Before we realized it—it was dark. We walked back through the woods to the edge of my driveway—the property line between Graham’s house and mine. And we stood behind my house kissing. He pressed me up against the side of the garage and slipped his hand up my shirt and inside my bra. I looked back at the house and saw the light of the kitchen window.
Allyson was standing there. She was looking out into the woods. Just staring blankly into nothing. Sometimes I think when I’m not around or when Mom is not telling her what to do, she just shuts down. I had no idea if she had ever leaned against the garage and felt a boy’s hard body pressing into her. But I knew she was missing a lot. And maybe dull-witted handsome Graham was the boy who would make her want to finally do more than homework and bake blueberry muffins.
I gave Declan a last tight squeeze and he put his skateboard down on the driveway.
“Tomorrow, Miss Tate?”
“You bring the herb and I’ll bring the flame.”
He high-fived me and skated away and I watched him cruise down the driveway and out onto the cool autumn street. The tall ornate streetlamps started to turn on one by one as he passed beneath them and I thought what a badass Declan Wells was. And how lucky I was to know him.
4:21—Tate going into her house
4:34—Tate in her bedroom
5:00—Playground outside after-school program
6:00—Tate kneeling in front of Declan in the woods
Dear Lined Piece of Paper,
I get the feeling people here think I’m weird. I’m trying to do what Dr. Adams says and focus and stay interested in what they are doing. Ask them questions about their lives. But mostly what I want to do is watch movies. You would think there would be plenty of kids at this school who would be down with such a simple thing like that. But no. The pretty Tate girl is still on my mind constantly. I invited her over but I don’t think she understood what it is I’m trying to do.
I’m starting to make money on the films. I’ve decided to call it an encyclopedia or a directory. A person can buy an individual entry or the whole directory. The individual entry is five thousand dollars. The whole encyclopedia is fifty thousand dollars. I could make an insane amount of money in a very short time. Enough to finance my long film. Enough to do it all by myself.
I feel like she alone could understand if she would just let herself—if she would be with me alone and let me talk to her. I feel like the two of us could make movies that would change the way everyone thought. The kind of movie I made back in Virginia with Eric.
Dr. Adams is still trying to get me to talk about Eric. Maybe if I could make another movie like the one I made with him I could just show it to Dr. Adams. I could say, Here. Do you get it now? Do you understand? Because Eric got it! Eric fucking understood. Eric knew exactly how I felt. He’d had the same prescription as me since he was like eight years old. If we had a sleepover and someone forgot the Ritalin—no problem, there was plenty to go around. And when we got older we figured out how to mix things just right. Eric and I were so close we were barely different people.
Dr. Adams looks interested and concerned when I say things like this but I know Tate will understand completely. I know she will. And I know we are going to be together forever. When I film her, I can feel how real she is. How solid and grounded and real. If anyone knows this world is bullshit and the way around it is to do your own thing, if anyone understands—has ever understood—it’s her.
I knew the thing I had to do was find out what happened between Graham and Ally. She had been keeping things from me, there was no doubt. Acting all weird like there was something she was trying to tell me, but I had been so pissed at her she couldn’t find the courage to do it.
I’d already threatened Graham and I was afraid if I tried to talk to him again, I’d end up rolling around on the floor with him in his room or having to watch some other film that looked like spliced-up surveillance footage from a convenience-store camera and then have to listen to him say that’s what he intended it to look like.
The thing is this. If you pay attention, if you watch the news or pay attention in any way, you know that little towns like ours are always hiding some nut or other. In the case of Graham, I couldn’t tell what he was up to. He filmed Becky. He filmed our neighbors. He filmed himself. Christ, he filmed that little Brian kid talking about freaking X-Men for like an hour. That’s when I knew it was not just artistic inspiration but also something else. Maybe the drugs. Who in the hell can listen to a ten-year-old talk about superheroes with such concentration and attention to detail unless they are using a little Adderall?
I started to worry that he had gotten Allyson to do something she didn’t want to. Or he had footage of us that he’d taken from across the driveway.
I knew I had to get into his house to find out what was going on.
And I would have done it sooner if the whole town hadn’t been swept up in a crisis.
And what happened next was so strange. So unexpected it was even more confusing about who Graham Copeland really was.
I knew the answers were all somewhere in his room. But I never expected what I would find there.
I had been thinking about him nonstop since the ride in his Austin and the long talk we had about his friends and how life was back in Virginia. I was distracted at school. I baked him two batches of muffins. And then finally I asked him to come out on the boat with me and my parents. Of course, Syd would not go. She hated sailing. She used to love it when we were kids but now she had some big grudge against it, like it was stupid or wrong or something our parents did to ignore us.
They didn’t sail to ignore us. The harbor and building was Daddy’s life and if we wanted to be a part of his life, we had to do the things he wanted to do. I don’t know why this was so hard for Syd to understand, but I didn’t really care that much either. It kept her out of our hair and let me have a lot of time with Graham, and it was nice for him to meet our parents without Syd showing up and saying some wise-ass thing or talking about Declan nonstop.
As usual, Daddy didn’t say much. He shook Graham’s hand roughly and gave him a little thump on the back. He said, “Can you sail, then?”
When Graham said no, Daddy shook his head a little and shifted his pipe to the other side of his mouth, then went to rig up the sails. But Mom stood next to him and asked him questions.
She asked him if he’d like a drink and then went below into the hold and made us club sodas and lime, which she put in two plastic martini glasses. She made herself a real martini and then began asking Graham if he was related to certain people she knew in Virginia. Mom was always so charming. I loved the way she talked to people. I think she was probably the best hostess in all of Rockland, maybe in the whole state.
Dad pulled up the anchor and we headed out and I saw the look of joy and fascination on Graham’s face as we tacked out into the middle of the harbor and then the wind picked up and pushed us along.
Mommy and I were wearing matching outfits and Daddy sat gazing out at the ocean, manning the rudder and shouting to me to handle the rigging. “Ready about! Hard-a-lee. Dammit, gal, I said hard to the leeward side—we don’t want to lose our wind.”