Chapter 26 Gigi
Gigi first met Alexander on the beach at British Landing.
It was a rainy April day during her senior year of high school. She’d left the house to evade the lecture Eloise was giving
about Gigi’s lack of college plans.
“College just cages you in conformity,” Gigi said.
“Is that what you think?” Eloise asked. “Or what your dad thinks?”
“What I think.” It was true that those were Gus’s words, but Gigi agreed with him of her own free will. She’d originally planned
to go to college as the most expedient way off the island, but the more she’d talked about it with her dad on his latest visit,
the more she’d started questioning it. She’d have to take out so many student loans that she’d be forced into some high-paying
corporate job after graduating just to get out of debt, and she’d be stripped of whatever independent thinking she had left.
She might as well get a job straight out of high school and save up some money while figuring out for herself what she actually
wanted to do.
“Besides, you didn’t go to college,” Gigi said to Eloise.
“Because I got married,” Eloise replied.
Eloise was trying to control her again, live out her own dashed dreams through her daughter. Gigi wouldn’t stand for it.
“I’ll get married too, then,” Gigi said. “That’ll solve everything.” Then she fled the house, heading down to British Landing
for some alone time.
The beach was damp and shrouded in clouds. It was spitting rain. Gigi preferred the gloom. It was easier to imagine she might be someplace interesting when she couldn’t see the horizon.
A young man was sitting in the sand. He looked like he’d come from the golf course or a job interview, maybe both. A bottle
of wine and a book lay beside him.
Gigi guessed it was the governor’s son, the one who was just a few years older than her. Alexander Vanderhosen III. He went
to Cornell or Columbia; Gigi couldn’t recall and didn’t care.
Gigi walked up to him, curious to see what he was like. “Shitty day, huh?”
Alexander looked up. His eyes were inky, the color of midnight. “Pretty shitty.”
Gigi took this as an invitation to sit down. Wet sand clumped to the backs of her legs. She was glad she’d shaved.
His book was a collection of poems by Edgar Allan Poe. Gigi had paid attention to the lessons on Poe in school because he
wrote a lot about death. Gigi figured that if you were going to be a poet, you might as well be a depressing one.
“Can I have some?” Gigi asked, eyeing the wine.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Ah, you’re one of those.”
“One of what?”
“Rule abiders.”
This bothered him. It was obvious in how he kicked the sand, like he was trying to leave a divot. “No, I’m not. That’s why
I’m here. I’m rebelling.”
“Oh?” Gigi said. “Against what?”
“My parents. Oppression. The whole fucked-up capitalistic world.”
“All topics worthy of an uprising.” Gigi sifted through the sand, searching for shells. Eloise and Rebecca always liked to
collect them. Gigi liked to crunch them up and scatter them.
Alexander looked at her, really looked this time. “Who are you?”
“One of the ghosts who haunts the island.”
His lips, full and pouty, nearly folded into a smile. “An evil ghost or a friendly ghost?”
“Evil,” Gigi said.
He laughed nervously. “You still haven’t told me your name.”
“Gigi. And you’re Alexander.”
“Xander,” he said. “Alexander is too pretentious.”
“Only when you include the three Roman numerals afterward.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Solid deductive reasoning skills. Putting your fancy college education to good use.”
He looked glad to be called out like this. “What’re you doing on the beach?”
“I was going to go skinny-dipping,” Gigi lied. “Care to join?”
His face shifted. His legs did too. “How about we go to the hot tub back at my house? My parents are at some fundraising event
at the Grand.”
Gigi noted even then how he seemed fond of the privilege he professed to resent, but she didn’t point out the hypocrisy. She
wanted to see the house. She’d always loved the governor’s mansion, envied what it represented. An entire world that existed
without her. Here was her chance in, her chance out.
“We’ll go skinny-dipping another time,” Xander said as they stood up. “But the water has to be warm.”
“Mexico,” Gigi said. “We’ll go to Mexico.”
***
They didn’t make it to Mexico, but they went to Florida two months later.
The plans came together quickly. Long nights, short fuses. Applauding each other’s genius. Ranting about society’s archaic
template for success, how it trapped everyone in a zombie-like existence. College, marriage, kids, retirement, death. One
manic sprint to the grave.
Musings morphed into planning over edibles on the beach. Marijuana wasn’t legal yet. Xander had gotten them from a fraternity brother, stocking up at the end of last term.
“Let’s run away,” he said. “Let’s just fucking go.”
Gigi popped another gummy. “I’m in.”
Their romance always felt like a race. For Gigi, a race to start a new life, far away from Mackinac. For Xander, a race to
end an old life, the one where he had to get straight A’s, network with politicians at holiday parties, and evaluate every
life decision in the context of how it would strengthen or smear his résumé.
It wasn’t like she thought Xander was her forever guy. She didn’t want to get married until she was much, much older, if at
all. Her parents were proof that young love didn’t last. But this didn’t need to last. It just needed to get her off this
island.
Gigi didn’t have a passport. This limited their options, though the governor’s private plane only flew domestically anyway.
The plane was a key part of the plan.
“It’ll be ironic,” Xander said when Gigi asked why he wanted to make their getaway on the jet when it stood for everything
they were rebelling against. “And my parents will freak.”
“It just seems a bit excessive,” Gigi said. “Stealing the plane. We could find another way. A motorcycle, maybe.”
“You’re thinking too small,” Xander said, and Gigi thought he might be right. “If you really want your parents to respect
you, you have to show them that you’re capable of big things.”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with my parents,” Gigi said, though she was already thinking about what they would do when
they found her missing. She would be teaching them a lesson. Her mother a lesson about what happens when you’re overly involved
in your child’s life. And her father a lesson about what happens when you’re absent from it.
“Okay,” Xander said. “But we’re still taking the plane.”
“Fine,” Gigi said. “But you’re bailing me out if we get in trouble.”
“We’re not going to get in trouble.”
Gigi should have known that what he meant was he was not going to get in trouble because of his last name and connections
and all the things Gigi didn’t have.
Xander forged a note from the governor saying he and Gigi needed to be taken down to Florida for a college function. The pilot
didn’t question it.
Gigi packed in the night while Rebecca slept. She could have packed in the day, but doing it in the dark felt more scandalous.
The day of their departure, Gigi headed off to school, then slipped back to the house to collect her suitcase after Eloise
was at work. She thought Xander might back out, but he was waiting for her at the airfield. Ten minutes later, they were taking
off. It was Gigi’s first time flying. She didn’t tell Xander that. She just drank the mini wine bottles from the fridge and
stared out at the cotton-candy clouds.
This is living , she thought. She felt very close to her dad in that moment, though she hadn’t seen him in a while.
She hoped he would be proud of her getaway. Worried too, of course, but once he tracked her down, he would be proud. Maybe
he’d even offer her a job at the repair shop he was working at down in Asheville. They could go on trips together on the weekends,
that sort of thing. She would have proved to him that she wasn’t a kid anymore, that she could handle real adventure, even
danger. Sometimes it felt like he still saw her as the eight-year-old she’d been when he’d moved out. This would remind him
that she was almost eighteen now, a real adult.
The plane touched down in Tampa. They would drive to Miami to throw off the authorities (a search party would surely commence
shortly). Gigi assumed they would rent a car, but Xander had a driver pick them up in a black Lexus.
“Here we go,” Xander said, squeezing Gigi’s hand as they sat in the plush back seat. “We’re on our own now.”
The hotel in Miami looked like a spaceship. Glitzy and modern, mood lights blinking. Three infinity pools, six hot tubs, and a jungle spa. Xander handed over his credit card, paid by his parents.
“Won’t they notice the charge?” Gigi asked in the elevator up to their suite.
“They never check the bill,” he said.
Gigi thought they would be making it on their own, Bonnie and Clyde style. But maybe Xander was right. The best way to oppose
privilege was to abuse it. And didn’t she deserve this after being shuttered away on Mackinac her whole life?
The first night was a thrill. Room service and robes and sex and tequila shots in the hot tub (Xander tipped well enough that
no one carded them). They slept in until noon, had a couple’s massage in a private cabana, and guzzled frozen margaritas to
cure the hangovers.
“Do you think they’re looking for us yet?” Xander asked.
“Probably.” Eloise would have pieced together that Gigi was with Xander. Gigi pictured her walking up to the governor’s mansion,
rapping the brass knocker. Rebecca would probably be drafting a speech for Gigi’s funeral.
The third day was when the cracks started appearing, fissures on thin ice.
“I don’t know what’s taking them so long,” Xander said from a poolside lounge chair. “To find us.”
Gigi, too, was feeling disconcerted. She’d expected her parents to work faster than this. Perhaps they weren’t that worried
after all.