“Remember how you went and yelled at the lifeguard?” Hannah said to Maya. “Who you then proceeded to make out with like five hours later.”
“Oh yeah, at the bonfire. He was cute.”
“He was very bad at his job,” Blue said.
“We had a lot in common.”
An old Van Morrison song came on the radio and Maya said “Ooh!” and cranked it up and soon they were all swept up in it, singing along just like they used to. The wind was in Blue’s hair and the day was in full bloom as the miles moved them closer to the girls they once knew, the house they once loved. When they hit the Sunrise Highway, they cheered.
Blue could’ve predicted with her eyes closed the minute they reached the Hamptons. The air changed, turned sweet and clean like it was filtered through sunshine and honey. She inhaled deeply, the golden wash of afternoon sun glinting off windshields and dappling through the trees on the side of the road. They drove past vineyards and little farm stands with weathered wooden signs for corn and jam and fruit. Past the square, white shops of Bridgehampton, Water Mill, East Hampton, Amagansett. Then, unleashed from the traffic, they whipped across the natty Napeague stretch until at last they were up and over the hill and looking down into Montauk, the Atlantic a sparkly blue bowl below them, rippling sideways like a flag in wind, a perfect circle of sun standing above it.
They stopped quickly in the old fishing village for snacks and the town paper and soft ice cream cones with sprinkles at John’s Drive-In. Then they drove out past the Montauk library and onto a sand-dusted road toward the beach. Finally they turned onto the pebble driveway of Nana’s house.
“Bring on the beach, bitches!” Maya screamed, leaping out of the car.
On the porch next door an elderly couple glanced over, alarmed. Blue gave a small, embarrassed wave.
The wooden two-story looked almost exactly as it did in Blue’s memory—smaller, perhaps, and more worn—the fence around it knocked down, probably by a tropical storm. The hammock still swung between the trees, but the netting looked ratty and precarious. Blue could see them again as they once were—bright and bursting out of the car in their short shorts and halter tops, their flesh so ripe and new, their laughter raucous and without edges, piercing the quiet. She remembered the last time they were there, how Hannah had run and jumped up on the front porch railing, walked it like a balance beam, did a little shuffle-hop-step, a cartwheel dismount. So fully present to the sunshine, to the smell of the ocean, to her friends beside her. She remembered Maya dashing out to the hammock, diving gleefully onto it, only to be flipped out, dangling by one leg as the others laughed. A little help, assholes! Her and Renee darting past Hannah up to the second floor to claim the best bedroom, doing their secret victory handshake when they got to it before Hannah and Maya did.
Now she extracted the spare key from the seashell key hider, left there for the property management and housekeeping services that came a few times a year to check the pipes, clean the house, mow the lawn and clear the gutters. The moment she unlocked the front door, Maya rushed past her into the foyer with its high ceiling and hardwood floor, its hollow echo. “I can’t believe we’re here!” Maya said as she threw her arms out and did a twirl. She took a big dramatic inhale. “Smell that—exactly the same.” She waved the air under her nose like she was a sommelier. “A wonderful bouquet...soap...sunshine...and a touch of...mold...or is it mildew? What’s the difference anyway?”
“Actually, they’re two different kinds of fungi,” Hannah said, “which grow on—”
“Oh, sorry, that wasn’t a serious question,” Maya said.
Blue took a deep breath filled with memory.
“I am literally eighteen again!” Maya said. “If we just cover all the mirrors, boom, we’re all eighteen. Well, Blue’s actually a grouchy old lady but, whatever...”
Blue tried to formulate a comeback, but Maya was already gone, running between the rooms on the first floor like a dog coming home. She returned breathless. “Everything looks the same. It’s like being in a time warp. Come look!”
They moved into the kitchen, the cabinets now dated, the linoleum floor peeling at the edges. In the center, the round dinner table where they’d once played drinking games while classic rock played beneath their laughter—Skynyrd and Zeppelin and Floyd—music that felt like a secret passed down from one generation of rebellious teenagers to the next, songs that carried the tang of nostalgia for their youth even as they were experiencing it.
“Whatever shall we do first?” Blue said. Maya’s gleefulness was catching.
“I need the bathroom and a shower,” Hannah said.
“I was thinking we might—”
The sound of pebbles kicking in the driveway made them all turn.
“Who’s that?” Blue said. “I’m not expecting anyone.” She went to the front door where a shiny red-and-black Mini Cooper was now parked behind their rental.
Maya followed, Hannah behind them.
“That is...” Maya said. The car door opened and a slim woman emerged, slightly teetering on sandals with a heel an inch too high, a bottle of wine in one hand, flowers in the other. “Uh...surprise! Please don’t kill me.”
Blue was pinned where she stood.
“Renee!” Maya called, waving.
“Hello!” Renee waved back with the airy cheer of someone departing on a cruise ship. She made a few careful steps across the pebbles and then her eyes found Blue. Her smile wobbled and her wave turned tentative.
Blue’s mouth hung open. A violent knock in her chest. Shock first. Then rage so hot and quick inside her, it could launch her head like a rocket. She looked at Maya, let her eyes speak for her: Are. You. Fucking. Kidding. Me. Right. Now?
Maya stared back, defiant.
Blue spun around, marched back into the kitchen. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Where to go. How to manage this.
She heard Maya call, “Stay right there, Renee! I’ll be right back. Hannah, talk to Renee.”
Blue dashed out the side door. Folded over. She was short of breath as if she’d been running. A sharp cramp across her chest.
“Listen.” It was Maya coming toward her. “I know you’re pissed.”
She was too angry to speak. Her fists were clenched so tightly she imprinted little crescents on her palms with her fingernails.
“Okay, you’re really pissed. But come on... Twelve years ago we made a vow that we’d all come back. All four of us. A sacred vow.”
Blue breathed through her nose. An image came to her—a game the four of them used to play over long, boring summers, tying rubber bands around a watermelon until it burst from the pressure. She could still recall that visceral squeeze, the anticipation of the explosion, not knowing when it would come, how destructive it would be. Now she imagined her own brain being wrapped in rubber bands, tighter and tighter.