The adults looked at me like they hadn’t noticed I was there. Classic. “The Gibson Foundation is going to be hosting a conference in August,” Dad said. “Mostly it’s a fundraiser—a few talks, a dinner—but they’re also taking meetings for grant proposals.”
Ah,grants, a magical word. Sing, o muse, of the ingenious hero with plentiful funding. Grants were a big deal in Dad’s world. Sure, his publisher paid him for his books, but not enough to live on. He was always applying to different institutions, writing long pages about why he was worthy. The public school he taught at paid him, sure, but teachers’ salaries were nothing to write homeabout. To afford all his re-creations of historical methods—not to mention, say, his daughter’s upcoming college education—he needed an extra income stream.
I wanted to ask Dad how much the grant was for and if he thought he had a chance at it. If getting it meant we wouldn’t have to sell our house. But I wouldn’t embarrass Dad by bringing up money in front of the Barbanels, who probably valued grants for prestige, not financing.
“Cool,” I said instead, and turned to Ethan’s parents. “You must be proud of Ethan, for his talk.”
They looked surprised. “Uh, yes, we are,” his mom said.
Weird vibe. I turned to Dad. “I’m gonna go hang out with Shira. See you tomorrow?”
“We’ll get brunch,” he promised. “What are you guys up to?”
“Just hanging.”
“Have fun,” he said. We hugged, and I smiled and headed out to see what Nantucket parties had to offer.
Eight
I found myself crammed in a Jeep with half a dozen Barbanels, a mess of long limbs and curly dark hair and loud, demanding voices. They had no conception of personal space. It made my heart hurt a little, and I missed my cousins, and my best friend, Grace, and our other friends back home.
We parked at a beach—I had no idea which one, my tentative familiarity with the island vanquished by the darkness—and scrambled down a narrow path in the dunes to the wide expanse of sand. The ocean at night washed over me, the darkness of everything beyond the shore, the sprinkle of stars, the blaze of small fires. Anything could happen at the beach at night. The whole world could unravel.
I’d changed into black pants and a high-necked top with intricate lacework, paired with my sturdy vegan-leather jacket. Winged eyeliner and red lipstick finished the look and made me feel more like myself. I followed the Barbanels toward one of the fires, a slight unease pervading me.
I wasn’t usually bad at parties.
In fact, I usually loved parties. I loved the energy, the press ofpeople, the excitement. I loved getting ready: trying on an outfit or ten, crammed in front of one mirror with three friends. I loved trying weird styles of makeup we’d never done before, blasting the getting-ready playlist Grace and I had been curating since eighth grade, and pausing when “Stay With Me” came on so we could dramatically sing to each other.
I loved thepossibilityeach party offered, even though half the time the kids were the same as always. Still, sometimes someone would sneak in alcohol and some nights it almost felt like we’dachievedwhat life was supposed to feel like. Like we’d reached the pinnacle of human experience all those movies and ads and other people’s social media kept telling us existed, where we were surrounded by love and friends and excitement and possibility.
Maybe that’s why I felt so uncomfortable here. Because I wasn’t surrounded by any of those things.
Instead, I was an outsider. Not just an outsider, but kind of an angry one with the wrong kind of clothes. At home I wasn’t weird, or it didn’t matter if I was weird because all my friends were too. Sure, preppy kids existed, but they had their own parties. And I wasn’t so bitter at home because I had my friends, and more to think about than how my dad didn’t want to have anything to do with me and how no one wanted to date me for longer than it took to get in my pants.
Anyway. No time to spiral. Time to pay attention.
I might have stuck by Shira, but she immediately joined a very beautiful boy, the kind of gold-touched boy you often found at the center of these groups. He and Shira wandered to the edgeof the party. I wasn’t surprised Shira’s boyfriend was as good-looking as she was: pretty people flocked together, after all. I was more surprised by a normal girl in a red romper who bounded up to the Barbanels. She gave Noah, the oldest of the cousins, a quick smack on the lips before slipping comfortably under his arm.
Great. I was surrounded by couples.
This was perhaps an unfair thing to be irritated by, given how often I was snuggled up against someone myself. But it felt different. Ifeltsingle. It had been ages since I’d had anything solid and real. Even Louis, my last real boyfriend, always made me feel like he was doing a favor by dating me.
The girl in the romper towed Noah over. “Hi!” The exclamation filled her body as well as her voice. “I’m Abby. You’re Jordan, right? Noah says you’re staying at Golden Doors.”
“Hey. Yeah. Are you also here for the summer?”
“Yeah, I work at one of the bookstores. And you’re Ethan’s boss’s daughter, right?”
“Do you know my dad?”
“No, but Ethan talks about him all the time. Here, come meet my friends.”
Abby gave me girl-next-door vibes. I liked her and her friends. Her roommate, Jane, was a sharply sarcastic Black girl dressed head to toe in Madewell; their other friends consisted of Lexi—a short white girl with an undercut—and her girlfriend, Stella, an Asian American girl with a high ponytail, dark red lip, and denim overalls.
After an hour and two drinks I’d relaxed into their group, eventhough I’d lost sight of all Barbanels. At least forty or fifty kids spread around the blankets, and a dance pit had formed by someone’s portable Sonos. “Wanna dance?” Abby asked.
“I always want to dance.”
