“M’kay,” she says, then slurps on her milk.
“And then maybe we can watch a movie? That’s a good thing to do in the—” I stop myself, remembering the society we just formed. “Or we can do whatever.”
“Is the cable on?” Holly asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say, remembering Ness’s note.
“We can call the company and have them turn it on. I added myself to his account. I have his passcode. They call me Mrs. Wilde when I call. I lower my voice like this.”
“I’m surprised they don’t call you Mister Wilde, talking like that.”
“Okay, not quite that low. But we’ll go from zero to five hundred channels just like that.” She snaps her fingers.
“You can watch TV if you want,” I say, trying to make it sound like she has my permission but that it’s the least cool thing one could possibly do. “I’m going to figure out how to get down to the other house and retrieve my book. Ever hear of Treasure Island?”
“My dad owns islands,” Holly says. “I think one of them is called Treasure Cay.”
“This is different,” I say. “It’s a book about untold riches and action and survival. I read it when I was about your age. That’s what I’m going to do with my day. Because I hate the rain.”
Holly squints her eyes and studies me. Her head tilts to one side, and I feel like she’s about to blow my cover and accuse me of manipulating her. I remember being that age and being whip-smart. As adults, we tend to forget how clever we were when we were younger, and so we underestimate youth just like we hated being underestimated when we were that age.
“You’re gonna get soaked if you go out there,” Holly eventually says. “I got wet just getting out of the car, and I had an umbrella.”
“I will armor myself against the rain,” I tell her. “Not a drop will touch me. That’s a rule in the I-Hate-Rain Society. You wanna come?”
Holly shrugs and looks away. I can tell I just lost her. “Nah, I don’t like that place. I’m gonna watch TV.”
I remember what Ness said about the first night he made her sleep down there alone, and that she has rarely been back. I shouldn’t push her; there’s no point in making her do something she doesn’t want to do. But I’m weak, and I like her, and I want her not just to like me back, but for the two of us to do something she’s never done with any of the other women who stay over. Because I’m not having sex with her father, and I need her to know I’m not the same as them.
“Well, I guess I won’t be able to read my book then,” I say, making myself sound sad. “I’m pretty sure it would take the entire Society to get down there in this heavy rain. Maybe I’ll just go take a nap instead. If I get lucky, I’ll have a good dream.”
I leave the dishes and head toward the breezeway that leads off toward Ness’s room. I have no idea what I’ll do in there if she lets me go. Sit in a chair and look at an empty fireplace or gaze out at the rain.
But she doesn’t let me go. The ultimate threat for Holly is that she’ll be left alone, that I won’t beg her to play with me, which is what I suspect she’s used to.
“Wait,” she says. And I turn back to her.
“We can beat the rain,” she tells me in a conspiratorial whisper. “But it won’t be easy. And we’ll have to work together.”
25
“I’m starting to think the saran wrap isn’t a good idea,” I say.
“Turn around one more time.” Holly has me spinning in the kitchen as she holds a spool of plastic wrap sideways. I still have the robe on, and the clear cocoon forming around me is causing me to sweat inside it.
“I can’t move my arms,” I say. “And how exactly am I going to breathe if you wrap my head up?”
“Good point. Reverse.” Holly makes a spinny gesture with her finger. I twirl the other way, and she gathers all the plastic in a ball. I don’t dare tell her that I’m not really interested in getting to a book I read years ago, or that I would be fine running out there in that crazy storm and just getting drenched again—because now it’s a mission for us to get from A to B without getting a single drop of water on us.
“I’ve got an idea,” Holly says. “Better than this one.” She gives me a serious look when I raise an eyebrow at her. “My ideas just get better with time. I think you should know this about me.”
I laugh and follow her down the north breezeway. We pass the utility room, where my clothes and the two towels are drying, and go past the guest bedrooms and Holly’s room, which she showed me after we got the clothes going. At the far end of the house, we go up a flight of stairs and through a door into the garage.
Holly hits the lights. “Yes!” she says. She dances through the empty space where Ness’s red gas-guzzler had been the other day and scoops up the bundled car cover from the ground. “It’s rain-proof. Because normal people don’t use these in their garages.”
I almost point out that the cover keeps the dust off as well, but I agree with her: it’s a bit much for a car kept in a garage. My car sits in the New York sun and the New York snow and the New York floods and mostly gets driven only to move it from street to street so the sweepers can get through.
“Grab the edge,” Holly says. “Meet me in the middle.”
We lift the car cover over us and paw at the ceiling as we work our way into the middle. Neither of us can see a thing. I think about the lazy summer days when my sister and I would make forts out of furniture, sheets, and sofa cushions. Holly is giggling. I can feel her breathing on my arm. We jostle and spin and laugh in the darkness together.
“We’ll stay dry,” I say, my words swallowed by the fabric and the deep shadows. “But we’ll never see how to get there.”
“We’ll feel along the rails. But through the tarp.”
“Won’t we get lost?” I ask.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I can get around that boardwalk with my eyes closed.”
I remember Ness’s story. But his daughter sounds so much braver than he made her out to be. I wonder how many years ago that was. Five? Six? Probably feels like ages to her.
“What about our feet?” I ask. “Won’t they get wet?”
“I’ve got just the thing.”
Holly extricates herself from the folds, leaving me in there alone. I work myself free as well. She has disappeared back into the house, returns with a pair of pink galoshes, then rummages around one of the other garage bays and brings out a pair of rubber hip waders that fishermen use.
“No rain shall touch us,” she says.
“Let’s just hope it hasn’t stopped raining by the time we put this to the test.”
We haul the gear to the living room, which gives us the shortest run down to the guest house, and I become quite possibly the first person in history to don rubber hip waders over a terrycloth bathrobe. My reflection in the living room door is of someone you would commit to an institution. Holly, meanwhile, looks downright adorable with her pink galoshes pulled over her blue jeans.
“No fair that you get to look normal,” I tell her.
“You look like you sleep with fishes,” Holly says.
“Let’s hope not. You ready?”
She nods, and the two of us crawl under the car cover. Rain hisses across the glass door and windows, and it thunders against the roof. “I’ve got the doorknob,” Holly says. “Hard to turn it through the fabric. It keeps slipping.”
“I’ll close it behind us when we get out,” I tell her. “But we have to make sure the cover doesn’t get caught.”
What I don’t tell her is that this is going to be an unmitigated disaster. No way we come out of this anything other than soaked and tangled in knots, but probably laughing hysterically. A gust of wind passes, and Holly yells “Now!” I hear the door open, the first of the rain spitting against the cover, popping it like a thunderstorm hitting a camping tent, and then we are outside, shuffling our feet, the wind whipping the car cover all around us.