Chapter 14
THE FIRST SUMMER, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Sammie shook Didion awake. “We’re going to a party. Just you and me.”
They didn’t worry about sneaking out. Their mother, who used to worry all the time about where they were, seemed not to care much anymore.
Fifteen minutes later, they were walking down the sandy, moonlit path to the bonfire on the beach.
It blazed brightly against the inky black sky, and the Top 40 playlist rang out from a speaker hidden somewhere in the sand, dampened by the mangroves and the sound of the water, only clear once you got close, and then it was blasting.
The bonfire flames danced in Sammie’s eyes as she looked out at the mess of partyers, her teeth biting her bottom lip in excitement.
“They’re so nice,” she said to Didion, looping an arm through hers. “You’ll love them.”
Didion wanted to believe her, but couldn’t help but feel deeply intimidated.
Girls in bikinis laughed and squealed, guys pumped beer out of the keg, the loud buzz of comfortable conversation making Didion feel more like an outsider than usual.
She wasn’t shy, but this was a lot all at once.
Especially after the last two weeks, which had been mostly quiet and relaxed at Birdsong.
Didion wished they’d brought Matt along. If he was there, she could have talked to him.
Then again, if he was there, the two of them probably wouldn’t talk to anyone else, and maybe Sammie knew that.
“There they are!” Sammie pointed at a group of girls, grabbed her sister’s hand, and tore across the sand to see her new girlfriends, kicking her flimsy flip-flops off as she went.
Didion admired her sister for not acting different in front of these new friends. She didn’t play it cool, she didn’t act like she wasn’t excited. She ran right up and collapsed in a heap on the ground and said, “This is so great, I’ve never been to a party like this— This is my sister, Didion!”
“Hi!” Didion felt like she shouted, as if she’d been wearing headphones on a helicopter.
The girls introduced themselves, one by one. Taylor Rae, who had a strong, old-school Southern drawl and boobs so big you couldn’t ignore them. Mabel, who had skin speckled with cinnamon-colored freckles. Eva, in glasses and a collegiate sweatshirt.
Didion pointed at the arching letters on Eva’s chest. “Wow, are you going to Yale?”
“Hope so, one day,” said Eva.
It was one of those nights where you don’t know anyone and you hear a million names and feel completely out of the loop since everyone else seems to know each other.
Sammie moved like water through these situations, filling every gap with a flowing, soft presence.
But Didion didn’t know how to be, and felt like she should, as the older sister.
She found herself smiling and laughing, but fidgeting with her fingers, wishing equally that she was having fun and that she could go home.
Taylor Rae offered them raspberry lemonade with vodka in it, holding up one of those plastic Tupperware pitchers everyone seems to grow up with. Sammie said yes immediately, but Didion hesitated before following suit.
Taylor Rae poured a few ounces into some pink Solo cups she had hidden somewhere, and then they all said cheers to new friends! before taking a sip.
It was actually not bad, though the vodka added a sharp, harsh, nose-tickling element Didion wasn’t used to. Like melted popsicles mixed with nail polish remover.
Nevertheless, an hour later, Didion was loosened up, actually starting to have a good time. This, she decided, must be why people like drinking. It can make a beach full of strangers way, way less scary.
She was even starting to like the girls. They were cheerful and welcoming. Mabel was a little dumb, Eva a little too smart for her own good, and Taylor Rae loud and brassy, but they were all cool in their own ways.
The random guy who joined them in the sand, however, was not as warm or easy to like.
Even before he said his name was Johnny, Didion was thinking of Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby.
It was the cheekbones, the bedroom eyes, the dark hair falling just so.
He wasn’t flirting with Sammie exactly, but he was giving her enough quiet attention, and she was lapping it up.
He lit up a joint and Sammie declined, as did the rest of the girls.
“I have to pee,” Didion said, then stood, dusted off her thighs, and took off to find a dark spot in the sandbanks.
As she did, she saw a group of people standing on top of a tall dune. She stared up at them where they stood, twenty feet up in the air. A girl screamed, and then all of them laughed. A guy in board shorts and a backward hat said, “All right, all right, step back.”
The next thing she knew, he did a backflip off the dune and into the sand below. The girls up top screamed and the guys laughed, one saying, “Dude, holy shit!”
Didion gasped and ran round the bend to where he would have landed, feeling sure she’d find someone with a broken neck lying there.
But instead, she ran straight into him.
“Sorry,” she uttered, her voice not even sounding like her own.
For the very first time, he cast his sage-green gaze down onto hers, his pupils flicking from one of her eyes to the next, then down to her lips and back again. “Where did you come from?”
“I was just—” Didion started. “I saw you flip off the thing and I thought maybe you’d be hurt. Or … you know, dead.”
He smiled, and she noticed the tiny imperfection in his otherwise perfectly straight, white teeth—a small chip in his left canine.
“You were worried about me?”
“No.” She felt her face go the color of Red Hots. “I wasn’t worried. I don’t even know you.”
He laughed once and held out his hand. “I’m Austin James.”
She took it. “I’m Didion. Bennett. I’m here for the summer.”
Austin James tilted his head at her. “Damn. That already doesn’t seem like enough time.”