We made it through. My heart pulsed in my ears as we met the calmer water on the other side of the bridge. The speed of the current no longer seemed so daunting after what we’d just endured. I was not looking forward to the only other bridge we had to pass beneath, but as it turned out, the water there was not nearly so rough. I had managed to put enough distance between us and the larger boat that its wake was not a problem, which I think disappointed my passengers.
The current carried us into the open water of the Manasquan River. I headed west instantly, afraid that George might suggest we travel east to the inlet and out into the ocean. I’d had enough boating adventure for one day.
We were not the only fishermen on the river, but we found a nice spot just to the side of the channel out of the way of the traffic. I turned off the motor and George lifted my anchor and tossed it overboard, handling it as if it were made of paper.
Wanda took one of the killies out of my bucket and began baiting her hook. “That another Nancy Drew book?” She nodded toward The Bungalow Mystery, which now rested in an inch of water in the bottom of the boat.
“Yeah,” I said. I lifted it up and rested it on my knees. “I’m not sure how readable it’s going to be now,” I said. I felt terrible. Grandpop had given me that book for my birthday the year before.
We all cast our lines into the water, and then I found the bottle of suntan lotion floating beneath my seat. I unscrewed the cap and rubbed some of the lotion on my arms and face. George took off his shirt, and he looked so handsome that I started having some impure thoughts about him. I wondered what was wrong with me that even a colored boy could make me feel that way.
“Can I have some of that?” he asked, pointing to the lotion.
I must have looked surprised.
“What?” he said. “You think black people don’t need no suntan lotion?”
He peeled an inch of his shorts down and I could clearly see the difference in the color of his skin. Wanda smacked his shoulder.
“We don’t want to see your ugly drawers,” she said.
I laughed as I handed George the bottle. He used some and passed the lotion to Wanda. Then, to my surprise, he put his shirt into the water in the bottom of the boat. He soaked up the water, wrung it out over the side, then soaked up some more. I was grateful. I hadn’t known how I was going to explain an inch of water in the bottom of the boat to my grandfather.
I opened the book resting on my thighs, but the pages were clumped together, already wavy from the water. It was ruined.
“Maybe when it dries you can pick them pages apart,” Wanda said. I could tell she felt sorry for me. I’d really come to like Wanda. She was quiet, except when razzin’ her brother, and although she never told me everything that had happened in her life, I knew it hadn’t been easy for her. One day when I complained about how my father’d dragged me home from her side of the canal, she’d responded with, “’Least you have a father,” which gave me something to think about. I was glad she had Salena looking out for her.
Whoever had told George that the fish were biting in the river was right. We caught black fish and fluke and a couple of feisty snappers, reeling them in one after another. I wondered how I was going to explain my magnificent haul to my mother without telling her where I’d been. I figured I would let Wanda and George take most of my fish, just keeping a couple of fluke for myself.
“Can I borrow them binoculars?” George asked, after we’d been fishing a while.
I slipped them over my head and handed them to him. He lifted them to his eyes and started exploring the world around us, his fishing pole snug, for the moment at least, between his knees.
I was baiting my hook again when I spotted something pale bobbing in the water a few feet from the boat. I handed my pole to Wanda and reached for the object with the net.
“What’s that?” Wanda asked as I lifted the net from the water.
“A doll, I think.”
It was a doll, a baby doll, no bigger than the length of my fingers. She was naked, with plastic, painted-on brown hair and perpetually open blue eyes. I took it out of the net and picked it clean of seaweed.
“What you gonna do with that raggedy ol’ thing?” Wanda asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t like to see trash floating in the water,” I said. Even Wanda didn’t know about the Nancy Drew box.
None of us had a watch, but when the sun had passed overhead, I knew we’d better start back. George raised the anchor and I pulled the cord to start the motor. It made a sputtering sound, followed by silence. I pulled again, and it made a sound like someone blowing air through his lips. I kept yanking, the boat drifting, and I imagined all sorts of nightmarish scenes of being rescued by the Marine Police and having to explain to my parents what I was doing with the colored people I’d been forbidden to visit on the river I had no right to be in. I couldn’t seem to breathe.
“What’s wrong with it?” Wanda asked.
“Hey, ain’t that your sister’s boyfriend?” George was looking through the binoculars in the direction of the canal.
“Where?” I asked.
“In that boat.” George held the binoculars steady as he pointed to our right. I turned and could see several boats in the area, but from that distance, I never would have been able to tell who was in them. “I think that’s him for sure,” George said, “but I got a news flash. That ain’t your sister he’s with.”
I forgot about my drifting boat for a moment. “Let me see!” I reached for the binoculars and he pulled them over his head and handed them to me. I held them to my eyes. “Where?” I said, trying to adjust the focus from George’s needs to mine.
“Well, I can’t tell now,” George complained. “Them boats is specks without them binoculars.”
“We’re gonna float clear out to the ocean, you don’t get this boat runnin’,” Wanda said.
She was right. I slipped the binoculars’ strap over my head and pulled once more on the cord. The motor sputtered again, then went silent.
“What’s wrong with it?” Wanda asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. Sometimes I did have to yank two or three times to get it going, but I’d never had this much trouble. “Let me,” George said. We shifted positions in the boat so that he was near the motor. He held on to the cord and pulled it back so fast his arm was a blur. Instantly the motor came to life and I could finally breathe. As we sailed toward the canal, though, my mind returned to the boat George had seen through the binoculars.
“Are you sure it was Ned?” I asked.
“I think it was that white boy you showed me the other day,” he said. “Your sister’s boyfriend.”
I’d pointed Ned out to George and Wanda through the binoculars.
“And who was he with?” I asked. “What did she look like?”
“I couldn’t see her that good,” he said, “but good enough I could tell she’s easy on the eyes. A blondie with a long pigtail.”
“Pam Durant?” I asked, my voice high. “Was the ponytail on the side of her head? Were there other people with them?”
“Girl, don’t get your drawers all tight.” George laughed. “Maybe they was just taking a boat ride as friends. Like we doing.”
We headed back to the canal, the current nearly slack now, much to my relief, making the bridges far less difficult to negotiate. I pulled into the dock where their cousins were fishing, and Salena and one of the men came over to look down into the boat, marveling at our catch. I moved a few fish from my bucket to theirs. George looked at me quizzically, then seemed to get it.
“Tell your folks it was just a good fishin’ day on the canal,” he said, slipping the largest black fish back into my own bucket.
I crossed the canal and docked my boat. Climbing up the ladder with the bucket of fish, I thought that as much as I craved a good adventure, I really couldn’t handle a day like this one more than once a month or so. There’d been too many close calls. My guardian angel must have been looking o
ut for me.
I was relieved to find that no one was home yet. I got the scaler and a knife from the kitchen and went out to the cleaning table in the side yard to work on the fish. It took me a long time, and when I was finished, I looked at the pile of filets and knew there was no way I could explain them to my mother. I left six of them on the cleaning table, then put the rest onto the cutting board along with their heads and tails and guts, and I carried them to the canal and tossed them into the water.
After dinner, I went out in the yard with the little baby doll I’d found in the river. I sat at the corner of the house and smoothed a couple of inches of sand from the buried bread box. I was just starting to lift the top of the box when it suddenly flew up into the air. I shrieked, jumping quickly to my feet. Then I saw what had raised the lid: a large, coiled toy caterpillar had been pushed into the box, ready to spring out at me like a jackin-the-box. I heard laughter, and turned to see Ned Chapman standing in his yard, hands on his hips, a look of amusement on his face.
“Did you put this here?” I yelled, getting to my feet, marching in his direction.
He held his hands up in the air. “Don’t look at me,” he said. He was trying not to smile.
I knew he’d done it, and I knew Isabel must have told him about the box. How else could he know?
“Don’t you ever touch my things again!” I said, a fury in my voice that I was not truly feeling. I was secretly thrilled by his attention. I thought of asking him if he’d been out on his boat with Pam Durant, but I suddenly realized he couldn’t possibly have been. He would have been lifeguarding at the Baby Beach. George had probably made the whole thing up just to tease me.
It was still light out, so I sat on the bulkhead with a book. I was there about fifteen minutes when Isabel came out into the yard. She walked beyond the fence and sat down on the bulkhead a few feet away from me. She had the giraffe towel knotted around her waist and she was staring at me, no expression on her face whatsoever.
“What?” I asked.
“I know what you’re doing,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I was doing so many things I wasn’t supposed to be doing that I didn’t know which one she was talking about.
“I mean, I know you’ve been going out in the boat at night,” she said.
I tried to put an expression of confused disbelief on my face. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
She leaned down to scratch her calf. “I happened to go outside the other night and I noticed the boat was gone,” she said. “I knew Grandpop hadn’t taken it because I could hear him snoring practically from the yard. I went upstairs and saw your bed was empty.”
I dropped my attention to my book again, as if I could possibly read after hearing what she’d said. “So?” I asked.
“Where are you going in the middle of the night?”
“None of your business.” She’d used that line on me so often it felt good to be able to say it back to her.
“Look, Julie,” she said. “You’re only twelve. I’m afraid you’re going to get in big trouble.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
“Either you tell me what you’re up to,” Isabel used her bossiest tone, “or I’m going to have to tell Mom what you’re doing.”
I looked at her sharply. “Go ahead and tell her,” I said. “And then I’ll tell her where you go in the middle of the night.”
She didn’t budge from her seat on the bulkhead, but I could see her face blanch beneath her tan.
“How would you know where I go?” she asked, some of the bluster gone from her voice.
“I have my ways,” I said. “Just…you just keep what you know about me to yourself, and I’ll keep what I know about you to myself.” I had the upper hand with her for the first time in my life. It was an extraordinary feeling of power. I could tell she was struggling with a response, and that pleased me. “By the way,” I added, “was Ned at the beach today?”
She looked confused. “What does that matter?”
“Just, was he?”
“No,” she said. “He had errands to run.”
My heart twisted a bit in my chest. I’d thought it would give me pleasure to imagine Ned cheating on her, but pleasure was not what I was feeling. I was about to ask her if Pam had been at the beach that morning, but she spoke first.
“I’m so in love with him, Jules,” she said. She looked out toward the water, a smile growing on her lips. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, but someday you will. It’s amazing to feel this way. To love someone so much and to know he loves you back.”
What could I say? That I was in love with Ned, too? That I understood how that half of the equation felt?
Suddenly she moved closer and put her arm around me. I stiffened, but it felt so soft and warm that my shoulders relaxed. I couldn’t remember the last time Isabel had touched me with affection. “Julie,” she said, and her voice was very quiet, so quiet that I had to look at her to truly hear her. Her face was very close to mine. Her eyes were like something edible, like chocolate pudding. I could imagine how Ned felt when he was this close to her. “Listen to me, Julie,” she began again. “I’m seventeen years old. What I’m doing may not be right, but it’s my business and I’m old enough to take care of myself.You’re not. I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The surprising tenderness in her words, the love behind them, stung my eyes. “I’m okay,” I said, my voice small now.
“Tell me you won’t do it anymore.” She squeezed my shoulders. “Whatever it is you’re up to. Tell me.”
“I won’t,” I said, although I knew I was lying. My sister and I had both turned into liars this summer.
And we would both pay.
CHAPTER 21
Julie
I hadn’t intended to call Ethan after I got out of the interview. I was certain I’d cut into his work time the day before and didn’t want to take up any more of it, so my plan was to drive back to his house, leave him a thank-you note, and head home. But as I pulled away from the police department, still shaken from so many unexpected questions, the memories churned in my head and I felt lonely with the weight of them. George. Ned. Isabel. They were all I could think about, and I hadn’t said anything I’d wanted to say about them to the police. I’d screwed up the interview, letting my interrogators rattle me. I needed Ethan. I needed to talk. To vent. I swerved over to the side of Bridge Avenue, stepped on the brake and grabbed my cell phone. I had to dial three times before I managed to tap out the right number.
“Julie?” Ethan answered the phone. “How’d it go?”
I started to cry, unable to find my voice.
“Meet me at my house,” he said. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yes,” I managed to say. I felt such relief at reaching him.
His truck was already in his driveway when I arrived at his house. I walked inside without knocking and he greeted me in the hallway, pulling me into a hug as he had the day before, but this one was not a surprise and it felt natural and welcome to me. I pressed my forehead into his shoulder, my hand against his back, clutching the fabric of his shirt.
“Shh,” he said, as if comforting a child in the middle of a nightmare. “It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.” He took a step away from me. “Do you want to sit outside or on the sunporch?”
I thought of the neighbors in my old bungalow, possibly sitting on my old screened porch, watching me fall apart in Ethan’s backyard. “Sunporch,” I said, already walking toward the back of his house.
I sat on the white wicker love seat facing the canal, and although there were other seating options available to him, Ethan sat down next to me. He’d been working outside; the skin of his arm was hot against mine and I could smell the scent of sun and soap on him. I was glad he was there with me. We were on different teams in the investigation, wanting and expecting different outcomes, yet I knew he would understand how I felt.
&nb
sp; “So,” he said, “what got you so upset?”
“They questioned me as if I were a suspect,” I said.
We were sitting so close together that I couldn’t really look at him, but I felt him nodding.
“I was afraid of that from some of the questions they’d asked me about you,” he said. “I’m sure they don’t really suspect you, though. They just need to rule you out. They have to look at everyone who was involved at the time. They asked me some tough questions, too.”
“I just never expected it,” I said. “I’d never thought about the case from the authorities’ perspective. I do look guilty. I had the motive. I knew where she’d be. I was there at the same time.” I shook my head. “I understand why they’d have to look at me that way. It’s just that it took me completely by surprise. And I got angry and said I had nothing to do with her murder, but of course…” My voice caught in my throat.
“Of course what?” Ethan asked.
“Of course I did have something to do with it.”
“Julie.” He took my hand and held it on his thigh. “You were only twelve. You were a child.”
People had said that to me before. Friends. Therapists. But Ethan had been there. He’d known me. He’d known the sort of person I was. The words meant more to me coming from him.