Chapter 5
Chapter Five
S ylvie was thirteen years old when her father shattered a vase across the floor.
They were in the dining room of The House on Nantucket, the bed-and-breakfast he ran from next door, and the shards of the vase glinted from all corners, reflecting a father and daughter who simply couldn’t get along.
But what was Sylvie’s crime this time? Oh, Sylvie was sick and didn’t want to go to school, and James just could not deal with that.
So the vase. So the volatility. Sylvie burst into tears and ran out of the inn, sniffling the entire way.
She really was so sick. She hated that she couldn’t control that.
Maybe if her father wasn’t so nervous about what the neighbors would think, James might have come out on the front porch and screamed at Sylvie to come back.
But Sylvie knew how wary Nantucketers were of island gossip.
The sound of a broken vase was something easily explained.
Something had fallen, and it was an accident.
Nobody would have to know. Even if they suspected that James was like that, they would never have official proof.
Sylvie should have known better than to ask her father if she could stay home.
But her cough had turned rather horribly into what felt like the flu, and she was smack-dab in the middle of puberty, and—worst of all—her best friend Caitlin had just decided to be best friends with someone else.
She’d ditched Sylvie pretty publicly, moving from Sylvie’s lunch table over to Tiffany’s, where they’d giggled together for the rest of the half hour.
Sylvie felt more alone than she ever had, including the era immediately following her mother’s death. At least she’d had Caitlin back then.
Sylvie ran from the inn all the way to the combined middle school-high school about a half mile away.
When she reached it, she gasped for breath that didn’t come.
It turned out running like that hadn’t been a good idea when she was this sick.
She staggered to a halt and coughed until it felt like her lungs were going to fly out of her throat.
When she pulled her head up, she found the gym teacher a few strides away. He pointed at the front door. “I think it’s time for the nurse?” His eyes showed no kindness, but kindness was a rare thing at school. All the teachers were paid too little and stretched thin.
Sylvie inched down the hallway. The first bell rang, and everyone scattered to their classrooms, clutching books.
Sylvie spotted Caitlin far down the hall, throwing her head back at a joke some guy told her.
That was another thing Caitlin seemed to do now: date boys or at least know them.
When they’d been close, Caitlin and Sylvie had regarded boys as another species, one they weren’t particularly interested in.
Sylvie didn’t feel so much betrayed by this as mystified.
At thirteen, she was sure she’d have to wade through the devastating reality of high school on her own.
But in the nurse’s office, she found she wasn’t the only student ill that day. As she lay on one of the long white beds, she heard a sniffling and coughing on the opposite side of a sheet between them. The nurse told whoever it was to lie down and get comfortable. “I’ll call your mom,” she said.
Sylvie’s heart surged with longing. How she wished that the nurse could call her mom. How she wished her mother were alive to come pick her up.
Sometimes she caught herself wishing her father had died instead—and then hating herself for having that thought. She didn’t want anyone to be dead. She just wanted things to go back to how they’d been.
The nurse disappeared to contact whoever’s mom, then returned to talk to Sylvie about her flu-like symptoms. “We really shouldn’t keep you here,” she said.
Sylvie swallowed the lump in her throat. “My dad’s too busy today. He can’t, like, pick me up.” And I really don’t want to go home. Please, don’t make me go home.
The nurse scrutinized her and took a step back. “Let’s hold off on calling him for now. Maybe you’ll feel better in an hour or so?”
“Yes,” Sylvie said, her heartbeat quickening. It was like the nurse could read her mind.
Sylvie guessed that reading minds was a part of the job description of being a school nurse. At thirteen, kids didn’t know how to express themselves.
Sylvie lay back and closed her eyes. Her fever made the room spin.
The nurse left the office. Sylvie could hear whoever was behind the sheet breathing heavily. Then they coughed. Sylvie echoed the cough, then put her hand over her mouth.
“Who is it?” a boy’s voice called out to her. “Who else is dying in here with me?”
At first, Sylvie couldn’t place it. At first, she wanted to pretend to be asleep.
“I can hear you breathing,” the boy said.
“It’s Sylvie Bruckson,” she said, embarrassment filling her chest.
“Ah. Hi.” There was a calm energy to the boy’s voice. It reminded Sylvie of lying on the grass in the summertime.
“And you?” Sylvie asked.
“You can’t tell?”
Sylvie felt a game coming on. Her lips wiggled into a smile. “Um. Michael Jordan?”
“Close,” he said. “Keep trying.”
“Elton John.”
The boy cackled and then immediately started to cough again. Sylvie liked the sensation of making him laugh. She liked feeling like it didn’t matter who they were, where they’d come from, or the fact that they were both incredibly sick. They took pleasure in silliness.
“Should I sing for you?” the boy asked.
“Please don’t.” She giggled.
But then, the boy began to sing—a song that had spent most of the past three years on the radio station, a song by Sheryl Crow that Sylvie hadn’t thought any boy would ever like.
She joined him, and they lay there together, singing and coughing until they forgot the words and burst into another round of giggles.
When was the last time Sylvie laughed with someone? Even Caitlin hadn’t been particularly cheerful during the last few weeks of their friendship, probably because she’d been planning her way out.
Suddenly, Sylvie realized who the boy was. “You’re Graham Ellis.”
“What? Who is this Graham Ellis you speak of?” But his tone told her she was right.
Sylvie remembered Graham: curly-haired and slightly awkward but always eager to laugh. He was in two of her classes and always got good grades, but never as good as hers. They’d only spoken to one another a handful of times. Sylvie had always thought he didn’t know who she was.
It was funny that she hadn’t recognized his voice at first. But she sensed that it had changed slightly since the last time she’d heard it. It was deeper. He was in the midst of puberty, too, after all.
“Are you leaving school today?” she asked.
“I’m sure my mom will come get me soon,” Graham said. There was relief in his voice. “Do you think we have the same thing?”
“Maybe,” Sylvie said. She remembered the shards of the vase on the floor. She remembered the ragged anger in her father’s voice.
Did Graham’s mother ever throw things? Did she ever yell?
“My dad can’t come get me,” she said. “But I feel awful. Like worse than I ever have.”
There was a lot of drama in her tone. She hoped Graham didn’t think she was overly dramatic, overly silly.
“Is he busy with work?” Graham asked. “My dad is always working.”
“Yes.” It was easier to say this, and it was even partially true.
“What’s it like to own an inn?” Graham asked.
“It’s weird. My life is mostly made up of people we’ll never see again.”
Graham said, “That sounds interesting. Like you could pretend to be someone new every week.”
Sylvie rolled to her side and gazed at the sheet that separated them.
She wondered what he looked like over there—if his nose was tinged red with sickness or if he looked greenish like she did.
She wondered what it would be like to hold hands with him, then banished the thought.
She didn’t know how to talk to boys! She didn’t know how to be a girlfriend!
Suddenly, the door to the nurse’s office opened and brought him a sunshiny lady with bushy blond hair. “Oh, Graham,” the woman said, shaking her head before she disappeared behind the sheet.
It was Graham’s mother.
“You should have told me you didn’t feel well!” she said.
“I did,” Graham said.
“You made it seem like you were faking it,” Graham’s mother teased.
“You just didn’t believe me,” Graham said.
But there was a lightness to this mini-argument, a silliness that meant that the two of them would go back to Graham’s place, eat pancakes, and watch movies until Graham felt well again. Sylvie’s stomach ached with jealousy.
But then, a miracle happened.
“We have to take Sylvie with us,” Graham said.
His mother hesitated. “I don’t know about that.”
“She’s over there,” Graham said.
Suddenly, Graham’s mother ripped back the sheet to look at Sylvie. Sylvie felt exposed and pulled herself upright, wrapping her arms around her knees.
“How are you feeling, honey?” Graham’s mother asked.
“She doesn’t feel good,” Graham declared. “That’s why she’s here!”
Graham’s mother sighed. “Did they call your dad?”
“I can’t go home,” Sylvie told her quietly.
The nurse entered, observing the scene with a nervous smile. “Are we all ready to go, Graham?”
“We’re taking Sylvie,” he said again.
His mother lent the nurse a nervous smile.
“Tell them, Sylvie,” Graham insisted. “Tell them that your father can’t pick you up. He’s too busy with work.”
A look of shame passed over Graham’s mother’s face. It was clear that, as a mother, she felt she had to step in to save this poor motherless girl.
“We’ll have to call your dad to make sure it’s okay,” the nurse said with her hands clasped.
But when they called the house and then The House on Nantucket Inn, the phone rang and rang and rang. James didn’t answer.
“We’ll stop by on our way and let him know,” Graham’s mother said, her voice edged with authority.
The nurse looked panicked until her eyes fell again on little Sylvie in the bed. Pity took over her face. She said, “Oh, honey. You need to get out of here, don’t you?”
This was how Sylvie found herself at Graham Ellis’s house for the first time.
On the way, they’d stopped by both Sylvie’s house and The House on Nantucket to speak to James, but he hadn’t been there.
It was only an hour after she’d encountered Graham in the nurse’s office, and Sylvie found herself bundled up on Graham’s sofa, with Graham bundled up beside her and his mother doting on them, filling mugs with tea and bowls with soup, baking chocolate chip cookies, and asking them to tell her what they needed, when they needed it.
Sylvie had never experienced that level of care.
When she went to the bathroom that morning, she burst into quiet tears and cleaned herself up immediately, not wanting them to know how sad she was.
All this tenderness made her miss her mother so desperately.
When they arrived, they put in a VHS of Labyrinth with David Bowie.
Sylvie had never seen it before, but apparently, it was a favorite of Graham’s and his mother’s.
She was fascinated with how bizarre it was and even more surprised at how funny Graham and his mother were as they watched it, quoting the lines and saying, “Oh, this is the best part!” every few scenes.
Sylvie felt relaxed and sleepy and so, so happy.
When it was time for her to pick a movie to watch, she went through the VHS tapes, nervous about picking the right thing.
Eventually, she settled on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark . Graham clapped his hands wildly.
“It’s the perfect sick movie,” he explained.
“I can’t watch this movie again,” his mother said with a laugh. “You guys holler if you need anything.”
Suddenly, Sylvie found herself alone in the living room with a boy.
Her heart started to pound. Was this the kind of thing Caitlin did all the time now?
Her hands clammed up as Harrison Ford embarked on an adventure across the desert.
She was filled with questions. Why had Graham gone out of his way to invite her to his house?
Why was he being so nice to her? Didn’t he know that nobody liked her?
That her best friend had abandoned her? That she was weird?
She was dying to know what he was thinking about.
But she soon got her answer. During a particularly lovely scene, when Harrison Ford kisses Karen Allen for the first time, Graham reached under the covers and took her sweaty hand in his clammy one.
They linked fingers, unable to look one another in the eye.
Sylvie thought she was going crazy. But up till now, it was the happiest moment of her life.