She’d thought he would pull out, she said. She had been with someone over the summer-not Luke Browning, but a summer guy by the name of Wils something or other-and Wils had pulled out and everything had been fine. Then, when Hobby came inside of her, she panicked a little, secretly, but not too much because she’d just finished her period, and anyway she went immediately on the pill-immediately as in later that same day. She’d had the pill pack sitting in her underwear drawer, she had gotten it back in December when things between her and Hobby were so intense, but then after things cooled off between them, she hadn’t seen any reason for birth control.

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“It’s my fault,” Hobby said. “I should have used a condom.”

“What are we going to do?” Claire said.

They were two good kids, among the best that Nantucket High School had to offer. Hobby was going to be given a free ride to a top-tier school. Claire would either shoot for the Ivy League or opt to play lacrosse someplace like Bucknell or Williams. They were rocket ships, side by side. A baby? A baby was unthinkable.

“Let’s wait a few days,” Hobby said. Just at that moment Patrick Loom walked by, slapping Hobby’s shoulder as he passed. Patrick Loom was headed to Georgetown in the fall. When Hobby looked at Patrick and thought about Georgetown, he saw everything he wanted for himself: brick buildings, manicured lawns, lectures and readings and film series and pretty girls in sweaters and crisp leaves underfoot and an indoor stadium packed to the rafters as Hobby jogged out onto the floor wearing a dove-gray Hoyas jersey, like Patrick Ewing.

“I heard there’s a guy on the Cape,” Claire said.

“On the Cape?” Hobby said. He had thought they were certainly looking at a trip to Boston, or possibly out of state. He didn’t know. He was daft. So fucking daft.

“It’s supposed to be quick,” Claire said. “They knock you out and you wake up and it’s over and the guy gives you a prescription for Percocet.”

“That’s what you want to do?” Hobby said.

Claire nodded.

Yes, that was what Hobby wanted to do too. He wanted to fly to Hyannis-tomorrow wasn’t soon enough-and see this guy and have it taken care of quickly and painlessly. Relief flooded his chest cavity, but it was trailed by something unexpected and unwelcome: guilt. The course of action they had taken just thirty seconds to decide upon-say it out loud, an abortion-seemed so selfish. They were two good kids, but this decision felt sinister. And yet to decide otherwise would be to ruin two brilliant futures.

And yet, and yet.

Hobby kissed Claire gently on the lips, and she went to class. Hobby’s mother had asked him a few months earlier if he’d ever been in love, and then she’d asked about Claire specifically. Did Hobby love Claire? No. Hobby liked Claire, Hobby thought Claire was cool. He and Claire were friends, they’d been lovers, they had this situation now and they were going to deal with it together, like good business partners who wanted the same outcome.

And yet, and yet.

Hobby had learned most of what he knew about the adult world from listening to his mother and her friends-Al and Lynne Castle, Jordan and Ava Randolph-as they sat around the dinner table after the meal had been consumed, when all that was left was to finish the wine, watch the candles burn down to nubs, and talk.

He had once heard his mother describe what it had been like for her to get pregnant, unexpectedly, at the age of twenty-two. She had been in her final semester at the Culinary Institute, she was dating Hobby’s father, Hobson senior, they were in love and living together. Hobson senior was a master butcher, a professor of Meats, and Zoe was a superstar, she had accepted an externship at Alison’s on Dominick, which at the time was the most sought-after job in the whole city. But then she discovered she was pregnant.

Zoe hadn’t seen Hobby lurking around the corner. She thought he was in bed, fast asleep.

She told her friends, “I’m not going to lie to you. I wanted an abortion. I had a life to live. A career to pursue. I was too young to have a baby. But Hobson talked me out of it. We got married at City Hall in Manhattan. We had been married six months when he died.”

There was silence around the table. Hobby could remember seeing Lynne Castle hold her face in her hands. She was staring at Zoe.

Zoe said, “Thank God I kept those babies. They are so precious to me. They are all I have, sure, but they’re also all I want.”

Those words weren’t lost on Hobby. His mother had had a choice to make. She could have gone to some guy and had the embryos growing inside her taken care of quickly and painlessly. She could have pursued a career, made a name for herself, opened her own restaurant; she might be as famous as Mario Batali by now. But she had chosen him and Penny instead.

Claire called and made an appointment with the guy on the Cape. It was for Tuesday morning; she would have to skip school. Hobby convinced her to postpone it for a week, to wait until school was out, until after graduation. He didn’t tell her that he was having second thoughts because he wasn’t sure what kind of influence he would have with her. It was, after all, her body. It was ultimately her senior year that would be affected, and possibly her chances for college. Hobby wasn’t prepared to marry Claire. God, if he asked her, she would laugh at him. But he wondered if he could convince her to have the baby, and then they could put it up for adoption.

He tried to talk with her about it on the night of graduation. She was at Patrick Loom’s party, and Hobby cornered her by the food table. Her expression was that of a trapped animal. Her eyes kept darting around the party; she was looking for someone to save her.

Hobby said, “Claire, listen, I don’t know about this.”

She said, “Next year, this is going to be us. It’s going to be us graduating, going away to school, all the parents thinking we hung the moon.”

“You don’t have any doubts?”

She looked at him. Her eyes held a wild light. “Of course I have doubts, Hobby. But I’m seventeen. My mother is a single parent, your mother is a single parent. I am not going to be a single parent, and especially not at seventeen.”

He said, “Well, there’s adoption. We haven’t talked about adoption.”

“Adoption?” she said. Her voice was incredulous, as though he’d suggested doing bong hits in the steeple of the Congregational Church. She took a big sip of whatever was in her Solo cup-Hobby hoped it was seltzer-and excused herself to go to the bathroom.


He saw her later, at Steps Beach, where she was most definitely drinking beer. Or at least holding a beer. Hobby tried to discern how much of it she was actually drinking, but he was so smashed himself from swigging off the bottle of Jim Beam that Demeter had brought that he wasn’t turning out to be much of a detective. Claire was surrounded by her entire posse, and when Hobby approached, she glared at him. He knew he was being what his mother would call relentless, he knew he should wait and call Claire the next day, when their conversation would be both private and sober. But he had the nagging feeling that their decision had to be made that night.

He said, “Claire, can I speak to you for a sec?”

Claire said, “Hobby, please go away.”

“Come on, Claire. Five minutes.”

Annabel Wright, who had cheered for Hobby since they were both eight years old at the Boys & Girls Club, was not cheering for him now. She said, “Hobby, leave Claire alone. You’re drunk.”

Annabel was right. He was drunk. He stayed put, his feet planted in the sand, his hand gripping the cheap plastic cup of not-quite-cold-enough beer that Demeter had poured for him from the keg. Annabel and Claire and the other girls wandered down the beach toward the dunes. At that point Hobby considered asking Demeter to let him have what was left of the Jim Beam. She would probably want to drink it with him, but that might not be too bad. Hobby liked Demeter; partly this was the result of conditioning by his mother, who believed Al and Lynne Castle to be the finest people on earth, and partly it was organic. Hobby thought Demeter was a nice person despite her self-destructive behavior. She had a weight problem, she wasn’t exactly going to be voted Homecoming Queen, but her isolation and her loneliness made her seem wise to Hobby, sort of like a solitary owl. He wondered what would happen if he told Demeter that he had gotten Claire Buckley pregnant. What would she say?

Hobby never followed through on this idea. He got to talking to one person and then another, then Jake found him and Hobby thought to look for Claire one more time-this time just to be polite, to say good-bye; she was, after all, carrying his child-but Claire was nowhere around. He tried texting her, but she didn’t answer, and Hobby was running out of time.

They were leaving the party.


By the beginning of August, Hobby was out of his wheelchair and on crutches. The physical therapist at the hospital, a woman named Meadow, said that he was the best patient she’d ever had. She attributed this to the fact that he’d been so healthy, so strong, and such an exceptional athlete to begin with. But a lot of times, Meadow said, it was the former athletes who were the most challenging to work with, because they were used to having things come easily. They weren’t willing to try. Their fragile psyches didn’t allow for the possibility of failure.

Ha! Hobby laughed at this, while at the same time identifying with it. He wouldn’t be human if a part of him didn’t mourn, didn’t ache for his old, unbroken body and its talents. Coach Jaxon (football) stopped by twice to watch his physical therapy sessions, and both times Hobby saw the gleam of hope in his eyes. Hobby tried to eavesdrop on the whispered conversations between Coach Jaxon and Meadow while he did his twenty-five reps of a simple neck roll, but all he saw was Meadow shaking her head. He wasn’t going to be ready in September, nor the September after that; his body would never again be able to absorb the kind of trauma that football delivered. Another concussion, Meadow told Hobby, if it didn’t kill him, would most likely leave him a vegetable for life. He would never have the quickness or endurance for basketball at the level that he wanted to play it, and though his pitching arm was unharmed, his left arm would always be weak. He was lopsided now, off balance.