Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

Piper stood. “Garrett and I are going for a walk on the beach,” she said, and with that, she stormed through the kitchen and out onto the deck.

Garrett remained in his chair, returning the stares of the other people at the table: Peyton, Marcus, David, his mother.

“Go ahead,” Beth said.

He almost stayed put just to spite her-he didn’t need his mother’s permission to walk on the beach-but his desire to be outside with Piper overwhelmed him. He went.

She was smoking a cigarette and he wondered where she’d gotten it until he noticed a jean jacket lying across a chair and he figured there must be cigarettes and a lighter in the pocket. She was sucking on the cigarette in an angry way, like the young, jilted, male lover in an old movie, and Garrett understood it was high drama for his benefit.

“I can’t stand it when people smoke,” he said.

“Why should I care what you think?”

“You shouldn’t care,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“Fine. Do you really want to go for a walk or were you just using me as an excuse to leave the house?”

“I’ll walk.”

“If you’re walking with me, please put out the cigarette.”

She stabbed it on the sole of her sandal and flicked it down into the dune grass. “There.”

“Yeah, except you littered.”

“So call the police.”

“You are difficult,” Garrett said.

“As advertised,” she said.

At home, in New York, Garrett had success with girls, mostly because they weren’t important to him. Soccer was important, his grades were important, and his friends were important-and by putting these things first, Garrett found he could have any girlfriend he wanted. Girls loved to sit on the sidelines at Van Cortland Park watching him play striker, they loved it when he left beer parties early because he had a math quiz the next day. Morgan, Priscilla, Brooke-they all went out with him whenever he asked and allowed him to touch their bodies in various ways. He’d lost his virginity the previous Christmas to a girl named Anna, who was a freshman at Columbia. He met her at Lowe Library while he was doing special research for a paper on Blaise Pascal; she showed Garrett how to access the university computer system, then later invited him back to her room and once they started making out, Garrett discovered he couldn’t stop and she didn’t force him to. His father had given him condoms for his sixteenth birthday and made Garrett promise to always use them. “I don’t want anything to happen to you or anyone you’re close to,” he said.

Garrett didn’t see Anna again-she went home to Poughkeepsie for Christmas break and never resurfaced.

Garrett didn’t tell his father that he lost his virginity; he was too embarrassed.

He got an A on the Pascal paper.

As Garrett led Piper down the steep staircase to the beach, he felt his attitude about girls changing. Maybe because this girl was so beautiful and spoke to her father with exactly the same rage that Garrett felt for his mother. He wanted this girl. That was what he thought as they took their shoes off and stepped on the cold sand.

There was no moon, but there were millions of stars. Garrett craned his neck to get a good look.

“I never see stars like this,” he said. “In New York, the sky is pink at night.”

Piper pulled her jean jacket close to her body. “I can’t wait to go away to college. I can’t wait to get off this rock.”

“You were hard on your dad,” Garrett said.

“He drives me nuts.”

“Which way do you want to walk?” Garrett asked.

She pointed to the left. The beach was dark-only a couple of houses along the bluff had lights on-and the ocean pounded to their right. Garrett felt pleasantly buzzed from the wine, pleasantly buzzed from the way Piper had managed to set them free from the dinner party. He felt bold and confident-he took Piper’s hand, and she let him. They walked, but the only part of his body that Garrett could feel was his hand. He was so consumed by it that he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Piper asked him.

“Not right now,” he said. “What about you?”

“I have lots of girlfriends.” She giggled.

He tightened his grip on her fingers. “Boyfriend?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh.”

“I’m breaking up with him tomorrow.”

“How come?” Garrett said.

“Because I met you,” she said.

Garrett sent a message to his father, whom he sometimes thought of as a satellite dish in the sky, always there to receive information. Are you listening to this?

“He’s just a stupid football player, anyway,” Piper said. “He’s never been anywhere.”

Garrett imagined the hulking, unsophisticated brute who was currently Piper’s boyfriend. Garrett knew the type-the kind of guy who would pound Garrett into the sand like a horseshoe stake if he knew Garrett was holding Piper’s hand right now.

“If you could go anywhere in the world,” he asked. “where would you go?”

“I already said, New York City.”

Garrett had been hoping for a more imaginative answer. “I want to go to Australia. I’ve wanted to go there ever since I was, like, six years old. I’m going to ask my mom to let me travel after I graduate from high school. I might not go to college right away.”

“Really?” she said.

Garrett could tell she thought that was crazy. “I’m different,” he said. “My father used to tell me I thought outside the box.”

She coughed a hacky, smoker’s cough. “Your dad died, right?”

The question took Garrett by surprise and he seized up with panic. He hadn’t encountered very many kids his age who wanted to talk about what happened to his father. Everyone knew, of course. Practically the entire student body of Danforth attended the memorial service. But no one wanted to talk to Garrett about the loss, not even his good friends. The other kids were afraid to talk about it and that made Garrett afraid. He felt that losing his father, that being fatherless, was something to be ashamed of.

“Right. My dad died.”

“In a plane crash?”

“Yep.”

Piper raised her face to the night sky, giving Garrett a view of her beautiful throat. “I can’t imagine how awful that would be. Even though I get angry at my dad, I want him alive. If anything ever happened to him or my mom, I’d go crazy.”

“Yeah,” Garrett said. “My sister’s pretty much gone crazy. That’s why she wasn’t at dinner. We have to keep her locked in her room.”

Piper stopped. “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re kidding.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

She swatted his arm and walked on. “How has it changed you? Losing a parent, I mean.”

It was an insightful question, and one he’d never been asked. How to explain? It was as if his seventeenth year were a bridge that had broken in half. His old life, his life before his father died, was on one side of the bridge, and now he found himself standing on the other side, with no choice but to move forward. What else could he say? He felt jaded now, hardened. The things that other kids worried about-grades, for example, or clothes, or the score of a soccer game-seemed inconsequential. In some sense, losing his father allowed Garrett to see what was important. This moment, right now, was important. Garrett stopped and slipped his hands inside of Piper’s jean jacket so that he was touching the bare skin under her rib cage. Her skin was warm; she was radiating heat. Garrett had no clue where he was finding the courage to touch Piper.