“You look different,” I say, pushing it away. “Same shitty shorts.”
He laughs. “About ten sizes bigger, but yeah, you know me, a creature of habit. How have you been?”
I am saved from dishonesty by the arrival of the sailing instructor, who yells at us to grab a life jacket and climb aboard, three to a boat. Five Sunfish are moored in the bay. They look like hard candies, their sails striped in green, turquoise, lemon, orange, red, and lavender.
“I hope you don’t mind me being here,” Jonas says as we climb aboard. “Your mother told me you signed up. I got all your postcards. Thanks.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m happy to see you,” I say. And I am.
“You look different, too,” Jonas says.
“I’ve had stomach flu.” I am an Untouchable.
He considers me. “No,” he says, “I don’t think it’s the diarrhea.”
“Yuck.”
“Indeed.”
“I’m probably fatter.”
“That’s not it. You’re lovelier than ever.”
“You are more ridiculous than ever.” I laugh. But I’m glad he thinks so.
An older girl climbs onto the boat and squeezes in between us. “I’m Karina,” she says. “I did this last year.” She takes hold of the mainsheet. Shoves us aside.
We sail out onto the choppy bay. Beyond us, a boat capsizes. Someone stands on the centerboard and rights it. The wet sail thwacks against the mast. The kids pull themselves out, drenched and happy, squeezing water out of their T-shirts. They pull the boom in, grab for the line. Our instructor dodges in and out around our flock of boats in a small white skiff with an outboard motor.
“Ready about! Hard alee! Watch the boom! Pull the sheet!”
“Is he speaking Mandarin or ancient Greek?” Jonas asks. “I can’t quite make it out.”
We laugh, but within an hour Jonas is captaining our boat like a pro, marginalizing the bossy Karina, shouting at me to trim lines, make knots, lean out. Our sails luff, we turn and zip, slow to nothing. None of it matters. I’m happy to be breathing. Happy to be here with Jonas. Safe from Conrad. I can do this, I think as we sail out farther and farther. I can survive this. No one needs to know. I’ll put a kitchen knife under my mattress. If he touches me again, I’ll kill him. The thought of that uplifts me. I close my eyes and let the salt wind coarse my face.
17
July
Sunday. Our day off from camp. Jonas and I have made a plan to take a picnic to the beach. We’ll canoe across and walk to the ocean from there so Jonas can fish on the way home. When he arrives, I’m in the kitchen making ham and Muenster sandwiches. I have a jar of dill pickles already packed in the basket, a thermos of iced tea. I throw in a bag of cherries, some paper napkins, and a baggie of Milanos. Jonas leans against the counter and watches as I fold wax paper around the sandwiches, making hospital corners.
The screen door slams open and shut. Conrad sits down at the porch table. I head into the pantry, bury my head in the icebox, pretending to look for something.
My cabin door has stayed locked every night since that night, but I’ve started to feel safe in daylight, as long as we aren’t alone. As long as I never, ever look at him. I have become a blindered horse. Conrad pretends to act as if nothing happened, but he has been unusually solicitous—pulling out my chair at the dinner table, refilling my water glass.
“Quite the young gentleman,” my mother says, smiling at him.
“Hello, Conrad,” Jonas says now.
“What’s up?” Conrad grunts.
“Not much. Elle’s making us a picnic to take to the beach.”
“What’s she making?”
“Ham and cheese.”
“Maybe I’ll come with you.”
“Okay,” Jonas says.
The mustard jar I’m holding slips from my hand, shatters on the floor, splattering everything around me in Dijon yellow.
I crouch down and pick up shards of glass.
“Are you all right? Did you cut yourself?” Jonas asks, coming into the pantry to help me.
“I’m fine,” I mutter. “Just glass and mustard everywhere.”
“Conrad wants to join us.”
“We can’t fit three people in the canoe.”
“I can fish later. It’s not as if the bass are going anywhere.”
“You should have asked me first.”
“What was I meant to do? Say ‘Hold on a sec while I go ask Elle if she wants you to come? . . . Sorry, she says no?’ That would have been marginally awkward, to say the least.”