Chapter 12 #2
Sylvie wanted to rip up the application.
But she knew that applications could be reprinted.
They could be re-sent. She got to her feet and shot up the stairs, anxiety splintering her heart.
When she reached her bed, she realized she was too exhausted to call Graham.
Tomorrow, she’d spell everything out to Valerie, and Valerie would help her hatch a plan.
But right now, she knew her father was downstairs, filling out the fine details of her seventeen-year-old life: name, birthdate, birthplace, mother’s name, father’s name.
Her father was ashamed of her, ashamed of the struggles she’d brought to the Nantucket Tourist Society and their connection.
She could hear him wondering why God cursed him with a daughter like that.
The next day, Sylvie was needed at the front desk of The House on Nantucket.
She’d told Graham she was going to bail but decided at the last minute that it was better to make her father think she genuinely cared about his life, his world, and his occupation.
So she found herself answering phones, cleaning bathrooms, and greeting guests.
Eventually, Graham swung by with worry in his eyes, bending over the counter to kiss her.
But at that moment, James entered the foyer, spotting them, and Sylvie pulled away from Graham. Graham looked injured.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sylvie said, brushing it aside and trying out a fake smile.
James remained standing a few feet away, watching them.
“You want to grab food after your shift?” Graham asked.
James answered for her, “Sylvie’s needed at home.”
Sylvie’s pulse quickened. Graham turned to look at James. Now standing at five foot ten, he was nearly as tall as James but not quite. Those three extra inches James had on him—plus the sixty-five pounds or so—made James someone not to be messed with. Still, Graham hardly shrank in the face of him.
“You can’t make her work at the inn and also make her go home,” Graham said, surprising Sylvie with his bravery.
“I’m her father,” James said. “I can do whatever I want.”
Graham’s eyes were struck dumb. He turned to look at Sylvie, muttering, “Let me know if you need anything.”
But Sylvie remembered those applications to a Maine boarding school. She remembered her formidable father in the middle of the night, daring her to mess with him.
Maybe she’d teased the bear long enough. He was coming after her. He was going to eat her.
Over the next few days, James hardly let Sylvie out of his sight.
He disconnected her phone line and forced her to work long days at the inn.
Graham tried to catch her when James wasn’t in the foyer, begging her to explain what was happening, but James had a habit of checking on them every few minutes, which gave them limited time.
All Sylvie could say was, “Things are bad right now.” Her father had forced her to dye her hair back to its natural color—from pink to brown, and she felt strange and unlike herself.
“My mom can contact the authorities,” Graham breathed.
Sylvie stuttered. “The problem is, I don’t think he’s really doing anything wrong. Not legally.”
Graham looked deflated. “What about the Fourth of July? The poster is only half finished.”
Sylvie took a sharp breath. “I don’t think I can finish the poster.”
Graham’s shoulders dropped. “It’s just a poster.”
But how could Sylvie explain? They’d pushed the boundaries long enough. Graham’s mother was supportive—endlessly cool about her son and his girlfriend’s quest to save the world—but James was ready to ship Sylvie off.
When Sylvie and James returned home that evening, he told her he’d sent off four boarding school applications and hoped to hear back within the week.
Sylvie felt her stomach thrash. Like a dead-hearted adult, she sat at the kitchen table with her hands stretched across the wood and asked, “Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”
But James said there wasn’t. “I don’t trust you. Not as far as I can throw you.”
Sylvie’s eyes welled with tears.
James said, “You can come back to visit. We can reassess at Christmas break. Maybe, if you stop all this carrying on and making a fool of yourself, you can come back and finish your senior year here. Maybe.”
“You’re going to yank me from one place to another just to see if I’ll do what you want me to?” Sylvie whispered.
James shrugged. “It’s not a test. I’m just trying to make sure you become the best version of yourself you can be.”
“I am the best version of myself!” Sylvie cried.
But James was not to be swayed.
Sylvie went upstairs and sat on the edge of her bed. It was a clear evening, and a fingernail moon hung low, dipping toward the frothing Nantucket Sound.
Suddenly, she was hit with clear-eyed focus. She could not let her father do this to her. She’d rather run away.
Maybe it wasn’t rational. Perhaps it wasn’t safe.
But over the next two hours, as quietly as Sylvie could, she packed a backpack, gathered relevant paperwork, cleaned her room, and stood at the door, listening to hear where her father was in the big, drafty house.
But after just a step into the hall, she realized he was downstairs watching television, probably with one eye on the door. He wasn’t going to let her escape.
She had to concoct a different plan.
That night, she couldn’t sleep. She was sick with worry, reminded of her favorite fictional characters who’d had to escape dark and alienating lives just to continue to be themselves.
The problem with her plan was Graham. Her love for him felt like the most powerful thing she knew—the only thing.
But her love for Valerie complicated it.
After all Valerie had done for them, how could she steal Graham away from his mother?
How could she destroy what was bound to be a bright future?
The following morning, Sylvie was needed at The House on Nantucket.
As casually as she could, she put her backpack on her shoulders and walked from her house to the inn.
There, she greeted Mrs. Galloway and Frank and checked out four couples, all headed back south to Savannah.
Sylvie heard herself make light small talk, amazed at her capacity to pretend in the face of her fear.
At lunchtime, Sylvie told Frank she was going to the sandwich place by the boardwalk.
“Your dad isn’t going to like that,” Frank said.
Sylvie shot him a look that meant she didn’t care.
She put her backpack on her shoulders and headed out, hurrying down a sidewalk dappled with shadows from overhanging trees.
She realized she was headed for Graham and Valerie’s house, a detour she hadn’t fully planned.
When she reached it, she found Graham’s two sisters sunning in the front yard and Valerie’s car gone.
“Hey there,” one of the sisters, Britney, said, propping her sunglasses on the top of her head. “You’ve been a stranger.”
“Not on purpose,” Sylvie said meekly.
“Graham’s not here,” Britney said as the other sister remained on her back in the sun.
Sylvie felt a stab of fear. “Do you know when he’s coming back?”
Britney shrugged. “He went off with that other girl from your little club. Janice?”
Sylvie’s mouth went dry. She remembered Janice being long-legged with bright blond hair slathered with blue streaks.
She was punkish and cool, and she had the best CD collection out of any of them.
She was also—sometimes—pretty fired up about the environment.
Sylvie and Graham had often called her “their only hope.”
And now Graham was running off with her.
Sylvie’s head spun with fear. She twisted around, half expecting to find her father at the corner, waiting for her to return to the inn. But there was nothing but a golden retriever sniffing a fire hydrant and a child on a tricycle.
Maybe this was her only chance to flee.
Sylvie didn’t say anything else. She shot down the road, running like videos of gazelles on safari, running as though her very life depended on it (because it did).
The ferry was finishing its 12:30 boarding, and the ramp was nearly on its way up when she arrived.
The ferry employee was nobody she knew, just someone who’d been hired to work on the island for the season.
She paid with cash she’d taken from the inn’s till and hurried to grab a seat down below.
She didn’t have the heart to sit on the top deck and watch the island recede forever.
She didn’t have the heart to watch her love drift away.