did, this time it would be for good. That if my family discovered just how broken I was, there would be no putting me back together.
Henry always told me not to keep secrets. “You can hide it from everyone else,” he’d said, “but not me. We’re practically twins, remember? We’re connected. Anything that passes through your mind passes through mine, too.”
But wait, I realized. That quote—that couldn’t have been Henry. An eleven-year-old would never say something like that. Even a brilliant eleven-year-old. Or would he? Was he truly that exceptional? Or did Manuel say that to me much later on?
No. No, no, no. It was happening again. The confusion. That infuriating, torturous defect of mind. The one that only happened with Manuel and Henry.
It had been a problem as long as I could remember, but in the past three years, it had gotten worse. Sometimes, my memory replaced one boy with the other. Sometimes they appeared together, one being, a messed-up mixture of body parts, blended until I couldn’t tell if the boy in my memory was my best friend or a ghost of the brother who once was the same. I shook my head, a dog trying to dry its fur of rain.
My cabin for the week was Little Lies. (If you can’t tell, Speedy is a big folk music fan. All the cabins are named after songs by his favorites—“Sunny Sunday” by Joni Mitchell, “Little Lies” by Fleetwood Mac, “Tangled up in Blue” by Bob Dylan, etc. The soundtrack to his drug-fueled past life.) With just one bedroom, one bathroom, and a small screened-in porch facing out toward the water, it’s the smallest cabin on the island.
Outside Little Lies, I stopped and bent to gather my breath. It was only then, stooped over my body, staring at nothing, that I heard the paradox in what I’d said to Manuel.
Stop trusting me. Trust me.
I sighed.
When I straightened up, I spread my arms to the trees. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “I give you: the Copywriter.”