He’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.
Raven black hair cut short around his ears. Sky-blue eyes underneath dark, pensive eyebrows. Lips that are just a little too big for his face. Dimples when he smiles.
He sticks out from the pack—but how could he not?—he’s well over six feet tall and towering over everyone. His body is all lean muscle, and he shows it off under the summer sun, wearing nothing but black boardshorts. He’s sitting on the deck of a fishing boat—perched on the rim, like it’s a throne—surrounded by a cawing group of three boys and two girls, all in swimsuit attire, all drinking wine coolers and shitty beer. They’re blasting some Top 40 and it’s echoing up and down the sleepy dock of Hannsett Island Marina.
At eighteen, he’s been dropped into the body of a God, and it’s clear from his posse and his confident grin that he’s decided to wield his newfound power by the way of Dionysus—chaos, destruction, and boys will be boys.
And I’m bored enough to be entranced by his peacocking.
The only thing I’m working on is a tan, playing through my new Gwen Stefani album, and a re-reading of Little Women (don’t we all want to be Jo?).
I’m lying on a towel, Walkman by my side, sprawled out on the top of Four’s sailboat, “Sweet Serenity,” which is currently tied up in a slip directly across from the party boat.
Four and Pearl are downstairs (or “below deck” as Four likes to correct me), and every now and then I can hear the blender roar as they down margaritas.
“Four” is short for “step dad number four.”
Which is all he will be, until step dad number five.
It’s not that I have anything against him—he taught me blackjack and he smokes Cuban cigars and he wears his hair in a long grey ponytail which he somehow pulls off. It’s not that I don’t like the guy. It’s just that he’s temporary, and there’s no point in getting attached to something that won’t be around for very long, anyway.
He owns both a beach house and a sailboat at Hannsett Island, an island off of Long Island that you have to take a ferry in order to get to, which means that Pearl and I are basically stranded here for the summer. Pearl is my mom, but I haven’t called her “mom” since I was five. I have a very vivid memory of her breaking me of the habit in Gabriel’s Butchery on the Upper West Side, after I’d ruined her effort to pick-up a man in a black tweed turtleneck along with her black-pepper ground salami. Apparently, it’s hard to flirt when you have a little rugrat tugging on your dress begging for attention.
Getting out of the stink and hot asphalt of a New York City summer seemed like a great idea at the time. Until I realized that Pearl and Four were going to be the ones drinking and necking…while I got stuck with no friends, limited internet access, and skin that burned before it tanned.
It would be better if I wasn’t here. I get that. This is Pearl and Four’s romantic getaway. I’m the annoying teenager who gets pissy when she’s gone more than 24 hours without her Myspace account.
Made only marginally better by the eye candy in slip 12A. I glance over the top of my book. Raven-Hair has got his legs splayed out, leaning back on his elbows, a posture that says I own this room and everyone in it. His friends address him as “King” and I can’t tell yet if that’s his name or if that’s just his Holier Than Thou title.
God save us from the cockiness of a teenage boy.
I don’t usually go gaga for jocks—they’re too often assholes to girls like me, who got curvier once puberty hit. But there’s something about his swag that goes right between my legs. Maybe they grow boys differently in Long Island. Something in the water?
Or maybe it’s just me. Nearly eighteen, never been kissed, hormones rocketing through me, making me boy-crazy, making me more of an Amy than a Jo.
King’s boat is a tall motorboat with the words “Healing Touch” scrawled in gold cursive along the back. The engine is going now, gurgling, and it looks like they’re getting ready to set off, even though I don’t see any adults on board. Are they even old enough to drive that thing? And aren’t they all at least semi-buzzed?
The water, I’ve learned, is lawless.
Curious, I move a headphone off my ear so I can snoop.
The dock boy unhooks the boat from the dock, untangling the lines and tossing them into the boat. Two more boys (obviously part of the party crew) come down the dock with a cooler between them.
“Get over here!” One of the girls shouts from the boat, “or we’ll leave you!”
I watch as the boys comically scramble over the side of the boat, carting the goods over first before tumbling in. Just as the final jock makes his landing, he puts his hand on the dock boy’s chest. “Thanks, Dick Boy,” I hear him sneer before giving the kid a shove. He goes tumbling backwards and hits the water—much to the delight of everyone on board, who breaks into laughter.
Oh, hell no. I leap to my feet and throw a single barbed insult: “Assholes!”
It lands straight between the eyes of King, who—now—suddenly notices me. His eyes meet mine. They’re way, way too blue to be real. His gaze feels like a bolt of lightning striking down my spine. It’s hitting 90 degrees right now, yet my nipples are knots.
He gives me a cocky half-grin and shrugs a single shoulder as if to say, Whoops.
I feel the heat rise up my neck. Jerk.
Healing Touch glugs as it leaves the slip and every teenager on board hoots and hollers as they go further out to sea. I hope a kraken swallows them whole, honestly.
I leave my Walkman and book behind and leap from the edge of the sailboat to the wooden dock. The sun-charred slabs are stingingly hot underneath my bare feet, but I ignore the pain and crouch down to the edge to extend my hand.
“Need a hand?” I ask as the dock boy swims to the edge of the dock.
“I’ve got it,” he grumbles, but as he scrabbles at the edge to get his footing, it’s clear he doesn’t have it. He takes my arm and together we pull him up. His uniform—a white polo shirt with a small lighthouse stitched into the chest pocket and khaki pants—is soaked through. I pick a piece of seaweed from his shoulder and he grimaces about it.
“Those guys are a bag of dicks,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he says. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Can I get you anything? A towel?”
“I’ll live. The clothes aren’t the problem.” He’s got these soft chestnut irises and they meet my gaze for the first time. “You want to know the real tragedy?”
“Always.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a neatly rolled joint, now soaked and limp.
“R.I.P.,” he says.
I hold up a finger. “Hold on.”
Why, yes. I have tricks up my sleeve. I reach into my bikini, where I’ve stashed away my one vice from Four and Pearl: a rolled joint and a lighter. For the moments I really need to escape.
For the first time, Dock Boy smiles. “Hello, new best friend.”
“You can call me Kenzi.”
Dock Boy’s real name is Donovan. His real age is nineteen. I haven’t discovered his real hair color yet, but I know it’s not black because he keeps having to towel off his neck when the dark hair dye drips down around his ears.
Harborstone Marina is a self-contained ecosystem, complete with its own restaurant (the Blue Heron, accessible by the public) and a slew of private facilities: a general store, a private pool, a communal shower/restroom/locker room, and a laundry room.
There are only two sets of washers and dryers in the laundry room. Donovan sits on one of the washers, I sit on the fold-out table, and we pass my joint back and forth as his clothes tumble dry.
He’s wearing only his boxers, but they look enough like a bathing suit that it’s somehow not obscene. Doesn’t keep me from admiring his body, though. He’s lean, not quite stacked like the jocks, but I like the softness of him. He’s kept on this thick leather-woven bracelet and a simple chain necklace with a ring on it.
“Promise ring?” I ask and point to it.
He frowns at that. “My mom’s wedding ring.”
“Divorced?”
“Deceased.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs, and that’s the end of that conversation.
I get it. I have things that were my dad’s, sort of. Pearl kept his record player and a few tattered albums. I play them sometimes, but only because I like music, not because I liked him. He died when I was just a kid, and the memories I have aren’t great ones, so we never had the kind of connection that inspired me to carry around any of his trinkets.
My head is a little hazy and I swish my legs under the table. I feel small, but not in a bad way. The comfort of careless innocence. “So why do they hate you?”
Donovan thins his lips. He taps ash off onto the quarter slot. “I’m a loser. I’m gay. I don’t have a yacht or a summer house. Take your pick.”
“That’s fucked up. Have you told anyone about it?”
Donovan’s eyes sharpen. “Who? No one cares. Jason King and his crew of idiots basically run this island.”
King. That clicks. “Jason King…is that the tall one?”
“Tall, blue-eyed and beautiful? That’s the one. He’s a rare breed of island native. Have you visited the Lighthouse Medical Center yet?”
“Nope, and from the sound of it, I don’t want to.”
“Good call. It’s Hannsett Island’s pride and joy, though. And the island’s cash cow. Jason’s dad owns it, which basically makes him richer than God. They have a mansion in the Dunes. Two boats. And a second house Upstate.”
“All hail the Kings,” I say which draws a little wry smile from Donovan. He holds out the joint in offering but I shake my head. I’m already floating. An ant crawls over my knuckles, its tiny legs tickling, and I let it. I watch its perilous odyssey across the back of my hand and then back onto the table.
“Why are the pretty ones always jerks?” I wonder out loud.
I can feel Donovan looking at me. “You don’t seem jerk-ish.”
I stick my tongue out at him. He laughs.
