For a few long moments, the snapper kept coming. Then, slowly realizing he had been given his freedom, he dropped the paddle from his jaws, gave us a last wary look, and turned his enormous body toward the safety of the deep. We watched as he made his arthritic crawl into the shallows, and when the water was deep enough, we watched him swim for his life.
Nothing was left of the paddle but a shredded stick. We reattached the rope and dragged the canoe around the edge of the pond toward my camp. At some point Jonas took my hand, just as he had done years before, when I led him out of the woods.
* * *
—
Conrad was sitting by the water, watching us approach, a nasty sneer slashed across his flabby face. His sickening cackle from this morning still echoed in my head, but my distress and shame had been replaced by a cold front of anger.
“Who’s that?” Jonas asked.
“My hideous stepbrother. I hate him.”
“Hate is a strong emotion,” Jonas said.
“Well then, I hate him strongly.” I paused. “He’s a pervert. I caught him spying on me this morning when I was in the bathroom. I’m planning to kill him later.”
“My mother says it’s always better to take the high road.”
“There isn’t any other road to take with Conrad. He’s always the low road.”
“What happened to the paddle?” Conrad asked as we neared him.
I walked past him without answering.
“It got attacked by a snapper,” Jonas said.
“Sounds exciting,” Conrad’s snide tone made me want to throw the paddle in his face, but I kept walking.
“It was,” Jonas said. Together we pulled the canoe onto dry ground, turned it on its side in case of more rain.
“I had an exciting morning myself,” Conrad said.
My jaw tightened. Whatever happened next, I was not going to let him bait me.
“I keep picturing it in my head, over and over,” Conrad said. “Who’s your little friend?”
“Jonas, meet my stepbrother Conrad. He is living with us temporarily while his mother decides whether or not she wants him back. I have a horrible feeling we’re going to be stuck with him forever.”
“You wish,” Conrad said. And though I had ended up on the low road, the genuine look of pain on his face was almost worth my tampon humiliation.
“Come,” I said to Jonas. “Let’s go tell your brothers what happened.”
* * *
—
That summer Jonas became my shadow. When I swam or canoed across the pond to go to the ocean, he’d be waiting for me on the shore, knowing I’d appear. When, instead, I walked to the beach along the path through the woods, I would find him sitting on a fallen tree trunk, drawing in the little sketch pad he always carried with him—a broken branch on a pitch pine, a darkling beetle. It was as if he had an internal compass—a magnetic field that picked up true north. Or maybe, like a carrier pigeon, he could smell my odor on the wind.
Sometimes he would point out coyote scat or a trail leading into the bearberry hollows, where the low brush still held the imprint of a deer. We spent most days lying in the hot sand on the wide empty ocean beach, daring each other to swim out too far at high tide, riding the waves, trying not to get taken by the undertow. Often we didn’t even talk. But when we did, we talked about everything.
I knew our friendship made no sense. I wasn’t a loner, or even lonely. Becky was down the road, and I had Anna. I was fourteen and a half, he was twelve. But for some reason that summer, when so many things were falling away, when I began to feel like prey, Jonas made me feel safe.
We were an odd pair. Me—tall, pale, plodding around in Dr. Scholl’s and a bikini, hiding my uncomfortable breasts and new curves under fray-collared shirts I’d inherited from my father. Jonas, easily a foot shorter, always barefoot, in the same filthy green shorts and Allman Brothers T-shirt he wore every single day. Once when I suggested this habit was repulsive and that a washing machine might help, he shrugged and told me swimming in the sea and the ponds was antiseptic.
“Also,” he said, “you’re being extremely rude.”
“I’m being maternal,” I said. “I feel responsible for you.”
“I’m not a baby.”
“I know,” I said. “You’re a child.”
“So are you,” he said.
“Not anymore.”
“Meaning?”
The second I opened my mouth I wanted to punch myself. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m just older than you.”