Elin Hilderbrand - Summerland

He should never have given her the keys to the car. He should have yanked the emergency brake. He had been worried about his transmission, for crying out loud. He’d never in a million years thought Penny would keep going, faster and faster.

He had thought she would hit the brake. Of course she would hit the brake.

At South Beach there was a group of people gathered around a bonfire. Jake stared at them from a distance. Another beach, another bonfire, the other side of the world. He didn’t recognize anyone there, of course; they were all strangers. Ferals. They were kids his age or a little older with dreadlocks and tattoos, they were drinking, and Jake smelled weed. This was most certainly not the place for him. But he was freezing now despite his sweatshirt, and the idea of being next to the fire was too tempting to resist. He would go check it out.

“Hey, man.”

One of the ferals stood. He was bare-chested, wore brown swim trunks, and had a bush of bronze-colored hair. He was so tan that the overall effect was of a continuous column of color-hair, skin, trunks. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Hawk,” he said. “Welcome.”

“Hey,” Jake said. This was a cult or something for sure. Regular people weren’t this friendly.

“What’s your name?” Hawk asked.

“Um, Jake,” he said.

“You American?” This was asked by a girl sitting a few people away from where Hawk had been sitting. She had long tangled hair and wore a white bikini top and a white eyelet skirt. How were these people not freezing their asses off?

“Yeah,” Jake said.

“Come sit,” Hawk said. “Join us. Warm yourself by the fire. You want a beer?”

Now would be a good time to excuse myself, Jake thought. Someone else, across the fire, asked, “You want a toke?” And everyone else laughed.

There was some tribal drumming music in the background, which gave the whole scene the feeling that someone was going to be sacrificed here tonight. Probably him, the newbie whose sweatshirt announced him as a punky American high school student.

“No, man, I gotta go,” Jake said.

“Go where, man?” Hawk asked.

“Sit,” the white-bikini girl said. “Have a beer. I’ll get it.” She ran through the sand to a big blue eskie. She pulled out an ice-cold Emu and handed it to him.

“Thanks,” Jake said. He had been craving a beer. He would stay for just this one. “Who do I pay?”

“ ‘Pay’?” Hawk said. “We all chipped in, man, you want to throw some in the pot, go right ahead.”

Jake pulled ten Australian dollars out of his jeans pocket and handed it to Hawk.

“Thank you!” Hawk said, holding the money out for everyone to see. “Have a seat, my friend. Have a seat.”

One hour, three beers, and two hits of marijuana later, Jake had handed over his remaining sixty Australian dollars, as well as two hundred of his three hundred American dollars, to Hawk, securing himself a place in Hawk’s van first thing in the morning. They were traveling across the Nullarbor Plain toward Adelaide, where some people would get out and some different people would get in, and then they were continuing east to Sydney. From Sydney Jake would use the credit card to book a flight back to the States, or he would jump on a container ship and cross the Pacific that way. His parents could chase after him, let them do that, or maybe they would realize how serious he was about returning home and they would do the wise thing and let him live with Zoe and Hobby for his senior year. Or he could live with the Castles. Once he reached Nantucket, it would be harder for his parents to make him return to Australia. Possession was nine tenths of ownership, after all, or something like that.

Two hours later Jake had had six or seven beers and another toke of marijuana, which had been a lot stronger than the first two hits. In one of his remaining cogent moments he wondered if it actually was just marijuana, or if it was something else. He remembered stumbling toward the ocean to take a piss, and when he returned to the circle, the fire was dwindling, and so was the group of people around it. The girl in the white bikini top was still there; he asked her what her name was, and she said… but he didn’t hear what she said, he was too busy noticing that her feet had a sort of black rind on the bottom of them, as thick as the sole on a pair of shoes. The next thing he knew he was falling, he tried to grab for the silken rope of Penny’s voice, but he missed it, and his head hit the sand with a thud that sounded like it hurt, but he barely felt it.

The other people around the fire were moving in a strange way. It looked like they were dancing. Jake had last danced with Penny on stage. Grease. Chang chang chang chang doo wop. We go together. Winnie Potts, he didn’t love Winnie Potts, he didn’t even like Winnie Potts, but she had put herself in front of him like a dish to taste, and he had momentarily forgotten Penny, just say it, he’d been glad she’d left the party so he could let loose for a minute and experience the freedom that was due every seventeen-year-old boy. I’m sorry, Penny, he thought. It could have just as easily happened to you with Anders Peashway or Patrick Loom or any other one of Hobby’s friends who were always flexing their muscles for you. And if you’d told me about it, I would have understood eventually. I wouldn’t have thought the world was over. The world wasn’t over, Penny. I should have told you myself. I should have told you myself!

Jake woke up at dawn, convulsing with the cold. His mouth was filled with damp sand, and he could barely lift his head.

Willow, he thought. The girl in the white bikini top. Her name was Willow.

But when Jake sat up and looked around, neither Willow nor Hawk nor anyone else was around. The beach was deserted, the fire pit cold ash. When he managed to get to his feet, his head felt as heavy and dense as a stone. He turned to look at the parking lot behind him: there was one silver Cutlass in the lot, dark and unoccupied, and nothing else. No van, no Utes, no ferals.

Jake’s duffel bag lay gaping open a few yards away. His stomach heaved, and he gagged and spit in the sand. He checked his pockets: no money, no credit card. He searched through the bag. They’d taken his camera and his running shoes. And the Hemingway. So they were literate thieves, he thought. He felt so stupid, so ashamed; he felt like a young, vulnerable idiot. Lean on me. When you’re not strong.

They had left him the picture of Penny. He picked it out of the bag. It was a picture of her at the Tom Nevers Carnival, the summer between their sophomore and junior years. She was eating pink cotton candy, her bluebell eyes round with anticipation: This is going to be sweet! she mimed. He kissed the picture and felt a surge of gratitude. They had at least left him that.

It was still pretty early, though he had no idea what time it was because his iPod was gone too. The sun was a pink smudge in the sky. He hefted his bag, now nearly empty, and trudged through the sand toward home.

He had thought he might make it back before his mother woke up. That would be best, though he was going to have to tell his father about the credit card anyway. He might be able to claim that he’d lost it somewhere. But really, he had been drugged, and then robbed. He had been a human sacrifice after all.

Jake opened the side gate to the house silently and tiptoed into the garden. He winced as his feet crunched on the gravel. He needed a big glass of water and seventeen aspirin, eight hours of sleep, and then a big breakfast. Just the thought of his warm, soft bed was so enticing that it nearly made up for the ugly realization that he was never going to make it back to Nantucket.

He smelled smoke and turned around. It still wasn’t fully light, but he could see the glowing orange ember at the end of his mother’s cigarette. She was sitting on the back steps alone, in her pajamas and a long sweater. As she exhaled, he saw her taking in the sight of him-what must he look like?-and his duffel bag.

“Jake?” she said.

“I need my bed,” he said. He resisted the urge to run to her, he resisted the urge to cry. He resisted the urge to say to Ava-for only Ava would appreciate it-“It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”

She no longer dreaded waking up in the morning. Her alarm went off at six-thirty, and in a flash she was out of bed, brushing her teeth, taking three ibuprofen, drinking an extra glass of cold water. She was putting on cargo shorts and a T-shirt, socks and work boots. She was taking a few shots off one of the bottles that she kept in her closet. Her collection was growing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Al was at work and Lynne Castle was at spin class at the health club, Demeter would make herself a cocktail, either a cup of coffee with cream and sugar and a shot each of Bailey’s and Kahlua or a screwdriver using the orange juice that Lynne squeezed fresh twice a week.

She took two water bottles to work with her every day, one filled with actual water and the other containing vodka, tonic, and lime juice, which she chilled secretly in the garage fridge.

She was, she had to admit, nearly always drunk. That sounded bad; it sounded like she was on her way to becoming the subject of an intervention reality show. But the thing was, she was happy. Finally happy. She loved going to work buzzed, she loved weeding and watering while she had a glow. She loved the strategy involved in hiding her condition from everyone around her: Nell, Cooper, and Zeus on the team, Kerry at the start and the end of the workday, and her mother and father at home. Her life was a game now, a game that balanced the scary thrill and fear of getting caught with the comfort of knowing that she was too smart to let that happen.