The other people around the fire were moving in a strange way. It looked like they were dancing. Jake had last danced with Penny on stage. Grease. Chang chang chang chang doo wop. We go together. Winnie Potts, he didn’t love Winnie Potts, he didn’t even like Winnie Potts, but she had put herself in front of him like a dish to taste, and he had momentarily forgotten Penny, just say it, he’d been glad she’d left the party so he could let loose for a minute and experience the freedom that was due every seventeen-year-old boy. I’m sorry, Penny, he thought. It could have just as easily happened to you with Anders Peashway or Patrick Loom or any other one of Hobby’s friends who were always flexing their muscles for you. And if you’d told me about it, I would have understood eventually. I wouldn’t have thought the world was over. The world wasn’t over, Penny. I should have told you myself. I should have told you myself!
Jake woke up at dawn, convulsing with the cold. His mouth was filled with damp sand, and he could barely lift his head.
Willow, he thought. The girl in the white bikini top. Her name was Willow.
But when Jake sat up and looked around, neither Willow nor Hawk nor anyone else was around. The beach was deserted, the fire pit cold ash. When he managed to get to his feet, his head felt as heavy and dense as a stone. He turned to look at the parking lot behind him: there was one silver Cutlass in the lot, dark and unoccupied, and nothing else. No van, no Utes, no ferals.
Jake’s duffel bag lay gaping open a few yards away. His stomach heaved, and he gagged and spit in the sand. He checked his pockets: no money, no credit card. He searched through the bag. They’d taken his camera and his running shoes. And the Hemingway. So they were literate thieves, he thought. He felt so stupid, so ashamed; he felt like a young, vulnerable idiot. Lean on me. When you’re not strong.
They had left him the picture of Penny. He picked it out of the bag. It was a picture of her at the Tom Nevers Carnival, the summer between their sophomore and junior years. She was eating pink cotton candy, her bluebell eyes round with anticipation: This is going to be sweet! she mimed. He kissed the picture and felt a surge of gratitude. They had at least left him that.
It was still pretty early, though he had no idea what time it was because his iPod was gone too. The sun was a pink smudge in the sky. He hefted his bag, now nearly empty, and trudged through the sand toward home.
He had thought he might make it back before his mother woke up. That would be best, though he was going to have to tell his father about the credit card anyway. He might be able to claim that he’d lost it somewhere. But really, he had been drugged, and then robbed. He had been a human sacrifice after all.
Jake opened the side gate to the house silently and tiptoed into the garden. He winced as his feet crunched on the gravel. He needed a big glass of water and seventeen aspirin, eight hours of sleep, and then a big breakfast. Just the thought of his warm, soft bed was so enticing that it nearly made up for the ugly realization that he was never going to make it back to Nantucket.
He smelled smoke and turned around. It still wasn’t fully light, but he could see the glowing orange ember at the end of his mother’s cigarette. She was sitting on the back steps alone, in her pajamas and a long sweater. As she exhaled, he saw her taking in the sight of him-what must he look like?-and his duffel bag.
“Jake?” she said.
“I need my bed,” he said. He resisted the urge to run to her, he resisted the urge to cry. He resisted the urge to say to Ava-for only Ava would appreciate it-“It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
DEMETER
She no longer dreaded waking up in the morning. Her alarm went off at six-thirty, and in a flash she was out of bed, brushing her teeth, taking three ibuprofen, drinking an extra glass of cold water. She was putting on cargo shorts and a T-shirt, socks and work boots. She was taking a few shots off one of the bottles that she kept in her closet. Her collection was growing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Al was at work and Lynne Castle was at spin class at the health club, Demeter would make herself a cocktail, either a cup of coffee with cream and sugar and a shot each of Bailey’s and Kahlua or a screwdriver using the orange juice that Lynne squeezed fresh twice a week.
She took two water bottles to work with her every day, one filled with actual water and the other containing vodka, tonic, and lime juice, which she chilled secretly in the garage fridge.
She was, she had to admit, nearly always drunk. That sounded bad; it sounded like she was on her way to becoming the subject of an intervention reality show. But the thing was, she was happy. Finally happy. She loved going to work buzzed, she loved weeding and watering while she had a glow. She loved the strategy involved in hiding her condition from everyone around her: Nell, Cooper, and Zeus on the team, Kerry at the start and the end of the workday, and her mother and father at home. Her life was a game now, a game that balanced the scary thrill and fear of getting caught with the comfort of knowing that she was too smart to let that happen.
She had enough alcohol hidden in her closet now to last her the rest of the summer. She had been stealing a bottle nearly every day.
The stealing was bad, there was no denying that, but the stealing was also good because the stealing was what made the days pass so quickly. After Zeus pulled up to a job and Coop started mowing and she and Nell went off in their separate directions to weed or mulch or deadhead or water, Demeter would immediately apply herself to the task of figuring out how to get into the house. If the owners were home, forget about it, she didn’t steal, except in the case of Mr. Pinckney on Hulbert Avenue, who lived at home by himself even though he was a hundred years old and couldn’t hear or see a thing, or Mrs. Dekalb out in Quidnet, who had broken her leg while ice skating at the rink with Dorothy Hamill and who sat in front of the TV all day with her leg elevated, watching reality shows and drinking tequila sunrises. When Demeter first happened upon Mrs. Dekalb-poking her head in to see if she could “use the bathroom”-Mrs. Dekalb had been so bored and wanting for company that she’d actually invited her to stay and join her for a cocktail.
Demeter had said, “You’re very kind to ask, ma’am, but I’m on the clock.” She offered to fetch a refill for Mrs. Dekalb, however, and while she was doing so, she snatched a bottle of Mount Gay. Then she wrapped the bottle in the flannel shirt that it was too hot ever to wear, and carried it out to the truck, and stowed it in her bag.
At houses where no one was home, Demeter used one of two ploys: either the bathroom ploy-she had perfected a facial expression of extreme urgency, though she used it no more than once a week with Nell-or the complete sneak, where she entered the house, grabbed something from the liquor cabinet, and got out of the house (all of which took her less than two minutes) without anyone’s seeing her.
Zeus had once come looking for her when she was exiting a house, but she saw him through the window and made it back to the truck in time to deposit the bottle safely and pull a bottle of Visine out of her backpack. When Zeus found her, she claimed to be battling an allergy.
“It’s the roses, I think,” she told him.
The stealing was bad, but it was also good. She was taking stuff that didn’t belong to her, yes, but the people she was stealing from had so much that they would never even notice.