Two
The high-speed ferry sliced through the Atlantic. I tipped my face up, savoring the heat soaking through my skin, the way the back of my eyelids turned red-gold. Salty wind tangled my hair above my head, then whipped strands into my mouth. A bright, cerulean world surrounded me, all endless ocean and cloudless sky.
A small secret: Mom was right. I did run from things.
Hard to stop, when the act of being in transition made me happier than anything else. I could leave things behind: I had no weights, but no new expectations. The world around me felt charged with potential. I could start again. Anything could happen. Somethingwouldhappen.
Something to distract me from Matt, ideally.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been blindsided by his decision to break up. “I need to concentrate right now, you know?” he’d said on the last day of February break, when we were out eating burrito bowls. “Harvard’s so picky, especially for kids from in state. They want diverse candidates, like from Kansas.”
“From Kansas.” Two seconds before, we’d been making plans to see the latest blockbuster. Now I watched him shovel rice and beans into his mouth, while my own meal sat like lead in my stomach. He was breaking up with me because of valedictorians fromKansas?
“And I need to be doing more interesting stuff,like the start-upinternship. I don’t have time to date. I like you,” the only boy who’d ever seen me topless said. “But, you know.”
I’d thought we were going to get married. I barely believed in the institution of marriage, and I’d still thought we’d stand beneath a chuppah. “Sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
He nodded, then pointed at the chips left in my platter. “You gonna eat those?”
“Go for it.” I pushed them over. “Great, well, uh, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you in Psych tomorrow.”
He spoke mid-crunch. “You don’t have to go. We can talk about it, if you want.”
“What would we talk about?” My forehead started sweating. I hadn’t even known foreheadscouldsweat. “You made a decision. Good for you, I’m glad you know yourself so well that you know you don’t want to date me. Great. I don’t want to date someone who doesn’t want to date me, so... we’re not dating anymore. Bye.” I awkwardly scooted out of the booth, walking away with as much grace as I could manage.
Perhaps pridewasa heritable trait.
A horn blew, and people rushed to join me at the rail. A stretch of land had surfaced on the horizon, and soon we could make out a haze of details: tiny gray houses, heaps of green trees, the spikes of steeples. Our ferry curved around a sandy point crowned by a squat lighthouse, then pulled into a painfully picturesque harbor. Dozens of different kinds of boats bobbed on the water, and seals warmed themselves on wooden docks. Above us, gulls cried out, soaring through a blue sky dotted with cotton-like clouds. People geared up to disembark.
Nantucket. Summer home of some of the wealthiest people in America. Home sweet home for the next few months.
The stream of passengers carried me onto the docks, which merged seamlessly with the cobblestone streets of downtown. Leafy trees lined the sidewalks and American flags waved. Clothing boutiques and ice-cream shops stood shoulder to shoulder, and the people strolling through the quaint downtown looked sun-touched and happy.
I clutched my suitcase handle tightly as I rolled it past well-dressed mannequins and nautical bric-a-brac, under hand-lettered signs hanging from horizontal posts. Nantucket seemed like an Epcot version of America, both beautiful and bizarre. I was Alice down the rabbit hole, Lucy through the wardrobe, Dorothy not-in-Kansas-anymore. I’d googled the island, but it still hadn’t wholly prepared me.
It had given me the island’s general history, though: Originally settled by the Wampanoag, Nantucket had boomed in population in the early 1600s when people on mainland Massachusetts fled disease and invasion, coming to the island for safety. But the British soon followed them, and the majority of the Wampanoag on the island died from disease by the 1760s. Then the Quakers came, then the whaling industry, then the wealthy, who stayed and conquered.
I’d always loved history, but I hadn’t realized you could seriously study it until this year. It seemed too easy, like I’d be getting away with something. Like—you could go to school toread storiesabout people from the past? That waswild. Literally all I wanted was to go on Wikipedia deep dives about ancient societies and women rulers and the Belle Époque. I’d read everything Stacy Schiff and Erik Larson had ever written. The idea of writing a college essay actuallyappealedto me, if it meant I could write about family history.
If, you know, I found something to write about.
Following the directions on my phone, I turned at a beautiful brick mansion, then walked down progressively smaller streets untilI reached a narrow lane.Gray-shingled houses stood close together on either side of it, surrounded by small lawns and rosebushes. There was an inherent coastal air to these weatherworn homes, with their American flags and signs sayingAll You Need Is Love and the BeachandHome Is Where the Beach Is.
I paused at a house with a wooden plaque that readArrowwood Cottage. Tiny white flower buds were carved in the corner.I jumped my suitcase the three steps to the porch, took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell.
An older woman answered, her silver-streaked gray hair cut in a bob, her purple tunic flowing. Blown-glass baubles dangled from her ears. “Hello.”
“Hi. Mrs. Henderson?” I’d met her niece—my mom’s coworker— a handful of times when I’d been dragged to college functions. The vague similarity in their features put me more at ease. “I’m Abby Schoenberg.”
“Yes, of course. Did you just arrive?”
“Yeah. Yes. I took the ferry from Hyannis. My parents dropped me off.” I followed her inside. To the left lay the kitchen, open and airy; to the right a living room, shelves filled with books. A golden retriever jumped up from a rug, barking sharply and hoisting her floppy ears high. She had a coat like browned butter and the long, awkward legs of a dog not yet full-grown.
“That’s Ellie Mae,” Mrs. Henderson said. “Come on, Ellie, she’s a friend.”
The golden barked again, then trotted forward and shoved her nose at the front of my shorts. I fell into a defensive crouch and caught her narrow head. She had gentle eyes and tufts of fur behind her ears and knees. “Hi, girl.”
She licked my face and panted at me with her terrible dog breath.
