I also knew the exact moment he would shatter if I didn’t shift the mood. I grabbed a fistful of his hair. “We’re twins,” I said, and tied my hair to a hank of his. We all laughed before the knot slipped out.
But something changed. He tossed me the T-shirt. “You’ll get cold.”
Vaguely I heard Kit say, “What about me? I’ll get cold too!” as I pulled the T-shirt on over my head, smelling Dylan-ness all around me, against my skin.
That was when he broke out his guitar, and while we ate peaches and s’mores, he started to play the folk songs he’d taught us to sing. We joined in, Kit with more gusto than tone, but I fancied myself a pretty good singer, and I tried to weave my voice into the main line of Dylan’s bass. His speaking voice was raspy and low, so nice to listen to, but his singing voice was deep and clear, so rich you could almost drink it out of the air like honey. We sang a bunch of camp favorites, then moved into the ballads.
I loved the moody, sad, violent ballads Dylan had taught us. He loved playing and singing them, and tonight there was something magical in the air, as if the sparks of the fire were turning to fairies who danced around us. Kit felt it too. She moved close enough to press her bare arm into mine as we sang “Mary Hamilton” and a Civil War ballad that was Kit’s favorite, “The Cruel War,” and one of my favorites, “Tam Lin,” which I thought could have been written for Dylan himself. As we warmed up, his voice wound around the fire and through both mine and Kit’s, and we sang like we were onstage somewhere. Overhead, the stars burned bright, and the waves rolled in eternally, and if we could have just stayed right there forever, everything would have been okay.
Kit said, “You should be a singer, Dylan. Nobody is better than you.”
He laughed. “Thanks, Kitten, but I just like being here with you guys.”
As the fire burned down, we spread out a big blanket on the sand, pulled our pillows out of the tent, and stretched out under the vast sky. Light spilled down the hill from Eden, along with music and the sound of voices. I was sleepy as Kit and I took our places next to Dylan, who flung an arm out in either direction so we could scoot up close. The two of us girls spread an open sleeping bag over our bodies and snuggled in, one head on each shoulder.
It was our ritual and had been for years and years now. By then, he’d been with us for five or six years and was woven completely into our lives. Often, all three of us would fall asleep, only to wake up and stagger into the tent one by one.
Tonight, the Perseids were shooting their way across the galaxy. For a while, Kit pointed to one and then another and chattered about the distance the stars traveled and how many there were and all sorts of other facts. Until she trailed off and fell asleep, just like that.
Dylan and I just lay there and watched the sky. It was perfect. He shifted so that Kit was more comfortable on her pillow, but when he came back down again, he patted the spot I liked on his shoulder, and I happily slipped back to my place. He lit a joint, and the smoke made shapes against the night.
It would have been impossible to be happier than I was right there, with Dylan and my sister close by, the stars overhead, nothing to worry about. Dylan smelled of salt and perspiration and a sharp note of something that belonged just to him.
His voice, low and quiet, rolled into the night. “I’ll tell you about the Long John Silver scar if you tell me something.”
I tried to pretend I didn’t know what he was going to ask, but my body turned into a board. “What?”
“Did something happen to you a couple of summers ago?”
“No.” I said the word in a tone of voice that made it sound like he was stupid for asking. “Why would you even ask that?”
“Mm.” He took another toke, blew it out, and I reached for the smoke as it wafted over the stars, cutting the sky in two pieces, just like my life—before and after. “Maybe I was wrong.”
I tried to let it go, but the question brought back the acid in my stomach, the taste of his hands over my mouth, the way he hurt me. But I lied. “You were.”
“Okay,” Dylan said mildly, and pointed up at a trio of falling stars.
I watched it. “I told you; now you have to tell me.”
“It was a belt buckle.”
Impossible to stop the sudden intake of my breath. “Dude.”
He scratched my head in a way I liked. “Long time ago, Grasshopper.”
But now I felt bad that he told me the truth and I didn’t tell him. I tried to think of a way to say it that didn’t sound disgusting, and I couldn’t find one. A man did stuff to me. This guy made me take off my clothes. This guy said he’d kill Cinder if I didn’t do what he said.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?”
I twitched my shoulders, moving away from him, sitting up so I could look out to the ocean. On the far horizon, light caught and made the edge glow. “I guess.”
“You guess?” He sat up too, his arms hanging loosely over his legs. “I swear you can tell me. Anything.”
Chewing on my lip, I looked over at him. His loose hair was getting tangled now, little loops sticking up here and there. “You have to swear, like completely and totally swear, that you won’t tell and you won’t make me tell.”
He touched his chest, hand over his heart. “I promise.”
But even then, I couldn’t figure out how to say it. A wind kicked up and made me shiver, but I couldn’t say it.
As I was struggling to find the words, Dylan said, “Was it one of the guests?”
I nodded, weaving my fingers together, a panicky feeling in my chest.
“Did he . . . touch you?”
Again, I nodded, but my lungs felt strange, and I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. I tried to suck in air, but I couldn’t, and I turned to Dylan with wild eyes, my breath stuck in my chest like my throat was broken in half.
“Hey, hey.” He moved closer, took a drag off the joint, and gestured me closer. “Breathe in as I breathe out.”
I leaned in as he blew out the smoke, and the acrid sting of it hit the back of my throat.
“Good,” he said, blowing the rest away from my face. “Hold it as long as you can.”
Immediately, my breath started moving again. It was like the booze I sipped out of glasses when nobody was looking or they were going back to the dishwasher or someone thought it was cute that I should have a sip of a martini.
I let go of the smoke.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Again.”
He hesitated, but I gave him my steely look, and he took a toke, a really big one, and smiled at me as he did it. I got ready for him to blow it to me, and maybe because I was already getting high, the exchange lasted a thousand years. I looked at his pursed mouth and noticed it was pink and plump, and there were sprouts of new beard coming in on his chin. The smoke left his mouth, and I sucked it in, and sucked it in, and sucked it in, deeper and deeper and deeper, and then I fell sideways holding my breath as well as I could. And only when it was completely impossible to hold it another second did I breathe out in a big gasp.
“Thatta girl,” he said, his voice low and approving.
I rolled over onto my back, my hands on my rib cage, the sparkling bright stars looking twenty times larger. Dylan fell down beside me, and we just lay there, side by side, looking at the sky and letting the wind move over us, for a long, long time.