Nantucket Blue - By Leila Howland Page 0,26

I called her. I felt desperate, a feeling I hated. Jules didn’t pick up. “Can I get a ride to the party with you?” I said to the dead air of her voicemail.

It was almost nine by the time she texted me back.

There’s no room in the Jeep.

I felt a flash of anger, could almost hear it, like a sizzling pat of butter on a skillet. What the hell, I thought. She’s blowing me off so hard that I’m getting windburn. There was another text:

Sorry .

I gave the phone the finger, then took a deep breath. You’re thinking like a desperate person, I said to myself. You’re thinking like a Nora. Maybe there really is no room in the Jeep.

Besides, I didn’t do anything wrong, I told myself as I clasped a necklace around my neck and squeezed into my nice jeans. I unpacked a green tank top that had once made a random guy stop me on the street to tell me my eyes looked like emeralds. I pinched my ears with delicate gold hoops. I blew out my hair and swiped on shimmery lip gloss. I dusted my cheeks with some blush.

No room in the Jeep, no problem. Gavin had said it would be fine for me to borrow one of the inn’s bikes as long as a guest wasn’t using it, and ’Sconset was only six miles away by Milestone Road. It would probably only take me a half hour at the most. I chose a blue bike with a big basket. It looked kind of old, but it was the only one with a low-enough seat. As I rode the bike out of the garden, Gavin waved to me from the kitchen window, where he was cooking ratatouille for his chiropractor girlfriend, Melissa, a glass of red wine in his hand.

The moon was so bright, I had a shadow. There was something freeing about the whole thing, about getting myself there without waiting for someone to take me, about the air, which felt soft and smelled like hay, and listening to the invisible insects. Jeeps and mopeds sped past me, some of them blasting music, but there were long stretches of road that were quiet, just me, my breath, my shadow, and the sound of the wheels whirring on the pavement. The best part was that I wasn’t afraid of being alone at night. This is why people come to Nantucket, I thought. So they don’t have to be afraid at night.

I coasted around a rotary; ’Sconset was its own little town with a coffee shop, market, and the smallest post office I’d ever seen. I was in front of some kind of country club, the flags out front snapping in the wind. I remembered that I needed to bear right to get to Sand Dollar Lane. It wasn’t long before I found it. It was pretty obvious where the party was, from the sounds of kids talking. The conversations were clear even a few houses away.

I hopped off of my bike and walked it down a driveway. My legs were wobbly and I was thirsty. My heart was beating fast, snapping like that country club flag, and my pretty green tank top was sticking to my back. I wished I’d brought a sweater. I wanted to cover up. As I was looking for a good place to put the bike (against the house? Inside the half-open garage?) I stumbled, my ankles suddenly soft as custard, and dropped the bike. It bounced off of a rock. Shit. I picked it up and placed it gingerly against the house. Pull it together, I thought, and applied more lip gloss. You’re fine.

I heard Jules’s laugh, her unmistakable “ha,” and a chill went through me. I should’ve gotten back on the bike and turned around, because I actually did know then, the way you just know sometimes, what was about to happen. You didn’t need a worry doctor to know that’s what jelly legs are all about. But for some reason, even though it was blasting as loudly as a mattress commercial, I just couldn’t hear the truth. So I straightened up and walked right into that party, practically begging for it.

Eleven

A LOUD TEXTURED BELCH came from the front porch. It was so specifically disgusting, I could practically taste it.

“So, you’re trying to say that there’s a truth with a capital T,” the guy on the porch said to his friend as he watched me approach. He was overweight,