“Herbs and collagen. The white powder is collagen.”
“Why are the packets labeled with our names? Who makes them?”
“I do.”
“You. What are you, some kind of nutrition expert at seventeen?”
“Nineteen,” he says. “I make them under June’s direction. She’s a skilled herbalist and she gives us each what we need, systemically.”
“Systemically,” I mock.
“She asked me to make you four packets with collagen, hemp hearts, and chia seed for fiber and protein, plus ginseng for energy. It’s meant to be welcoming, Matilda.”
“You’re expert at welcoming,” I tell him. “Thanks for making me feel so at home. I’m impressed with your warm interpersonal skills.”
“Fine. Snoop in the fridge all you want,” Tatum says. “Did you look in the pantry yet? Have you opened the drawers? How about the medicine cabinets? There are several, and it might take you a while to look in every single one, but I’m happy to show them toyou. No, wait, I have a better idea. Come upstairs and look under my bed. See what I’m hiding. Would you like to go through my wallet? Look at all the texts on my phone? Because I really want you to feel welcome here, and that’s what you’re supposed to do to make a person feel welcome, right? Let them invade your privacy?”
“It was literally a crisper drawer,” I shoot back. “People do go in the crisper drawers at other people’s houses, you know. Sometimes there isfruitin there. It’s a reasonable, normal thing to go in a crisper drawer.”
“You already admitted you were hunting around in Kingsley’s fridge. And you thought it was full of drugs.”
Okay, that’s true. But he’s terrible.
I turn my back and stomp out the sliding door.
19
I find Meerand Brock outside. They’re playing Frisbee and grilling, simultaneously. They’ve got the grill set up near a huge tree by the edge of the cliff. Nestled in the high grass is a long picnic table and an assortment of mismatched wooden chairs. They’re cooking up the steak Brock bought. They have a carton of premade potato salad, and another of coleslaw. Four large bags of potato chips, some beer and seltzer.
June is too busy to join us for dinner, says Meer. She’s got projects going on, upstairs in her studios. Weaving and herbal work. And Tatum doesn’t seem to be around.
“Yes, he is. I met him in the kitchen,” I say.
“Really?” says Brock. “And did you love him? Girls love him. Or do you love me?”
“I love no one,” I say. “God, you’re a flirt.”
“He’s handsome, but I’m more fun.”
“Shut up,” I retort. “Do we know each other well enough for me to say that? I think we do.”
I am not flirting with Brock after overhearing his conversation with Tatum. And I don’t want to get near anyone anyway, since Luca knew everything about me and then decided I was a maladjusted creepy nerd-girl who didn’t even deserve friends.
“I can shut up,” says Brock. He looks down at the steaks on the grill and pays very close attention to flipping them over and brushing them with marinade.
I feel bad now. He looks like a scolded kid. “You got all different kinds of potato chips,” I say, conciliatory. “So fun.”
“There’s barbecue, honey mustard, ranch, and a terrifying pickle flavor,” says Brock, grinning at me. “I haven’t tried the pickle yet. Do you want to do the honors?”
I’m upset with Brock for wanting to get rid of me, but it’s very hard to hate him. He’s a complete clown. He heaps my plate with steak and pickle-flavor potato chips. He worries about Tatum missing dinner. He tells a funny story about having his zipper down when he met Miley Cyrus. Then he tells about the aftermath of that fire on the island across the way. “No one on the Vineyard can get a tree doctor or arborist or whatever anymore because all the tree doctors are spending their days on Beechwood, looking after the tree needs of the Sinclair family. Because they pay more than regular people. And so this lady at the grocery store, like an older lady from the Wampanoag community in Aquinnah, she told me she rented achain saw and cut down this branch from her tree that was scraping her roof. By herself. Her grown-up children were mad at her because they said it wasn’t safe, but she told me that she was going to do all her own chain saw work from now on. Then she said the Sinclair family acts like they’re some kind of landed gentry going back to the sixteenth century. There’s no royalty in the USA and this land is Wampanoag land and everyone else is just squatting on it.”
“What did you say to that?” I ask.
“I said she was no doubt right and asked if she was ready to give chain saw lessons,” says Brock. “Then she asked if I did yard work and I said, nah, I’m an actor, and she said complimentary things about my physique. She was a little dirty-minded, actually.”
He’s bought a deck of cards on his outing to town. He pulls them from his pocket when we’re done eating. He wants to play a game called Mao where you don’t explain the rules to the new players. Meer and I will just have to figure it out as we play, says Brock, based on the penalties he doles out as the emcee.
“I’m going to completely fail, you know,” says Meer. “I literally can play war and go fish. That’s it.”
