Janna King
THE
ISLANDERS (temporary title)
With the sound of tires on gravel, Jason stopped folding his laundry to watch from the bedroom window as his next-door neighbors pulled up into their driveway, just now arriving from Connecticut. Jason’s family had returned to Shell Island a few days ago and was just starting to finish cleaning and unpacking, an extra laborious task for him now that his parents expected him to help out more, seeing as he was “practically an adult.” Meanwhile, his fourteen-year-old sister Rachel ran around greeting her friends. Outside, neighbors Frank and Kathleen Spinelli emerged from their car, opening the trunk and pulling out suitcases and a cat carrier. Kathleen knocked on the backseat window and said something to the person on the other side of the glass. She glanced at her husband before they went inside their house.
Finally, their daughter emerged from the car. She was nineteen, the same age as Jason, and although her name was Anna Maria, everyone called her by her surname. He stared as Spinelli walked over to the house (without unloading anything from the car), headphones over her straight black hair, the wire leading to an MP3 player tucked into a jean pocket. Jason was surprised to see how different she looked from last summer. Her usual baggy jeans or sweatpants and oversized T-shirts were replaced with clothes that not only actually fit her small yet muscular frame, but were somewhat trendy. Her once chin-length hair was now several inches past her shoulders. The one thing that had not changed about Spinelli’s appearance was her trademark black sunglasses, so dark that you couldn’t see her eyes behind them.
Jason’s mother called to him from downstairs. He found her in the living room talking to Will Mahoney, his best friend on the island. Will was a tall, gangly guy and he stood slightly humped over, in stark contrast with Jason’s mother whose dancer’s body never slouched.
“The crew’s having a cookout on the beach tonight,” Will said, as Jason’s mother went into the kitchen. “You wanna come?”
“Of course,” Jason said.
“Man, we need to have fun this summer.”
Jason laughed. “Don’t we always?”
“Yeah, but I need to let loose after working my ass off all year. You think freshman year is hard? Wait ’til next year.”
The strange thing about growing up with a summer home was that Jason went a year without seeing most of his island friends, meaning each summer there was a period of adjustment for them. Even though he lived not far away in a different Massachusetts town during the rest of the year, many of the other islanders were spread throughout the Northeast. Kids changed a lot in a year and although his friendships lasted, he always had to rediscover people. Jason remembered first meeting Spinelli at age twelve, still called Anna Maria at that point, wearing her preppy outfits, her long hair often in a single braid down her back. One summer later, after transferring from private to public school, she was in oversized clothes, weightlifting, swearing, and moping around like the teenager she had become. High school proved to be a more stable time for everyone, but now that several of them had started college, there was a whole new chapter of change occurring.
Spinelli sat on a porch step. About twenty feet away was the beach, the sun starting to set under the horizon of the ocean. Behind her was her family’s summer home, a two-story two-bedroom two-bathroom light gray house with dark blue-gray shutters. Her parents were inside arguing over which things should be unpacked first. She heard a door open and close next door and watched through the dark tint of her sunglasses as Jason walked towards her grinning. He was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt that matched his brown hair.
“Hey,” he said. “Come on, we’re having the first cookout of the year.”
“Don’t order me around.”
He stood waiting for her. Spinelli smirked and started walking across the beach, passing Jason so he had to catch up with her.
“So how’s college?” he asked.
“Fine. Actually, it’s really good. Worth all the fighting with my dad.”
Her father was a history professor at Yale, so she had pretty much had guaranteed admission there, not to mention a significant scholarship. However, the thought of going to the elitist school where her dad worked, not to mention being in the same city she had lived her whole life, was not appealing. After some struggle, she had enrolled at The New School’s Eugene Lang, a respectable liberal arts college in New York City.
“How about you?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” Jason said. “Lowell isn’t New York of course, but I like UMass fine.”
Spinelli trudged through the sand in her flip-flops, her eyes on their destination. Up ahead, a charcoal grill illuminated the group of teenagers surrounding it. She spotted Will Mahoney, Emily Lyons, Diego and Julian Nicolini, and the insufferable Naomi Johnson in a tiny denim miniskirt. There was also a boy she didn’t recognize.
“Jaaaason!” Naomi cried out, lifting her arms up in the air, a Bud Light in one hand. “Spinelli!”
Jason laughed. “Hey Naomi,” he called.
Spinelli zipped up her navy blue hoodie. The wind from the ocean was cold and the weather wasn’t hot enough yet for it to feel refreshing. The heat from the fire felt good on her skin. There were hot dogs lying on the grill, being tended to by Will. All of the friends exchanged greetings and Spinelli’s life fell back into familiarity, except that she now felt out of place in her old summer-world.
She was offered a
beer, and declined as usual, but she did accept a cigarette from Diego. It was a habit she had picked up in
She stood next to him now as he drank from a small flask of vodka. “Here we are again,” he said, his face close to hers, with a glimmer of a smile.
“Did you two see each other during the year?” Emily asked. She was a soft-spoken, soft-bodied girl with dirty blonde hair that was usually up in a ponytail.
“Constantly,” Diego said. “Spinelli is my new badass little sister.”
“What about Adriana?” his brother Julian asked.
“Adriana is just our bad little sister,” Diego said.
Emily laughed. “She isn’t that bad.”
“You haven’t seen her since she started high school. The girl is trouble… or she’s going to be soon, at least.” Julian nodded reluctantly in agreement. “Watch out for Rachel,” Diego said now to Jason. “Adriana will corrupt her. Girls are like that.”
Jason smiled and shook his head. “Hey, Spinelli, you haven’t met Ben yet.” The unknown boy, who looked her age or a little younger, came forward and stuck out his hand for her to shake. He had dark brown hair and wore a green and white striped T-shirt and cargo pants, his blue eyes friendly behind his glasses. She transferred her cigarette to her left hand to shake his with her right.
“Ben Weinstein,” he said. “My family just bought a house here, it’s inland a little ways.”
“The Meyers’ house,” Jason explained. “They bought a place in Maine, apparently.”
Spinelli smiled politely. “Welcome.” She noticed some of the younger kids (although they could hardly be called kids anymore) walking steadfastly across the beach towards the cookout. Jason noticed, too.
“What are you doing here?” he asked his sister Rachel. Adriana and a boy named Josh Gallagher were with her.
“Joining the party,” she said innocently.
“The corruption starts already!” Diego exclaimed.
“You aren’t even in high school yet,” Jason said to Rachel.
“So? It’s not like you’re doing anything bad, right? Nothing I should tell Mom and Dad about?”
“You better let them stay, Jason,” Naomi said, smiling, “or they’ll rat us out for underage drinking.”
“Fine, whatever. But nobody gives them anything except hot dogs.”
Everyone was back to talking as Spinelli put out her cigarette in the sand and Ben asked her, “Spinelli, is it?”
She nodded.
“I take it that’s not your first name?”
“No, but my first name is too foul to be uttered.”
He laughed. “What is it? Gertrude? Maude?”
She just smiled. He smiled back awkwardly, looking around as if for help from the others.
Diego noticed. “Everyone’s afraid to tell you because she might beat them up. She looks small, but check out her biceps. It’s just better not to ask.”
Spinelli lay in Diego’s bed the next day, looking at the foreign film posters on his walls. A large Chilean flag was tacked to the ceiling above her. Sitting on the bureau was a framed black and white photo of Diego, taken from his bare chest up, his dark eyes staring out intensely, his hair gelled up perfectly.
“Did Kevin take that?” Spinelli asked, pointing to the photo.
Diego, squatting on the floor to rifle through his DVD collection, looked up, and nodded.
“Makes you look kind of self-centered,” she said. “Having a sexy photo of yourself in your room.”
“Well, if the shoe fits… No, really it’s to show off Kev’s talent. And remind me of him.” Diego scowled. “I would have stayed in the city if I could have found a job. Anyway, as embarrassing for my parents as it is, it’s still better than having a picture of Kevin up. God forbid. The Big Sleep?” He held up the movie. “Classic film noir. Bogart, Bacall.”
Spinelli shrugged. “Sure.”
“Have you heard what everyone else is doing tonight?”
“What, you’re bored with me already?”
“Of course not, Spinelli,” he said, smiling, “but I would be interested in a fun party or something. I know it’s unlikely in this town—the fun part—but you never know.”
“Well, Emily said they were probably going to the movies, but I’m sure our movie will be better.”
“Our film,” he corrected.
Spinelli knew she had made the right argument to persuade him to stay in with her. Diego was a screenwriting major and especially loved obscure old and foreign films. He was really rather a snob about it. She, on the other hand, did not have such elitist taste in movies, and knew he probably picked out The Big Sleep with this in mind, as a sort of compromise, knowing she enjoyed a good mystery.
After playing video games with Will for three hours straight the next morning, Jason was ready to get outdoors for a while. He took his digital SLR camera and walked down to the beach to find something to photograph.
Jason’s grandparents had first bought the island home when his mother was ten. They had lived there year-round, braving the fierce winds that came from the ocean during the winter. When his granddad died, his grandma moved to a retirement community and his parents bought the house to use as a summer home. This was back when Jason was eight. He had loved playing on the beach with his new friends, challenging Will to races, and plotting with the other boys over the best ways to annoy the girls. He also enjoyed spending time alone reading and drawing comics. Photography was a hobby he had picked up later in high school.
He crouched down in the sand to get close to a dried up crab carcass lying in the dunes. He aimed his camera at it, framing the crab in the top left corner of his viewfinder, and clicked. The image popped up on the little screen.
“Hey, Mr. Photographer.”
Jason turned around to see Naomi approaching him. Her long, straight hair was dyed a dark brown and blunt bangs crossed her forehead. For years before, she had dyed her hair an orangey red and Jason couldn’t quite remember what her natural color was anymore, although he seemed to remember an average-looking brown. She wore little short shorts that showed off her amazing toned and tanned legs. She peered over his shoulder to look at the photo on the camera screen.
“Are you taking any photography in college?” she asked.
“I took one class, yeah. That’s probably all I’ll be able to do, though. I have too many other requirements for my communications major.”
“You should keep it up, though. Your photos are great.”
“Thanks, Naomi.”
“It’s true. And if you ever need a model…”
She struck a dramatic pose, tossing her hair and looking over her shoulder at him, her lips pouted. He laughed.
“Anyway,” she said, breaking into a smile, “there’s going to be a party tonight at this guy’s house in Northport… Mike Rice, I think? He’s a friend of my friend Rob. His parents are out of town and it’s going to be pretty big. You in?”
“Definitely.”
“Sweet. I’ll call you later with the details.”
Diego hung up the phone. “That was Naomi. She said there’s a big party in town, everyone’s going.”
Spinelli shrugged. “Guess we’re going then.”
They arrived at the party around ten o’clock. The house was quite large, as was the backyard, where most people were congregating. Walking across the lawn in her flip-flops, Spinelli could feel that the grass was soft and freshly cut. There was a vast open space of lawn in the middle of the yard, with massive trees filling the borders. It was too dark to make out figures properly, but she could hear people talking and laughing around her. A fireplace grill was blazing and nearby was a table covered with cans and glass bottles of soda and alcohol. Naomi greeted the guy who had apparently invited them. Spinelli waited as everyone poured themselves drinks, and then she walked with the group over to an empty spot of lawn and sat down together. Ben started talking to Spinelli, asking what she was going to study in college.
“I don’t know, I was thinking of going into journalism,” Spinelli said. “But I’m not sure yet.”
“Really? Me too,” Ben said. “I was the editor of my high school newspaper and it was so great.”
“Yeah, it seems cool, but I don’t know. I mean, I never worked on the school newspaper or anything. I wasn’t really into clubs. Actually, we barely even had a paper at my school… it was, like, just a folded print-out with tons of typos. I went to school in the ghetto.”
“By choice,” Jason piped in.
“Well, of course,” she said, trying to discern his face in the dark. “Obviously none of us here are underprivileged.”
Jason’s family, however, probably had the lowest income of the group. His father was a contractor and his mother was a dance instructor for children. They struggled to keep the house in the family, even though it was a bit out of their means. Spinelli knew Jason and his family harbored some resentment being surrounded by over-privileged, often exceedingly wealthy families from out of state. Still, the Riders were far from poor, so the veiled complaining annoyed her. She had no sense of entitlement; it’s not like she could help that her parents came from money and were overpaid in their fields.
Ben and Spinelli kept talking while the group started to break up, leaving to find more excitement or new people to meet. Soon Jason got up, dusting grass off his legs.
“I’ll see you guys later,” he said. “Have fun and don’t stay here the whole time. Mingle, Spinelli, mingle.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said sarcastically as he left.
Ben smiled at her. “I love how you guys all seem so close. It must have been great to grow up with kids your age around like that. I barely know anyone in my neighborhood at home.”
“It’s okay,” Spinelli said. “Sometimes it gets… awkward, I guess. If you want to avoid someone, it’s pretty hard. Plus everyone always knows your business.”
“That’s true. You just have to try not to make enemies, I guess,” he laughed.
“Oh, I try a lot.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s giving you shit?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t tell you anything that would cause trouble because by tomorrow morning the whole crew would know.”
“I don’t tell secrets,” Ben said.
“No one ever does, but somehow they always get out. You have to keep everything to yourself on the island.”
“Sounds like you have a lot of dirt… on other people or yourself, I don’t know. As a possible future reporter, I’m dying to hear it. But I can tell I won’t win that battle tonight.”
Spinelli smiled. She liked this kid. But she also didn’t like people trying to figure her out like she was so simple that they could analyze her down into something quick and understandable. She didn’t want to squash his interest yet, but she didn’t want to lead him on, either.
“I’m going to try to find Diego to bum a cigarette off him,” she said. “I guess we should mingle anyway, like Jason said.” She had no intention of doing this, but it was a good excuse.
“Okay, I’ll bump into you later,” Ben said, putting a hand on her arm briefly before heading over to the drinks table. Spinelli did not consider this suitable behavior, which her friends knew, but she let it go for now since Ben didn’t know better yet.
She walked slowly around the yard so as not to accidentally bump into or trip over anything. She heard Emily giggling off to her left, but didn’t see Diego with her. Suddenly she felt someone grab her wrist from behind and she whirled around and punched the person in the stomach with her free arm.
Jason bent over, letting go of her wrist to hold his stomach. “Holy shit…”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“I was just trying to get your attention.”
“Words are usually preferable to grabbing someone with no warning in a dark, strange place.”
Jason made some more guttural noises before straightening up. “Point taken. Can I show you the thing I was going to before you slugged me? Damn, you really are strong.”
She stood in front of him silently. Apparently he took this as a yes, because he was brave enough to take her hand and start leading her off into the gathering of trees that circled the backyard. Her heart raced.
“Look,” Jason said when they reached an evergreen tree. He pulled up the branches and they walked underneath, stepping into a large empty space underneath the tree high enough for them to stand fully upright. The branches surrounded and hid them. It was even darker under the tree than out in the yard and the only reason why Spinelli could make out Jason’s features now was because he was standing so closely.
She felt his lips on hers first, and then his hands on the small of her back, bringing her closer.
“Don’t,” she said quietly but firmly, turning her face away from him. “We’re not doing this again.”
“Why not?” Jason whispered back.
“Because it’s in the past, it’s over,” she said.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
She made a face. “You sound like something in a romance novel.”
Spinelli was disappointed in how she had barely tried to prevent this moment; she had been doing so well not letting her guard down. Now she had to stick to her decision and follow through.
But instead, when he kissed her again, she let him. She let his hands move up and down her sides, and then through her hair, which had been much shorter the last time this had happened. She put her arms around his neck. They kissed feverishly for what felt like a long time, and probably was a pretty long time, before Spinelli pulled away abruptly because she heard voices not far outside the tree.
She looked at Jason, who was about three feet away from her now, and the two of them just stood there for a minute, listening to Diego, Will, and Naomi talk. Finally Jason pulled up a branch and ducked underneath.
“Hey there,” she heard him say.
“Dude, where’d you come from?” Will asked.
“I was just taking a piss,” Jason said. “Come on, I need another drink.”
Spinelli breathed a quiet sigh of relief, alone under the evergreen tree.
Around one, the crew started to leave. Naomi and Will wanted to stay longer, so Spinelli, Diego, Emily, and Ben went home with Jason in his car.
“Do you want me to drive?” Spinelli asked. Being a non-drinker, she would have made the perfect designated driver except that she didn’t have a car. She had a license, but there was no sense in having a car in New York City.
“I’m fine, I had one beer hours ago,” Jason said. “Even if I were drunk, I still wouldn’t trust you with my car.”
“I’m a good driver,” she protested. But it was true; she drove her parents’ cars sometimes, but not often enough to feel completely comfortable behind the wheel.
She squeezed into the backseat with Diego and Emily as Jason turned the radio on to a top forty station that was playing some upbeat dance song. Diego, seated in the middle, grooved to the beat while Emily bopped her head along with him.
“Is Naomi dating that guy Rob?” Jason asked from the front.
“They have a thing going, yeah,” Diego answered. “Nothing official.”
“That was fast. Didn’t she just get here?” Ben said.
“That’s Naomi,” replied Jason.
“You would know,” Spinelli said. She saw him give her an exasperated look through the rearview mirror.
Diego rested his head against Spinelli’s shoulder and laughed drunkenly.
“What?” Ben asked, looking first at Jason, then at her.
“It’s nothing,” Jason said. “Naomi and I dated like three summers ago. Old news. Hey Spin, I heard you’re working at Bill’s.”
“That’s right,” she said. She had gotten a summer job at an ice cream shop in downtown Northport, the nearest town. It was minimum wage, but working in shops or restaurants was about the only nearby work for students.
“We can ride together,” Jason said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t know? I’m working at Bill’s, too.” A street light illuminated his face and she could see that he was grinning, loving surprising her.
“Shut up,” she said. “Are you fucking serious?”
“See you bright and early on Monday.”
“Won’t you two have fun,” Diego said, poking her arm.