Page 55 of Under the Stars

Meredith

Winthrop Island, New York

She stood on the deck of the sailboat and called his name into the night.

“Stop screwing around,” she yelled. “I mean it.”

Above her, the sail started to shiver. The wind seemed to be rising, or maybe it was her imagination. The water slapped the sides of the boat. A sliver of moon gilded the rocky shore of Little Bay Point to her left. Some boulders just off the shore.

What the hell was she to do now?

For a girl who lived on an island, she wasn’t much of a sailor.

Her dad used to take her out on the water when she was younger.

He would bring his schooner around the point on some sunny Saturday morning and glide right up to the crumbling dock outside her mother’s house.

From her window upstairs, she would glimpse the first white triangle of sail emerging into view and run outside to scamper down the lawn, grasp his hand, and leap aboard.

Just the two of them. She remembered the easy intimacy of those hours—how they talked and laughed and fell comfortably silent, how she could bask in his attention while the sun warmed her skin and the wind washed her hair.

She didn’t remember much about the mechanics of sailing, though.

Her dad liked to handle the boat himself.

He gave her instructions—told her which rope to hold, which side to sit on.

Warned her when they were going to tack.

He’d never told her why, or how. Maybe if she’d been a boy. Maybe if she’d asked.

This boy knew what to do. It was his damn boat, after all.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted his name again.

The word dissolved into the vast darkness of Long Island Sound.

There must have been other boats out there, other people, but you might as well have been alone in the universe.

The creak of the mast, the slosh of water.

A couple of shore lights winking through the July haze.

Something gleamed to her right. She turned her head and threw herself to the deck just in time to avoid the boom that swung across the width of the boat in a long, squeaky groan.

“Shit!” she yelled. The sails flapped. The boat rolled to starboard. From behind her came the sound of laughter.

“You asshole !” she screamed.

Before she could rise, Coop fell on her back, laughing his head off. He kissed her neck, the side of her face, her hair.

“Beautiful girl.” He nibbled beneath the tender patch below her ear. “You’re so beautiful when you’re freaked.”

“It’s not funny, jerk. You need to take me back to the marina. Now. ”

“Come on. Lighten up. Everything’s under control.”

“Like hell it is. You’re high.”

“So are you, beautiful.”

“Whatever.”

“Come on,” he said again. “Let’s go back to what we were doing.”

“Not in the mood. Get off me and take me back.”

He held her arms down and kissed his way down her spine. “You were in the mood a minute ago. A minute ago you were—”

“I said, get off!” She bucked hard and he tumbled to the side, grinning.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not.”

“Okay, I’m not.” He reached out and tickled her breast. “Hey. Relax. Trust me.”

“ Trust you? I don’t even know you.”

“Maybe not,” he said, “but you get me, right? We get each other. Birds of a feather, you and me.”

“You are so full of shit.”

His hand shaped its way around her breast. His thumb brushed the tip. “That’s why we were drawn to each other. That’s why you’re here.”

“I’m here for a good time, you moron. Which I’m not having right now.”

She slapped the hand away. Coop laughed.

“Come on, angel. Let me touch you.”

“ Angel? Are you kidding me?”

“Fallen angel,” he said. “Like me. Birds of a feather.”

Meredith tried to rise but the wind was gusting now, the boat was rocking weirdly from side to side and she couldn’t get her balance. Too much booze. That speck of coke, what a stupid thing to do.

What had her mother always said? If you want to dance, you have to pay the piper.

“You know what’s underneath us, right?” Coop asked.

“Sand. Rocks. Crabs.”

He shook his head. “Shipwreck.”

“No shit.”

“On this exact spot, Meredith, one century and a half ago,” he said, pulling her arm so she collapsed back on the deck, facing him, “a steamship wrecked in a storm.”

“Wait, right here ?”

“Right here, babe. Right here on this exact patch of water. The wreck’s underneath us.

What was the wreck. The wooden stuff is all gone.

My dad took me diving here once. He’s, like, obsessed with it.

” Coop stared in her eyes and dragged his thumb along her cheekbone.

“All these people drowned. The ones who made it swam to that shore, over there. All those fucking rocks. Crazy-ass surf. Bodies floating everywhere. Body parts .”

“That’s fucked up,” she whispered.

“And they say”—he leaned forward and kissed her with slow, pliant lips that tasted of booze—“they say you can still hear the ship’s bell tolling here at night. Tolls for the dead. Clang, clang. Listen.”

“Screw you.”

“Can’t you hear it?”

“Stop screwing around, okay? Just take me back.”

“You don’t think that’s a total trip? Right here where we’re floating.

Epic storm. People screaming and dying. Crushed to death.

Trapped. Smashed into the rocks by the surf.

Right here. This water. A hundred and fifty years ago, almost. Same rocks.

Same rocks right here were the last thing they saw. ”

She couldn’t look away from the gleam of his eyes. “Dude, you’re scaring me.”

“I like to sail out here sometimes. Like it’s calling me, you know? They’re calling me.”

“Who’s calling you?”

“The dead, Meredith. The ghosts. If I close my eyes, it’s like I’m there. Time travel. I can hear the bell. Clang, clang. I can hear them. Feel them clawing on my legs and my arms. And all I want to do is join them.”

“ Join them? What the hell does that mean?”

“Like I could seriously die right there, right in that moment. Be with them. Float with them forever in the fucking void.”

“Oh my God, you’re so feral, ” she said. “Snap out of it.”

“I mean it. I could die right now. So fucking high like this. Leave all the shit behind me and join the universe. Die right here with you, in a massive cosmic orgasm. Right now.”

She struggled out of his grasp to sit up. “What the hell is wrong with you? Take me back.”

Coop rolled on his back and spread out his arms. The wind was rising now, swirling in short, mad bursts.

A handful of rain singed her cheek. A gust of wind grabbed the shivering sail and it billowed out with a crack, listing the boat hard to starboard.

She shrieked and grabbed for a cleat, but it was too late.

She rolled right over the side and into the sea.

She came up gasping and yelled his name. “Where are you? Where the hell are you?”

Her mouth filled with water. The air filled with sea spray, with wind. A wave picked her up and carried her along. She thrashed her arms and squinted through the squall, looking for the boat.

Then she found it. White and shimmering as a ghost. It skidded along on its side and then, in an elegant arc—like ballet, she thought, like a grand jeté gone wrong—turned over.

Holy shit, she choked out. The white hull gleamed against the foaming black water.

She launched herself forward and stroked to the boat as hard as she could.

Called Coop’s name, over and over. Took a deep breath and swam under the edge, came up sputtering into the eerie dark cavern of the overturned hull, rising and falling in the agitated waves.

She called his name again.

A wave surged under her. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything except this echoing din of water. The thunder of a million raindrops against the hull. Where was he?

Clang, clang, he said in her head. Join the universe.

Shit, she thought. Shit.

Get out of here, Meredith. Get the fuck out.

Her breath choked up in her throat. The sides of the boat closed around her.

Get out of here. Now.

She started to fill her lungs. Girded herself to swim back under the edge and outside into the night, where she could draw the fresh sea air into her chest and—

A hand grabbed her right thigh, just above the knee, and dragged her under.

Water swallowed her—black, thick, endless as outer space. She thrashed her arms and legs, but the hand kept hold. Another hand snatched her left leg. Pulled her deeper and deeper, into a draft of cold.

A strange feeling overcame her, like she was slipping outside her skin to experience this existential struggle from afar. Floating in the universe somewhere, another dimension, to watch her own body. Herself.

This girl who fought for her life.

Each second ticked by inside its own eternity. Don’t move, Meredith told the girl—herself, but not herself. Don’t waste air. Wait for your chance.

Already the girl’s head was growing fuzzy. Meredith felt this dizziness, this fog in the girl’s brain, this pressure on the lungs, squeezing them dry—even though her own mind, drifting apart from the body inside the water, remained clear.

The hands climbed up the thighs to the hips. Fingers like claws, denting the flesh. Up the hips. Clamped around the waist. Lips on the mouth. The girl screamed tiny bubbles of panic.

Now, Meredith thought. Last chance.

The girl raised a knee as hard as she could, right into Coop’s unseen crotch. Swung a fist into his gut.

His hands fell away from her waist.

The girl’s body hung in the water, alone. Long limbs, pale hair. Meredith watched her curiously, wondering what she might do next. Sink or swim. Live or die.

Clang, clang .

Snap. Her soul reentered her body.

Meredith scissored her way to the surface, bumped her head on the edge of the boat, went down again and came back up into the rich night air, oxygen, panting and gasping, eyes blurring, brain dizzy.

Her arms like noodles. Legs limp beneath her.

Chest dragging for more air, more air . She grabbed the edge of the boat with one shaking hand and focused on each breath, each breath that started almost before the last one ended—never enough, not quite enough.

Then—enough. Just enough.

Her lungs inflated with one gulp of delicious air, then another. The slow, gigantic thunder of her heart dented her ribs.

Noises returned to her ears. She could think, she could see.

She looked across the dark water. The air had cleared, the wind had died. The strange squall had passed, as if it had never existed. The waves bore her gently up and down again.

No sign of Coop. Only the rocky shore about a hundred yards away, the boulders gleaming silver under the bitty moon. The soft crash of surf.

And a bell. She heard it now. Clang. Clang.

She closed her eyes and listened. Her lungs hurt.

Her heart pounded back to its old shape.

The night reassembled around her. Shadows, winks of light, acres of black water.

The lumps of distant land. Long Island, North America, the ocean, the world.

Her world, herself in the middle of it, her woozy head, her shaking limbs—still there.

Alive.

Still no Coop. No sign of another life.

In her imagination, a hundred dead arms reached for her legs.

She sucked some wind into her raw, shocked lungs and started for shore.