Page 25 of Dead of Summer

ORLA

The curtains billow into the living room like the tails of ghosts.

Orla closes her eyes, blocking them out.

Her heart thrums. Her mind spins in useless circles.

All the movement outside, the leaves in the wind, the waves lapping at the dock, has her on edge.

It could be that the Xanax is making her paranoid.

She’s lost track of the time between doses and taken too much of it. She should know better.

She’s going to need to leave Hadley she decides suddenly.

She’ll tell her father she couldn’t do it.

She’ll get a job in New York selling tourist crap or waiting tables, she doesn’t care.

She just has to finish with the house and then she can leave.

She has only to get rid of the furniture now, fill a few nail holes, and tackle the upstairs closet of course.

She’ll work all day tomorrow. Then she will get the hell off this island.

The plan soothes her enough to lull her into a partial sleep, and a memory of Alice comes to her.

“What about our plan?” Orla had asked quietly when she saw Alice the next time.

They were at the lighthouse for a picnic hosted by Orla’s family.

It was a yearly tradition, and much like everything it was different that year.

Even the weather seemed more volatile. The wind plastered their sundresses against their backs and whipped their hair across their faces.

“I have a new plan,” Alice said, casting her eyes down at the lineup of food on the folding table.

They hadn’t spoken since the bonfire night on the beach.

Orla had waited for an apology, but Alice hadn’t offered one.

Her bedroom window had been dark the last few days.

Orla picked up a hot dog from a tray and dressed it with ketchup.

She found herself nervous in her friend’s presence for the first time.

Alice pulled out a can of Coke from a cooler.

“What is it?” Orla put her hot dog down and leaned across the picnic table. But Alice had raised her eyebrows, taking a sip of Coke as Orla’s mother ran past them to secure piles of paper plates with rocks.

Alice pulled her hair out of her face. “It’s always so intense up here. Why do we do this every year?”

“Tradition,” Orla said. Alice rolled her eyes. “What’s the plan?”

“It’s something I’ve been working on,” Alice said cryptically. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Promised who?”

Orla’s father came over and interrupted them, all joyful naive dad bluster. “Be sure and get some of that curried chicken salad before it all gets scooped up,” he said. “It’s my new recipe.”

“Looks amazing,” Alice said as she gave him a dazzling smile.

“But I still want to do our plan,” Orla said when her dad left. She had come around to the idea of New York. The idea of David and her being together had taken hold of her fully. “We’ll go to school in the fall and get an apartment. We’ll do all the things you said.”

“You don’t understand.” Alice finally looked at her, frustrated. “I can’t.”

“What are you talking about? Yes, you can. You have to.” Orla began to panic. Without Alice there was nothing. No apartment. No art school. No David.

“No, Orla. You don’t get it. Do you know how much money art school costs?

” Alice twisted on the bench to look back toward her mom.

She stood off to the side of the gathering drinking a plastic cupful of wine and talking with the dad of one of their school friends.

Her thin dress flapped in the breeze. She looked even frailer than normal, Orla noted, her face drawn.

Alice shook her head, dejected. “My dad left, so I’ll need to help my mom. Somehow.”

“Oh my god, when?”

“Memorial Day weekend. He got on the ferry and just didn’t come back. My mom has been so depressed. She barely gets out of bed except to go down to the liquor store.”

“I’m so sorry.” Orla leapt up and hugged her friend, relief spreading through her. All the feelings she’d been having about Alice betraying her were wrong. This was the reason she’d been acting strangely. It wasn’t Orla. And most important, it wasn’t David.

“She’ll be okay, I think. Don’t worry about me, though. Like I said, new plan.”

Alice looked down at her plate. To one side, Orla’s parents conversed with a group of locals next to the grill. Orla couldn’t imagine what Alice must be going through.

“What do you mean?” Orla asked, confused. Alice had turned back into that enigmatic girl from the bonfire, the one she hardly knew.

“There are other ways of making it besides school, you know?” Alice said, giving Orla a little wink.

“Like what? There’s no job you can get around here that will pay us enough for college, not without a degree,” Orla protested.

“Who said it was a job?” Alice said cryptically.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Orla said, getting frustrated.

“Oh, Orla, sometimes you are just so… young.”

Orla had pulled back, stung by Alice yet again.

“When you know the right people and they can put you in touch with whoever you want, you can skip all the other stuff.” Alice said it as though explaining to someone much younger than her.

“But I thought you wanted to go to school.”

“I want to draw. And I want to be successful at it. But honestly? School has always just been a means to an end.” She flipped her hair away from her face, a gesture Orla hadn’t seen before.

“And how are we going to meet people like that on Hadley?” Orla said, unconvinced.

“You haven’t been paying attention, Orla,” Alice had said in that newly adult voice, thin with impatience. Orla looked up to see David crossing the field toward them. “It’s summer. There are influential people everywhere. If you know how to look for them.”

A loud bang vibrates through the house. Orla’s eyes fly open.

Her body startles into a sitting position on the sofa.

She thrashes, struggling to unwind her legs from the blanket as the pounding starts back up, incessant, coming from the front of the house.

She turns her head to the front door. It rattles again as whoever is out there slams their fist to it frantically.

Orla’s body goes rigid. She’s left a lamp on in the corner of the room.

It was meant to comfort her but now she feels exposed; the light spilling through the too-sheer curtains would have already given her away.

Orla pictures the rigid form of the woman.

The thin legs and oversize coat. The damp curls spilling from inside the hood.

She’ll be standing on the front steps. Waiting for her.

Orla drops onto the floor sick with fear.

There are no neighbors near enough to hear her cries.

There will be no one to help her. The knocking starts again, harder now.

She crawls on her hands and knees in a mad scramble through the living room looking for something to defend herself with.

Orla snatches a fireplace poker from its holder.

She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. The banging on the front door continues, turning to a rhythmic thud as she moves in a low crouch to the front door.

Her own breath rattles along with it as she stands next to it, feeling the vibrations of a fist pounding on the other side.

Whoever it is, they are not going to stop. They know she is here. She will have to confront them. She rises to her full height and raises the poker above her shoulders, holding it like a baseball bat so that she can get a good enough swing if needed. But her body shakes with fear.

“What do you want?” she cries out in a shaky sob.

“Orla?” The muffled reply is amused, familiar. A man’s voice. “It’s me.”

“David?” Orla’s voice wobbles. Her body goes weak with relief.

“Jesus Christ, Orla, let me in.”

She pulls the door open a crack. He stands in the shadows of the doorway with a cocky smirk on his face.

“Orla! Did I wake you?” His voice sounds teasing, like showing up at nearly two in the morning unannounced is normal behavior.

She pulls the door fully open. He takes her in, scanning her ragged pajama bottoms and baggy T-shirt.

He raises his eyebrows, amused when he gets to the poker.

“Oh, were you just about to club me? Glad I knocked.”

Asshole, Orla thinks. So full of jokes even when he knows that he terrified her. She lowers the poker slowly. Her heart is still racing.

David gives her a grin, rocking back confidently on his heels. His shirt is damp and unbuttoned partway, exposing a V of skin on his upper chest. His chin is covered in uncharacteristically messy stubble. He has a brand-new bottle of something in his hand.

He moves toward her, and she braces herself for a hug but instead he brushes past her into the house.

“Oh, did you want to come inside?” Orla asks sarcastically, glancing back at the dark empty street behind him before she shuts the door and locks it.

He is nearly to the kitchen by the time she catches up with him.

She can smell booze on him, mixed with the lingering aroma of some kind of expensive aftershave.

“Yes, thank you.” David thrusts the bottle out at her.

“What is this?”

“Tequila. Let’s have some,” he says brusquely. He walks into the dining room. Orla trails behind.

“No, I meant what are you doing here?”

“Can’t a man pay a visit to his dear old friend?” he asks, a sarcastic edge to his voice. He leaves the dining room, moving past her farther into the house, going from room to room, searching for something.

Finally, he spins unsteadily back toward her. “Where is your bar?”

“We don’t have a bar. We are normal people. We keep our glasses in the kitchen,” she says, trying to give him a hard time though her voice is shaking.