DVD cover. The girl looks cool. So cool. Like someone so strong and fearless, her heart could never be broken. Someone who would pour a drink over Dr. Alex Comfort’s misogynistic head. Or give her number to a handsome, barefoot stranger on an island. Or do whatever the hell she wants.
I hold it up so Dandelion can see. “What do you think?” He yawns and rolls onto his back, paws curled, blinking at me.
I turn on the television, slide the movie in. I watch, studying Jean Seberg as if I’m going to be tested. Hair. Clothes. Smile. Walk. Every gesture. Dandelion curls up next to me and kneads my leg. I pet him without thinking, and he stays until it’s over.
As the end credits are rolling, I shiver. I’m not sure if I loved the movie or hated it, but I know this: I’ve never seen anything like it. Boy falls for girl, girl falls for boy, boy has a gun, girl wants to be a writer, boy steals cars, girl betrays boy, boy refuses to leave girl. All of this happens in beautiful, photogenic Paris, and I sit there feeling like I need to see the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Élysées right now.
But there’s something else. In the pit of my stomach, a slightly ominous burning feeling is growing, which means, against all better judgment, I’m about to do something inevitable I’ll probably regret. I rummage through the kitchen drawers till I find a pair of scissors, tuck the DVD case under my arm, and march into the bathroom.
* * *
—
Twenty minutes later, I have chopped off my hair, giving myself a pixie cut. I don’t know what makes me do it except that Jean Seberg looks so completely secure and happy and comfortable in her skin, like nothing bad or upsetting will ever happen to her because she’s just too together, too sure of who she is. Besides, short hair is more practical. It’s too warm on this island to have long hair, and it’s just hair, after all.
I hold up the DVD case and compare. Unlike Jean Seberg, I am a cross between an elf and a fairy, and it is not a good look for me.
I throw on my bikini, a T-shirt, and black pants, the tightest I own, which is the closest I can come to Jean’s iconic outfit. I decide from here on out to go braless when I’m not wearing a bathing suit. Let’s face it, I don’t really need one anyway. I rummage through my mom’s makeup until I find what I’m looking for—a red lipstick. I draw it on. Make a pout. Draw it on more.
I grab my map. Grab my notebook and a pen and throw them into my bag. There’s liquor in the house, but it’s locked in a cabinet. I scrounge through drawers for the key, but the only thing I come up with is an old pack of Virginia Slims. I throw these into my bag too, along with a lighter. On my way out, I grab a navy blue Greek fisherman’s cap that hangs in the hall—the kind my dad and Addy’s ex-husband, Ray, used to wear sailing when we lived in Rhode Island—and put it on, making my hair disappear entirely.
I walk outside. As I’m standing in the sun, a deer trots away, across the dirt road that curves past the house. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I yell, which of course makes it run. I adjust the hat, tugging at my hair. At where it used to be.
DAY 2
(PART TWO)
Following my map, I start down Main Road, which connects one end of the island to the other. In all that emerald green of forest, it’s a slash of white—sand, solid as concrete, crushed with shells, and rumble strips in a washboard pattern. I head south now, the only person on earth.
At some point I see it up ahead—Rosecroft. The drive curves toward the remains of the house, which rise up through the trees. This was where Samuel Blackwood Jr. first settled with his young wife. Where my great-grandmother was raised until she left the island, never to return. This was the homestead where my great-great-grandmother, Aunt Claudine’s mother, died—where the gun went off, where they found her body, where the bullet carved a perfect hole in the closet door—and where Claudine lived out her life until the house burned in 1993 and she died two months later.