We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel(13)
“You’re a very challenging peanut sometimes.”
“Be mad at Kingsley, not at me,” Meer says, laughing. “And be good to her like you are to Brock. You’re great and kind and a wonderful mama with a big heart. I know you are, really, so you don’t need to act grouchy.”
For the first time, June looks up from her work to examine me. As her eyes meet mine, she stops stirring the indigo vat. “Oh,” she says, light dawning in her eyes. “You’re Kingsley’s child.”
15
No more words on the subject are exchanged between them. Without any trace of her former irritation, June begins explaining that the enormous vat on the stove, which covers several burners, contains an indigo dye. She’s running an “offering” next week at the West Tisbury crafts market. She’ll bring the dye in a smaller vat on a hot plate. There will be clotheslines, tie-dye supplies, and so forth. For a donation, people can come and dye whatever they’d like. Today is a test run.
She hands me an apron. It’s made of white cotton and her hands stain it blue where she touches it. I take off my cream-colored henley and put on the apron over my black tank. Meer ties an apron on himself as well. It hangs over his shorts and looks like a dress. He redoes the elastic that secures his long hair on top of his head.
I begin as June instructs me, by squeezing blue water from fabrics over the sink, twisting them and wringing them. Then they go in another bath to set for a bit. After that, they must be wrung again and hung to dry.
“I could use the clothes dryer,” explains June. “But it’ll stain blue. And anyway, I like to see the color change as the fabric dries.”
She is right. As we work, greenish blues fade to teal. Blue-black fades to blue-gray.
I am tired and still shaky from vomiting earlier, but I do everything that’s asked of me. There is no music, no radio news, no podcast playing. No sound at all but June’s and Meer’s voices, now and again talking about whether something is rinsed well enough, or whether a certain shirt should go into the dye again.
At one point I excuse myself and check my phone to see if Kingsley has sent me anything, but there’s nothing. I write to him:
I’m here at Hidden Beach.
I hope you didn’t worry I’d be angry to find out about Meer. I’m not at all. I feel so lucky to have a family connection, even with someone I’ve only just met.
One thing: June didn’t know I was coming. I’m not sure how that happened, but I think she’s okay with me staying, at least for tonight.
See you tomorrow. /Matilda
Meer folds his apron down, takes off his shirt, and puts it into the pot. His shoulders are darkly tan, and he has the long, narrow look of someone whose weight hasn’t caught up yet to his height. He has writing and drawing all over his torso. At first I think it’s tattoos, but it’s actually only Sharpie, half washed off. In the center of his abdomen, in bubble letters, it says Read a freaking book. Lower down on the left, where Meer presumably drew on himself, there is an upside-down picture of three skulls, in classic tattoo-artist style. On his upper back, someone has drawn an awkward cartoon sailboat with the name FartFace on the hull, plus a series of spirals that represent waves.
I tamp Meer’s T-shirt down into the dye, watching the Shirley’s Hardware logo sink beneath the surface. When I look up, there’s another person in the room.
He seems familiar, but I can’t place him at first. He’s about eighteen, white, shirtless and jacked, like a surfer who spends time in the weight room—very good-looking in a brainless, living-his-best-life way. His eyes are huge and the brightest of blue. His blondish hair is bleached light at the ends. The color hasn’t been refreshed in maybe a year. Like Meer, he’s covered in Sharpie. There’s a beautifully drawn donkey on one shoulder, and a seal on the other, plus a series of ornate anchors and an old-fashioned pinup girl on his left arm. His right arm has bubble lettering from elbow to wrist reading Meer smells great all the time.
“Are you Brock or Tatum?” I ask.
He grins at me, and his smile is so dazzling I can’t help but smile back. “Brock.” He turns to Meer. “Who’s this?”
Meer explains and Brock hustles over to where I’m standing by the stove. He opens his arms. “Bring it in, Matilda.”
“What?”
“You’re Meer and Kingsley’s family, and they’re like family to me, so you’re like family to me.” He wraps me in a nice-to-meet-you hug that I’ve only encountered before in Hollywood, with some of Saar’s actor friends. It’s a lot of naked boy skin.
“Oh my god,” I say when he releases me. I’ve put together why he looks familiar. “You’re Sammy.”
“Paul-David Brock.”
“But Sammy. Meer didn’t tell me you were Sammy.”
“He isn’t Sammy,” says Meer.
“Of course not,” I say, flushing.
I have seen Brock be Sammy for I don’t know how many hours of my life. A lot. His TV show, Men and Other Critters, stopped having new episodes a couple years ago, but there are clips on TikTok all the time. It’s impossible to escape videos of Brock saying “Don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know!” and “Girls are so much smarter than me.”