Page 67 of Summer of Salt

A shadow passed over his features, and I saw him how my sister must have seen him that night in the barn, that night when she saidnoand he saidyes.

“Do you have any idea,” he began, his words dipped in acid, “what it’s felt like, all these years, watching your sister go out and...”

He put his hands over his face. His shoulders bounced in some silent, hate-filled laugh.

“Ilovedher,” he said. “I wrote her letters and brought her presents and walked her home in the dark and madeher tea and left flowers on her bed. I dideverythingfor her, and do you know how it’s felt to watch her pick every single guy on this island exceptme?”

His eyes were flashing now.

The sky had turned a deep, dark purple. The lightning split the clouds in half and set the whole world on fire. Someone put a hand on my arm, and when I tried to brush it off, whoever it was just held on tighter.

I turned around.

Mary.

Out of the tree and (thank God, thank God, thank God) still a girl.

“Let’s just go home,” she said. “It isn’t worth it.”

“Gohome?”

“He’s right, Georgina. This is why I didn’t tell you. Nobody’s going to believe me. Everybody knows I’m a...”

Fernweh.

Bitch.

Slut.

“That’s bullshit,” I spat. Another crack of lightning, a flash so bright we all paused and looked upward.

When I looked back at Mary, her mouth was open just a little. She was staring at me.

“Oh my God,” she said.

“What?”

“This whole time,” she said.

“Mary,what?”

She grabbed my hand. She pointed up at the sky.

It had started to rain again. Tiny drops of ice-cold water.

Mary stopped pointing at the sky and pointed, instead, at my face.

“Georgina, you’re crying,” she said.

It felt like time was moving only for my sister and me. Everyone else on the boat stood silent and still, frozen, suspended.

“So?” I said, and wiped at my cheeks. “What’s your point? I always cry when it rains; you always say that.”

Mary smiled. “It’s the other way around,” she said. “It always rains when you cry.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing at all. Don’t you see?” she said. “It’s yourthing, Georgina. This is your thing. It’salwaysbeen your thing; it was just too big for any of us to see!”