What I Thought Was True

Chapter Twenty-two

Luckily for both of us, Cass does not turn out to be a Boat Bully—what Nic, Viv, and I call those guys who get on a boat of any size and suddenly start barking orders, throwing around nautical terms, and acting all Captain Bligh.

He doesn’t say much of anything except “It’s chilly out there. Got a sweatshirt?” until we get onto the dock, and even then, it’s mostly technical. He tells me to bend on the jib, which I do after some brief direction.

Am I going to be stuck out on the water with the silent stranger or the charming Cass? And why am I even here, when before he could barely speak to me?

Over on one side of the beach, there’s a grill smoldering, and Dom and Pam and a few of the other island kids are gearing up for a cookout. I could go over, sit down, fit right in.

But the island gang doesn’t seem to notice us. Cass ignores them as well. His nose is sunburned and I have this urge to put my index finger on the peeling bridge. When he ducks his head, busy with the mainsail, I can see that the top of his hair is bleached white blond, almost as fair as when he was eight.

He works quickly, efficiently, still without saying anything. I catch him looking up at me through his lashes a few times, though, smiling just a little, and the silence begins to seem more tranquil than tense. I’m compelled to break it anyway. “Your boat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You bring it out from town?” Did he have time to do that? Did he shower? I lean discreetly closer to try to tell. Should I have showered? I passed my time wallowing in self-pity rather than body wash. He looks very clean. But then, Cass always looks that way.

He shakes his head, tosses me a life jacket. Fastens his own. Squints his eyes against the sun as he looks out at the water.

“You have a mooring? Here?” Moorings on Seashell are strictly controlled, and there have been incidences of actual fistfights over who gets which spot. Or any spot.

“Dad,” Cass offers, in a neutral tone. “Ready?”

I’ve been around boats most of my life. But mostly motorboats, which have sounds and smells and movements all their own. You always get a whiff of gasoline when you back up to head out, see a slick of it rainbowing on the surface of the water, then the surge forward and the bang, bang, bang up and down of the bow if it’s choppy. When I raise the jib and Cass the mainsail, it’s so noisy, lots of clanging and the sail flapping around. Then the wind catches and they billow out, the hull kicks up and forward, spray flying in our faces, and we head toward the open water. I’m unprepared for how silent, how serene, it is then. There’s almost no sound at all except the scavenger seagulls dive-bombing and the thrum of a prop-plane high, high up, heading out to the distant islands.

Cass asks if I know about ducking my head under the boom when the boat comes about, and I do. He shows me by example how to hook my shoes and lean back.

The water is thick with boats of all kinds, huge showy Chris-Crafts and Sailfishes skimming along the water. Far away there’s some sort of ferry headed somewhere and what looks like a tanker far out on the horizon.

“Do we have a destination?” I ask.

“Here,” Cass says, as though we aren’t whizzing through the water, as though we were just in one spot. “Unless you’d like to go somewhere else. Another direction.”

The wind is whipping now, blowing my hair into my eyes, across my lips. I pull it back, twist and knot it at the back of my neck. Cass looks at me, riveted, as though I’ve performed some rabbit out of the hat trick. But all he says is, “Ready about.” One turn, and we’re flying along. It’s like being one of Nic’s stones skimming over the surface of the ocean without ever landing hard enough to sink. Out here, the water is a deep bottle green, foamed by whitecaps, and I want to reach out and touch it, dive in, even. This is better than jumping . . . more exhilarating, more breath-stealing, more of a release, just . . . more.

I’m smiling so hard my cheeks are starting to hurt. I check Cass’s face. He’s intent on the water, the tiller, all focus and game face. I need to tone it down. He was so weird before. And he’s still not talking.

But then, he clears his throat and says, “Thanks. For coming. Sorry I was”—he nods back in the direction of shore—“a douche on land.”

“Yeah,” I say, “what was going on there?” Then add hurriedly, “If it’s about the lessons, you don’t have to do them. We’ll understand. I mean, even just that one was great and it’ll probably come more easily now. He just needed to get over being afraid.”

“It takes longer than an hour to get over being afraid. It’s not that at all. I was just . . . thinking about stuff. Nothing about you two. A family thing.”

I remember him using that same phrase after The Great Hideout Save.

“Should I ask if you want to talk about it?”

The jib flaps a little and he tightens the line, almost unconsciously, without even having to look, then clenches and unclenches his hand, looking down for a second before quickly returning his attention to the crowded waters around us. “That conversation with my brother you, uh—”

“Eavesdropped on?”

He flashes me a smile. “Yeah, just like I did with ol’ Alex at the rehearsal dinner. But yeah, that talk is one I get a lot at home.”

“I got that impression. You going to tell me what your Big Sin was now?”

He moves the tiller to the left, getting us out of the line of fire of a Boston Whaler with a bunch of girls in bikinis in it. “I got a million of them.”

“Mostly alongside Spence?” I say, then regret it, expecting him to snap something about us having that in common, those Spence sins, or just shut down completely.

But he says, “Yeah. We started together at Hodges in kindergarten. It wasn’t so bad then, but the older you get, the more it su—the worse it is. I mean—the rules, and what they think is important and just all this—shi—garbage. He hates that as much as I do and cares less about pretending he doesn’t. So we started messing around—” He hesitates.

“Define messing around.”

Cass shoots me a smile. “Not like that, obviously. Just stuff—like—there’s this big statue of the guy who founded Hodges—marble, in a toga, with a wreath—”

“Hodges was founded in Ancient Rome?”

“Asinine, right? So, sophomore year, Spence and I would, you know, put a bra on it or a beer in its hand or whatever. We did that for a few weeks, and then they caught us.”

“Don’t tell me they kicked you out for that. You’d have to do way worse to get booted from SBH. The last kid who was expelled set all the choir robes on fire while sneaking a cigarette in the chorus closet.”

“Yeah, and from what I hear about that one, he was smashed and it wasn’t exactly a Marlboro he was smoking. That guy managed to pull off all three strikes and you’re out in one day. Chan and me . . . not that efficient. So, yeah, disrespecting our illustrious founder”—he makes air quotes around those two words—“strike one. Then we borrowed the groundskeeper’s golf cart and almost drove it into this little pond they had.”

“Small-time, Somers.” I lean back, folding my arms across my chest. Until I realize how stupid that probably looks with a life jacket on. And that I’m totally borrowing his gesture. Isn’t mirroring a mating signal in the animal kingdom? Soon I’ll be rolling over and exposing my soft underbelly.

“Now I’m supposed to impress you with How Bad I Am, Gwen? Is that what it takes? Okay, so the dining hall looks like . . .” He drags on his earlobe, searching for words. “Hogwarts. No, worse, like where Henry VIII would go to eat a whole deer leg or whatever. Or Nottingham Castle. So, Spence and I figured we ought to up the authenticity of the whole medieval thing. We borrowed a key from the custodian—snuck in at night with a couple bales of hay and these big wolfhounds that Spence’s dad had. And a chicken or two. This pot-bellied pig. Long story short, the headmaster was not as much of a fan of historical accuracy as you’d think. That was that. Strike three.”

I’m laughing. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re going to have to work a lot harder to go to hell. Or even jail.”

But he’s unsmiling, clenching that fist again.

“Oh God. I’m sorry. I just don’t think that’s so bad. Honestly, if they had a sense of humor. I mean, I’m sure your family is very funny, I mean, not like funny-strange but like they—”

“I get what you mean. And they do have senses of humor. But, uh, not about getting expelled. From a school that your dad and your brothers and your mother and grandmother all went to. Not to mention that my brother Jake is on staff there, a coach. None too cool to have your loser little brother booted.”

Loser? Cass?

“Ouch. I’m sorry.” I rest my hand on his, the one on the tiller, leave it there for a second, feel this shiver—each nerve ending, one after another, vibrating with awareness—spread up my arm. I yank my fingers away, busy them in twisting my hair back into a knot again.

“But I’m not. I’m not sorry.” His voice rises, like he’s drowning out someone else’s voice, not just the waves. “That’s the thing. Getting out of there was . . . right. It was not the place for me. SBH is—I like Coach better, the team is better, the classes are fine . . . I’m happy to be where I am.”

“Your family’s still mad? After all this time?”

I have this image of Cass’s dad bringing a bunch of us—summer kids, island kids, whoever wanted to come—out in their Boston Whaler that summer. He’d take a pack of us tubing or waterskiing, things we island kids never got to do. Keep going out all day to make sure everyone who wanted a chance got one. He let us take turns being in the bow, holding on tight as it rose up and slapped down, soaking us with spray. And once, when I stepped on a fishhook at the end of the pier, he carried me all the way back on his shoulders to the house they were renting so he could clip it off with pliers and ease it out, telling me these horrible knock-knock jokes to distract me.

“They’re not mad,” Cass says. “‘Disappointed.’”

In the universal language of parents, “disappointed” is nearly always worse than “mad.”

“After a year?” I ask. I should change the subject. The knuckles of Cass’s fist are white. Clench. Unclench.

“After yesterday. My grandmother and my mom went and talked to the headmaster a few days ago. He said he regretted kicking me out, since he knew I would never have done that stuff myself, that it was all Spence’s bad influence. Which it wasn’t. But he said if I apologized and admitted I wasn’t the one who came up with it, I could get back in. Which would be great for my transcript and probably get me into a better college and . . . you know the drill.”

His voice has deepened, mockingly, on the last sentence. Clearly a lecture he’s heard often.

And I do—I know the drill. I know it exactly. Realizing I do, that I get it, is like cold, hard ocean spray in the face—a shock, but then sort of soothing. Sure, no one’s imagining me winding up at some Ivy—but it’s that same sense of what’s next. I look at Cass now, at his hair blowing all those shades of blond, at his eyes, focused, determined, the stubborn set of his mouth. And this is the hardest, weirdest part of not being that barefoot girl and that towheaded boy running down the sand to the water, all legs and elbows and unself-conscious. Suddenly, you edge your way to the end of your second ten years and BOOM. Your choices matter. Not chocolate or vanilla, bridge or pier, Sandy Claw or Abenaki. It’s your whole life. We’re suddenly this close, like Nic said, to the wrong move. Or the right one. It matters now.

His blue eyes are grim. I slip my hand over his now fisted one again. He turns his head sharply, closer to mine.

Then the Boston Whaler full of bikini-clad girls sweeps a wide horseshoe, zooms past us one more time. One of the girls is waving the top of a bright orange bikini in the air, sun gleaming on her wet skin. No sweatshirt for her. Or life jacket.

The waves slosh into the boat, surf slapping us in the face and we rock back and forth crazily.

“Friends of yours, Cass?”

I have this sudden awful fear that they are. Former classmates, fellow Bath and Tennis Club buddies, whatever. The people he really belongs with. To.

“Nope. Yours?”

“Despite the island girl rep, no. We usually save our topless antics for land.”

“We’d better head in, then,” Cass deadpans. I whack him on the shoulder as though he’s Nic, and he grins back at me with an expression that is . . . definitely not my cousin’s way of looking at me. And a slow smile that builds. I feel that race of electricity slip-slide over my skin again, and meet his eyes full on, the way we did in Mrs. Ellington’s kitchen. And that March night.

He tightens the line on the mainsail without looking away from me, waiting for my eyes to fall. But I keep watching him, noticing, in the small confines of the sailboat and the strange stillness of this moment, things I hadn’t seen before. A tiny white scar that cuts through the left corner of his dark left eyebrow. Faint flecks of green in the deep blue of his eyes. The little pulse beating at the base of his throat. I don’t know how long it is that we just look. When I finally turn away, everything on the water seems just the same. Except my sense that something has shifted.

Shutting my eyes, I tip my face up to the sun and the wind, then open them to find that we’ve lost the gust and the boat is still, except for rocking a bit in the wake of some huge powerboat that just sped by, full of guys wearing aviator sunglasses.

“So, this island girl thing. What’s that?”

“C’mon, Cass. Don’t play dumb.”

“I’m the one needing remedial English help, Gwen, I am dumb.”

I turn to him incredulously. He stares back at me. His eyes seem to see all the way into me, and pull something else out.

“The last thing you are is dumb, Cass. I mean . . . here on island . . . we’re the . . . well, you know how there are townies and non-townies in Stony Bay?”

“I guess,” he says vaguely, as if he really doesn’t know.

“Well, island kids are the townies and then some. Especially if we’re girls. We’re like summer amenities.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cass jerks up on one elbow, eyebrows lowered.

“That we’re picnic baskets. Useful, even kind of nice to have when it’s hot and you’re hungry. But who wants a picnic when summer’s over?”

Cass clearly doesn’t know what to say to that. Or there’s actually some sort of wind and water crisis that involves intense concentration and not looking at me at all. Lots of rope hauling and a few orders barked at me in some sort of sailor lingo I don’t understand, which he translates after a beat or two of my silent incomprehension.

“So you are a Boat Bully after all,” I say.

“Huh? Can you take the tiller for a sec—yeah, like that.” His warm hand steadies mine, heat settling in, then lets go.

“You’re one of those guys who gets all nautical and bossy on the water.”

“I am not. I just know what I’m doing here. Just keep holding that steady. I’ll get the wind back soon.”

Since I don’t know sailing, I have no idea whether he actually needs to pull and loosen and adjust all these things or if it’s just a way to tune out. But then he looks at me, smiles, and the sparkle of the water is reflected from his eyes. “Don’t worry.”

I find myself answering, “I’m not worried.”

And I’m not. I’m not worried. I’m not awkward. I’m not self-conscious. I’m not anything except here. It feels like forever since I’ve been “here” without being “there” and “there too” and “what about there.” But none of those exist. Just me, Cass, and the blue ocean.

He starts to say something, but whatever it is gets drowned out by the roar of an enormous Chris-Craft surging by, leaving a tidal wave of foaming wake behind it.

We toss back and forth against the sides for a second before Cass decides it’s probably a life-saving decision to get out of the line of oddly thick traffic on the high seas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many sails and spinnakers and wakes. Is there a race? Or is everyone as reluctant to have their time on the water end as I am?

We sail in silence until the sunset turns the sky streaky Italian ice colors: raspberry, lemon, tangerine—all against blue cotton candy. Then we head home and dock the boat. I climb out, hand him my life jacket.

“I’d walk you home, but I’d better get this back out to the mooring before dark.”

I say I understand. Though I actually want him to walk me home. In the dark.

“Tomorrow night at six,” Cass says.

“Is?”

“Tutoring. You can’t put it off forever, Gwen.” He holds out one hand, its back facing me, and ticks things off on his fingers. “You told me how Old Mrs. P. Likes Things Done. I boiled your lobsters—”

“I thought we’d agreed not to bring that up again.”

“I’m making a point,” Cass says. “You helped me with the hedge. I took you sailing.” He’s ticked off four fingers now.

“You gave Emory a lesson . . .”

“That’s not in the equation. We’re even now. I know you like to be one up, Guinevere Castle. So time for you to tutor me and find out just how stupid I am.”

“I’ve never thought you were—”

He holds up one finger. “I really do have to go,” he says. “Tomorrow. At six. Your house.”

“Why not the Field House?” Why am I now wanting to be alone with him?

“Besides the fact that it’s messy, disgusting, and smells like dog piss?” Cass asks. “Your grandfather told me all about the job he had as a teenager sharpening knives. I don’t know Portuguese, so I can’t be totally sure what he said next . . . but I got the idea he’d be dropping by with some sharp ones if we were alone in my apartment. Six. Your house.”