That got my attention, first because from the way she saidSouthie,I could tell she was picturing the set ofGood Will Huntingrather than the fratty, gentrified neighborhood full of condos and swanky bars that I knew South Boston to be these days, and second because, gentrification or not,dealing for some total sketchballs from Southiesounded suspiciously like a lead.You’re not looking for leads anymore, dickhead,I reminded myself firmly.
“Honestly, I don’t know what that guy was up to,” Aidy said, shooting a cautious look at Jasper, “and I don’t care. I wish him a speedy recovery and everything, but as far as I’m concerned, he and I are kind of ancient history at this point.” She quirked an eyebrow. “I mean, I also had a scoliosis brace and orthodontic headgear, but that doesn’t mean it’s a part of my life I particularly want to relive.”
“You hadheadgear?” Jasper asked with a smile.
“And rubber bands,” Aidy reported grimly.
Jasper shook his head. “I can’t help it,” he said. “I still think you’re cute.”
The two of them took off not long after that—to go for a walk, they said, which I assumed was code forfool around down at the beach.Once they were gone, Eliza stood up, holding her hand out. “Come with me,” she instructed, leaving no room for argument. “I want to show you something.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, unable to keep the implication out of my voice. “What’s that, exactly?”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “Don’t be basic, Linden,” she scolded. “Come on.”
“Sorry, sorry.” I let her lead me inside the house and up the back staircase, past her room, then up another flight of stairs and past mine. She opened a door I’d thought this whole time was a closet, scuttling up a narrow wooden ladder before finally unlocking a hatch that led to the roof. I followed her up and out onto the widow’s walk, where the air was cool and salty, the endless sky cluttered with stars—thousands of them packed densely all the way out to the horizon, stars like I’d never seen in my life. I spent a lot of time back then trying not to seem impressed by things, but this time I couldn’t hold back my awe. “Holy shit,” I said quietly—turning a slow circle, taking it all in.
Eliza smiled. “View’s not bad,” she said, coming to stand beside me at the railing.
“No,” I agreed, looking at her pointedly, “view’s not bad.”
Eliza burst out laughing, the sound of it echoing baldly out over the water. “Shit, Linden,” she said once she’d finally composed herself, propping her elbows up on the railing, “I like you, so I’m going to pretend for both our sakes that you did not just say that.”
“Fuck you!” I said, laughing myself even as I felt my cheeks flush. “That was romantic as all hell.”
Eliza wrinkled her nose. “Is that what you’d call it?” she asked. “Really now?”
“It is,” I told her, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “Not to mention the fact that you’re talking a pretty big gamefor a person who just brought me up onto the roof to look at the fucking stars.”
Eliza tilted her head to the side like,Fair point.“I did do that,” she admitted. “That was a tip of my hand.”
“Say more about how much you like me, why don’t you.”
“No, I don’t believe I will.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded, smirking at her in the moonlight. “That’s what I thought.”
“Can’t let you get too confident, bro,” she said, doing a pretty good impression of Jasper. “Gotta keep the mystery alive.”
“Yeah, yeah.” We were quiet for a moment, both of us gazing out at the endless blackness of the ocean. The waves sounded louder from up here, slamming against the rocks with body-breaking force. I thought of the hurricane swirling its way up the coast at this very moment, of squalls and shipwrecks and lives lost forever at sea.
“I used to come up here every night of the summer when I was like ten and eleven to look for ghosts,” Eliza told me quietly, as if possibly she could read my mind. “You know that age when little girls are like half-feral and really into like, ancient Egypt?”
“Not really,” I confessed, though now that she mentioned it, I did faintly remember Holiday going through a phase with scarabs. “Is that a thing?”
“It’s a thing,” Eliza assured me. She frowned out at the smudgy horizon, the wind whipping her hair around her face. “This used to be an actual fishing island, you know. The women who lived in this house when it was first built used to climb up here to wait for their husbands to come back from these long, dangerousvoyages, knowing the whole time that the odds were they probably wouldn’t.”
I glanced over at her, teasing. “Did you used to pretend you were one of them?”
“Fuck no!” Eliza said, whirling on me in faux outrage. “I used to pretend I was an eighteenth-century lobsterman. I was like, really into sea shanties.” She made a face at the memory. “I was a weird kid.”
“It sounds like you were great.”
That made her smile, ducking her blond head almost bashfully. “I had my moments,” she allowed. “I definitely had an overactive imagination, though. Wells used to stand at the hatch when I was up here and make ghost sounds to torture me.”
“Sounds about right,” I said with a laugh. “What’d you do when you realized it was him and not the creature from the Crying Swamp?”
“Well, one time I ran over there and shoved him clean down the ladder. Broke his arm in three places.”
