Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
D espite the age-thirteen hand-holding on Graham’s couch during Indiana Jones, Graham and Sylvie didn’t go on their first official date till they were fifteen.
By then, Graham had shot up to five-foot-seven (with far more inches to go till the end of high school), and Sylvie had lost her acne and baby fat and looked slightly more like the models in the magazines she sometimes read in the living room of The House on Nantucket. Slightly.
The date was Graham’s idea. He approached Sylvie after study hall, books tucked beneath his arm, looked her dead in the eye, and said, “Where have you been?”
Sylvie cocked her head. Although she wasn’t the pariah she’d been in middle school, it was still a rarity for anyone to approach her in the hallway like this.
Oftentimes, she wore headphones, listened to music, and pretended the rest of the world didn’t exist. She tugged her headphones down so that they hung on her neck and waited for him to explain himself.
When he didn’t, she said, “Where do you think I’ve been? ”
Graham deflated slightly, adjusting his books so they pressed against his chest like a shield.
Was he afraid of her? Sylvie wondered. But the truth was, she was pretending not to know what he meant when really it was obvious.
Two years ago, they’d bonded in a profoundly human way, and since then, they’d hardly spoken.
It was almost as though that sick day hadn’t ever happened. Almost.
But now, it seemed that Graham wanted to take back all that pretending. Why?
“I saw your poster board,” Graham said. “It’s cool.”
Sylvie realized he meant the poster she’d made for science class.
On it, she’d illustrated the quickly dying oceans and seas, the ways that various industries had destroyed the wildlife therein, and what humanity needed to do if they were going to save their natural resources.
They needed to act fast. Maybe they were already doomed.
She’d gotten an A on the poster, and the teacher had hung it up as a model for other students.
“It’s useless,” Sylvie said now of the poster.
When Graham had nothing to say, Sylvie turned and shot down the hallway. Her pulse was going fast and wild.
She heard Graham’s footsteps tapping behind her, but she didn’t turn around till they were outside, and he said, “Sylvie, please. Stop.”
Sylvie was on the sidewalk under the big maple tree.
She could feel fifty-plus pairs of eyes, other students catching buses or car rides with parents, watching Sylvie Bruckson and Graham Ellis.
She could imagine what they were thinking: what is Graham doing with that loser, Sylvie?
Sylvie flared her nostrils and turned around.
“You don’t have to be nice to me,” she said under her breath.
Graham’s eyes were electric. “I’m not being nice to you.”
Sylvie stiffened. “Good. I’m not being nice to you, either.”
What was she saying? It was as though she’d lost the plot of her life. For two years, she’d desperately wanted Graham to look at her, to take her hand again, to make a joke about Indiana Jones.
A passing group of juniors burst into giggles. Sylvie’s cheeks were burning.
Graham reached over to touch her shoulder.
Sylvie flinched back, then cursed herself.
She couldn’t remember the last time her father had hugged her.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had any human contact.
What did that do to a person? How was that damaging her heart?
But she knew that Graham’s mother probably hugged him every day when he got home from school.
She knew that he and his guy friends high-fived between shots on the basketball court.
She knew that he was a part of the human experience, and she was not.
“I wondered if…” Graham began, then bit his lower lip.
“What?” Sylvie demanded. But her voice was like a string.
“I wondered if you could tell me a little bit more about your, um, research,” Graham said. “I’ve been having these crazy dreams. About the planet. About Nantucket.”
Sylvie softened. She searched Graham’s eyes for some sense that he was teasing her, that he wanted to make fun of her poster and her research.
But she saw only genuine fear. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and remembered the piles and piles of notes she had back at home, notes she’d taken after multiple hours in the library.
“Do you want to see my notes?” Sylvie asked.
Graham nodded. “Sounds like a good place to start.”
When Sylvie and Graham reached Sylvie’s house, Sylvie tiptoed into the foyer to call out for her father. “Dad?” When nobody answered, she beckoned for Graham to come inside.
“Are you not allowed to have people over?” he asked.
Sylvie gave him a look. “I mean, are you allowed to have random girls over without asking your mom?”
“You aren’t random,” Graham said.
Sylvie didn’t know what to say to that. She certainly didn’t want to tell Graham that nobody had been over to visit her, not since her and Caitlin’s big friend breakup.
She was surprised that she wasn’t embarrassed by the house, of the big photographs that featured her mother and Sylvie as a toddler, of the dishes piled up in the sink.
They went up the stairs to her bedroom. It was tidy, mostly because her father grew incredibly volatile if she didn’t keep it that way.
Her research notes were on the desk. She handed them to Graham, again searching his eyes for some sign of betrayal.
He clutched the papers and looked at her with an open and earnest face.
He said, “But what can we do?”
Sylvie frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What can we do about the oceans? How can we save them?”
Sylvie dropped to the edge of the bed so that the mattress shook beneath her. She gazed out the window, where, far down the road, she could make out a sliver of Nantucket Sound.
“It’s basically up to politicians and corporations,” she said sadly.
“I don’t believe that,” Graham offered. “There has to be something. Change starts with one person. One person telling someone else. Your poster inspired me, Sylvie. I went home and talked to my mom about how much we recycle, and we have a whole new plan in place. I’m reading about vegetarianism.”
Sylvie took a breath. She hadn’t imagined such intensity behind Graham Ellis.
With a meek voice, she said, “I’m vegetarian, too.”
“Of course you are,” he said with a big smile. “It’s environmentally responsible.”
Silence filled the room. For a moment, Sylvie allowed herself to imagine the two of them throwing their arms around one another and kissing. Kissing as though the world was about to end anyway , she thought.
But then she said, “There’s no reason we can’t start small.”
“Exactly,” Graham said, snapping his fingers. “Think about our community.”
“Or our school,” she said. “I think they barely recycle. And the food they serve in the cafeteria is not environmentally friendly. And so many people have their own cars and drive themselves to school. I mean, carpooling would do so much.”
Graham nodded furiously. Idealism sizzled between them.
“We could even get a crew together to clean up the beaches,” he said.
Sylvie popped off her bed to grab her notebook. “We have to write all this down.”
They spent the next three hours listing out ideas and hatching plans. Sylvie was surprised at how many times Graham made her laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. She was amazed at how often she made him smile.
When they were finished, they had ten sheets of paper—paper they agreed they would recycle the minute they’d finished with it—upon which they’d listed their environmental goals.
Sylvie couldn’t believe how optimistic she felt.
When she walked Graham back downstairs to say goodbye, she had to fight the urge to hug him.
“When I made that poster board, I thought we were doomed,” she said softly. “But maybe you’re right. One baby step at a time. Maybe we’ll make a difference.”
Graham looked as though he wanted to say something else. Sylvie was suddenly terrified that he wanted to take it all back, as though he wanted to say, We’re taking it too far . So Sylvie hurried to say, “It’s okay if you want to call it off.”
Graham flinched. “Call it off?”
Sylvie nodded.
But Graham’s smile was crooked and handsome and charged with emotion. He said, “We’re going to take the world by storm.”
With that, he swept off the porch and down the road. Sylvie’s knees nearly gave out beneath her. She thought, Maybe I won’t end up all alone .
Sylvie and Graham’s Environmental Club began as a party of two but soon swelled to a party of twelve.
They met weekly in the science classroom where Sylvie’s poster remained tacked to the wall.
It was there they discussed protests, cleanup crews, and various environmental disasters occurring faster and faster around the world.
Together, they made posters that tried to convince other students to go vegetarian, and they met with the school board to talk about better recycling habits and why it behooved the school district to make the change.
But Sylvie and Graham were soon miffed at how little they felt they were getting done.
When summer hit and the beaches were swarming with tourists, they walked brokenhearted through the island, trying their best to pick up garbage.
They watched cruise ships go by, knowing they were some of the worst polluters of their beautiful oceans.
Sometimes Sylvie allowed herself to mourn the fact that she and Graham had never kissed.
Maybe their romantic life had died along with their hope for bettering the environment.
Perhaps by sophomore year, they’d start avoiding one another again.
They’d close up their environmental club. They’d start eating meat again.
But everything changed in August of 2000.