Page 13 of Dead of Summer

ORLA

Orla spends the afternoon cleaning and sorting the upstairs bedrooms. Better to be busy and productive than to let the lethargy she’s felt these past months come for her here.

It was already starting when she returned from the store.

She’d finished putting the groceries away and just stood there in the kitchen for too long, her eyes going in and out of focus.

She could feel it coming for her, like a hand slowly closing around her ankle, ready to drag her down.

If she sat down right then, she realized, she might never get up again.

So instead, she took another Xanax from the bottle on the counter and began to clean.

The really important things in the house, those with any deep sentimental or monetary value, have long since been shipped to Florida but there are still plenty of little things to sort through.

She works methodically, sifting through boxes of mostly useless odds and ends, stacks of old bills and papers, folded-up blankets and towels; going through the extra boxes in her parents’ bedroom; sweeping and scrubbing the floors while listening to a podcast. It feels surprisingly good to keep moving, to feel useful.

She sorts diligently through boxes under beds and in cupboards, deciding what should be kept (very little) and discarded or donated (most of it) and forming piles of each.

She hasn’t stopped moving in hours and her brain has so far stayed away from the topics that brought her here, the well-trodden paths that lead to no place good.

She gathers armfuls of musty-smelling linens and blankets and takes them outside. Standing in the dappled sunlight Orla shakes them out, hanging them on the clothesline the way her mom used to. It soothes her. Orla likes the way tidying up makes her feel competent, even if only temporarily.

The sheets ripple gently in the breeze. Orla takes in a deep breath of the air that smells like sweetgrass and wonders what it would be like to live here again.

She could keep the house for herself and stay.

She begins to imagine herself painting seascapes and selling them at a shop downtown.

Could she be happy here? Living next to the Gallo house?

She narrows her eyes at the laundry to avoid looking next door as a flash of memory comes back to her.

Orla is chasing Alice across the lawn toward the water.

They are young, elementary age, both in their swimsuits; their tan legs pump across the grass.

Alice is excited. She’s heard that a humpback whale has been spotted offshore and is determined to see it.

“Wait, wait,” Orla calls to her, but Alice just runs faster, yelling impatiently over her shoulder, “There’s no time, Orla.

Keep up!” Orla hangs another sheet on the line as a new image crowds that one out.

The rush of waves, frothing white in the moonlight.

And between crests, barely visible, Alice’s hands reaching up for help as she sinks into the murky black.

Back upstairs Orla washes the floors in the hallway and the bedrooms with Murphy Oil Soap. On her hands and knees, she furiously cleans, returning the sponge over and over to the soapy bucket, scrubbing at the wood as though she might also be able to remove the horrible pictures from her mind.

Satisfied by what she’s done, she returns to her bedroom. Orla braces herself and twists the handle on the closet door.

It opens into a long crawl space lined on one side with rough wooden shelves.

The space inside smells of must and mildew.

On rainy days when they were young, it had been Orla and Alice’s secret fort.

Orla’s hand grasps to the right, her muscle memory helping her quickly find the flimsy string that pulls the light on.

A yellowy bulb illuminates a set of long shelves containing a variety of tattered boxes, plastic bins, and stacks of board games.

The edge of an old cigar box catches her attention.

It is decorated with an assortment of bright stickers.

Curious, she reaches up and pulls it down.

Her chest tightens as she flips open the lid and looks down at an assortment of treasures she’d long since forgotten.

A string of glass beads barely clinging to a threadbare cord.

She remembers the way it lay on her sun-freckled wrist. How she couldn’t stop touching it, running a bead back and forth along its cord.

There is a selection of shells and small rocks she picked up on the beach, their edges chipped.

None are particularly special, except for when she found each of them. One for each time she saw David Clarke.

A childhood crush was all it really was.

Though it felt like love at the time. Their connection was intense for how young they were, Orla had thought then.

But winters were long and gray on the island.

They had a way of distorting things. The Clarkes’ return each summer gave Orla something to look forward to, something to cling to all those cold empty months.

As soon as late June rolled around, Orla would begin her torturous wait.

When the Clarkes’ driveway filled with fancy cars, she knew David’s first visit of the summer would be imminent.

It could take a few days or sometimes just hours for David to free himself from his father’s iron grip and come to find her.

She never could quite picture what he was doing in the Clarke mansion before he showed up at her house, sometimes on a new bike, or once with a boat.

Always in a way that let you know that David wasn’t any old neighborhood kid, he was a Clarke.

That last year, before everything went to shit, she’d had to wait longer than normal for David to show.

Days had passed since the cars had arrived in the drive.

Orla became so morose that she was difficult even for Alice to be around.

“He’ll come, don’t worry,” she’d said, but Orla grew more inconsolable with each passing hour.

She didn’t even want to leave home in case he should arrive.

Exasperated, Alice eventually abandoned her, leaving on her own for the beach while Orla moped inside, her eyes always at the windows.

She had to wait an entire agonizing week before she finally heard the honking in the driveway.

It was an unfamiliar sound, and because of this she knew right away it was him.

She fled the kitchen, where she’d been restlessly watching her dad make rose hip jam and bounded out onto the front lawn.

The Bentley was silver and stunning and so foreign to Orla that David may as well have arrived by spaceship.

Alice must have heard him first somehow, and by the time Orla got there, Alice was already outside, leaning against the car like she and David had been talking awhile.

“Look who’s here,” Alice said, her voice teasing. Orla gave her a hard stare, telling her to shut up. An anxious lump formed in her throat as she looked to David. But he seemed not to notice.

“Orla! Aren’t you going to get in?” he called when he saw her in the doorway, smiling that mischievous half smile of his.

“Going into town with David,” Orla yelled through the screen door to her parents, not bothering to wait for a response.

“You take the front,” Alice said with a wink, jumping into the back seat.

Orla skipped down the steps and slid into the passenger seat.

The car was one of his dad’s, David explained, showing Orla how the top moved up and down with the flick of a button.

He was sixteen to her fifteen. A whole year ahead.

It meant a lot as a teenager. Each year was so precious, a large percentage of your life when you only have fifteen of them under your belt.

David looked different that year. He’d filled out in some ways but slimmed in others.

His cheeks looked narrower than before, his jawline more defined.

“What’s been happening since I was last here? Give me all the Hadley gossip.” His voice had changed too, grown deeper. There was something about it that gave her a queasy feeling in her stomach, the same way Alice’s talk of the future did. It scared her.

“There’s a new owner down at Mint Ship. And the storm in February tore up the beach, they had to bring in sand from the mainland to fix it,” Orla started, but Alice had interrupted her.

“Nothing. Nothing ever happens on Hadley,” she’d said, sounding hard and angry enough to stop Orla from continuing.

“Where are we going?” Orla asked, trying to change the subject.

“Hidden Beach, of course,” David said, reaching an arm across to playfully ruffle her hair.

“Where else?” Orla willed herself to relax.

She leaned back and let the air stream through her fingers.

David looked over at her, dropping one hand from the steering wheel and draping it over the back of her seat.

She watched as his eyes lingered a moment on her bare shoulder.

She realized then that he felt it too. As they sped toward the beach, Orla knew suddenly and surely that this was going to be the summer that changed everything for her.

In the closet Orla snaps the lid of the box closed, her heart thumping.

She shoves it back onto the shelf. There’s no use for any of it now , she thinks bitterly.

She’ll toss it in the trash, and everything else back here, too, before she puts the house on the market.

The closet air grows warm and stale. The list of obligations grows in her mind as she turns back toward the closet door, her hand already reaching for the light pull.

Orla stops dead in her tracks when she sees the drawing.

It’s large and sprawling, a mural covering the plaster wall on both sides of the doorframe.

She’d completely forgotten about it. Orla and Alice made it one rainy afternoon when they were in sixth grade, inspired by a book they’d read in school about a secret treasure map.

Orla marvels at it now, tracing her finger along the thick lines of paint that depict all their favorite places on the island.

There is Danny’s Market and Hidden Beach, their name for the small patch of rocky cove between their houses and the Clarke mansion.

Farther up by the doorframe said mansion stands above a wild swirl of waves.

A depiction of David out on the edge of the lawn.

And above the door, Alice and Orla, running through the water hand in hand.

Orla had almost forgotten how good an artist Alice was, even at such a young age.

You can tell which lines belong to each of them.

Orla’s waver, tentative, afraid for her mistakes to become permanent.

But Alice’s are dark black and unafraid.

Orla had learned so much from her. She can only imagine how good Alice would have become.

When Orla steps back into the bedroom, a bank of thick gray clouds has rolled in, low and ominous above the water.

She picks up a basket of old sheets to donate and looks out the hall window.

The waves are choppy now, their crests topped with frothy white.

A fat drop of rain spatters the window and then another, like long fingernails tapping on the glass.

A low rumble of thunder shivers through the atmosphere.

“Shit!” Orla yells, remembering the clothesline.

She drops the basket on the floor and races downstairs, flying out onto the lawn just as the downpour begins.

She yanks the wet sheets and blankets off the line, bunching them in her arms and sending clothespins flying into the grass.

She pulls down the last quilt, an old one her late grandmother made for her as a girl.

As it falls off the line, the backyard comes into full view.

The air rushes from Orla’s lungs. A slim figure in a black jacket stands in the middle of the lawn.

The hood is pulled down over their eyes.

Wet tendrils of dark hair cling to the slender shoulders.

Orla’s body jerks back, clutching the wet blankets to her chest. The person also stands still, the rain splashing off the shoulders of their jacket. They waver slightly between the trees on the back edge of the lawn.

Orla blinks raindrops out of her eyes. She raises a hand from the blankets in a tentative wave. “Hello?” she tries to call out, but her voice comes out as a thin rasp.

The figure moves suddenly, sending another shock through Orla’s system.

It’s a woman, Orla thinks, as she watches the black coat dart across the lawn and down toward the water, disappearing onto the slope of the beach.

Over the rain Orla can barely hear the engine of a boat starting up.

Now she breaks free from her trance, flailing and tripping over the soaking blankets as she races back into the house.

She leaves a trail of dirty wet footprints on the freshly mopped floors.

It is not until all the doors are bolted shut that she yanks the curtain aside, looking down over the bending branches toward the water.

But all she can see is an empty beach getting battered with waves and beyond it through the creeping mist, the almost invisible outline of the Rock.