A large swell lifts us up and then drops us with a thud.
“Jesus,” Conrad yells at Jonas as the water soaks his clothes. “I thought the whole point of dragging you along was you know how to sail.”
“Be my guest,” Jonas says, and lets go of the tiller.
“Dick.” Conrad stands up and starts inching toward us.
I feel a shift in the sea as our little boat loses its grip on the waves. “Jonas, please don’t be an idiot. We’ll breach.”
Jonas says nothing, but he grabs the tiller.
Another wave brings us crashing down.
“We’re getting too far out,” I say. “Loosen the sheet, or we’re going to pass the Point.”
“Fine,” Jonas says. “I’ll come about.” He pulls in the ropes and prepares to turn. “Conrad, sit down. Watch out for the boom,” he yells.
Conrad gives him the finger. He smiles at me. His teeth look like Chiclets.
When the boom hits him, I watch him topple, then lurch into the sea. He comes up a moment later, flailing behind the boat.
“Stop,” I scream at Jonas. “Stop the boat.”
Jonas slacks the mainsheet, and our boat slows. There’s an orange life preserver in the well, and I try to untie it, but my fingers fumble on the wet knot.
“Help!” Conrad screams as our boat drifts farther and farther away from him. “Get me out of here!” He is panicking, gagging for breath.
“Take your sweatshirt off, it’s weighing you down,” I yell, struggling to get the life preserver free.
“Jesus Christ, you stupid bitch. Just throw me the thingy.”
“I’m trying,” I say. But I sit down, numb. Jonas puts his hand over mine, holds it still.
When the next wave comes, Conrad is lifted up out of the water, his face white with terror. He reaches for me.
Book Three
◆
PETER
19
1989. February, London.
I am racing down Elgin Crescent toward the Ladbroke Grove tube station, trying to make the last train back to Mile End. It’s late, and the damp night air is bone-chilling. I’ve had too much to drink and my bladder is about to burst. I’m considering squatting between two cars, when a heavyset man steps out in front of me and asks for my wallet. He has a shaved head and a swastika tattoo on his neck. The pubs have just closed, and there are people falling into the streets, but there is no way I am saying no to a man with a knife. I hand him the cash in my pocket.
“Your ring,” he says.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “It’s worthless.”
“Fucking ring, slag,” he says, and punches me in the stomach.
I double over. There’s a scroll going across the inside of my head, reading Stop being an idiot, but somehow I can’t seem to connect thought to action.
The man grabs my hand and tries to twist the ring off my finger.
“Fuck you,” I say, and spit in his face.
He wipes his face with his sleeve before backhanding me so hard my teeth rattle.
I deserve this.
1983. August, the Back Woods.
It is three days before Conrad’s body washes up on shore, a few miles down the coast. A local mother and her two small children find his body. At first, they think the bloated corpse is a dead seal. His ears have been nibbled at by crabs. I am in my cabin under a blanket, hiding from Leo’s wails, when the door opens and Jonas comes in. He is shaking, pale-faced. I crawl out from under the covers and wrap my arms tight around him. Rest my head on his shoulder. I cannot see his face, but it doesn’t matter. I know he is crying, because I am, too.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
We sit like that for a long time, holding each other in the quiet, Jonas’s heart beating against mine.
“No one can ever know,” Jonas says. “Blood oath.”
“No one,” I say. There’s a safety pin on my bureau. We prick our thumbs, each squeeze out a drop of blood, press them together.
Jonas wipes his hand off on his shorts. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a silver ring with a green glass stone, puts it in the palm of my hand. I squeeze my fingers tight around it. It feels cold; one of the metal prongs that holds in the glass bites at my life line.
“I love you, Elle,” he says.
I slide the ring onto my ring finger, put my hand in his.
I love him, too.
* * *
—
The following summer Jonas doesn’t come back to the Woods. He’s at a camp in northern Maine, his mother tells me in a curt voice when I call the house. Jonas writes me only one letter that summer. The blackflies are terrible, he says, but he is learning to make a birchbark canoe. He has seen a giant moose. Did I know that a group of bears is called a sloth? There are snappers in the lake. He misses me more than anything, he says, but it is better this way. And though I know he’s right and that I am the one who did this to us, I feel devastated, abandoned. As if he has chosen camp over me, not because of me.