For the first twenty minutes, everything seemed perfectly normal, and Amber almost relaxed. Once they were out on the ocean, with only the tip of Culling Pointe in sight, Rocca brought the boat to a stop and stepped away from the wheel. He’d slipped his penis out of his pants. And Amber realized there was nowhere to go.
He let her keep her virginity. He’d save it for another boat ride. From that day forward, oral sex always made her seasick.
Going to the police didn’t seem like an option. Quitting the team would mean giving up on her future. But she couldn’t go back out on the boat. Then a solution occurred to her—a way to rid herself of the bad luck once and for all. The night after the boat ride, she snuck out of her house at two in the morning and walked the three blocks to the marina, clutching the gas can her father used to fill the family lawn mower. She poured the gasoline out on the deck of the boat, lit a kitchen match, and tossed it over the rail. She’d never set anything on fire, of course. She had no idea the explosion would be powerful enough to singe her eyebrows and wake the neighbors.
Amber couldn’t prove what Rocca had done, and Jamie refused to talk. But two witnesses had seen Amber sprinting out of the marina that night, and the police found her father’s plastic gas can floating in the sound. It was more than enough to send Amber to a juvenile detention facility for the remainder of her high school years.
The lobsters around Mattauk had been dying in droves, and countless businesses had been dragged under. One afternoon when Amber was in the second year of her incarceration, her father jumped over the side of his boat and swam out to sea. Unable to pay the mortgage after her husband’s suicide, Amber’s mother lost the house later that year. Six months after that, she moved in with an abusive boyfriend, who knocked out her front teeth and introduced her to meth. The old woman Amber had interviewed died a few weeks before Amber was released from jail. Amber likely never would have known if a shocking discovery inside the woman’s house hadn’t made the news. Two bodies were found in the basement—both men. One was the old lady’s uncle, who’d vanished when she was fourteen. The second was the woman’s first husband, who’d supposedly run off the year she turned thirty.
Two decades after the fire, Amber still fantasized about what might have been. She’d decided long ago that if she could do it all over again, there was only one thing she’d change. She would still go out on the boat with Rocca. But as soon as they were far enough from shore, she would push the motherfucker over the side.
She’d had her chance, and she’d missed it. There was nothing she could do now. The bad luck had found her, and now it stuck like glue.
They Walk Among Us
It was late when Jo finally made it back home. No one was up, but her family had left the living room light on for her. Lucy’s schoolwork was spread out on the coffee table, with a half-empty glass of milk and a bowl of Goldfish cracker crumbs serving as paperweights. The handmade throw Jo had purchased from a boutique in Brooklyn had literally been tied in a knot, and the giant television was paused on a scene from Bob’s Burgers. Jo had no trouble reconstructing the evening’s events. At some point well past nine, Art had yelled down to Lucy that she should have been asleep a long time ago. Lucy ignored him until he made an angry appearance at the top of the stairs. Threats were issued, but never seen through. Teeth may have been brushed—though probably not. Lucy definitely pouted and asked when Mom would be back. Art would have kissed her forehead and said he didn’t know. You’ll see Mom in the morning, he’d have told their daughter, as if there were nothing more certain. As if mothers and daughters always came home.
Jo rode a wave of panic all the way up the stairs. She rushed past the dimly lit room where her husband was snoring and threw open the door at the end of the hall. A girl in striped pajamas lay curled up on the mattress, the bedsheets and blankets all kicked to the floor. Awake, Lucy played the role of a miniature adult. She sassed her mother and cursed like a sailor when her father wasn’t around. Only when Lucy was sleeping could Jo see how small she still was—and how easy it would be for someone to hurt her.