It’s a disturbing story, but I remind myself that he wants me to leave. Of course he’s going to tell a disturbing story. “I have lived with a good number of different people who were deeply messy,” I say. “But not like that.”
“You’ve lived with a good number of different people?” Tatum turns to me again, but this time, his dimples aren’t showing. There’s a delicate furrow between his brows.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He pauses but doesn’t ask any more about it. “Meer pays close attention to some things, but other things aren’t even visible to him. I feel like that’s part of his nature, or his brain, or whatever. And Brock, he grew up working all the time, he worked his whole childhood, but at the same time he never had to like, do laundry. Or wash a dish. So even though he’s in this process of transformation, he’s basically constitutionally unable to clean anything.”
“I’m sharing a bathroom with him, so I already know.”
The dimples flash. “Brock showed up here like a year ago, saying basically, teach me how to be a person. And Kingsley said he could stay.”
“Teach me how to be a person?”
“Well, apparently not a person who thinks to clean up a pile of festering dog crap, but a person, like, in touch with his humanity. Which I guess Brock wasn’t. But he fell in love with Kingsley’s art and came here.” Tatum shrugs. “He’s not the only one to do that. He’s just the only one who’s here now.”
“Kingsley didn’t clean up the Glum poo, either?”
“He did not.”
“And June didn’t.”
“June’s focus is on the tinctures. On the indigo. On her herbs and weavings.”
So that’s why Brock stocks the fridge. Because June and Kingsley don’t.
Tatum has a strong, wide nose. The area beneath his eyes is puffy, as if he’s tired. The delicate baby fat on Meer and the ripples of muscle on Brock have both been stripped away from Tatum, leaving a bunch of complicated hostilities and opinions sutured together with copper wires to make up a boy.
“Hoy!” says a voice from behind us. And there is Meer, wearinga sweatshirt that seems much too large. “I fell asleep,” he says, scratching his head. “Then I woke up.”
Brock trails behind him. “Ifell asleep and then Meer woke me up,” he adds. “Why didn’t you come get us?” he asks Tatum.
“Didn’t know if we were really going.”
“Oh, it’son,” says Meer. “The longer we wait, the more likely the Sinclair family will go back to the island. We need to go tonight.”
“Why are we going, at all?” asks Tatum.
“I have no idea,” says Brock. “But it’s been a while since we caused any mayhem.”
“And you want to bring Matilda?” Tatum asks. “Trespassing and all that? She just got here and we don’t even know her.”
And just like that, I hate him again. “I’m fine to go,” I say.
“Of course I want to bring Matilda,” says Meer. “I was waiting for her to come so she could be with us.”
“Waiting for her?” Tatum sounds scornful.
“We trespass all the time,” Brock explains to me. “We’re professional-level trespassers.”
“Beechwood is anisland,” says Tatum. “Not just a piece of land down the road. And it’s owned by a really powerful family.”
Brock looks at him deadpan. “We trespassed on the Kennedy property,” he says. “And Ted Danson’s. And that place the Obamas used to rent. Powerful people and their ideas about their land don’t actually faze you.”
“Why are you people trespassing all the time?” I ask.
“For the swimming pools,” says Tatum, at the same time Brock says, “ ’Cause we’re absolute anarchic criminals.”
“Swimming pools and tennis courts,” Meer explains. “A lot of the summer rentals on the island turn over every week or two.People leave around noon, cleaning crews come in, and that night, the places are empty before new people come.”
