What I Thought Was True

Chapter Six

The water is an icy shock, stripping away any fears or feelings. I blast up toward the surface, emerge, take a deep, gasping breath of air, then plunge back down into the cold depths, push off from the pebbly bottom, flip toward the surface, turn on my back, eyes closed, lazily breathing in the difference between the icy water and the still, summer air.

Rising in me, I know, is what I’ve been trying to avoid. For months. I open my eyes, let the memory lap at the edges of my thoughts, then close them again, and give in.

They call it the Polar Bear Plunge, which doesn’t really make sense because it’s held in the spring—and here in Connecticut, polar bears are pretty damn scarce.

But ocean water in March in Connecticut is the stuff of hypothermia. And the Polar Bear Plunge is Stony Bay High Athletic Department’s big spring fundraiser. There’s always a bonfire, and the cheerleaders and the PTO bring hot cider and yell encouragements as the athletes run into the icy water. Parents and people from town show up—to bet on who stays in the water longest, who will swim out farthest. This year, since Vivien was cheer captain and Nic was on the swim team, which I’d been timing for all year, I got up at seven a.m. and went with them to watch.

The morning was blinding bright and extra cold. There’d been one of those freakish heavy coastal snowstorms the week before, and patches of snow still drifted in the tall sea oats. I wanted to stay in Vivien’s warm car with the heat on nuclear, but Nic was in swim trunks and Vivie wearing her skimpy cheer outfit with only Nic’s sweatshirt pulled over it. So I got out and stood by the bonfire in the name of supporting the football team, the field hockey team, the soccer team, the baseball team, the basketball team, and the swim team.

Plenty of show-offs all around, stripping down and striking muscle or cheesecake poses to hoots and whistles from the well-bundled crowd. Hooper, though small, was speedy and mighty confident for a skinny, pale guy. Ugh, and he was wearing a Speedo. Gross, Hoop.

I clasped my fingers around a foam cup of cider, blowing into it to feel the warm steam on my face, then heard a rustle of movement next to me, felt this prickle of awareness across my skin, and turned. It was Cass. He’d shucked off his parka and shirt and was now unbuttoning the top of his faded jeans, revealing navy swim trunks.

I expected him to be out putting on a show like the others. Even Nic, hardly an exhibitionist, swirled his sweatshirt on a finger with a grin before tossing it to Vivien. But Cass was alone, quietly undressing. Right next to me.

I assumed he didn’t realize who I was. I’d grabbed Mom’s parka on the way out the door, and with the hood tipped up I had all the sex appeal of the Goodyear Blimp.

He hesitated, then kicked his pants and the rest of his discarded clothes into a pile farther from the fire.

“Bet on me, Gwen?”

I looked at him. Shivered. Shook my head.

“You should. Nic and Spence are the flashy ones with all the strokes, but I’m all about going the distance. And endurance.”

“I’m not the betting kind.” I took a sip of my cider, breathed in the apple-cinnamon-scented steam, added quietly, “Good luck.”

He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, then shook his head and loped off. I tried unsuccessfully not to follow him with my eyes as he strode through the crowd, but . . . Those nice shoulders, the V of his upper body tapering down. I mean, it was purely aesthetic. Who wouldn’t look?

The opening air horn blasted, shrill, ear-splitting. Everyone plunged into the water. Jimmy Pieretti, ever the comedian, was wearing a yellow-and-white polka-dot bikini, although I couldn’t imagine where he found one that fit. Nic got delayed by Vivie’s good-luck kiss. There was a lot of splashing and yelling and swearing.

“Quit your bellyaching and focus!” Coach Reilly bawled through his bullhorn. Through the crowd, I saw Cass dive into the water, then slice through the surf, shoulders and forearms flashing in a fast crawl. Yes, there were chunks of ice. I marveled at some people’s school spirit. You couldn’t have made me take that plunge for anything less than world peace or having Emory’s medical expenses paid for life.

I walked down closer to the water, where Vivien was jumping up and down with the other cheerleaders.

“Shake it, shake it, Stony Bay. Swim it, swim it, all the way.”

About twenty kids had already lurched back out of the water toward the bonfire. Nic was sticking it out, but he looked crimson with cold. Jimmy Pieretti was evidently going for “Longest Time Underwater” because I could see his enormous legs sticking out in a headstand as the crowd shouted, “Jimbo, Jiiiiiiiiiimbo!” He had to top two hundred fifty pounds, but that wasn’t enough insulation: his toes were blue.

Coach, a bunch of parent volunteers, everyone was watching, but I still found myself counting heads, scanning the water. By the shore my whole life, I’d grown up knowing what the ocean could give, then take away in a flash.

Where was Cass? He was popular, but no one was chanting his name the way they were for Jimmy or even Hoop, who had dashed out of the water to throw up on Coach Reilly’s shoes.

Where was Cass? Someone could easily have drowned in this noisy, yelling crowd, without anyone noticing.

I ran to the edge of the water, shielded my eyes from the bright sun dazzling off the waves, seeing black spots dancing in front of me. But no blond head. The race had been going on for at least five minutes, maybe more.

“Coach. Coach! Where’s Cass Somers?” I pulled at his sleeve as he raised the bullhorn again, my voice panicky. “Can you see him? Do you have binoculars?”

“Which one of you morons spiked the cider?” Coach bellowed. “You guys are disastrous. What the hell!”

I yanked at his sleeve again, and he turned, face ruddy against his thick black hair. “Not now, Gwen.” He tried to sound gentle. Coach had always been good to me, maybe because my dad’s restaurant donated food and ice cream for the beginning and end-of-year rallies. “Got a public relations disaster here. If the PTO finds out about the cider, we can kiss this fund-raiser good-bye.”

“I can’t see Cassidy Somers. He’s in the water somewhere.” I tried to haul Coach with me into the waves, which were HOLY FROSTBITE frigid. My skin felt like it was being peeled off with a thousand knives carved from ice. Coach remained motionless, a red-faced Rock of Gibraltar. So I yanked off my parka, tossed it to the sand, waded in up to my knees, my waist, my armpits.

“Gwen! What the hell are you doing?” Vivien shouted. “Are you insane?”

Now everyone was back on shore, except me, in my clinging jeans and soggy hoodie, and there was a splash and Cass surfaced right in front of me, eyes wide and blue, hair plastered over his forehead, darkened to shifting shades of amber and gold by the water. He gave his head a shake, tossing his hair out of his eyes.

“I . . .” My teeth were chattering. My whole body was trembling. Cass too was shuddering so hard, I could feel his legs buck against mine. “I thought you’d drowned.”

He didn’t say anything, just reached out and wrapped an arm around my waist, stumbling as he tried to steer me to shore.

I was shaking and he was breathing hard and fast. I wasn’t sure who was holding up who, but he’d been in the water longer and I had the sense that I was towing him. Coach wasn’t even watching us, having headed up to the bonfire to cuss out his wayward team.

“I th-thought you’d drowned,” I repeated when we got to land. Vivien was holding out one of the big quilts from the back of her mom’s car. Cass’s fingers swiped at it, but didn’t close. It was me who grabbed it and shook it open, reaching for his waistband to pull him close to me under the quilt. Smack against him, I could feel his heart racing.

“Thank you,” he said. “I w-w-wasn’t drowning, but if I had been, that would h-h-have been an awesome rescue. As it was, it was plenty am-m-mazing.” His breath was white in the frigid air but felt warm on my face and now I was conscious that my hands were tight on his cold waist and I was practically thigh to thigh with Cass Somers.

Coach came over at this point. “You aced the distance and length record, Somers. Maybe the personal stupidity one too.”

Cass nodded, game face, neither gratified or abashed. Then he looked over at me. “Can we g-give G-Gwen the Lifeguard of the Year award, Coach? She w-was trying to save me.”

Coach snorted. “All you two need saving from is your own foolishness. Didja even kick off your shoes, Castle?”

I wiggled my wet toes in my hiking boots. “N-no.”

“Glad you’re not on my team,” Coach huffed. “You gotta think on your feet.” He scanned the beach for Mrs. Santos, the school nurse, but she was bent over Hooper, face concerned.

Coach sighed. “Always that guy,” he said. “Scat, kids. The bonfire’s not going to do it for you. Go someplace warm. And lose those sopping clothes, pronto.”

I was someplace warm. Cass’s arm was tight around my shoulder. It was thirty degrees, tops, but I felt hot.

“Can you drive me home?” he asked. “I came here with Pieretti and I think he’s w-wasted.” In addition to the chattering teeth, his voice sounded slurry.

“Well, that was a given,” I said. “Can’t you be the designated driver? Or, oh, were you drinking too?”

“N-no. My lips are j-just numb. B-but frostbite may be setting in.” He held one whitish blue hand outside the blanket, flexing it gently, wincing. “I can’t feel my fingers. Doesn’t seem safe to wait. Jimbo’s car’s got a stick shift. Hang on.”

He disentangled himself from the quilt, and my arms, and walked slowly up the beach toward the bonfire. Vivien immediately scooted to my side.

“What’s going on?” She gathered the quilt folds around me more securely. “What’s up with you and Sundance?”

“Nothing. I thought he was d-drowning. He wasn’t.” I gave a short laugh. “End of story.”

“I doubt that.” She ducked around to the other side of me as Cass returned, carrying his clothes and Converse.

“All set,” he said. “Thorpe is d-driving Pieretti home. You can drive me—can you handle a s-stick? Pieretti can grab it when he sobers up. Then I’ll bring you home.”

I found myself saying only, “I can drive a stick,” concentrating on pulling Mom’s parka back up. After lying on the cold beach sand, it felt like an ice pack.

“Cool.” He put a hand on my down-covered back, steering me to Jimmy’s car up in the beach parking lot.

It was a Kia. Why did huge Jimmy Pieretti have the smallest car in the world? I squelched my way into the driver’s seat, shivering again. I’m sure my lips matched the navy-blue vinyl seats.

“Here.” Cass tossed the keys to me. I snagged them in midair, and he smiled at me, the sidelong curl revealing his dimples, crinkling the corners of his eyes, taking his face from perfect to real. When I turned the keys in the ignition, he snapped on the hot air, which blasted glacial currents at us.

“It’ll heat up in a minute.”

“That’s okay. I’m f-f-fine.”

“Gwen, you’re a Popsicle.” He dropped his clothes in my lap. “P-put these on.”

My face heated instantly. “I c-c-can’t do that!”

He folded his arms. “Want me to do it f-for you?” He flexed his fingers. “As soon as the numbness and tingling go away . . . But I thought you m-might not wanna wait that long.”

“It’s fine. I’ll just change later.” I notched up the heat a few more degrees. It seemed to get even colder.

“C’mon. I can’t have your f-freezing to death on my conscience.” He said all this in a flat, logical tone without glancing over at me. “Just change.”

“Here?”

“Well, I th-thought you might like the privacy of the backseat, but whatever my fearless rescuer w-wishes.”

“You want me to take off my clothes in the backseat?” I echoed, like an idiot.

“C-can’t get warm if you just put the dry clothes on over wet ones,” he told me, still in that serious, scientific way. “So, yeah, d-ditch yours, put on mine. I’ll wear my parka over my suit. It’s fine. But do it fast. I’m f-freezing.” He shuddered.

His clothes were faded jeans, a black turtleneck, thick woven gray wool socks. Sandy, but not dripping wet or icy cold. I stumbled over the stick shift and into the backseat, unzipped Mom’s parka, then halted, my eyes flicking to his in the rearview mirror. “No looking.”

“Damn. I was hoping you’d forget about the m-mirror. No problem. I’ll just shut my eyes. I’m getting kind of warm and drowsy, anyway. Must be the hypothermia c-coming on.”

I tried to move quickly. My drenched hoodie made a wet slapping sound as I yanked it over my head and onto the backseat. My fingers were too stiff to undo the clasp of my bra, so I just left it on. Though I’d forbidden Cass to do so, I couldn’t avoid a glance in the rearview mirror. Fantastic. My hair stood out in icy-dark Medusa curls, my nose was red, and my lips, yes, blue with cold. I’d never looked more bedraggled in my life. I shoved myself into Cass’s clothes and stumbled back over the seat.

Cass did indeed have his eyes closed; his head slanted back against the headrest, his black parka bundled around him. There was a silver strip of duct tape on the shoulder, starkly bright against the black. He looked pale. Had he really gone to sleep? Into a hypothermic coma? I bent over to take a closer look.

He opened his eyes, smiling. I caught my breath. He moved in infinitesimally closer, dark lashes fluttering closed, just as Coach rapped hard on the window.

“C’mon, you two clowns. Get a move on. This isn’t a drive-in movie.”

We were silent after that as I pulled out of the parking lot, through town, following Cass’s mumbled directions. He reached out, flexing his fingers, then drumming them against the dashboard.

I tried to drive resolutely but couldn’t resist a few stolen glances.

Always when he was doing the exact same thing.

It was strange. Like a dance. One I’d never done.

“First left up here,” he said. I turned onto one of those quiet, tree-lined streets with wide, paved sidewalks and generously spaced houses with their rolling lawns. So different from the scrubby twisted pine bushes, crushed clamshell driveways, and shoulder-to-shoulder ranch homes of my side of Seashell. “You turn down this road.” He indicated a right onto a drive with a sign that said “Shore Road.”

I couldn’t help but gasp when I saw the house. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen . . . Modern, but somehow old-fashioned, built along the long strong lines of a sailing ship, a schooner, a clipper ship—something majestic poised to conquer the sea. One whole side of the house was bowed out with a narrow rail around the second story, high and proud, jutting like the prow of a boat.

“Wow.”

Cass tilted his head at me. “My uncle designed it. That’s what my parents were building—that summer.”

“It’s amazing. This was where you went? When you left us?” Then I winced because . . . because the Somerses were on the island for one season. It’s not like they abandoned us. Me. But Cass didn’t blink.

“Yeah. My brothers still rag on me because I mostly got to grow up here and they were already off to college. Down there”—he pointed down the low hill, grass turning to sea grass, tumbling softly down to the ocean—“there’s a good stretch of beach. Just ours. It’s beautiful. I’d like to show it to you. But not now. We’d both freeze.”

A mansion. No one could call this anything but that. Not a house. An estate. It reminded me a bit of Mark Twain’s house, where we went on a school field trip once. But that was built to look like a riverboat, and this could only be a sailboat. The yard had all these big trees, a wrought-iron bench under a willow, a fountain even. It looked like something from Perfect Life magazine.

A mansion and a private beach.

I did not belong here.

“I’m glad you didn’t drown,” I said, at the exact moment he said, “Thanks for wading in after me.”

“It was nothing,” I added, just as he said, “Gwen—”

We both stopped. His eyes were the darkest, purest blue. The ocean in winter.

“Look . . . My parents are going away tomorrow for a week. I thought I’d live the high school cliché and have a party. Will you come?” He’d somehow moved closer again, smelling like the best of the coast: salt water, fresh air.

I leaned toward him without meaning to, without a clear thought in my head, and he bent forward and kissed me. It was such a good, sweet kiss—a simple press of the lips at first until I opened, wanting more, and he was ready. No jamming tongues or bumping teeth. Just one smooth delicious glide and then a rhythm that made my insides jangle and had me tilting against him, gasping for breath, then diving back for more. We kissed for a long time—a long, long time—and he let that be it, only brushing his hands into my hair and gently grazing my neck with his thumbs.

“Will you come?” he repeated.

I looked back at his house, that huge house. I’d never heard of Cass having a party. Who would be there? Spence Channing. The people Cass hung out with at school. Jimmy Pieretti, Trevor Sharpe, Thorpe Minot. The Hill guys—the boys who lived on Hayden Hill, the richest part of Stony Bay. No one I knew well. A . . . a party.

And Cass.

I swallowed. “What time?”

He reached into the pocket of his parka and pulled out a blue Sharpie. Uncapping it with his teeth, he took my hand, his thumb dancing lightly over the inside of my wrist. He turned my palm closer. “How far, again, is it from your house to your dad’s restaurant?”

“Three miles,” I said faintly, feeling all the hairs on my arm stand on end.

He made an x on the base of my wrist, traced up to the line of my index finger, made another x, and then slid his hand down my palm, making three x’s below my thumb. “An approximation,” he said. Then wrote “Gwen’s” by the first x, “Castle’s” by the next. And “Shore Road” by the three x’s. Then “Eight o’clock Saturday ni—”

“Ha!” my cousin laughs. He grabs my wrist and pulls me under, before hauling me above the water again.

I splutter and wipe my hair out of my face. “Nic! What the hell!”

“Thought I might find you here. What are you doing, crazy? You were headed straight for Seal Rock. Head-first.”

I have inadvertently gulped in a mouthful of brackish water and am coughing. “I—”

He thumps me hard on the back, dislodging another series of coughs. I dive back under, come up, flicking back my hair, then notice that he’s freckled with large spatters of white paint. Jackson Pollack Nic.

“What?” he asks as I frown at him.

I twitch my finger from his bespattered face to his speckled shoulders. He looks down. “Oh. Yeah. We were doing old man Gillespie’s garage ceiling. Then I went to check out the island job. Didn’t have time to clean up.” He scrubs his hand through his mop of sandy hair, much of which is also coated with paint. “Maybe I should have?” he offers. “Is this not a professional look for a job interview?”

I’m treading water, trying not to let myself be dragged away by the rushing creek current.

“How’d that go?”

“Aw . . . you know.” Nic cups his hands in the water, splashes it on his face, slapping his cheeks. “It was what’s-his-face, the island president. In his shorts with the blue embroidered whales and his effing pink shirt. He acted like it was all competitive. But I know from Aunt Luce that no one wants that painting and repair job. Too much aggravation. Almost as bad as yard boy. We’ve got it in the bag. Hoop’s pissed.”

“You’ve got a steady job all summer and Hooper’s mad?”

Nic dunks under, bobs up. “He doesn’t want to work for ‘those summer snobs.’ Painting, we could’ve headed around the state, maybe camped out on Block Island or something, whatever—gotten the hell off island, for Chrissake. Hoop’ll come around, though. Anything’s better than working for Uncle Mike.”

Yeah. These past few years Nic has done anything and everything to avoid working for Dad. Or, lately, even having dinner with him.

My cousin whacks me on the shoulder and starts doing a fast crawl to the rocky shore. I used to be able to beat Nic every time, but since swim team, and especially since he’s been training for the academy, no contest. He’s nearly drip-dried; shaking the last drops off his shaggy hair, by the time I clamber up next to him and throw myself down in the sand. He tosses himself down next to me.

We lie there for a while, squinting at the evening sun filtering through the trees, saying nothing. Finally he stands up, reaches out a white-splotched hand to pull me to my feet. He glances around the shore.

I know what he’s searching for. A skipping stone for Vivie. I study the sand for a thin, flat rock, but Nic’s eyes are better trained, longer attuned. He finds one—“Here’s a keeper”—slips it into the pocket of his soggy shorts, jerks his head toward the sandy roadside. “Hoop let me take the truck home. Party on the beach tonight. We’re going to start this summer off with a bang.”

Great, both Cass and a party on the first real day of summer. Talk about Kryptonite.