The Telling (28 page)

Rusty's sneakers nip at my heels. “The corpse stinks, and he's slowly going mad. He thinks that she's coming back to life, twitching, moving.” Carolynn pauses as she skips a step. “He sees her sit up. He watches her make tea. The guy was losing his shit.” My chin drops to my chest. I gawk at the metal risers and grates of the stairs. Is it my imagination or is there a shadow below, soundlessly keeping pace with us?
Is it listening to Carolynn's story, which might as well be about me losing my mind? “Then she begins talking to him, and she's a real vindictive nag. ‘Why did you leave me? You wanted me to die.' ” Carolynn intones this part in a ghostly boom. “When dusk rolls around that day, she tells the keeper not to light the lantern. ‘Don't leave. The darkness will come for me.' So he doesn't go. He can't bear to desert her again. He stays beside her rotting corpse, holding her decomposing hand, having both sides of a conversation.”

I watch Carolynn's bobbing head over the boys'. I've never heard her talk like this. The Carolynn of a few days ago would have said that ghost stories were boy stuff. This Carolynn is commanding an audience and licking her lips, she's so satisfied with herself. She reminds me of Ben. Not only reminds me of him, this story feels linked to ours. Carolynn makes me wonder about our island. Is Gant an in-between place where under the right circumstances, the dead aren't gone?

“On that particular night,” she continues, “there was an ocean liner sailing down the sound for Tacoma. There was no light to warn them away from the island. The ship's bottom caught a shallow reef, and the rocks slashed it open. The boat sank and the passengers drowned, only a hundred yards from the coast. Clouds covered the moon, and they couldn't even see the island to swim for it.” There's a tense silence. Our footsteps echo to the bottom of the staircase and then boomerang back, as if there's someone chasing after us.

Duncan is the first to speak. “You made that whole thing up.”

“Did not.” Carolynn stops dead in her tracks and faces us. “I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a thousand needles in my eye.” Her lips blur, undecided between a smile and a frown. “It's in the
history books. One hundred and thirty-three people drowned. The keeper and his wife still haunt the cape.”

“That is not in a history book,” Duncan says. He makes a grab for Carolynn's wrist as she takes the stairs two at a time to escape him.

“How would you know? You've never read even one book,” Carolynn calls back, laughing. Duncan gives us this perplexed, crooked grin and then jogs after her. Their panting and hammering footsteps surround us until they reach the top and the sounds go muffled.

I keep staring through the metal risers. The shadows below us are ours. Still . . . I feel like we're being observed. Then we wade into the lantern room's pool of light and the heat hits me like the rush of warmth that one and only time I let Becca drag me to a tanning bed in Seattle. And I sniff to myself, because even when Becca was at her nicest, she was convincing me to bake my skin in a tanning bed—basically a cancer-oven.

My eyes adjust to the brilliant light. The gas flame of the lantern is lit automatically by electricity at dusk. A thousand prisms in a hexagon surround a steel frame, and each is ablaze with refracted light. I'm hypnotized by the hundreds of flashing mirrors that make up the lighthouse's lens.

On the gallery deck the night is cold and autumn-y. The wind isn't as still here as it was in the harbor. The lantern's glow frames our silhouettes, sears their edges in bright light. I look around me at luminous faces.

Duncan and Rusty survey the ground below. The shore is treeless, only sandy, windblown dunes and cliffs that cut them off from all but the sound.

“Bonfire?” Duncan says when he's reached his threshold for contemplative stares out at the water.
Oh yeah
s and
definitely
s are traded. I've only been here once before with the core, on the beach below three weeks ago, in the middle of the afternoon. There was a wedding tent erected at Shell Shores and kids migrated up the point instead, willing to put up with the staring tourists at the lighthouse to get a little beach time in. We lit a fire in a circle of rocks that looked like a small-scale Stonehenge. Becca threw twenty party poppers, one at a time, into the flames to get them to explode. They didn't, not one. She clapped in anticipation with each try. Willa cupped her hand at my ear and whispered,
Ignorance really is bliss, huh
?

I shuffle with the others toward the helix-shaped staircase. Josh catches my hand. “Lana and I will be down in a few, guys,” he tells the others.

“Wrap it up, bro,” Duncan hollers from where he's descending the stairs. Rusty cracks a joke about the size of the condom needed for the lighthouse, and their laughs fade as they continue. Becca winks at me before locking arms with Carolynn and sauntering away, their hips swinging in unison.

“C'mere,” Josh says, leading us to the rail of the gallery deck. Below us the waves beat the tide pools at the base of the cliff. The spray of salt water floats up into the atmosphere, and there's a fine mist that coats our faces. Little drops catch in my eyelashes. Josh exhales, ghosts swirling from his mouth. He rests his arms on the rail and looks straight out at the water. Pinpoints of light like tears in the cloth of the horizon are scattered where Bainbridge Island lies across the sound. Other than that, there's nothingness—no, not nothing,
infiniteness
.

We are infinite as the night sky and space and those bottomless caverns in the ocean that divers explore but never reach the bottom of. I start to wonder if people are like that—bottomless, boundless. No matter how much you know them, they can always surprise you.

Josh slides until there's more of my right side touching him than isn't. “You were amazing today.” His voice is warm and soothing as a lullaby.

I tilt my head to find his sparkling eyes; the freckles sprayed on his cheeks from the summer sun are barely visible. “
You
were amazing. I couldn't have pulled off the museum without you.”

“I don't just mean the prank,” he says, half smiling. “You took care of B and Car earlier and you've been steady all night.
You
are incredible.”

It's hard to hold his stare. My cheeks burn. My smile is too eager and—who are we kidding—panicked. “
You're
incredible,” I say. I'm stupid with nerves. Josh's hair is stirred by the wind, and I want so badly to reach up and let it tickle my fingertips, and all of a sudden I think,
What the hell
. Tell him. “Carolynn would call me PG-13, and Becca would die at my lameness, but I want to tell you anyway.”

He smirks playfully and nudges my shoe with his. “What?”

I am brave, bold, and alive. “I like you. Always have,” I tell him.

There's an awful moment where his face goes surprised. Then a smile crinkles his eyes and nose in a way that makes my nose tingle. The corners of his mouth dig deep in his full cheeks. He leans until he's only two dark, blue eyes looming before me. “I wish I'd gotten to know you way earlier than this summer. And I'm not going to waste any more time,” he says. “I like you, too. A lot.”

Although very nice, Josh is not the sort of boy who asks permission
to kiss you. Thank God, because my voice retreats somewhere into my toes as his mouth presses to mine. His lips are warm and dry. He tastes minty and full of possibility. He pulls my waist to his, and the way I flatten against him makes me present, like I exist in a whole new way, more than I used to, as if I were only a sketch and I've been painted vivid with acrylics. I'm powerful and can be anyone, go anywhere, do anything, even kiss Josh Parker, even smash my hip bones to his.

I wonder if our merged profiles are projected across the water by the lighthouse's lantern and if there's a ferry captain two miles out watching us kiss. The moment feels that big, epic, like all of Washington can feel the reverberations. I wonder if the others can see us from where they are below. I imagine Carolynn watching as the tide washes over her silver ballet flats. Carolynn's lips aren't the last that touched Josh's. Maggie's are. Dead Maggie's mouth was open as Josh heaved air into her lungs. Alive Maggie's mouth was always open and willing to Ben. If the whole island can feel what's happening between Josh and me, can Ben?

I fight to focus only on the impossible warmth of Josh. It rushes from his mouth to mine, down my throat, fills my chest, spreads bumps on the skin under my bra. I place my hand on Josh's sternum. I am determined. His heart punches my palm.

Like mine did that last night with Ben.

We watched a movie, robots and time travel, on the short sofa in the living room. We put the TV on mute to talk as we ate lobster tacos and I swigged beer. Ben turned to me suddenly. I had just finished taking a gulp from the bottle. I winced at the beer's bitter taste, even though it was this wimpy apricot-flavored ale that Diane likes.
The bottle left my hand cold and wet. I wiped it on his jeans,
right on his thigh
, and giggled over not having a napkin.

“This is my summer,” he said. It was the way we told each other we were happy. Our secret code. I was so close that I could find that slight bend in the bridge of his nose. A long-ago break healed. He never told me how it happened. He never talked about before he came to the island. He went pale, or sulky, or stubborn if I asked. If I pushed, he stood up and left, so of course, I didn't push.

I smiled. “It's my summer too.” We were sitting so close—
too close
—but I couldn't remember who sat down last, who was responsible for us sitting thigh to thigh? I was, I worried. I hoped that maybe—
maybe—
I wasn't as bad and dirty as I thought.

No, that's a lie.

I didn't hope to be good.

I hoped for Ben to be as bad and dirty as I wanted to be.

That Ben had moved closer to me after I sat down.

“Ben?” I said it as a question. He laid his last taco on the plate. A blond brow shot up. His gray eyes were opaque, variation-less; the color of the sound, ancient stone and moody sky. I loved that about them. They were unreadable. But I usually guessed what he thought. Not then.

I admit that I've read too many books—the kind with sea-blown green dunes, and Gothic mansions, and angry, poor boys who love who they shouldn't. Ben had told me too many stories. I was drunk off apricot beer and romantic notions. Rather than speak, I took Ben's hand and pressed his palm to my chest. Not so he'd feel my boobs. I placed it over my heart. It was hammering through my rib cage, the muscle of my chest, my skin, his hand, and into my fingers
that covered his. It was pounding like his hand was calling to it. And maybe it was.

He opened his mouth to speak. The doorbell rang, three frantic whines, and he leaped up to answer. Maggie stormed in, even more agitated when she noticed me on the couch. I don't know what he planned to say; I used to think I never would. Now I'm not so sure.

“Lana?” Josh releases my waist and holds my shoulders. “Are you okay? Was that too soon?”

“No,” I say.

“No? You don't want to kiss?” Josh's hands drop away.

“No, I mean yes, I want to kiss.” My hands fly between us. “I just . . . I don't know. Everything, tonight, became overwhelming, and I spaced out thinking.”

Josh frowns momentarily, and then the tension and lines ease. He smiles, looks to his feet, and peeks back at me. “If you let me kiss you again, I swear I won't make it so easy for you to get distracted.”

A flutter of the skin on his neck. Can I see his pulse? “Yeah,” I say, “let's.”

I move to him and all his charming Josh-ness. I had a crush on this boy long before I knew that Ben existed. I've gone blushy over Josh since before I even understood why I was blushing. Years and years before I ever noticed the slightest deviation in the bridge of Ben's nose; or felt his laugh vibrating in my bones; or closed my eyes tight and imagined his mouth on mine so that a pressure would build, one that made my stomach ache and connected with a place I touched, shyly; or curled on my comforter, all shame and guilt and messy, useless feelings for a boy I was awful and weak for wanting.

Josh's lips are hesitant. I move mine and am dizzy that I'm kissing
Josh, not only the other way around. He sighs. I scrunch my eyes closed because they want to open. I touch his hair. It's soft fluff, and I can feel his pulse in my wrist against his neck. I think,
Yes, this could be enough.
Could be. If I wasn't stuck loving Ben.

Ben was a strong wind, his origin mysterious, his effect as invisible as it was undeniable. Ben was necessary to me, and I want to believe that he found his way back from the nowhere place of death not just for revenge on those who were nasty to me but for what comes after. With me.

I want Ben to need me like I need him.

I want us to need each other like the summer needs sun.

I
pull back from Josh. He opens his eyes with a bewildered and good-natured smile. “Do you mind if we go down to the others?” I ask.

He grabs my hand and looks briefly serious. “I would have waited longer to kiss you if the night hadn't seemed perfect. But I've got to admit something.”

I wait. Josh Parker doesn't have a confession as big as the one I do. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a breath, pupils dilating a little with the exhale. “The night I saw you and Willa at Marmalade's, and I came over to say hey, Carolynn sent me. She didn't tell me straight out that you liked me. She just pointed you out and said she heard you'd been really torn up about Ben and that it would be nice for me to say hi.” His frown is so solemn.

After a long, surprised silence I say, “I can't believe she did that. Not that I'm upset over it—the opposite. It was nice of her.” I don't wonder how Carolynn knew that Josh's attention would make me happy. I might have let it slip to Becca when we were kids that I had a crush on him. It's predictable; most girls like Josh Parker. I
do wonder why Carolynn cared about making me happy, though.