Chapter 33
WILLIAM
At first, William was drawn to the loud whistle.
Then it was the lights. A crackling wick followed by a fierce spray of orange sparks.
The teenagers setting off the bottle rockets were difficult to see at first, the moon muffled by a cloud bank.
They were moving outlines until their silhouettes burned gold in the fireworks’ flare.
Then he could see their shaggy bangs, the slopes of their noses, their lips cracked into grins.
They were firing the bottle rockets at one another.
Two would peel off from the pack and sprint across an open field, grinding the wheel of a lighter until they lit the fuse.
As it burned down, they’d aim the slim tubes at their opponent like the barrel of a gun, bolting as soon as the rockets fired so that the fireworks sputtered out harmlessly into the grass.
The remaining four—they were all boys except for one girl, from what he could tell—would whoop and holler.
There was the clink of bottles. A transistor radio that kept losing the signal, verses of a Heart song waving in and out.
He watched from the other side of the road, hesitant to interrupt their revelry.
“Jeez, we got a real marine over here,” one of the boys shouted.
“Yeah, what was that move, G.I. Joe?”
One of the boys had dropped to his stomach after the rocket had fired, rolling sideways across the lawn.
He shook his head out as he approached, brushing blades of grass from his long hair.
They shoved him playfully, except for the girl, who was looking at William.
Her face was plain, each of her features too small for its pale moon, and William thought of how whenever there was one girl in a thicket of boys, it seemed like they either all wanted to have sex with her or saw her as sexless.
There seemed to be no middle ground. She nodded at him, directing the others’ attention with her chin.
“You need something?” one of the boys asked.
“I was just watching,” William said.
“He’s a looky-loo.”
“A lurker.”
He felt embarrassed. It was remarkable how easy it was for teenagers to make him feel sixteen again.
“You’re one of the fancy wedding guests,” the girl said. Her voice was deep, like she’d pitched it to match the others.
“Well, we’re not all fancy,” he said.
“I thought they were all supposed to be at Lorraine’s tonight,” one of the boys said. William was surprised at this knowledge, though of course the locals would be aware of their movements, tracking them like a flock of geese. It made him feel uneasy, like they’d been watching him this whole time.
“I guess I just needed a little break,” he said.
The girl studied him, her face inscrutable. Her eyes and mouth too minute to read, like a figure in the background of a painting.
“You can hang,” she said, and knelt down to pick up a bottle of rum, her braid falling over one shoulder, brushing against the grass. The boys said nothing, as if they all knew her word was final. One unwrapped a Snickers bar and bit it in half.
After William joined them, the firing evolved into a more legitimate game of chicken, the boys seeing how long they could wait before diving out of the rocket’s path.
The girl never played, but seemed to preside over the proceedings like a judge, chiding the boys who jagged too early, calling them babies and chickenshits.
She offered no praise, even to the tall one who was almost struck. There obviously wasn’t any fun in that.
Though William had thought he wanted to be alone, he liked being around them.
It allowed him to imagine that he was from the island, and they asked him nothing except how old he was and why he owned such torn-up sneakers.
He wondered what age he looked to all of them.
He was too young for crow’s-feet or a receding hairline and still had the same wiry shape he held in high school.
He knew he no longer looked like a teenager, but he could not tell how exactly, just that he no longer had their colt-like sheen, that vibration of energy that made it seem like—if they had their way—they’d never go to sleep. He always needed to sleep.
Lights from distant houses snapped off. He wondered whether Shay was still at the bar or if his cousins were asking after him.
If Oscar would attempt another swim in the bay.
Whether his mother had tried to call Aunt Eleanor again, the phone ringing out in her empty apartment. If Lewis could hear it.
“Ready for a turn?”
The girl was looking at him again. For the first time, he noticed that she wore tiny turquoise studs in her ears, and he wondered if she was in love with one of the boys.
If, before she’d come out, she’d tried on one of her mother’s lipsticks and then wiped it off, knowing that it would look too conspicuous.
Though he’d never felt that sort of attraction, he understood that it was safer not to try.
To keep all desires secret and hope that somehow, by some incredible luck, you’d still have them met.
“If he goes, Bean should go again. They’re almost the same height,” one of the boys said.
“I think I messed up my ankle on the last one,” Bean complained.
“Not your ankle!”
“Your beautiful ankle!”
“Fine, fine, fuck off.” Bean picked up two bottle rockets from the dwindling pile, offering one to William, even though he hadn’t said a word.
Of course he could say no. He would never see these children again.
But he wanted to linger, to remain one of them a little longer: a careless teenager out past curfew, the only known danger a boy not wanting to kiss you or a firework hissing through the dark.
It was the same way he felt after certain services, standing awkwardly by a table of dry coffee cake, wanting to see how long a congregation could mistake him for one of their own.
It was odd to think this was what Shay had done: become one of Synanon’s own.
“I need a lighter,” William said. One of the boys threw him a BIC, sniggering when he missed the catch.
They both walked out across the field. The farther away from the group they got, the louder the sounds of the island became: the wind rustling the trees, the insistent cooing of a bird.
He nervously rubbed his thumb against his lighter’s metal wheel.
Bean stopped walking, and William followed.
The others began to chant the countdown: “Ten, nine, eight . . .” Shay had once said that she felt whenever he was in danger. He wondered if she felt anything now.
His lifted his hand, clicking the flame to life.