We Were Liars(21)

“I can’t get ugly with you this early,” says Johnny. “I haven’t had my pretentious tea yet.” He bends and looks in the laundry basket at my feet. “What’s in here?”

“Botanic prints. And some of my old art.”

“How come?” Johnny sits on a rock and I settle next to him.

“I am giving away my things,” I say. “Since September. Remember I sent you the stripy scarf?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I tell about giving the things to people who can use them, finding the right homes for them. I talk about charity and questioning Mummy’s materialism.

I want Johnny and Mirren to understand me. I am not someone to pity, with an unstable mind and weird pain syndromes. I am taking charge of my life. I live according to my principles. I take action and make sacrifices.

“You don’t, I dunno, want to own stuff?” Johnny asks me.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I want stuff all the time,” says Johnny, throwing his arms wide. “A car. Video games. Expensive wool coats. I like watches, they’re so old-school. I want real art for my walls, paintings by famous people I could never own in a million years. Fancy cakes I see in bakery windows. Sweaters, scarves. Wooly items with stripes, generally.”

“Or you could want beautiful drawings you made when you were a kid,” says Mirren, kneeling by the laundry basket. “Sentimental stuff.” She picks up the crayon drawing of Gran with the goldens. “Look, this one is Fatima and this one is Prince Philip.”

“You can tell?”

“Of course. Fatima had that chubby nose and wide face.”

“God, Mirren. You’re such a mushball,” Johnny says.





32




Gat calls my name as I am heading up the walkway to New Clairmont. I turn and he’s running at me, wearing blue pajama pants and no shirt.

Gat. My Gat.

Is he going to be my Gat?

He stops in front of me, breathing hard. His hair sticks up, bedhead. The muscles of his abdomen ripple and he seems much more naked than he would in a swimsuit.

“Johnny said you were down at the tiny beach,” he pants. “I looked for you there first.”

“Did you just wake up?”

He rubs the back of his neck. Looks down at what he’s wearing. “Kind of. I wanted to catch you.”

“How come?”

“Let’s go to the perimeter.”

We head there and walk the way we did as children, Gat in front and me behind. We crest a low hill, then curve back behind the staff building to where the Vineyard harbor comes into view near the boathouse.

Gat turns so suddenly I nearly run into him, and before I can step back his arms are around me. He pulls me to his chest and buries his face in my neck. I wrap my bare arms around his torso, the insides of my wrists against his spine. He is warm.

“I didn’t get to hug you yesterday,” Gat whispers. “Everyone hugged you but me.”

Touching him is familiar and unfamiliar.

We have been here before.

Also we have never been here before.

For a moment,

or for minutes,

for hours, possibly,

I am simply happy, here with Gat’s body beneath my hands. The sound of the waves and his breath in my ear. Glad that he wants to be near me.

“Do you remember when we came down here together?” he asks into my neck. “The time we went out on that flat rock?”

I step away. Because I don’t remember.

I hate my fucking hacked-up mind, how sick I am all the time, how damaged I’ve become. I hate that I’ve lost my looks and failed school and quit sports and am cruel to my mother. I hate how still want him after two years.

Maybe Gat wants to be with me. Maybe. But more likely he’s just looking for me to tell him he did nothing wrong when he left me two summers ago. He’d like me to tell him I’m not mad. That he’s a great guy.

But how can I forgive him when I don’t even know exactly what he’s done to me?

“No,” I answer. “It must have slipped my mind.”

“We were— You and I, we— It was an important moment.”

“Whatever,” I say. “I don’t remember it. And obviously nothing that happened between us was particularly important in the long run, was it?”

He looks at his hands. “Okay. Sorry. That was extremely suboptimal of me just now. Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m angry,” I say. “Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you’re all, Ooh, I thought I’d never see you again, and holding my hand and Everyone hugs you but me and half-naked perimeter walking. It’s severely suboptimal, Gat. If that’s the word you want to use.”

His face falls. “Damn. It sounds bad when you put it that way.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how I see it.”

He rubs his hand on his hair. “I’m handling everything badly,” he says. “What would you say if I asked you to start over?”

“God, Gat.”

“What?”

“Just ask. Don’t ask what I’d say if you did ask.”

“Okay, I’m asking. Can we start over? Please, Cady?” He clasps his hands. “Let’s start over after lunch. It’ll be awesome. I’ll make amusing remarks and you’ll laugh. We’ll go troll hunting. We’ll be happy to see each other. You’ll think I’m great, I promise.”