During my junior year, I started looking at colleges. After years of taking care of my dad and myself, I thought I’d make a pretty good nurse. I’d helped a lot when Avó, my dad’s mother, had cancer, and it had come naturally to me, making me feel proficient and useful. My plan was to go to school somewhere not too far away, then come back to the Cape and work here. I never wanted to live anywhere else. How could I? Once the Cape’s salty fingers got ahold of you, you were addicted to the place.
So I studied hard, knowing I’d need a chunky scholarship. I had Beth as my best friend and a nice circle of other girls—Jennifer, Jessica, Justine and Ashley. I was never bullied or overly teased. A lot of my classmates came from wealthy families, and Nauset High’s parking lot had plenty of Volvos, Range Rovers and BMWs. But there were plenty of beater cars, too, like the one I drove, my beloved Honda Civic with 250,000 miles on it. I was a solid student, As and Bs, just enough to separate me from the wicked-smart kids. I sang in the choir but didn’t have solos. Played field hockey and made varsity, but big deal, right? Nothing special, nothing not special, if you know what I mean.
Until the end of my junior year of high school.
Like many torrid stories from one’s youth, this one started with alcohol and ended at the hospital.
Chase Freeman was the resident god of the senior class, from an old Cape family with old Cape money, and they still lived in Eastham, as they had generation after generation. Chase’s great-great-grandfather had been a whaling captain, and his house was now a small museum. Chase and his parents lived not far away from there, on a winding road that had views of the town cove and the salt marsh. Their home was Eastham’s answer to the Kennedy compound down in Hyannis—a sprawling, gray-shingled house on a couple of acres, the lawn stretching out to a sharp drop-off to the marsh.
Old money and privilege; a name that would get a reservation at a great table just about any night of the week, even in high summer. Add to this that Chase’s aunt was an actress of some renown and occasionally flew her nephew to California for a screening or as her date for an awards show. We had all seen him at the Golden Globes last year, looking handsome and confident as his aunt told E!’s red carpet correspondent that her nephew was her favorite person.
So he was draped in entitlement, good looks and security, with that access to fame gilding the lily. In the fall, Chase would attend Harvard like his parents before him. He played lacrosse, drove an Audi, wore Vineyard Vines bought from the flagship store on Martha’s Vineyard. He’d eyed me in the hallways a time or two—I had grown a few inches since my freshman year and was now not short and thick, but almost average height and curvy in a way that shouted “Fertility!” In the past couple of months, I’d discovered that I was actually kind of pretty, especially once I’d discovered John Frieda’s anti-frizz hair empire. My lips were full, my eyes were dark, I was a 36C, and suddenly boys went on high alert when I walked past.
This terrified and thrilled me. For one thing, I still loved nothing more than to walk in the woods and swim in the kettle ponds with Beth or HandsomeBoy. I had zero experience with boys, had never been kissed, had never met a boy I wanted to kiss （or a girl, for that matter）。 I had absolutely no idea what to do when it came to romance, or even why people liked French kissing, because it sounded quite disgusting to me. This new male attention made me flushed and flustered, so I did what many girls did—I ignored it.
Boom. I may as well have draped myself in bacon and sprayed myself with new-car smell. It was a strange and abrupt change. After all those years of feeling abandoned by my sister, fairly invisible in school outside of my little circle, I was suddenly drunk with the power I had over boys. I started wearing V-necks. I stopped hating that I had a significant ass, because I had just learned that it was a booty, and Sir Mix-a-Lot told me that this was a good thing. There was a storm brewing on the horizon, and it was me.
And then, on May 16, the storm broke . . . just not in the way I’d imagined.
On May 16, Chase Freeman stepped out in front of me in the hall and asked my breasts if I’d like to come to a party at his house on Saturday. My breasts and I accepted. “What time?” I asked, as if this kind of invitation was normal in my life.
“Seven,” he said, meeting my eyes with a smile.
“Great.” Then I turned away and walked off to English class with Beth, willing my knees to keep working.
“Oh, my God,” Beth whispered. “Lillie! Oh, my God!”