The Paper Palace(58)

I brace myself. “What? What did he say?”

“He said you let him feel you up. He said you fool around. He said I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”

A hysterical laugh escapes from my mouth. My windpipes start to close in on themselves. “That’s so disgusting.”

He laughs, relieved. “Well, technically you aren’t related, but the thought did make me want to puke.”

“What’s wrong with him? I hate him so much. I would die before I ever let him touch me,” I say, voice shaking.

“I never really thought you had.”

I will myself not to cry in front of Jonas, but the tears start slipping out against my will.

“Elle, forget it. He was joking around, being a jerk.” He takes the bottom of his T-shirt and wipes the rain and tears off my cheeks. “So, I can get my hopes up again?”

“I’m too old for you,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe myself.

“I know you think that, but you’re wrong.”

“And you’re way too good for me.” And this I know is true.

He reaches into his slicker, pulls out a smushed Peppermint Pattie and tears it in half. “Lunch?”

There is something so sweet about everything he does, something in his gesture that breaks my heart and makes me start crying again.

“What? You hate mint?”

A sob bursts out of me, half laughter, half pain. Conrad has stolen everything from me. I will never be sweet again. I will never be clean again. I always imagined my first time would be with someone I loved. Someone like Jonas. I’m sobbing uncontrollably now, all the terror and shame I have held vomiting out of me in massive heaves and gulps.

“Elle. Stop, okay? I’m sorry I brought it up. I’m an idiot.”

I try to stop, to catch my breath, but the more I try, the harder I cry. The sea fog rolls in now, so thick it muffles my sobs, turns us both into specters.

“He enjoys belittling me. We know that. I shouldn’t have said anything. Please stop crying.”

I want to tell him everything, to unshoulder this burden, but I can’t. He’s barely fourteen, and this murder of crows in my belly is mine alone to carry. The wounds inside me will scab over and heal, however lopsidedly. And next time I will be prepared, armed with more than pills. In the distance, I hear the toll of a warning bell.

“We should head in,” I manage to gulp out, through my snot and tears and sobs.

“Elle, I don’t understand. Please stop crying. It’s not like it’s true.” He is anguished, confused. “Did something happen that you aren’t you telling me?”

I stare down at my waterlogged sneakers. An inch of seawater has collected in the bottom of the boat. I tap at it with my shoe, making little splashes, wipe my face with the sleeve of my plastic slicker.

I feel him scrutinizing me, trying to weigh things up. “Did Conrad hurt you?”

“No,” I say in a whisper.

“You swear on your life?”

I nod, but my face must betray me, because all of a sudden his body slumps, as if the sharp blade of discovery has de-boned him.

“Oh god.”

“You can’t say anything. Ever. No one knows.”

“Elle, I promise, he will never touch you again.”

I laugh, but the sound is bitter, hollow. “That’s what I promised myself after the first time he came into my room.”

A large shadow passes under our boat. It hovers for a moment before slipping off into the mists. Our boat rocks gently as I tell Jonas everything.





18


   August


The most beautiful days in summer come after a heavy rain. White cumulus clouds hover in a deepened blue; the air is crisp enough to drink. Today is one of those days. Yesterday’s storm has washed the skies clean. I wake up having forgotten—I may even be smiling before memory strikes and I wish it away. A stick cracks outside my cabin door, the steps sag with a hollow groan. My mother’s face appears in the screen door.

“Why is this locked?” she says, rattling the handle.

“It catches sometimes.” I jump up and unlatch the door.

“Put this stuff away, please.” She dumps a pile of fresh folded laundry on my bed. “Leo thought it would be fun to take my father’s old boat out today.” My grandfather’s sailing dinghy has been parked on a trailer at the bottom of our driveway collecting pine needles all summer. “We’re thinking eleven-ish to hit the outgoing tide, so up you get. No dawdling.”

“I think I’ll skip it, if that’s okay. I’m not really in the mood.”

“Leo wants a family day. We’ll have a picnic and then sail out to the Point.”

The Point is the literal end of the Cape, a dwindling spit of sand that curves around the wide harbor in a protective embrace, the final barrier between civilization and the wide-open ocean. From the launch at the town beach you can sail out to the Point, drop anchor in the warm, glassy shallows of the sheltered bay, watch scuttling crabs in the sea grasses, dig for clams when the tide recedes. But three minutes’ walk around the point and you are facing out to sea, nothing between you and Portugal but an occasional yacht coming in for safe harbor, fishing boats in the far distance heading out to the rich waters of the Stellwagen Bank in search of bluefin tuna and halibut, the breaching whales.