Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
I t was nearly two years since the regatta protest, and Sylvie and Graham were more in love than ever.
At seventeen years old and with nothing to lose, they fought valiantly for a better world, staging little protests across Nantucket and traveling to Boston to meet with bigger protest groups.
They used the internet to push their message and wrote numerous articles for the Nantucket newspapers about the delicate ecosystem on the island and how “regular people” could help out day-to-day.
It felt like they were finally getting somewhere.
They’d been arrested no fewer than four times.
Sylvie’s father thought she was insane. Ever since the very first arrest at the 2000 regatta, he’d done everything in his power to get between her and her “environmental bogus.” Sylvie had had to get extraordinarily creative in order to continue seeing Graham and pushing their message.
James had always been one of her biggest enemies, but now she saw him as something far greater and more sinister than that. He was against a better world.
Because Sylvie was seventeen years old and “needed to earn her keep,” she worked almost daily at The House on Nantucket.
There, she handled day-to-day operations at the front desk, checked people in, and occasionally cleaned rooms. Sylvie hated working there.
She hated seeing her father every day, walking in that dominant and aggressive way of his, shooting angry looks her way.
Mrs. Galloway and Frank, the other employees who’d worked there for years, didn’t seem bothered by him.
“That’s your father’s way,” Mrs. Galloway said sometimes. “He’s a man in a great deal of pain.”
“Pain?” Sylvie scoffed. If anyone was in pain, it was her. James had seen to that.
But just because Sylvie had to work didn’t mean she and Graham weren’t perpetually at work on their true mission.
That Fourth of July was the Nantucket Festival, which always brought in a staggering two hundred thousand tourists.
Armed with buckets of beer bottles and gushes of wine and spirits, their bellies full of seafood and salty fare, they partied all through the weekend, sailed dangerously and drunkenly across the Sound, barbecued from their iconic vacation homes, and generally pretended as though whatever “real” life they’d scored wherever they lived didn’t exist. These people—the wealthy millionaires and billionaires who treated the planet like their personal trashbin—were Sylvie and Graham’s targets.
But what was the best way to get their attention and teach them a lesson?
At first, Graham and Sylvie put their efforts toward a dramatic hand-made poster, which they spent mornings and evenings painting in Graham’s garage.
They listened to music and wrote out facts about ocean life, Nantucket’s unique ecosystem, and how the people celebrating the Fourth of July were single-handedly ruining island life.
SAVE THE PLANET! KEEP NANTUCKET ALIVE! As they worked, they listened to music on full blast, wiping sweat from their brows with the back of their hands.
Sometimes, they took breaks to kiss or take snacks from Valerie’s refrigerator.
Valerie knew about the poster; she’d seen what they were planning to write and said, “It’s powerful.
” She also said she wished she would have been more “worldly” when she was their age.
She wished she would have made a difference.
But Sylvie wasn’t convinced their poster was powerful enough. After all, it was easy to ignore a bit of writing, even if that writing contained three-foot-tall lettering. It was especially easy to ignore it when you were a multi-millionaire and out of your mind on expensive champagne.
“We need something bigger,” Sylvie breathed over the phone to Graham about three weeks before the Fourth of July, wrapped in a ball on her childhood bed.
“Bigger? You want to get more handcuffs?” Graham asked.
“I think they’ll be expecting that,” Sylvie said, frustration mounting. “We can’t do the same thing over and over again.”
“Maybe we need to gather more people,” Graham suggested.
Sylvie groaned, remembering the other high schoolers who occasionally dipped in and out of the environmental club.
They’d been excited by Graham and Sylvie’s 2000 summertime arrest (and the fame that had come with it) and had wanted to jump on the bandwagon.
But Graham and Sylvie didn’t think they were serious about the message they were fighting for.
“I don’t want them to get cold feet in the middle of a demonstration,” she said finally.
Graham went quiet. Sylvie could picture him in his own childhood bedroom, a Star Trek poster tacked to the wall over his bed, a desk covered with books and journals, photographs of him and Sylvie taped to the door.
“I just think we have to do something daring,” Sylvie countered. “Daring and big and unforgettable. We have to stop them in their tracks. You know?”
“I know. We’ll come up with something,” Graham said.
A few minutes later, Sylvie and Graham said good night and “I love you” and hung up the phone. Sylvie brushed her teeth and got into bed, feeling the weight of the world on her chest. It was up to her and Graham to fix everything, she’d decided. Nobody else was going to.
That’s when the door burst open to reveal her father.
James was a dark and ominous shadow in her doorway.
Sylvie leaped up, reaching over to turn on her lamp.
But this only illuminated how sweaty and strange James was, shifting uneasily as though he’d had too much to drink.
If Sylvie had to guess, she’d say that he’d been in his study, looking over old photographs of her mother and bemoaning his existence.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Sylvie demanded. “You’re scaring me.”
James took a step into the bedroom, bringing with him the smell of salt and sweat.
“Dad?” Sylvie got out of bed and tried to stand her ground, but her legs were shaking. She tried to find a path past him, but he took up too much space. It would have been easy for him to reach out and grab her.
“I heard you,” James growled. “I know what you’re up to.”
Sylvie glared at him. Last summer, she’d asked for a separate phone line in her bedroom, but he’d denied her. She thought she was good at detecting when someone was listening in, but sometimes she got carried away with James.
“If you heard anything, you know I have no plans,” Sylvie shot back.
James took another dramatic step forward. “Your mother would be ashamed of you.”
It felt like a smack. Her father never spoke of her mother.
“That’s a lie,” Sylvie said. “Mom believed in me. She believed I was capable of so much. She believed in more than that stupid inn and money and whatever else you stand for.”
James’s hands were in fists the size of massive rocks. Sylvie was suddenly terrified. Her father had never been violent with her, but the look in his eyes was red-hot and murderous.
“I think it’s about time we did something about this,” James said under his breath. “It’s about time I stop letting you destroy what I’ve built.”
Sylvie’s eyes widened. She told herself it was an empty threat.
She decided on another tactic. “I need to go to bed, Dad. Please, let me sleep.”
“I don’t think so,” he shot. He turned on the overhead lights and stomped out into the hallway. “Come with me.”
Sylvie remained in her bedroom. Terror spiked in her heart.
“If you don’t get out here, Sylvie, you won’t like what happens next,” James said.
Sylvie couldn’t fathom what that meant. But she scurried after him, feeling like a frightened rabbit, and followed her father to the living room downstairs.
He pointed at the sofa, using his eyes to demand that she sit, then disappeared into his study.
He returned with a thick folder, which he smacked on the coffee table. “Open it.”
Sylvie’s hands shook as she reached for the folder. Her nails were painted bright pink in a vegan nail polish she’d recently discovered at a little earth-friendly shop in the Nantucket Historic District, but she’d bitten them to the quick, maybe due to anxiety, perhaps due to youth.
Inside the folder was an application to a boarding school in Maine.
Sylvie’s jaw dropped. “What is this?”
“That’s where you’re going for senior year,” he growled.
“No. I’m not.” Sylvie closed the folder and stood. “I’m seventeen years old. I only have one year left of school.”
“You’re seventeen, and I’m your father,” James shot back.
“This is my home,” Sylvie said.
“It’s only your home because I’m paying for it,” James said. “It’s only your home because I’ve agreed to let you live here. Now, that agreement is ending. We’re filling out that application tonight.”
“What if I don’t get in? I have a record, remember?”
James’s smile was strange. “There are other schools. Other applications. We can spend all summer long filling them out.”
Sylvie sat back down. She couldn’t stop shaking. Graham’s face came to her mind, that wonderful smile, the glint in his eyes when he was about to kiss her. She couldn’t leave Graham. She couldn’t leave her home.
“I won’t do it,” Sylvie snarled.
“Won’t do what? I thought you weren’t planning anything?” James mocked her.
“You know we were.” Sylvie shrugged. “I’m telling you, I’ll end it. I’ll stop everything.”
James chuckled. “I’ll believe it when I see it. You’re a menace. You don’t understand how the world works.”
“And you don’t understand that you’re killing the world!” Sylvie’s breathing was shallow.
James groaned and put his face in his hands.
“Please, Dad,” Sylvie begged. “Please, don’t send me away.”
James’s voice was thin when he said, “Just go up to your room. I’ll fill out the application myself.”