Chapter 42
Katie
August, Eleven Years Ago
Long Island
The beach was dark and empty. It was mid-August now, and I was sitting in the sand, scribbling in my notebook. Tyler was right
next to me, doing the exact same thing. My body was angled toward his, and his knee, as usual, was brushing ever so slightly
against mine.
I tore out the page I’d just written.
And then, a minute later, I tore out another.
“What’s wrong?” he said. For nearly seven weeks, we’d been writing like this. Our sun-bleached afternoon sessions were not
enough, and so, after sitting across from each other at the dinner table every evening, we’d do it all over again. Tyler,
around ten or eleven, throwing a sock at my window, grinning, coming to get me. Me, grabbing my bag, laughing, taking his
hand. The two of us, letting midnight turn to one turn to two.
I twisted away from him. “It’s nothing. Just struggling with this scene. I’ll—”
“Oh, come on.” He turned to me a little more. The glow of our lanterns—two flashlights stolen from my mom’s emergency preparedness
kit—beamed across his face. “What are you hiding? What could possibly be in there that you won’t show me? I’ve basically read
every word twice.”
I clutched the notebook to my chest. “It’s stupid, okay? Let’s just workshop your graveyard scene again. Let’s just—”
“Hand it over.”
“No! It’s private! It’s really bad! It’s . . .” But it didn’t matter what I said or how tightly I held on to that notebook.
Because Tyler had already pried it out of my hands.
“Give it back right now!” I said as he reclined onto a single elbow and began to read each ridiculous word I’d written aloud.
As he fought back every last one of my grabs, clutches, and claws.
“This is really bad, Katherine. This is really, really bad.”
“I know!” I climbed on top of him, screaming, attempting to snatch it out of his grip. “Give it back!”
“You’re so technical. Like, is this a kissing scene, or did you plagiarize a Wikipedia article about tongues?”
“Screw you!” I was still climbing. Still clawing. “It’s not finished yet! I didn’t want your opinion for a reason!”
“You know what? Let me write it for you. Give me your glitteriest pen, and I’ll . . .”
I was really screaming now. I was burning up and kicking hard and cursing his name, and he was still laughing, still clutching
on to that notebook, still reciting choice lines of my prose, still doing everything he could to keep my hands at bay—shaking
me, tickling me, tangling my arms, flipping me over, pinning me down . . .
Hovering over me.
Covering my mouth.
And then, all of a sudden, there was this pause.
He stopped moving, stopped smiling, and he was right there, biting his bottom lip, pushing the hair out of my eyes, tracing
the slope of my nose, the arch of my cheek, the line of my jaw.
My notebook fell to the sand.
“You sure you don’t want me to write it for you?” he asked, very quietly.
I could barely speak. My heart raced. “I’m—I’m sure.”
“Yeah? Because it’s more of a whirl than a straight line. Your sentences, they—”
“I want you to show me,” I said. “I want you to kiss me.”
His eyes widened. They brightened. They softened. And then, they narrowed. He blew out another breath and, very slowly, dragged
his thumb across my bottom lip. I let out a soft, strange gasp, and something brand-new worked across his face. He lowered
himself another inch and pushed his forehead against mine. My inhale caught again. My whole body, a magnet, ruled by the weight
of him and melting into the sand, hot pink putty in his sixteen-year-old hands.
His eyes scrunched shut.
“Tyler?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
When he opened them, they were different. Cold. Distant. Not the ones I’d had all summer. Not the ones I’d had just a heartbeat
before. “I need to take you home, Katie. Now.”
“What?” I said as he pushed himself off me and onto his feet. “Why? What’s wrong? What’s—”
“I’m high, okay?” He turned away with his hands on his head. The moon recast his shadow—every pace, every pivot—in the blue-gray
sand. “This was a mistake. I’ve been high all summer. I . . . I can’t do this.”
I stood too. “So? You’re always high. What difference does it make? You still spend every day with me. You touched my knee.
You—”
“Stop it, Katie. I said I can’t do this.”
“But you take me to the diner! You stay up and talk to me all night! You—”
“Because you’re always around, okay? That’s why! I’m just bored and Mikey’s gone, and you’re always there, waiting for me!
You don’t know how many girls I’ve been with! You don’t know who I am, and you don’t know what I do when you’re not around!”
“You don’t mean that! You act like you’re so tough, like you’re so tortured, like you’re this bad boy, but you’re not! I’ve
read your stories! I know who you really are! I see the way you look at me! The way you stare into my window! The way you—”
“Why won’t you listen to the words I’m saying? You don’t mean anything to me! This whole summer, it—” He took his notebook
and chucked it in the ocean. I flinched, and he did too. “None of this means anything to me!”
“Yes, it does! I don’t believe you! You’re just too stoned and sad and stubborn to admit it! I ask you about your dad, and
you shut me out! Like it’s not completely obvious your whole book’s about him! Why won’t you just admit you’re in pain? My
parents suck too, okay? And I don’t do what you do! I don’t act like an asshole or use it as an excuse to push people away!
Why can’t we just talk about what happened? I’m not Mikey. You can tell me how you feel. You can—”
“Stop it! Don’t fucking talk about my dad! I’m not the boy in one of your stupid books! You can’t fix me! You’re not special!
There’s no magic key!”
I took a step back. And then another. My face flooded with tears. My notebook, somehow, was in my hands. I threw it as far
as I could—I threw it right where Tyler had thrown his, right into the goddamn ocean. But mine barely made it to the shore.
“I’m going home,” I said, trembling. “Don’t follow me.”
“It’s three in the morning. You can’t—”
“Can’t I, though? I mean, it’s not like you give a shit about me.”
He frowned. And then, because he was right, because it wasn’t safe, because I was still a month away from fifteen, we biked
the seven silent and familiar minutes back to our side gates. Tyler helped me up to my bedroom, and before he climbed back
down the lattice, he twisted around to speak. He didn’t even bother to look at me.
“Owen Davis has been asking about you all summer, by the way. The older guys do this a lot. They pick freshman girls to—”
“Can’t wait to meet him,” I said, slamming the window shut. I turned off my lights, closed the blinds, and cried myself to
sleep. It would be nearly two years until Tyler came back to my window. By then, everything would be different. By then, in
so many ways, it would already be too late.