Now is when we can stop pretending to be normal.
I am looking for the right words, the best way to start.
Suddenly he climbs back to where I’m sitting in three big steps. “You are very, very beautiful, Cady,” he says.
“It’s the moonlight. Makes all the girls look pretty.”
“I think you’re beautiful always and forever.” He is silhouetted against the moon. “Have you got a boyfriend in Vermont?”
Of course I don’t. I have never had a boyfriend except for him. “My boyfriend is named Percocet,” I say. “We’re very close. I even went to Europe with him last summer.”
“God.” Gat is annoyed. Stands and walks back down to the edge of the roof.
“Joking.”
Gat’s back is to me. “You say we shouldn’t feel sorry you—”
“Yes.”
“—but then you come out with these statements. My boyfriend is named Percocet. Or, I stared at the base of the blue Italian toilet. And it’s clear you want everyone to feel sorry for you. And we would, I would, but you have no idea how lucky you are.”
My face flushes.
He is right.
I do want people to feel sorry for me. I do.
And then I don’t.
I do.
And then I don’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Harris sent you to Europe for eight weeks. You think he’ll ever send Johnny or Mirren? No. And he wouldn’t send me, no matter what. Just think before you complain about stuff other people would love to have.”
I flinch. “Granddad sent me to Europe?”
“Come on,” says Gat, bitter. “Did you really think your father paid for that trip?”
I know immediately that he is telling the truth.
Of course Dad didn’t pay for the trip. There’s no way he could have. College professors don’t fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.
So used to summers on Beechwood, to endlessly stocked pantries and multiple motorboats and a staff quietly grilling steaks and washing linens—I didn’t even think about where that money might be coming from.
Granddad sent me to Europe. Why?
Why wouldn’t Mummy go with me, if the trip was a gift from Granddad? And why would Dad even take that money from my grandfather?
“You have a life stretching out in front of you with a million possibilities,” Gat says. “It—it grates on me when you ask for sympathy, that’s all.”
Gat, my Gat.
He is right. He is.
But he also doesn’t understand.
“I know no one’s beating me,” I say, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “I know I have plenty of money and a good education. Food on the table. I’m not dying of cancer. Lots of people have it much worse than I. And I do know I was lucky to go to Europe. I shouldn’t complain about it or be ungrateful.”
“Okay, then.”
“But listen. You have no idea what it feels like to have headaches like this. No idea. It hurts,” I say—and I realize tears are running down my face, though I’m not sobbing. “It makes it hard to be alive, some days. A lot of times I wish I were dead, I truly do, just to make the pain stop.”
“You do not,” he says harshly. “You do not wish you were dead. Don’t say that.”
“I just want the pain to be over,” I say. “On the days the pills don’t work. I want it to end and I would do anything—really, anything—if I knew for sure it would end the pain.”
There is a silence. He walks down to the bottom edge of the roof, facing away from me. “What do you do then? When it’s like that?”
“Nothing. I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet other day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”
“Another day.”
“Yes.”
Now he turns and bounds up the roof in a couple steps. Suddenly his arms are around me, and we are clinging to each other.
He is shivering slightly and he kisses my neck with cold lips. We stay like that, enfolded in each other’s arms, for a minute or two, and it feels like the universe is reorganizing itself,
and I know any anger we felt has disappeared.
Gat kisses me on the lips, and touches my cheek.
I love him.
I have always loved him.
We stay up there on the roof for a very, very long time. Forever.
50
Mirren has been getting ill more and more often. She gets up late, paints her nails, lies in the sun, and stares at pictures of African landscapes in a big coffee-table book. But she won’t snorkel. Won’t sail. Won’t play tennis or go to Edgartown.
I bring her jelly beans from New Clairmont. Mirren loves jelly beans.
Today, she and I lie out on the tiny beach. We read magazines I stole from the twins and eat baby carrots. Mirren has headphones on. She keeps listening to the same song over and over on my iPhone.
Our youth is wasted
We will not waste it
Remember my name
’Cause we made history
Na na na na, na na na
I poke Mirren with a carrot.
“What?”
“You have to stop singing or I can’t be responsible for my actions.”
Mirren turns to me, serious. Pulls out the ear buds. “Can I tell you something, Cady?”
“Sure.”
“About you and Gat. I heard you two come downstairs last night.”
“So?”
“I think you should leave him alone.”
“What?”
“It’s going to end badly and mess everything up.”
“I love him,” I say. “You know I’ve always loved him.”
“You’re making things hard for him. Harder than they already are. You’re going to hurt him.”
“That’s not true. He’ll probably hurt me.”
“Well, that could happen, too. It’s not a good idea for you guys to be together.”
“Don’t you see I would rather be hurt by Gat than be closed off from him?” I say, sitting up. “I’d a million times rather live and risk and have it all end badly than stay in the box I’ve been in for the past two years. It’s a tiny box, Mirren. Me and Mummy. Me and my pills. Me and my pain. I don’t want to live there anymore.”
A silence hangs in the air.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend,” Mirren blurts.
I look into her eyes. There are tears. “What about Drake Loggerwood? What about the yellow roses and the sexual intercourse?” I ask.
She looks down. “I lied.”
“Why?”
“You know how, when you come to Beechwood, it’s a different world? You don’t have to be who you are back home. You can be somebody better, maybe.”
I nod.
“That first day you came back I noticed Gat. He looked at you like you were the brightest planet in the galaxy.”
“He did?”
“I want someone to look at me that way so much, Cady. So much. And I didn’t mean to, but I found myself lying. I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to say. I take a deep breath.
Mirren snaps. “Don’t gasp. Okay? It’s fine. It’s fine if I never have a boyfriend at all. It’s fine if not one person ever loves me, all right? It’s perfectly tolerable.”
Mummy’s voice calls from somewhere by New Clairmont. “Cadence! Can you hear me?”
I yell back. “What do you want?”
“The cook is off today. I’m starting lunch. Come slice tomatoes.”
“In a minute.” I sigh and look at Mirren. “I have to go.”
She doesn’t answer. I pull my hoodie on and trudge up the path to New Clairmont.
In the kitchen, Mummy hands me a special tomato knife and starts to talk.
Natter natter, you’re always on the tiny beach.
Natter natter, you should play with the littles.
Granddad won’t be here forever.
Do you know you have a sunburn?
I slice and slice, a basketful of strangely shaped heirloom tomatoes. They are yellow, green, and smoky red.
51
My third week on-island is ticking by and a migraine takes me out for two days. Or maybe three. I can’t even tell. The pills in my bottle are getting low, though I filled my prescription before we left home.
I wonder if Mummy is taking them. Maybe she has always been taking them.
Or maybe the twins have been coming in my room again, lifting things they don’t need. Maybe they’re users.
Or maybe I am taking more than I know. Popping extra in a haze of pain. Forgetting my last dose.