“Overdoing it much?” It is Johnny, padding down the steps with bare feet, dressed in old flannel pajamas with a ticking stripe. He’s wearing wraparound sunglasses and white sunblock down his nose like a lifeguard.

Mirren’s face falls, but only momentarily. “I am expressing my feelings, Johnny. That is what being a living, breathing human being is all about. Hello?”

“Okay, living, breathing human being,” he says, biffing her lightly on the shoulder. “But there’s no need to do it so loudly at the crack of dawn. We have the whole summer in front of us.”

She sticks out her bottom lip. “Cady’s only here four weeks.”

“I can’t get ugly with you this early,” says Johnny. “I haven’t had my pretentious tea yet.” He bends and looks in the laundry basket at my feet. “What’s in here?”

“Botanic prints. And some of my old art.”

“How come?” Johnny sits on a rock and I settle next to him.

“I am giving away my things,” I say. “Since September. Remember I sent you the stripy scarf?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I tell about giving the things to people who can use them, finding the right homes for them. I talk about charity and questioning Mummy’s materialism.

I want Johnny and Mirren to understand me. I am not someone to pity, with an unstable mind and weird pain syndromes. I am taking charge of my life. I live according to my principles. I take action and make sacrifices.

“You don’t, I dunno, want to own stuff?” Johnny asks me.

“Like what?”

“Oh, I want stuff all the time,” says Johnny, throwing his arms wide. “A car. Video games. Expensive wool coats. I like watches, they’re so old-school. I want real art for my walls, paintings by famous people I could never own in a million years. Fancy cakes I see in bakery windows. Sweaters, scarves. Wooly items with stripes, generally.”

“Or you could want beautiful drawings you made when you were a kid,” says Mirren, kneeling by the laundry basket. “Sentimental stuff.” She picks up the crayon drawing of Gran with the goldens. “Look, this one is Fatima and this one is Prince Philip.”

“You can tell?”

“Of course. Fatima had that chubby nose and wide face.”

“God, Mirren. You’re such a mushball,” Johnny says.

32

GAT CALLS MY name as I am heading up the walkway to New Clairmont. I turn and he’s running at me, wearing blue pajama pants and no shirt.

Gat. My Gat.

Is he going to be my Gat?

He stops in front of me, breathing hard. His hair sticks up, bedhead. The muscles of his abdomen ripple and he seems much more naked than he would in a swimsuit.

“Johnny said you were down at the tiny beach,” he pants. “I looked for you there first.”

“Did you just wake up?”

He rubs the back of his neck. Looks down at what he’s wearing. “Kind of. I wanted to catch you.”

“How come?”

“Let’s go to the perimeter.”

We head there and walk the way we did as children, Gat in front and me behind. We crest a low hill, then curve back behind the staff building to where the Vineyard harbor comes into view near the boathouse.

Gat turns so suddenly I nearly run into him, and before I can step back his arms are around me. He pulls me to his chest and buries his face in my neck. I wrap my bare arms around his torso, the insides of my wrists against his spine. He is warm.

“I didn’t get to hug you yesterday,” Gat whispers. “Everyone hugged you but me.”

Touching him is familiar and unfamiliar.

We have been here before.

Also we have never been here before.

For a moment,

or for minutes,

for hours, possibly,

I am simply happy, here with Gat’s body beneath my hands. The sound of the waves and his breath in my ear. Glad that he wants to be near me.

“Do you remember when we came down here together?” he asks into my neck. “The time we went out on that flat rock?”

I step away. Because I don’t remember.

I hate my fucking hacked-up mind, how sick I am all the time, how damaged I’ve become. I hate that I’ve lost my looks and failed school and quit sports and am cruel to my mother. I hate how I still want him after two years.

Maybe Gat wants to be with me. Maybe. But more likely he’s just looking for me to tell him he did nothing wrong when he left me two summers ago. He’d like me to tell him I’m not mad. That he’s a great guy.

But how can I forgive him when I don’t even know exactly what he’s done to me?

“No,” I answer. “It must have slipped my mind.”

“We were— You and I, we— It was an important moment.”

“Whatever,” I say. “I don’t remember it. And obviously nothing that happened between us was particularly important in the long run, was it?”

He looks at his hands. “Okay. Sorry. That was extremely suboptimal of me just now. Are you angry?”

“Of course I’m angry,” I say. “Two years of disappearance. Never calling and not writing back and making everything worse by not dealing. Now you’re all, Ooh, I thought I’d never see you again, and holding my hand and Everyone hugs you but me and half-naked perimeter walking. It’s severely suboptimal, Gat. If that’s the word you want to use.”

His face falls. “It sounds awful when you put it that way.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how I see it.”

He rubs his hand on his hair. “I’m handling everything badly,” he says. “What would you say if I asked you to start over?”

“God, Gat.”

“What?”

“Just ask. Don’t ask what I’d say if you did ask.”

“Okay, I’m asking. Can we start over? Please, Cady? Let’s start over after lunch. It’ll be awesome. I’ll make amusing remarks and you’ll laugh. We’ll go troll hunting. We’ll be happy to see each other. You’ll think I’m great, I promise.”

“That’s a big promise.”

“Okay, maybe not great, but at least I won’t be suboptimal.”

“Why say suboptimal? Why not say what you really are? Thoughtless and confusing and manipulative?”

“God.” Gat jumps up and down in agitation. “Cadence! I really need to just start over. This is going from suboptimal down to total crap.” He jumps and kicks his legs out like an angry little boy.

The jumping makes me smile. “Okay,” I tell him. “Start over. After lunch.”

“All right,” he says, and stops jumping. “After lunch.”

We stare at each other for a moment.

“I’m going to run away now,” says Gat. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Okay.”

“It’s better for the starting over if I run. Because walking will just be awkward.”

“I said okay.”

“Okay, then.”

And he runs.

33

I GO TO lunch at New Clairmont an hour later. I know Mummy will not tolerate my absence after I missed supper last night. Granddad gives me a tour of the house while the cook sets out food and the aunts corral the littles.

It’s a sharp place. Shining wood floors, huge windows, everything low to the ground. The halls of Clairmont used to be decorated floor to ceiling with black-and-white family photographs, paintings of dogs, bookshelves, and Granddad’s collection of New Yorker cartoons. New Clairmont’s halls are glass on one side and blank on the other.

Granddad opens the doors to the four guest bedrooms upstairs. All are furnished only with beds and low, wide dressers. The windows have white shades that let some light shine in. There are no patterns on the bedspreads; they are simple, tasteful shades of blue or brown.

The littles’ rooms have some life. Taft has a Bakugan arena on the floor, a soccer ball, books about wizards and orphans. Liberty and Bonnie brought magazines and an MP3 player. They have stacks of Bonnie’s books on ghost hunters, psychics, and dangerous angels. Their dresser is cluttered with makeup and perfume bottles. Tennis racquets in the corner.

Granddad’s bedroom is larger than the others and has the best view. He takes me in and shows me the bathroom, which has handles in the shower. Old-person handles, so he won’t fall down.