We Were Liars(3)

Mirren took off her shoes and the rest of us followed. We tossed stones into the water. We just existed.

I wrote our names in the sand.

Cadence, Mirren, Johnny, and Gat.

Gat, Johnny, Mirren, and Cadence.

That was the beginning of us.



Johnny begged to have Gat stay longer.

He got what he wanted.

The next year he begged to have him come for the entire summer.

Gat came.

Johnny was the first grandson. My grandparents almost never said no to Johnny.





5




Summer fourteen, Gat and I took out the small motorboat alone. It was just after breakfast. Bess made Mirren play tennis with the twins and Taft. Johnny had started running that year and was doing loops around the perimeter path. Gat found me in the Clairmont kitchen and asked, did I want to take the boat out?

“Not really.” I wanted to go back to bed with a book.

“Please?” Gat almost never said please.

“Take it out yourself.”

“I can’t borrow it,” he said. “I don’t feel right.”

“Of course you can borrow it.”

“Not without one of you.”

He was being ridiculous. “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

“I just want to get off-island. Sometimes I can’t stand it here.”

I couldn’t imagine, then, what it was he couldn’t stand, but I said all right. We motored out to sea in wind jackets and bathing suits. After a bit, Gat cut the engine. We sat eating pistachios and breathing salt air. The sunlight shone on the water.

“Let’s go in,” I said.

Gat jumped and I followed, but the water was so much colder than off the beach, it snatched our breath. The sun went behind a cloud. We laughed panicky laughs and shouted that it was the stupidest idea to get in the water. What had we been thinking? There were sharks off the coast, everybody knew that.

Don’t talk about sharks, God! We scrambled and pushed each other, struggling to be the first one up the ladder at the back of the boat.

After a minute, Gat leaned back and let me go first. “Not because you’re a girl but because I’m a good person,” he told me.

“Thanks.” I stuck out my tongue.

“But when a shark bites my legs off, promise to write a speech about how awesome I was.”

“Done,” I said. “Gatwick Matthew Patil made a delicious meal.”

It seemed hysterically funny to be so cold. We didn’t have towels. We huddled together under a fleece blanket we found under the seats, our bare shoulders touching each other. Cold feet, on top of one another.

“This is only so we don’t get hypothermia,” said Gat. “Don’t think I find you pretty or anything.”

“I know you don’t.”

“You’re hogging the blanket.”

“Sorry.”

A pause.

Gat said, “I do find you pretty, Cady. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. In fact, when did you get so pretty? It’s distracting.”

“I look the same as always.”

“You changed over the school year. It’s putting me off my game.”

“You have a game?”

He nodded solemnly.

“That is the dumbest thing I ever heard. What is your game?”

“Nothing penetrates my armor. Hadn’t you noticed?”

That made me laugh. “No.”

“Damn. I thought it was working.”

We changed the subject. Talked about bringing the littles to Edgartown to see a movie in the afternoon, about sharks and whether they really ate people, about Plants Versus Zombies.

Then we drove back to the island.

Not long after, that, Gat started lending me his books and finding me at the tiny beach in the early evenings. He’d search me out when I was lying on the Windemere lawn with the goldens.

We started walking together on the path that circles the island, Gat in front and me behind. We’d talk about books or invent imaginary worlds. Sometimes we’d end up walking several times around the edge before we got hungry or bored.

Beach roses lined the path, deep pink and white. Their smell was faint and sweet.

One day I looked at Gat, lying in the Clairmont hammock with a book, and he seemed, well, like he was mine. Like he was my particular person.

I got in the hammock next to him, silently. I took the pen out of his hand—he always read with a pen—and wrote Gat on the back of his left, and Cadence on the back of his right.

He took the pen from me. Wrote Gat on the back of my left, and Cadence on the back of my right.

I am not talking about fate. I don’t believe in destiny or soul mates or the supernatural or any of that stuff. I just mean we understood each other. All the way.

But we were only fourteen. I had never kissed a boy, though I would kiss a few the next school year, and somehow we didn’t label it love.





6




Summer fifteen I arrived a week later than the others. Dad had left us, and Mummy and I had all that shopping to do, consulting the decorator and everything.

Johnny and Mirren met us at the dock, pink in the cheeks and full of summer plans. They were staging a family tennis tournament and had bookmarked ice cream recipes. We would go sailing, build bonfires.