“But what was he like?”
“Taylor,” she said, “he was like a unicorn.”
The Game
Susan and I spent the summer between fifth and sixth grade out in the woods behind my house, pretending to be pirates.
No one else was invited.
We dyed my old bedsheets with coffee and made dirty-looking clothing out of them, braided our hair, and didn’t wear shoes.
We built elaborate forts and covered them with moss, pretending they were ship cabins, and wrapped tiny twigs in maple leaves for dinner, with a handful of baneberries on the side. Those were poisonous, so we only pretended to eat them. Sometimes I stole whiskey from Sandra’s unlocked liquor cabinet and we each took a sip, calling it liquid courage.
I always chose to be Blackbeard, coloring my chin with Sandra’s black eyeliner and bragging about my fourteen wives, of whom I pretended Susan was my favorite. She was Rachel Wall, the only female pirate in New England. In real life, they weren’t alive at the same time, but we didn’t care.
I remember one night very clearly. It was mid-July, and I didn’t want to go inside because Sandra had a man over, a man who I disliked more than the others because he was always slapping my butt or tousling my hair, calling me “my little monkey” and trying to get me to kiss his cheek. Susan sat by the edge of the firepit, tired and swatting at mosquitoes. She wanted to play that we had a baby, and I wasn’t interested in that, but I needed to keep her outdoors with me.
I stood, narrowing my eyes, rearranging my face into what I hoped was a brave, serious expression.
“Someone has ravaged our ship,” I said, standing at the edge of the forest, wearing one of Sandra’s leather boots as a fake leg. I pointed in the direction of my house, accusing Sandra and her boyfriend. “Call for help!” I shouted. “We have to kill them before they make you dance the hempen jig!” One of our favorite facts about Rachel Wall, besides that she was a girl, was that she confessed to practicing piracy just before she was hanged in Boston.
Susan ran into the clearing, screaming at the top of her lungs, then swooning on the ground.
“Help!” she cried before she fell.
I swooped in and killed the invisible enemies with a stick I used as a sword. Susan followed along.
“Die, scallywags!”
We ran around until we were sweating, our cheeks red.
“We must spend the night looking out,” I told her when we’d finished killing the enemies. “Let’s stay in the crow’s nest.”
We climbed into the fort and lay down on the blanket stowed inside it, pretending this was the very top of the ship. She laid her head on my stomach, and I put my hand in her hair. We were both breathing heavily, sticky with sweat.
“I will keep watch,” I said. I handed her a lime from inside my house, to prevent scurvy. We always carried limes.
Susan took the lime and closed her eyes, and I tangled my fingers in her hair.
“Let’s weigh anchor in the morning,” I whispered. Let’s get out of here, just you and me.
“Aye,” she answered. “Give me another lime.”
Her breathing became deep and steady, and I felt like the leader of the forest. I would stay awake all night, just in case.
* * *
—
Now, at yet another one of Scottie’s parties, Susan was holding a plastic bottle full of vodka and cranberry juice. We sat on the porch swing, waiting for Brad to arrive. Earlier that day, I answered the phone when he called, panicking slightly at the sound of his voice—the voice of my boyfriend. He asked if I’d be at this party, and I knew it was probably in my head, but his tone made me think it was a dare.
“Remember when we used to play pirates?” I asked Susan.
“What made you think of that?” she asked.
I was always remembering things no one else did and reminding them of these things when they didn’t want to be reminded.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The grass of Scottie’s lawn was dim blue in the dark, and the rich, horsey smell of it made me think of playing pirates. It was late fall, though, not summer, and cold. The mosquitoes were long gone, and everything looked smaller than it had that summer when we were eleven.
I took a sip of my beer.
“Sometimes I wish we could still play games,” I said. “I just . . . This isn’t fun.” I was a little drunk.
I saw Brad’s Datsun pulling up, him getting out. His lacrosse letterman jacket had a big cartoonish face of a sailor on the sleeve and his last name embroidered on the breast pocket. We were the Hopuonk Beachcombers.
Beachcombers were people who spent their lives roaming the sand, looking for something of value. Often, they’d been banished from pirate ships. Brad’s letterman jacket and Heather’s cheerleading uniform had the Beachcomber emblem sewed on. Hopuonk’s sailor version was actually nothing like what a real beachcomber was—someone who wasn’t a sailor at all.
“You’re so weird,” Susan said, pulling away from me at the sight of Brad.
I had a brief but fierce urge to pull Susan into the bathroom and tell her right then that I was a lesbian, to exonerate myself no matter what the consequences were, but then Brad was in front of me and I could see frustration in his face.
“Hey,” I said to him, standing. My head barely reached his shoulder, and he leaned down and kissed my hair.
“You look beautiful,” he said, holding me at arm’s length, his hands on my shoulders, trying to look cool in front of everyone—in front of Heather. “It’s nice to see you.”
Even though his words were plain, I felt a little threatened. Because I’d been ignoring him, I’d need to make up for it, and since I wasn’t supposed to lose him, I knew that probably meant sex. Sandra said I had to make sure I didn’t lose him. I thought about what Heather had said outside Emmylou’s—that I wasn’t in love with him—and I hated that she was right.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said, leaning into him.
As we ascended the stairs, I could feel Susan’s eyes on my back.
Heather watched too. I wondered if she was also in love with Brad, if that was why she was so mean.
I was glad that they saw us, but that feeling went away once the door closed. I hated Scottie’s bedroom immediately and wondered how Heather spent tons of time here. His bed was dirty and he only had one pillow, but he had three bongs. The cowboy wallpaper on the walls was dingy and covered in posters of barely clothed women, and one with the rules of Beirut that said GET YOUR BALLS WET! across the bottom in neon orange.