31
The lake house hasn’t changedin a lifetime at least, and neither have my friends. Chelsea and I arrive almost exactly at the same time, and the moment we pull up in my father’s BMW, Chelsea spills out of the car and stretches her arms wide as if to embrace the whole of it: the enormous log mansion, the stately pines, the glittering lake beyond.
“This is home,” she sighs. She flops her arms at her sides and spins around in her sandals, laughing. “Kennedy Ellis Hartford.”
I step into the sun and lift my hair, feeling my shoulders begin to bake already. It doesn’t take very long. My skin is so pale I tend to flash fry. A damp lake breeze infused with wood smoke and pine whips my long hair and white linen dress up behind me like a sail. It smells like heaven.
Chelsea reaches her hand out to me. “You look like an avenging angel.”
“I feel like Marilyn.” I stretch an arm out to her and let her pull me into an embrace and cover my cheek and neck with dozens of kisses. I’m always shy about PDA in front of my parents, but I linger for a moment in Chelsea’s arms, comforted by the familiar scent—warm strawberries and old spice—before retrieving my suitcase from the trunk.
Ryan’s car pulls into the driveway, and I breathe a sighof relief as he and Emily step out into the sun, opposite sides of the same coin. Emily bursts forward while Ryan dips back into the car to carry their bags. Even though we just saw each other yesterday, Emily and I embrace and jump up and down like we haven’t seen each other in a year. Chelsea flicks a wave, and a hint of an eye roll, and I can’t tell whether she feels left out or thinks we’re being silly. But this weekend is tradition, the most sacred tradition of all, and Chelsea sometimes takes things too seriously. Everything is a competition, even friendship. But then I see her eyes wander over to Ryan, a secret kind of smile playing over her lips, and it’s my turn to lose the magic of the moment.
I don’t like the way he looks at my girlfriend.
“Hey, handsome.” I wrap my arms around his neck and plant a kiss on his cheek. He flushes bright red. Emily cocks her head at me and raises an eyebrow, and Chelsea turns abruptly and heads for the house. I grab her hand, though, and she turns back reluctantly.
Ryan reaches for her backpack and slings it onto his shoulder, which is already weighed down with several of Emily’s bags. She’s a fashion junkie and talented artist, headed for RISD when we graduate next year, and probably New York after that. She designs and makes her own clothes and insists on several costume changes per day. She always looks fabulous, and I let her dress me up like a doll from time to time. Chelsea sometimes wears her designs too, but she has her own inimitable style. She likes to drag me out of bed to wander through thrift stores and pick through yard sales on early Sunday mornings before the church ladies have descended and mine themfor vintage dresses, scarves, blouses, cardigans, jewelry, even glasses. Whatever catches her eye, she can do something with. Emily is high fashion, and Chelsea is a junkyard scavenger. Maybe not a junkyard. But certainly a yard of junk.
“You don’t have to,” I tell Ryan, slipping him my suitcase too.
He takes it with a forced smile. “Of course I do.”
Chelsea takes back her bag apologetically. “Sorry. I’ve got it.”
Emily selects a small duffel from Ryan and heads into the house. “Swimsuits first,” she calls over her shoulder. Chelsea heads after her, waving for us to follow. But Mrs. Joiner is still hovering in her ancient pea-green Volkswagen. As usual, my parents have whisked away the suitcases and groceries and disappeared into the house. My guests, my responsibility. I’m the hostess. With all the perks it entails. Food serving, vomit wiping, friend wrangling. Usually I don’t have to babysit parents, though.
“How was the drive?” I turn and wave to Mrs. Joiner, who sticks a hand out of the car window to wave back at me. My parents don’t come out of the house to greet her, and she doesn’t get out of the car to say hello. She just watches us walk to the porch, then backs out of the driveway and leaves.
“It was fine,” Ryan says.
“Your mother okay?”
He opens the door for me. “Women and children first.”
The house smells like it always does when we walk in the door, warm and wooden and inviting. My mother bustles around in the kitchen, filling the refrigerator with clinking bottles, dropping ice into glasses, and crumpling empty cardboard grocery bags. My father is already out back working onthe boat. I start up the stairs just as I hear gravel crunching in the driveway again. Chelsea and Emily begin to stampede down toward me, already in swimsuits, smelling of coconut sunscreen. Emily is holding her long, sandy hair above her head, and Chelsea is running, laughing, trying to rub in a big white spot of sunscreen on Emily’s back.
Ryan sighs and kicks at my insole, and I almost topple over. “Chase est arrivé.”
But as we pile onto the porch and Chase parks his car, something unexpected happens. Chase bounds out of the car with his customaryEvery day is summergrin at the precise moment that the passenger door swings open and a tall, tanned girl in a tiny dress and doubtful smile steps out. She flicks her bangs out of her eyes and sticks a cigarette between her lips, and I start hyperventilating.
Emily grabs my arm with one hand and Chelsea’s with the other. “Who the hell is that?” she whispers.
“Ohhhh shit,” Ryan whispers back.
Chase slings an arm around her shoulder casually and kisses her neck in a way that makes me cringe. “Okay if I bring a guest, Ken?”
But it’s not really up to me. The house isn’t mine. It’s not even my mother’s or father’s. The house has always belonged to others, before us, maybe even before my grandfather. I still think of them—the quiet people—by the names I first used for them when I was a toddler, which makes them seem silly, but none of them have ever spoken, and for all I know, they don’t have names. They may be cross-dimensional glimpses of some parallel universe, something Chelsea would absolutely adore.Or some record skip in the space-time continuum.
The truth is, though, they don’t look like glimpses.
They look dead.
They were clearest, most tangible, when I was young. Like some cosmic transmitter was perfectly in tune, beaming them through an invisible screen, or maybe beaming me to them. I could reach out and touch a cold hand in a game of pat-a-cake or play a game of catch. They faded over time into pastel shimmers, then cool spots, like in the movies, and finally to just a faint sense, difficult to describe, but familiar as my own skin. I do still feel them. I know when they’re pleased or angry or when they simply disapprove.
Well. Everyone knows when they’re angry.
They just don’t know that they know.
They notice the broken dishes, feel things somehow slip out of their hands, or a sudden burst of emotion as if from nowhere. Everyone notices the power blinking out for seemingly the millionth time. It’s impossible to miss something like that.
But only I know why.
It’s dangerous to make them angry. They’re summoned by anger, and I’ve learned over time to keep the peace in this house in order to pacify them. They don’t like it when we fight. They don’t like it at all.
But they weren’t always a threat.
My parents used to look at me oddly as a child when I had tea parties with the backward girl and the blue lady or chased butterflies with the crushed man. I stopped mentioning them after my parents shipped me off to that awful school, wherethere were silent, ice-cold faces peering around every corner. A lot of people die in older institutions. I’ve learned not to talk about these things. Even to people like Chelsea, people with bright, open minds and bright, open hearts. Because believing opens up worlds of possibilities. But I don’t believe. I know. And knowing is dangerous. Because they don’t want to be known. Because no one really wants to know about them. And because if you do say a word, sooner or later people who don’t believe find out—people with the power to send you away from everyone and everything you love. And truth isn’t worth losing people like Chelsea. Nothing is worth losing her. And nothing is worth losing your home. Dead people know that better than anyone. They’re fiercely protective of their homes. And right now I’m extremely nervous about Chase bringing an uninvited friend, because the real hosts of the lake house are highly particular about their guests.
And they aren’t pleased.