think she’d agree that the sex she’s having with her girlfriend doesn’t count.” I suddenly feel protective. Like, lift-the-car-off-the-baby protective. Not just of Saz, but of Yvonne. Of both of them. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as technically. It’s about who you’re with and how you feel. Sex is sex. Love is love. I don’t need some stupid 1950s construct to tell me what it is or isn’t. However it happens, whatever it looks like, I think you know in here”—I tap the space over my heart—“if you’re still a virgin or not.”
Wednesday sits forward. “It’s like crossing this invisible threshold that only you see. You decide it. I decide it. We decide it.”
“Uh. Yeah.”
She says, “I agree.”
“What?”
“I agree with you.”
We sit blinking at each other, stunned into silence because we feel the same way.
Jared clinks my bottle with his. “I’ll drink to that.”
And I think, I’m glad they’re here. It makes me miss Saz a little less and also more. I suddenly want to call her and apologize for not asking more about Yvonne, and more about how Saz is feeling, how it’s going. She hasn’t been the greatest friend lately, but I haven’t either.
Emory and Wednesday tap their bottles to ours. She says, “God, we’re profound.”
Mom finds me then to tell me she’s heading back to the house. When I offer to go with her, she says, “No, stay with your friends. It’s good to see you having fun. Just be home by one o’clock at the latest.”
The conversation turns from sex to the SDS, or Secret Drawer Society.
“Have you been in the Blackwood Suite at the inn?” Emory asks me.
“No.”
“There’s this ancient monster of a desk that takes up most of the room, and it has a kind of hidden compartment. People have been leaving notes in there since forever. Like, as far back as the start of the inn. There’s love notes, stories about their stay, the island turtles, hurricanes. Things like that.”
Jared takes a drink, wipes his mouth. “The love ones are pretty cool. There’s a guest staying in that room now, but we can show you when the room turns over. I’ve written a couple letters. To my grandfather. To my friend Rashid, the one who died. But I’ve also written some to me. Like: ‘Dear Jared, you need to remember that life is short, so make the most of every second.’ ”
Wednesday draws circles in the sand with a shell. “We all have. ‘Dear Wednesday, don’t be so hard on yourself. If you don’t love you, no one else will.’ When I first got here, I wrote one to my family because I couldn’t tell them where I was or why I left.”
Their voices rise and fall, reminding me of road trips with my parents when I was little, sitting in the back seat, staring out the window or reading, listening but not listening to them as they talked, close but far away. I stare across the blackness of the ocean toward the lights in the distance from some unknown island, thinking about what I would write to myself or maybe to Miah.
What if I just found his house tonight and slipped into his bed and surprised him? I imagine it. His skin. My skin. Naked. Hot. Him. Him. Him. This boy who knows me so well already and likes me anyway, in spite of myself. I touch my arm and it’s on fire at the thought of him.
Five minutes later, he appears, a dark figure walking across the sand. I don’t need to see his face to know it’s him. I already know his walk and the way he moves. Without a word, he holds out a hand to me, and my blood starts pumping and my heart starts racing just like I’m waking up from a long sleep. Wednesday leans over to say something in Jared’s ear, and then they’re both watching us. Emory offers Miah a beer.
“Nah, I’m good, man,” he says. Then, to me: “Want to get out of here, Captain?”
“Yes.”
DAY 6
(PART TWO)
We drive north to a quiet strand of beach, where we walk and talk and watch for turtles. I wait for him to take my hand or kiss me, but he doesn’t. I tell myself it’s okay, we can just be friends. There’s no time for anything else, anyway, with both of us leaving. We’re two ships passing on a long summer night, and I’m the one deciding that, not him. As we head