1
Parris, the island where it seems girls go to die.
And like always, Luca is the only one to remember Polly on her birthday.
Luca drives with the windows down, air twisting her curls around her face. Maybe that isn’t true. Maybe people do go to Polly’s grave, put down flowers that will sit and rot among the headstones. Perhaps they stop to clean off the photograph Polly’s mom chose, the one with her hair slicked back in a ballet bun and red-painted lips hiding her braces.
Luca wouldn’t know, because she never goes there. That’s not where Polly is, to her. It’s just a box in the ground and a stone in a place far too somber for a girl like the one Polly was.
It’s still early enough that the island is quiet as she drives across it. Not that it’s ever busy, really, but the roads are almost completely empty, every light green as she heads toward the bridge.
It rises up into the blue sky, the only way out of this place. Luca doesn’t drive across, though, but pulls to the side and turns the engine off. She gets out of the car, the stems of the orange carnations she brought with her pressed between her palms. Then Luca steps down, beside the bridge, onto the uneven rocky ground where nobody’s really supposed to go.
But we did, she thinks.
Her and Polly, climbing down these rocks, so they could reach the water below. That’s why she comes here. Or that’s mostly why.
Below her the ocean swirls, a calmness to the waves that’s unusual for this spot, and Luca throws out the carnations one by one, the bright blooms drifting down and down and down until they meet the water. “There you go, P,” she says. “Happy birthday.”
Three years she’s done this. She brings the flowers, she sits for a while; she starts to tell Polly something that’s happening and then stops, because what could she ever say that would mean anything now? School is shitty. Our favorite breakfast place closed. I realized I was in love with Jada right after you died and I told her about the curse and then she stopped speaking to me. What does any of that matter to Polly now? What does any of it matter when Luca is alive and she’s dead?
She was scared, the first time, to come back. To return to this place where the curse had surfaced. But then she had realized that really, this might be the safest place for her to go. After all, the curse never strikes the same place twice.
So she came, the first year, and the next, and now. And Luca will come back in a year and do it all again, like the ritual can change anything. But it means something to her, to do it. It means something that there’s somebody to remember Polly who really knew her. After all, Polly’s parents left the island soon after she died. Jada hasn’t talked to Luca in almost three years, acts like she and Luca and Polly were never even friends. And everybody else, well, they didn’t know her, and they don’t talk about her. She’s sure they have their reasons. Thinking about her is unnerving; they don’t like to look death in the face so close. Something like that.
Luca closes her eyes and remembers that last year, that last birthday. Fourteen years old. Polly is fourteen and Luca is seventeen now, will be eighteen in two short months. There was always that distance between them, Luca being born in the long days of summer and Polly coming so much later, arriving in the world during the spring bloom.
She waits there for as long as she can bear. Maybe it’s an hour, maybe it’s a minute. But when she’s done, Luca opens her eyes and looks down at the water again. She kisses her fingers and then holds them out to the air, her only goodbye to the girl she’s let down the most.
“I love you,” she says, words she never said when Polly was alive. “I’ll see you next year.”
And she leaves. She’s always leaving Polly behind, further and further with each day.
2
When Luca wakes on Friday and pushes back the covers, there is a line across her legs, turning her light brown skin golden. A beam of sun pushing through the crack in the curtains.
She closes her eyes against it. Sometimes she is so sick of the sun that she could climb up into the sky and rip it down with her bare hands.
She gets out of bed and goes to the balcony, stepping out into the early morning quiet. Down below, the backyard is a carefully controlled explosion of flowers, surrounding the wide deck and curling past the pool, edging their way along the green, green lawn. At the end of the garden is the beach, and then the ocean, glittering bright under the sun, as it always does.
Luca turns her gaze left, to the edge of the property next door. The house where Polly used to live. The house that has been sitting empty since her parents left, as if people thought it was haunted.
But then this spring it sold, sign outside, and now new people will live there, new people will sleep in Polly’s bedroom and walk her steps down to the beach and it’s really over, Luca thinks. It’s done: no more Polly. This is the last place that felt like she was still alive, the house suspended in time, a living, breathing space seeming to say, I will stay for as long as it takes. I will be here until the truth is known.
But no more.
Luca sighs and steps back into her room. She gets dressed, sort of: high-waisted vintage-style bikini (she does not subscribe to such outdated rules like “fat girls should wear one-pieces,” fuck that) and a sheer black robe, and twists her long curls into a knot on top of her head.
Sometimes she is tired of the sun, but all of the time, she needs it to live.
She makes her way through the house: past the framed photos along the upper walkway, down the soft-carpeted stairs, cutting through the open living room where her sister’s diploma hangs above the piano. Only temporarily, Whitney says every few weeks. Once this internship is over, I’m thinking about going to New York. Or Chicago, or Austin—the place changes, but the fact that Whitney is not leaving doesn’t. No one really leaves Parris. Whitney had gone to college, but she came back, just like everybody else did, like Luca is destined to do someday.
Outside she takes off her robe and slips into the pool and stays there, suspended in the water as the sun moves through the sky and time seems so still.
So she doesn’t know what time it is when a shadow falls on her as she floats on her back.
“Do you ever get out?” the shadow says.
Luca turns over and swims to the edge, holding on to the side and looking up at her sister. “You look like shit,” she says, but she doesn’t mean it. She never means it, even when Whitney looks like she does today: clearly hungover, in last night’s dress, lipstick still stained on her mouth, her long dark hair pulled up in a sloppy ponytail. Whitney is her big sister and always beautiful because of that.
“Ha.” Whitney kicks off her heels so she can sit and slide her feet into the water. “Did Mom ask where I was?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Luca says. “I can’t believe you were out all night. I thought it was a work thing. You hate them.”
“It was,” Whitney says. A small smile is on her face. “And then it wasn’t.”
“You could have called me.” Luca flicks water up at Whitney. “I would have come out.”
“You would have hated it,” Whitney says, and tips her head back, squinting at the sun. “The new people are here.”
Luca sinks a little, letting the water cover her chin. “What?”
“Saw them as I came in,” Whitney says. “So. That’s it, I guess.”
That’s it.
Although it won’t be it, Luca knows. Her mom will invite the new people over for drinks, maybe dinner, and she’ll make Luca and Whitney be there, because it’s polite and nice, and Luca will have to put on a smile and pretend that she hasn’t hated them since she first heard they existed.
“What are they like?”
Whitney shrugs. “I think it’s just two of them,” she says. “A woman and her daughter, I guess. I saw their stuff, mostly. Nice art.” Then she pulls her feet out of the pool. “I’m starving. Are you hungry? Let’s go get something to eat. And coffee. I need coffee, desperately.”
Luca tries her hardest not to look over at the wall that separates their property from the Sterns’.
Not the Sterns’ anymore. Whoever these new people are.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding at her sister. “Give me a minute to change. I’ll meet you out front.”
3
A drop of water trickles down Luca’s neck as they wait in line at Darkroom, Whitney’s preferred caffeine dealer. It’s the usual afternoon crowd: moms with babies in thousand-dollar strollers, kids like her on summer break, a few basic white guys stabbing at laptop keyboards.
The line’s going slow. Whitney’s talking to her about what she’s going to wear when they go out tonight, but Luca’s looking up ahead to see who the holdup is, and she rolls her eyes when she sees Isaac Charles at the register, in that beat-up leather jacket he’s always wearing no matter the heat and the scuffed boots with undone laces. Likes to lean into the wrong-side-of-the-tracks stereotype, except in Parris, there is no wrong side. Just the wrong kind.
He’s getting his card out as slowly as he can and talking intensely at the barista—not to her, but at her. “Well, maybe you could swing by after you close up,” he’s saying, running a hand through his short but artfully messy hair. “You know Beth Palermo? Her parties always go all night. You’ll have time.”
The barista is clearly avoiding his gaze, busying herself tapping things into the register. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I have to open tomorrow, too. Super early, you know?”
“So come for an hour.” Isaac leans over the counter. “Come on, Grace. Have some fun.”
“Hey.”
The sharp word comes right next to Luca’s ear, and she lets herself smile as Whitney snatches Isaac’s attention. “Super not it to hit on someone whose job depends on her being nice to you, asshole.”
Isaac flushes, narrowing angry eyes. “I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were, Isaac,” Whitney says. “And she’s clearly not interested, so now that’s done, you can fuck off and let her do her job and the rest of us get on with our day. Yes?”
He lingers a moment, as if torn between staying and fighting for the barista’s yes, or doing what Whitney says, and then he pushes past them so fast that Luca almost doesn’t hear the “Bitch” he throws over his shoulder.
Almost.
The barista visibly relaxes and Luca watches out the door, watches him striding down the street. “He is such a dick.”
“That he is,” Whitney says, and then it’s their turn to order and the barista is saying thank you to Whitney, and Luca turns, gaze moving along the line behind them. And that’s when Luca notices her.
The new girl.
Has to be, because Luca knows everybody on this island, if not by name then at least by face, and she would remember a face like this girl’s. Would certainly remember an Asian girl, because Parris is exceedingly white and Luca is a mixed-race Black girl and those are the things you keep track of in a place like this.
She’s tall, dark hair cut blunt at her shoulders. Wide eyes and a mouth to match, and as Luca watches, the girl sinks her teeth into her lower lip, staring up at the board.
Some small part of Luca that has lain dormant for years sets alight.
Look away, she thinks. Look away look away look away—
“Luca.” Whitney’s looking at her, eyebrows raised. “What do you want?”
“Oh. Sorry,” Luca says, and then she gives the barista her order and Whitney pays and then says, “I have to pee,” and disappears.
Luca moves down to wait at the end of the counter and pulls out her phone so that she has something to look at other than this girl.
She’s staring at it when someone says, “I love your nails.”
“What?” Luca looks up and the girl is next to her now. Up close Luca can see the deep brown of her eyes and a tiny scar below that bottom lip.
Do not look at that scar. Do not look at this girl like that. She took Polly’s house and you are supposed to hate her, right, that’s what you decided, isn’t it?
“Your nails,” the girl says. “I always rip mine off. But yours are perfect.”
“Oh,” Luca says, and she looks at her fingers, tipped with almond-shaped acrylics, bright red for now. “Thanks.”
“I’m Naomi,” the girl says. “Fontaine.”
Do not play nice with her. What would Polly say?
Luca pushes her hair over her shoulder and gives the girl—Naomi—a tight smile. “Luca Laine Thomas,” she says, the way she always does when she says her name, partly because it is her name and partly because she’s always loved the way it sounds out loud. And then, because it feels like Naomi has the upper hand and she does not like it, Luca says, “You moved into the Stern house. Right? On the north shore.”
Naomi looks surprised. “Yes,” she says. “How did you know that?”
“Not many secrets in Parris,” Luca says, and then Whitney is back.
“Hey,” she says, and notices Naomi. “Hi. Oh! New girl. Right?”
Luca gestures between the two of them. “Whit, this is Naomi. Naomi, my sister, Whitney.”
“Naomi,” Whitney says, drawing it out in that way she likes to do. “I wondered when we’d meet you. We’re neighbors, you know.”
“Oh,” Naomi says, glancing at Luca. “No. I didn’t know.”
A different barista sets their drinks down in front of them, and Whitney looks at Luca with a shine in her eyes that Luca knows all too well.
Naomi’s phone chimes, and Whitney takes full advantage of the second Naomi takes to look at it, away from them.
She’s cute, Whitney mouths.
Don’t, Luca mouths back.
But of course she does. “You should come out with us tonight,” Whitney says. “Meet everyone. I mean, you’re gonna meet them all eventually, but it’s better if you’re with us.”
“Tonight?” Naomi looks up and bites her lip again.
Luca looks away.
“Sure,” Naomi says after a moment. “It’s not like I’m doing anything else, so—”
“Perfect.” Whitney grabs their drinks and heads to a table. “Luca, give her your number, okay?”
She’s subtle as a brick through a window, but Naomi is looking at Luca and does not seem horrified. “You sure you want to come?” Luca says, a weak attempt at loyalty, still. “These things can be kind of… intense.”
Naomi does not back down. “I like intense,” she says.
Luca sighs. “Okay,” she says. “Give me your phone.”
After she’s tapped her number in, she hands the phone back. “Thanks,” Naomi says.
And Luca gives her another smile, sharper this time. “Don’t thank me yet.”
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