Page 48 of High Season

“Hey,” said Olivia. “Guess who invited Hannah here.”

There was a singsong lilt to her words. She made them sound like a playground chant.

“Who?”

Olivia paused. She looked between the girls, gleeful. Settled on Tamara.

“Blake,” she said.

Hannah knew she wasn’t imagining the way that Blake’s name tightened something in the air. How Chrissie and Phoebe exchanged a glance. They were impressed. Maybe even a bit jealous.

Tamara was lighting a cigarette, unmoved as the others shot eager glances toward her, hunting for her reaction.

“So?” she said. “Blake’s probably invited half the town.”

“Are you, like, hooking up with him or something?” said Chrissie.

Hannah shrugged. Trying to play it cool.

“Oh, you know,” she said. “We’re just seeing where it goes.”

Olivia passed her the bottle of vodka and she took a large swig. It burned all the way down to her stomach, a petroleum tang.

“You like him?” asked Olivia.

“Everyone likes Blake,” said Tamara. “He’s the fucking golden boy. Can we talk about something other than who fancies my brother, please?”

“Let’s play a drinking game,” said Olivia. She turned to Hannah, voice saccharine. “Unless you want to go and find Blake?”

Hannah hesitated. The only reason she had come here was to see Blake.

But then she imagined him catching sight of her from across the beach. Laughing, having fun, already absorbed into his world.

“Blake can wait. I think I’d like to play.”

The game was truth or dare. Tamara set the rules. Three truths and three dares, going round the circle, each taking turns. Backing out on a dare or refusing to answer a truth was punished with a swig of neat vodka.

It seemed to Hannah that the game was a way for the girls to spill all the outrageous things that they’d done, all the things they wanted to brag about.

Almost everyone picked truth for the first couple of rounds.

Tamara described how she’d blown a guy in the school library.

Olivia coyly dropped the name of a celebrity’s son whose virginity she had taken on a skiing holiday.

Phoebe told a long, elaborate story about the worst sex she’d ever had, the other girls shrieking with laughter.

When it was Hannah’s turn, they asked her to name her crush, and the question felt so easy compared to the ones that they had already asked one another that she’d glanced between them, almost expecting a punchline.

“Well,” she said. “I guess… I guess Blake.”

Tamara pulled a face, and Olivia demanded that Chrissie take a shot for asking such a boring question.

“Hey,” said Phoebe. “Isn’t that your friend over there?”

She was looking across the bonfire to the other side of the rocks. They all followed her gaze, but the brightness of the fire snatched at Hannah’s vision. She could only see dim silhouettes, half shapes.

“Watch out, Tamara,” said Chrissie. “She might try and touch you up again.”

Hannah felt her stomach tighten.

“Oh shit,” said Olivia. “She’s coming over.”

From the mess of bodies, the dimly lit crowd, Hannah’s vision calibrated and Josie came into focus, her short, compact figure, her trademark ponytail. Her face was open and smiling as she lifted one hand to wave.

“Hannah!” she said, her voice bright and clear, even over the crowds. “You got out of the tutoring job?”

Beside her, Hannah heard Olivia snort. “Tutoring job?” she mut tered. “On a Friday night? Jesus. You must be more desperate for money than I thought.”

“Hi, Tamara,” Josie said. She was looking straight at her, her gaze unwavering, even when Chrissie wolf-whistled and Phoebe snorted with laughter. Tamara stubbed her cigarette out, ignoring her.

“You must be getting mixed up,” Hannah said loudly. “I’m not tutoring tonight. Clearly.”

Josie’s face creased into a frown.

“But you said earlier—”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Hannah said before Josie could finish speaking. Before she could reveal something that would confirm for these girls how unlike them she really was. “You can’t have been invited.”

Josie shifted her weight onto her right foot, her hip protruding to one side. Her bare legs were marked with small, pitted scars. Mosquito bites. Grazes that Hannah recognized from when they spent their summers scrambling over rocks and diving into the sea.

“It’s a public beach, isn’t it?” Josie said, bristling slightly. And then, with less affront, “And Tamara told me about it.”

“Tamara?” Chrissie turned around, disbelieving.

Tamara’s mouth was a thin line.

“Yeah, I mentioned it,” she said. “I didn’t say that you should come.”

“Oh my god,” said Chrissie. “She’s, like, stalking you or something, Tam.”

Josie was frowning now, confused. She looked at Hannah, appealing directly to her best friend.

“I was just sitting over there, by the fire,” she said. “Some of the guys are setting up beer pong. You wanna come and play?”

“ You wanna come and play? ” Chrissie mimicked Josie’s hopeful tone, elevating the pitch of her voice until it twisted into a toddler-esque mewl.

The others collapsed with laughter. Only Tamara and Hannah stayed silent.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” said Olivia. “We don’t want you trying to get with us, like you tried to get with Tamara.”

Hannah saw Josie flinch. For a moment, she looked very young. Even younger than usual. Then, her face hardened, her hands folding across her chest.

“You told them that?” she said.

She was looking directly at Tamara.

“Yeah,” said Tamara. “Well. I didn’t want you twisting it. Telling everyone that we were… that I was up for it, or something.”

Josie didn’t move. Her legs remained firmly planted on the sand. Her chin lifted.

“Hannah?” she said. “Are you coming?”

When Josie first started at Hannah’s school, she had been picked on by the other kids. They had spotted her secondhand uniform, taken stock of her stature, and crowded around her on the playground on her first lunchbreak. They had tugged at her battered backpack, imitated her accent.

It was Hannah who had broken them up. Hannah who had pushed through them all and clasped Josie’s hand.

She’d taken her to the back room behind the assembly hall, a place where she would hide when she wanted to be away from the others, reading books and eating her prepacked sandwich.

After that, the two of them spent most of their lunch breaks there together, and people had mostly left Josie alone.

“Yeah, Hannah,” Olivia said, her tone somehow sweet and acidic at the same time. “Are you going to play beer pong with the boys?”

“Actually,” Hannah said. It was as if someone else was speaking. “I think I’m going to stay here.”

“Hannah doesn’t need to chase after boys, right?” said Chrissie. “She’s already with Blake.”

Josie opened her mouth. Closed it again. There was a glint in her eyes, the reflection of the fire. She looked furious. She looked fierce.

“I’ll come and find you later,” Hannah said, quietly.

“Yeah,” Josie said. “Right.”

She turned to walk away but her foot caught on a piece of driftwood and she stumbled. The girls erupted into laughter.

“Oh my god,” said Olivia gleefully. “She’s, like, so weird?”

Hannah wasn’t laughing. The vodka and the heat were making her head hurt. Her skin was hot, the fire too close.

“Hey, Hannah, look who it is,” said Phoebe.

“It’s your boyfriend ,” sang Olivia.

“Oh my god,” said Chrissie. “I know. I know what your next dare is.”

“It’s not her turn.”

“No, it’s perfect, listen.”

Chrissie grinned. Her teeth looked sharp in the light of the fire.

“I think it’s time for you and Blake to make it official, right, Hannah? I dare you to go and kiss Blake, right in front of everyone.”

“No,” said Tamara. “Come on, guys. You’re taking the piss now. Blake would hate that.”

“It’s a dare? It’s supposed to be something a little risky.”

“That’s not fair, though. You know it’s not.”

“Oh, come on, it’ll be great.”

Chrissie turned back toward Hannah.

“Sometimes guys just need that little push, you know? Just to get things over the line.”

“He’ll probably like it,” says Chrissie. “A hot girl just walking up to him and snogging him in front of everyone?”

“It’s a dare, Hannah. It’s meant to be hard.”

“Blake’ll be hard when she’s done with him.”

“Oh my god, Olivia, grim.”

“Come on, Hannah. It’ll be funny .”

Hannah had begun to rise to her feet, slowly. There was a small rush of blood to her head, like a tiny explosion of stars behind her eyes.

“Hannah.” Tamara caught hold of her arm. “Seriously. Don’t.”

Of course Tamara didn’t want Hannah kissing her brother in front of everyone. Tamara didn’t think she was good enough for Blake. Across the fire, he was smiling as he talked to someone. Swigging a beer. She had that there he is feeling when she saw him. She was starting to think it might be love.

Phoebe had started to slow clap.

“Do it,” she said. “ Do it, do it, do it .”

Hannah walked toward him, one foot in front of the other. She felt like she was floating.

In those last few steps, as the space closed between them, Hannah saw the entirety of their summer together.

Lying together at the bottom of her parents’ boat, the sky golden above them.

Him kissing her on the beach late at night.

The taste of his skin. The way that his touch made something within her spark and shiver.

She saw the next year of her life, and the next. She saw Oxford. She and Blake, together in England, Hannah finally becoming more than a summer fling. As if the changing of the seasons with Blake by her side would make her real at last.

He didn’t see her until the very last second. When he turned, he was still smiling. Then there was a judder of recognition in his eyes, followed by confusion. Surprise.

“Hi,” she said, and she could hear how sexy she sounded. All casual and confident like this was the most natural thing in the world. As if she did this every day. Leaning toward her boyfriend, putting one hand up to rest on his shoulder, kissing him hello.

“What the fuck?”

Blake stepped back from her, frowning. His palms out flat, as if bracing to push her away.

Hannah stumbled, her body misbalanced by the air where she had expected her skin to meet his, the feeling that she was flailing in space. From behind her there was a snort of laughter.

“Whoopsie-daisy!”

Olivia with that singsong voice again. A peal of cackles. Hannah didn’t turn to look at them. She could only see him. The look on his face. Something close to revulsion.

“Blake—” she started.

He was shaking his head.

“Wow,” he said. “You’re pissed.”

Then, an arm was slipping around his waist, and Hannah’s vision expanded.

A girl, a bottle of beer in one hand, the other hooking into a loop of Blake’s trousers, an easy sense of ownership.

She was beautiful. Long, straight hair. Blue, oval eyes, a petite frame.

Skin with the exact right kind of honey-gold tan, the kind that suggested expensive holidays rather than days spent out working on the boat and parents with a laissez-faire attitude to suncream.

This girl and Blake looked good together. They looked right. She looked like the kind of girl who belonged with him. And suddenly, it all made a terrible kind of sense.

The girl’s head tilted to one side. Not threatened, but inquisitive. Because, of course, why would a girl like her be threatened by a girl like Hannah?

“Are you alright?” she said brightly. Loudly, as if speaking to a child. “Do you need something? I could get you some water, if you like?”

She turned her face toward Blake.

“Do you know her?” she said, quietly, as if Hannah might be too drunk to understand.

Hannah felt a scorch of embarrassment, heat rising from her cheeks.

Blake was looking straight at her.

“Yeah, I know Hannah,” he said flatly. “She helps out at the house sometimes.”

“Oh!” the girl said. “Yeah, I know you. Don’t you work at that little shop in town? The one that sells all the beach stuff?”

Hannah stepped back. She could see it so clearly. His lies. Her stupidity. Her idiotic belief that Blake would ever actually be with someone like her.

“I’m fine,” she muttered.

She turned, too quickly, a rush of blood to her head, a flush of light. When it cleared, she could see Olivia and Phoebe and Chrissie, their arms looped around one another, bent double with laughter. Tamara, standing apart from them, her face still.

Hannah walked straight past them, trying to ignore the sound of Chrissie cawing, the rise of Olivia’s voice as she protested that it was a joke.

She knew, in that moment, that she was the joke, to them.

She understood, for the first time, that they found the thought of someone like her being with someone like Blake funny.

She knew then that she would never, ever be like them.

“Hannah!”

A familiar voice was calling after her. Hannah didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. She was almost running now, almost back on the beach, where the rock would turn to sand. The grit between her toes.

“ Hannah .”

A hand caught hold of hers, jerking her to a stop. Hannah shook it away, not wanting Josie to see that she was crying.

“Stop following me,” Hannah said.

“Are you OK?” Josie said. “I saw what happened, and—”

“I’m fine,” said Hannah, even though her eyes were stinging, her vision blurred.

“I was worried that something like this would happen, ever since Tamara mentioned Cordelia. I wanted to sit down with you and tell you properly, but—”

Hannah’s head snapped up, looking past Josie.

“What do you mean?” she said. “Ever since Tamara mentioned Cordelia?”

Josie looked pained.

“Cordelia,” she said. “Blake’s girlfriend. She flew out yesterday.”

The world slowed.

“Blake has a girlfriend?”

“He’s been a total dick,” Josie said. “I told Tamara it wasn’t fair, messing you about like that. But—well.”

Hannah feels as if her skin is burning, as if there’s a pressure in her skull that she can’t shake off.

“You knew?” she said. “You knew he had a girlfriend?”

Josie flushed.

“Not until a few days ago,” she said. “I’m sorry, Han.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hannah said. “What, were you too busy trying to get with Tamara?”

The words are sharp, coming out before she can think them through. But she wants to lash out. She wants to hurt someone, anyone, so that she is not the only one who feels this gut ache, heart wring of pain.

“Hannah, no.” Josie’s face tightens. “You know I didn’t try and kiss Tamara. She tried to kiss me . In the pool, at the pink house. And I said I wasn’t interested and she got angry with me. She pushed me. And now she’s telling everyone before I can.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

Hannah started to walk away. Away from the bonfire, and the beach, and her best friend.

Josie called after her again, except this time, she didn’t follow.

This time, she let Hannah leave.