The Paper Palace(56)

We sail out onto the choppy bay. Beyond us, a boat capsizes. Someone stands on the centerboard and rights it. The wet sail thwacks against the mast. The kids pull themselves out, drenched and happy, squeezing water out of their T-shirts. They pull the boom in, grab for the line. Our instructor dodges in and out around our flock of boats in a small white skiff with an outboard motor.

“Ready about! Hard alee! Watch the boom! Pull the sheet!”

“Is he speaking Mandarin or ancient Greek?” Jonas asks. “I can’t quite make it out.”

We laugh, but within an hour Jonas is captaining our boat like a pro, marginalizing the bossy Karina, shouting at me to trim lines, make knots, lean out. Our sails luff, we turn and zip, slow to nothing. None of it matters. I’m happy to be breathing. Happy to be here with Jonas. Safe from Conrad. I can do this, I think as we sail out farther and farther. I can survive this. No one needs to know. I’ll put a kitchen knife under my mattress. If he touches me again, I’ll kill him. The thought of that uplifts me. I close my eyes and let the salt wind coarse my face.





17


   July


Sunday. Our day off from camp. Jonas and I have made a plan to take a picnic to the beach. We’ll canoe across and walk to the ocean from there so Jonas can fish on the way home. When he arrives, I’m in the kitchen making ham and Muenster sandwiches. I have a jar of dill pickles already packed in the basket, a thermos of iced tea. I throw in a bag of cherries, some paper napkins, and a baggie of Milanos. Jonas leans against the counter and watches as I fold wax paper around the sandwiches, making hospital corners.

The screen door slams open and shut. Conrad sits down at the porch table. I head into the pantry, bury my head in the icebox, pretending to look for something.

My cabin door has stayed locked every night since that night, but I’ve started to feel safe in daylight, as long as we aren’t alone. As long as I never, ever look at him. I have become a blindered horse. Conrad pretends to act as if nothing happened, but he has been unusually solicitous—pulling out my chair at the dinner table, refilling my water glass.

“Quite the young gentleman,” my mother says, smiling at him.

“Hello, Conrad,” Jonas says now.

“What’s up?” Conrad grunts.

“Not much. Elle’s making us a picnic to take to the beach.”

“What’s she making?”

“Ham and cheese.”

“Maybe I’ll come with you.”

“Okay,” Jonas says.

The mustard jar I’m holding slips from my hand, shatters on the floor, splattering everything around me in Dijon yellow.

I crouch down and pick up shards of glass.

“Are you all right? Did you cut yourself?” Jonas asks, coming into the pantry to help me.

“I’m fine,” I mutter. “Just glass and mustard everywhere.”

“Conrad wants to join us.”

“We can’t fit three people in the canoe.”

“I can fish later. It’s not as if the bass are going anywhere.”

“You should have asked me first.”

“What was I meant to do? Say ‘Hold on a sec while I go ask Elle if she wants you to come? . . . Sorry, she says no?’ That would have been marginally awkward, to say the least.”

“I need wet newspaper and a broom,” I snap.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say, turning away from him. “Stop asking.”

We take the path that leads from the camp to the beach, walking single file through the woods—Conrad, then Jonas, then me.

Jonas keeps up a patter of conversation with Conrad. I slow down and let them drift ahead. When they are out of sight, I double over, dry-heaving. I was wrong. I can’t do this. I can’t be with him. Smiling, naked except for my bikini, swimming, knowing. Knowing that he knows. The panic in me feels like a snake slithering out of my mouth.

Somewhere up ahead, Jonas is calling me.

“I stubbed my toe,” I yell. “I’ll catch up.”

I want to turn around and run home, lock myself in my room. Instead, I close my eyes and will myself to calm down, move forward. I’ve been down this path so many times I recognize every root, every tree. I know when I round the next corner I will see wild grapevines climbing into the trees and scrub, clusters of sweet Concord grapes hanging down from the bay laurel, crops left over from a hundred years ago when this wooded hill was still farmland. I know that beyond the vines, the path will widen and steepen. I will crest the hill and come down into a hollow between the dunes, where an old fire road runs parallel to the sea. Beyond, at the top of the next dune, I will come to a wooden hut, dilapidated but still standing, built during the war as a lookout for approaching German submarines. Anna and I played there with our dolls when we were little. I will stand there, looking out at the wide ocean, my ocean. I know this place. This is my place, not his.

The beach is beautiful and broad. Low tide. Conrad is already knee-deep in the water, wading out. The skin on his back is bright white against his ugly red bathing suit. There’s a smattering of acne across his shoulders. I scan the ocean, looking wistfully for a shark fin. I run down the steep dune, letting my towel out behind me like a sail.

I sit down a few feet away from Jonas.