The Islanders (21 page)

AISHA HAD LEFT ZOEY'S HOUSE
soon after Nina had gone to deliver the letter. She had fully intended to walk on up the hill and go home. But Zoey had put her in a bad mood. It was hard to be exposed at close range to all that weeping and sadness and regret without having it affect you at least a little. Frankly, Aisha resented it just a bit. Emotional people were always like that, always dumping their problems on you.

And it wasn't like anyone with half a brain couldn't see it coming. She'd told Zoey that getting involved with Lucas would lead to trouble. Why Zoey would decide to trade a nice guy like Jake for Lucas was totally beyond her. Lucas had been in one kind of trouble or another even before he decided to drive drunk, plow a car into a tree, and kill one of his few friends.

As she walked down from Zoey's toward the beach, Aisha passed Jake's house. Nina was probably still there, delivering Zoey's letter and waiting for Jake's reply. She considered waiting
to see if Nina came out, but decided against it. It would just mean more of the same. More
then he said, then I said.

The night was cool but not cold, with wispy clouds concealing, then revealing stars, one moment hiding the moon and plunging the road into darkness, the next moment letting the moon shine bright and turn the road silver. The surf to her right broke on the beach with comforting regularity, a crash followed by the rattle of small stones being sucked into the undertow, a lull, then a new crash.

Across the water Weymouth was going to sleep. Most of the office buildings were dark, except for a few scattered lights where cleaning crews were at work.

To her left, many of the buildings she passed were dark. The tourist season was officially over now that Labor Day was past, and the big Victorian bed-and-breakfasts were mostly empty. Aisha herself lived with her parents and brother in an inn up on the ridge, and they had only a few reservations for the next month or so, and none past October.

Only one car had passed as Aisha walked along, rattling and belching as most island cars did. The roads were never exactly busy, even in July. It was expensive to bring cars over on the ferry, and there wasn't really anywhere to go that couldn't be easily reached on foot. And with a crime rate that was in essence zero, the island was infinitely safer than Boston, her childhood home.

She heard the whir of the bicycle just seconds before it blew past.

The rider applied his brakes and stopped twenty yards down the road and waited, straddling the bike and leaning on the handlebars.

“Christopher, tell me that isn't you,” Aisha said wearily.

“I don't know, Aisha, I hate to start lying this early in our relationship.”

“What do you do, follow me? I mean, every time I turn around . . .” She came up even with him and kept walking. “And don't tell me it's fate.”

He rode slowly, keeping pace beside her. He was tall, just around six feet, and muscular in a wiry way. Walking or riding he always gave the impression that he was leaning forward, as if he were being propelled, or as if there were something he had to see first, before anyone else could pass him.

“I think it's just that we're on a small island together,” Christopher said. “We're bound to run into each other. It's the law of probabilities.” He caught her eye and smiled. “I would never say it's fate. I know how you feel about fate. You don't like anything you don't control.”

Aisha started to object, but when she thought it over, she had to admit Christopher was right. “It's not so much that I want to control everything, it's just that I don't want to be controlled.
Not by fate, not by some guy, not by school or parents or hormones or emotions. I make my own decisions.” She nodded in satisfaction. That had sounded just right.

“Wow,” Christopher said. “Sometimes your smugness absolutely amazes me. Takes my breath away. No one is that much in control. It doesn't work that way.”

“It doesn't work any other way,” Aisha said. “I just spent the evening with a certain friend who shall remain nameless, who doesn't even
try
to control herself. And she's been weeping and wailing since lunchtime today and will probably be weeping and wailing by lunch tomorrow. Plus, thanks to her, certain other people, who shall also remain nameless, are completely humiliated and depressed. Why? Because she believes in true romance, in true emotion, and she doesn't stop and ask herself,
Hmm, let's think this over and see where it's all likely to lead.
Even though certain of her friends, namely me, told her so all along.”

Christopher laughed. “So the whole evening you've been sitting there with Zoey—who shall remain nameless—and having to resist the urge to jump around yelling
I told you so, I told you so.
” His broad smile was just visible in the moon's glow. “That must have been very, very hard for you.”

“It was hell,” Aisha admitted, laughing good-naturedly.

Christopher stopped. “I live right there.” He nodded toward
a sprawling Victorian with a tall turret on one end topped by a cone roof that gave it the air of a medieval castle.

“I've noticed the place before,” Aisha said. “Cool turret.”

“I have the top room in it,” Christopher said. “It's small, but the landlady rents it to me cheap since I help out as the handyman.”

“One of your ninety-four jobs.”

“Just five jobs at the moment. I still cook at Zoey's folks' restaurant, but I'm getting fewer hours now that the season's over. The newspaper-delivery thing I still have, plus equipment manager and part-time soccer coach at your school, and the landscaping business. Still, if you add it all up, I'm only working about fifty hours a week. I'd like to do more, but jobs are scarce.”

“Of course they're scarce,” Aisha said. “You have them all.”

“A man's got to eat and pay his rent. Not to mention saving for college. You want to come upstairs and see my palatial apartment?”

Aisha made a point of looking at her watch.

“Five minutes,” Christopher said.

He parked his bike and led her inside a somewhat shabby foyer and up a set of stairs that creaked with every step. “My landlady usually rents out five different rooms,” Christopher said as they climbed, “but right now there are only two other people
staying here aside from her, so there's no one else on my floor.”

They reached the top of the stairs and Christopher showed the way to his door, opening it onto an octagonal room with tall paned windows on three sides and a smaller window that opened onto the pitched roof. A single bed, neatly made, stuck out from one wall, and a desk was positioned by a window, giving him an excellent view of the beach and the waves during the day. Now it revealed a postcard-perfect view of Weymouth by night.

On one wall he had nailed up a dry marker board, where his work schedule was laid out on a red, blue, and green grid.

Instead of a closet, an iron pipe was suspended from the ceiling. On it hung white coats for cooking, overalls for landscaping, and shorts and rugby shirts for his work at the school. The room showed very little in the way of personal touches—no posters, no pictures, no mementos.

“It's very neat,” Aisha said.

“It's a place to sleep,” Christopher said.

“No pictures of your family or anything?” Aisha asked.

Christopher's face grew somber. “I like it uncluttered,” he said flatly. Then he softened a little. “I don't get along all that well with my family.”

“Who does?” Aisha joked.

“No, I mean we don't really communicate anymore. I
haven't seen them or spoken to them since I graduated four months ago and came up here.”

Aisha realized she was on touchy ground. This was the first time she'd ever seen Christopher seem uncomfortable or unsure of himself. “I guess you'd like me to drop it, huh?”

Christopher shrugged. “It's no big deal. We're just the typical screwed-up inner-city family. No father. My mom's on welfare. She was on crack for a year, but she got off that and now she just drinks. My older sister's living with a creep who takes all her money.” He made a derisive noise. “Not much like your family, Aisha.”

Aisha was stunned. It seemed impossible that this arrogant, confident, often annoying guy should come from a background like that.

She had always been comfortably middle class. Not that her parents didn't sometimes have money problems. In fact, they acted like they'd go broke if Aisha bought one too many outfits or failed to finish the food on her plate.

“How did you end up here in Maine, on Chatham Island?” Aisha asked, looking at him with renewed curiosity.

“Baltimore's very hot in the summer,” Christopher said wryly. “I decided if I was getting out of Baltimore, I was going to head north and at least stay cool.”

“Wait till you check out February. You may change your
mind. Kids here compete to come up with new descriptions for the cold. Last year's most popular entry was
icicle enema.
And it's not an exaggeration.” She tilted her head and stared at him thoughtfully.

“What?”

“I just didn't picture you coming out of the projects.”

“Coming
out.
Staying out. Never going back,” he said with quiet conviction. “I learned two things growing up there. One, life isn't fair. Some people are born with everything, others are born with nothing and it just gets worse—bad neighborhoods, bad schools, bad teachers, bad parents or no parents at all. Guns and drugs and violence all around. It's like some huge conspiracy to keep you from staying alive, let alone making anything of yourself. Most people fail. Most people don't have a chance.”

Aisha looked at him thoughtfully. “And the second thing you learned?” she asked softly.

“I learned that I'm not
most people
,” he said, focusing an intense gaze on her. “I don't care how impossible it is to succeed. I like it that way. Impossible doesn't bother me. It's going to take more than that.”

“I did sort of notice that you are persistent,” Aisha said dryly.

“I make a point of getting what I want,” he said, stepping closer.

“But there are
some
things even you can't get.”

Christopher broke into a grin. “You could just give in now and save us both a lot of trouble.”

“Oh, no, I don't think so, Christopher,” Aisha said. “Besides, you just said you like it hard. And I have to get home.” She turned and headed for the door.

“You do know we're going to keep running into each other,” Christopher said.

“It can't be totally avoided,” Aisha said.

“Tomorrow night is bargain night at the movies,” Christopher said casually. “Two-dollar tickets. Do you ever go?”

“Occasionally,” Aisha admitted.

“Then we might accidentally run into each other there, too.”

Aisha hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. It wasn't like a commitment. It wasn't like he was asking her out on a date. Not really. He was just pointing out the obvious. It was a small island and a small world and people sometimes ran into each other. “Like I said, it can't be totally avoided.”

“Hello, Passmore residence.”

“Hi, it's me.”

“Nina? What are you doing calling? Where are you? I thought you were coming straight back here after you gave Jake my letter.”

“Well, it is kind of late.”

“So what did he say?”

“Um, nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“I mean, I didn't give him the letter.”

“Nina! You said you'd do it.”

“I tried, only . . .”

“He wasn't there?”

“Um . . . I'm not sure if he was there.”

“Look, Nina, just tell me whatever it is you're trying so hard not to tell me.”

“I can't, Zoey. It will be like tattling or something. I mean, you're my best friend and all, but jeez, I can't be spying for you.”

“Spying on who?”

“Anyone. It's not really up to me to tell you certain things. It's up to certain people to tell you certain things. I only called because I had to tell you that I couldn't deliver the letter. Otherwise I wouldn't have called at all.”

“Nina. Just tell me why you didn't give Jake the letter.”

“Zoey—”

“You said you don't know if he was home or not, which means whatever your reason is, it couldn't be because he wasn't home. Right?”

“Zoey—”

“Was someone else there? Is that it?”

“I have to go now.”

“Who was it? It wasn't Benjamin; he's here. Obviously it wasn't me or you or Aisha because she left after you did. Are you telling me Claire was there?”

“I haven't said anything, I want the record to be clear on that. I never said—”

“There is no record, Nina. Claire was with him. Claire was over at Jake's house at night. That's it, isn't it? Well, it didn't take her long, did it?”

“She was probably just bringing him some homework or something.”

“Right. Homework. That bitch, if she's going behind my brother's back, I'll kill her. That would really tear Benjamin apart, and the least she could do is break up with him first.”

“You mean like you told Jake before you started letting Lucas stick his tongue down your throat?”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, that was rotten. I shouldn't have said that, but I feel bad I told you about Jake and Claire. I don't handle guilt well. I lash out.”

“No, I deserved it, Nina. It's true.”

“Yeah, but best friends aren't supposed to tell you the truth about yourself.”

“Do you think it was . . . I mean, do you think Jake and Claire . . .”

“I didn't stay and watch, Zoey. But she's still not home.”