“I’ll meet you in an hour, okay?”
And she got up. And she floated across the room. And I knew I should go and yank her back to the ground, but instead, I just watched her leave.
Mary knocked on my door an hour later, and didn’t wait for me to respond before she let herself inside. She was holding an umbrella, and she’d changed into black, ripped jeans and a boxy T-shirt, heavy black boots that I thought she must have stolen from our mother’s closet. Her blond hair was braided into two long plaits that lay over each of her shoulders and she wore a dark plum lipstick that matched the circles underneath her eyes.
My sister always wore long, flowy dresses and not a stitch of makeup. I wasn’t sure who this was, but she looked more like Vira or my mother, twenty years ago.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” I asked.
“Is that whatyou’rewearing?” she shot back. I had on jean shorts, a flannel shirt. My hair was pulled into a bun,and I wore plain white sneakers, dirty now from years of use.
It had taken me the full hour to decide what to wear. What if Prue was there? I doubted the news of a party at Colin Osmond’s house would have reached her, but if ithad, I didn’t want to look like I’d gotten dressed up for her, but I didn’t want to look like a jerk either. Half my wardrobe was spread out across my bed, and I saw Mary sneak a glance at it.
I hadn’t told her about Prue and me kissing in the backyard, but in my defense, I hadn’t seen more of her lately than the back of her head disappearing around corners. And I would have told her then, but there was something so disconcerting about the way she was dressed, about the plum lipstick that colored her pout into something unrecognizable. Something a little creepy.
“Are you ready?” she asked, crossing to my window and lifting it open.
I thought of Clarice Fernweh barricading her children in their bedrooms. I thought of the original Georgina so sick with accidental poison that she almost died. I thought of Annabella, seizing her one opportunity to get away forever.
I didn’t blame her. Given the chance, I think we all would want wings.
“Georgie?” Mary said. She already had one leg out the window, and she was ducking her head to get outside. Ithought I would always remember my sister like this: poised to jump.
And she did.
And she waited for me to climb down the latticing, and then we set off together across the island, huddling under one umbrella, just like we had the night of the summer solstice—minus the rain, minus the umbrella, minus my sister’s dark lipstick. That night felt like a lifetime ago; everything had changed since then. The island was a different place, my sister was a different girl. Even I was unrecognizable.
My sister pulled a little silver flask from her bra, just like the night of the solstice, but unlike the night of the solstice, she drank with a singular purpose: long, deep pulls without asking me if I wanted any. When she was finished, she handed it over as an afterthought. There was hardly a sip left.
“What’s going on with you?” I asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“This outfit? The amount of alcohol you just drank?”
“I’m getting ready to party. Can’t you tell?” she said, and then she slipped away from me, out from the protection of the umbrella, and she was running down the middle of Main Street, following the road to Colin Osmond’s house, which was just north of the Beach. I lost sight of her in between the streetlights, and I slipped the empty flask into my back pocket and tried to keep up.
By the time I reached Colin’s house, she was gone—already inside or else disappeared into the night. Colin’s parents were always traveling; they owned the only general store on the island and they left often, on buying trips. They’d been gone before Annabella had been murdered, before my mother had disabled the ferry. I wondered how they would even make it back.
Colin was standing on his front porch, and when he saw me he waved me up. I had been to this house with Verity so many times that it felt weird to be here now, without her, but I was glad that Colin was here, one friendly face against the darkness of the night.
“Hey, Georgina,” he said. His usual upbeat energy was more subdued, and I was reminded for the second time that night that everything was different now. “How are you holding up?”
“It’s been hard,” I admitted.
“I saw you at the funeral, but I didn’t know what to say. Things like that... they just mess with my head. You know?”
“It’s fine. I get it.”
“I should have reached out to you, though. I’m sorry.” He took the umbrella from me now that I was safely under the roof of the porch, and he shook the water out over the railing. There was a bucket full of umbrellas outside the front door; he added mine to the bunch. “There are all kinds of things to drink inside. Help yourself, okay?”he said, but I didn’t get a chance to respond, because Billy Kent erupted from the house in a mess of alcohol fumes and noise. He seemed to pause midstride when he saw me, a burst of laughter dying on his lips as he pulled the front door shut behind him and froze.
“Oh,” he said. “Georgina. I didn’t realize you would be here.”
“Georgina is my friend,” Colin said, putting his arm around my shoulders in a protective way that set me immediately on edge. “Why wouldn’t she be here?”
Billy rolled his eyes, but then he seemed to catch himself. He took a slow breath. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought she might have other things to do.”
“Other things to do?” I asked. It took me a minute to catch on, but then I had a flash of Lucille falling all over herself to get away from me, of Shelby leaving the funeral early, and something clicked together. “Are you kidding me?” I hissed. “Billy, you’ve known me my entire life.”
