The Summer of Broken Rules, page 5
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. “I went to the Camp to meditate.”
“So Aunt Rachel?”
“Fuck,” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry,” Michael said. “Sarah and I are impartial. Wink and Honey made us swear we wouldn’t help with any eliminations.”
“And you’re confident Sarah’s gonna abide by that?” My cousin was the worst secret keeper. Claire always used that to her advantage, feeding Sarah incorrect intel to spread around The Farm.
Michael laughed. “She’s going to do her best.”
“So…” I ventured after a beat. “Wit?”
“Ah.” He nodded. “What’s up with you and Witty, anyway?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly.
The corners of Michael’s mouth turned up, bemused. “Impartial,” he reminded me. “I’m impartial.” He mimed zipping his lips, then pointed to the far end of the Cabin, to the last room in the row. “He’s in the shower right now, but that’s his.”
“Thanks,” I squeaked and dashed over to Wit’s door before Michael could say anything else, taking a seat on the ancient wood bench outside his room. While waiting, I unlocked my phone and texted Wink that I’d eliminated Aunt Rachel.
He responded: Roger that.
Along with: What are you doing awake, Meredith?
I rolled my eyes and started to type something back, but then I heard a surprised, “Oh.”
Wit was standing there with only a red beach towel around his waist. I didn’t even blink, used to seeing people walking around in only towels that was how it was with outdoor showers. Much to Aunt Christine’s chagrin, Uncle Brad was infamous for enjoying a beer in his towel while listening to James Taylor on Lantern House’s deck.
“Hi,” I said to Wit, rising from the bench. “Mission accomplished.” I patted my water gun. “Not as dramatic as I wanted, but…”
“But you got the job done,” he said. “Awesome.” Then he adjusted his towel around his waist, and it wasn’t like I meant to check him out, but it happened anyway. The beads of water dripping down his chest and his tanned, taut, washboard abs.
“I need your help, though,” I said, clearing my throat. “I don’t know who”—I pulled my new mark out of my pocket and waved it around—“this is.”
“Sure, of course.” Wit nodded, and when he swung his screen door open, I started to follow him right into his room. He turned and blocked the doorway, that crooked grin on his face. “Nice try, baby.” He motioned to his half-naked body. “Give me a sec?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” My cheeks blazed, both with embarrassment and irritation. I didn’t like being called baby. Ben used to call me babe.
Hey, babe.
Love you, babe.
Bye, babe.
When we first started dating, he called me his “girl” in an endearing and old-fashioned way, and it seemed so special…but then somewhere along the way, I became an impersonal “babe.” Babe in public, babe in private, babe always.
“All right!” Wit called from inside his room. “All good!”
He was pulling on a T-shirt when the door shut behind me, and I had to bite back a laugh.
The shirt was a transformed version of Sarah and Michael’s wedding invitation—pastel blue with a lighthouse sketched on the front, and in the reflection in Wit’s mirror, I made out #HURRAYSHESADUPRÉ on the back.
“Hurray, she’s a Dupré?” I said.
“Yeah.” He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s the hashtag for the wedding. You know, for Instagram and stuff.”
I smirked. “I know what it’s for, baby.”
Wit blushed through his bruise.
Good, I thought. Payback.
“I don’t really do Instagram.” He shrugged. “But all the groomsmen and bridesmaids have been instructed to wear these whenever we do something together.”
“By my aunt Christine,” I guessed.
“By your aunt Christine, yes, but fully backed by Jeannie.” He flopped down on his bed, full-sized with a plaid patchwork quilt on top. “Michael’s mom.”
I nodded and perched at the edge of his bed, looking around—it had been a while since I’d been in the Cabin, which had the most masculine décor of the houses. Wit’s walls were wood paneled and his dresser dark green. I remembered there was a hilariously obnoxious painting of a tiger bearing its teeth hanging over the massive stone fireplace in the main room.
In short, it was the perfect house for a groom and his six buds to spend the week.
“What’re you guys doing today?” I asked. “Going into town?” My heart sort of sped up, secretly hoping he’d say no. Sarah and Michael would be excellent tour guides for their wedding party, but I didn’t want Wit to sit down for lunch at Atlantic in Edgartown and squeeze lemon and shake Tabasco onto his oysters (as delicious as they were). I wanted him to cram into the local dive, Dock Street Coffee Shop, and devour a messy breakfast sandwich with me.
That was the Vineyard.
“No.” Wit shook his head, and my pulse spiked before slowing in relief. “Not today. We’re taking a big group photo and then heading to the beach, I think.” He yawned. “Which is cool, because I want to get going.” He gestured lazily to the Gatorade bottle on his dresser, correctly assuming I’d decoded why he’d sprayed me. I watched him snuggle up with his pillow, wince slightly because of his bruise, then yawn again and close his eyes. “Tell me who you have,” he said as I moved a little farther onto the mattress. “I’m listening.”
I told him, and then he told me what I needed to know.
“And you can lie down if you want,” he said afterward. “I hear you yawning.”
“Oh, no,” I said, even though I had yawned more than a handful of times. Because believe it or not, it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. I’d need a nap before tubing at noon. “That’s okay. I’ll go back to the Annex.”
“Nah, stay,” Wit said, his eyes fluttering open. His impossibly turquoise eyes. “I promise I won’t call you baby again.”
I felt pinpricks on my neck. Had it really been that obvious? How much it had bothered me?
“That’s what Shithead called you,” Wit said. “Isn’t it?”
“Shithead’s name is Ben,” I replied, sighing. “And it was more babe than baby.”
“Ben? I like Shithead better.”
“Me too, actually.” I laughed and stretched out next to him. Not close enough for us to touch but more than comfortable enough to fall asleep. The sheets and pillows smelled like the sea and citrus. “Oranges,” I murmured.
“My shampoo,” Wit murmured back.
“I love oranges.”
“So you love me.”
I giggled. He hadn’t phrased it as a question, and for some reason—lack of sleep, probably—that made me giggle. Really giggle.
“You have a nice laugh,” Wit commented.
“A nice laugh?” I asked, giggles gone. Nobody had ever told me that, at least not in a long time. The last time someone had mentioned my laugh, it was my dad saying he missed it.
“Mm-hmm,” he replied and rolled over so that our toes touched. I curled mine, tingles going through them, but didn’t move away. “I like it.”
So you like me, I thought about saying but didn’t. A little casual flirting with Wit was fine, but a lot was not. He was my new partner in crime, my new pal, my new friend. I wanted him to stay my friend. It had been so long since I’d made one.
“Wit?” I whispered.
“Yes?” he whispered back.
“What’s your last name? It’s not Dupré, right?”
“No,” he said. “My dad’s married to Michael’s mom. Our last name is Witry.”
“How alliterative,” I said. “Wit Witry.”
“Mmm, that’s…” Wit started but drifted away to dreamland before he could finish his thought, breathing now slow and steady. I suddenly wanted to reach over and feel his heartbeat.
But instead I burrowed deeper into his pillow and closed my eyes.
Five
Part of me wanted to invite Wit tubing when we woke up, but then I remembered it was actually an Assassin alliance meeting and that Wit had groomsman obligations.
#HurrayShesADupré.
Will it be like that all week? I wondered as he mentioned that their rendezvous point for the group picture was the Pond House, since it had the most breathtaking view of the Oyster Pond. Will he just hang out with the wedding party?
“Let’s do something later,” I blurted before leaving his room. “I want to take you somewhere.”
Wit raised an eyebrow. “You want to take me somewhere?”
I raised an eyebrow back. “Any objections?”
“No.” He shook his head. “But do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, shouldn’t we keep stuff on the down-low? So people don’t suspect anything?”
“Um, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart,” I said, “but Michael saw us earlier, and he definitely told Sarah, so I’d wager the whole Farm knows we’re friends by now.”
Wit wrinkled his nose. “I don’t like ‘sweetheart.’”
“Fine, cross it off the list.” I smirked, my heart racing. I had no idea where this was coming from, who this person inside me was, but it felt good. I felt good—confident and a little daring. “No baby,” I told Wit. “And no sweetheart.”
“Sounds good, darling.” Wit winked. “Now, where’re we going today?”
“It’s a surprise, dearest,” I said. “Just meet me at the Annex at 1:15.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
I nodded back. “Okay.”
“So…” we then said at the same time, unsure how to say goodbye. An awkward handshake? An even more awkward hug? Where was the non-awkward middle ground?
“Good luck out there,” I said a minute later to break the silence.
“With my target?” he asked. “Or your aunt Christine and the photo shoot?”
“Both.”
“Thanks.” He smiled, and I was so busy smiling back that I didn’t register him grabbing his Gatorade bottle from his dresser. “Have a productive strategy session.”
And when he raised the bottle to spray me, I made a break for outside—so gracefully that I banged my knee on the door frame. It would bruise for sure.
“Now we’re even, peaches!” Wit called after me.
* * *
By 11:50 a.m., there were plenty of Foxes sneaking around The Farm. My dad and Uncle Brad were like overgrown teenagers, sporting camouflage hats, hiding behind scrub trees, and army crawling through the tall grass with their identical water guns. I looked up the road to see who they were tailing: an older couple walking toward the beach.
Meanwhile, Aunt Julia wasn’t taking the same subtle approach as her brothers; she was stationed outside Lantern House, gun aimed at the door. “I know you’re in there, Peter Fox!” she said. “I know you’re chugging your third cup of coffee, but you better hurry up, because I also know you have someplace to be soon.”
Peter, Sarah’s thirty-year-old brother and another groomsman. Instead of the Cabin, he was staying in Lantern House with his wife and their new baby. Third cup of coffee? I thought. Nell must not be sleeping through the night yet.
“You get him, Aunt Julia!” I said as I passed by but then picked up my pace—it suddenly hit me that my assassin could be out on the hunt.
I felt a few imaginary creepy-crawlies scuttle up my spine.
Who had me?
To be on the safe side, I veered off the sandy road and onto one of the worn trails—the labyrinthine way to the beach. It was almost out of a fairy tale, a wooded pathway with sunlight streaming through the tree branches. Birds chirped as I walked along.
Eventually, the path opened out onto the shore of the Oyster Pond, blue-green water glittering. When I squinted, I saw that a group had already gathered across the water on what we all considered the true beach, a stretch of sand halfway between the placid pond and rolling ocean so you could swim in either. It offered the best of both worlds. Claire and I used to challenge each other to flip into the ocean’s waves and avoid getting stuck in “washing machines” (whenever a wave broke overtop one that was retreating back out to sea). Then we’d go to the pond and float on our backs for a while. “This is heaven,” my sister once said. “I love this so much, Mer.”
Now, I waded in the opposite direction of the ocean, freshwater soaking my sneakers, until I reached the small dock nestled in between dunes. A rickety old set of stairs led up the hill to the Pond House. “Aunt Christine is taking this way too seriously,” Eli said to me from Wink’s Boston Whaler. I was the last one to arrive. Pravika and Jake were already sorting the life vests while Luli tied the oversize tube to the back of the boat with a complicated knot. Eli pointed up the hill, where the wedding party photo was being taken. Listen, he mouthed.
“No, no, everyone,” my aunt was saying. “Sarah and Michael will be in the middle, then bridesmaids on one side and groomsmen on the other.”
“But don’t you think alternating might be cool?” someone asked, a confident voice I now immediately recognized.
Wit.
“Yeah, Mom,” Sarah agreed. “Michael and I will still be in the middle, and we can mix it up with bridesmaid, groomsman, bridesmaid, et cetera. It’ll be less formal and more fun. We should save the traditional poses for the wedding day.”
A moment of silence, then, “I suppose so.”
“Yes!” Sarah exclaimed at the same time Wit went, “I’ll stand next to Isabel!”
No, I thought, stifling a snort. No way, not here.
Isabel Davies, Sarah’s college roommate and Wit’s first target. “She’s been to The Farm before,” I’d briefed him, “so she knows it pretty well. She’s not just going to be lying around on the beach all day. She likes playing tennis in the mornings, paddleboarding after lunch, and then she usually reads a book near Job’s Neck Pond before dinner.”
“That’s fine, Wit,” Aunt Christine replied as Jake helped me into the boat. Luli finished securing the tube. “Just get rid of the water bottle, please.”
“Oh my god,” I whispered to myself. Yes way, yes here.
But I didn’t get to overhear Wit’s first takedown, because Eli powered up the Whaler, its engine drowning out everything. “Let’s go!” Luli called over the droning.
Eli steered us out to more or less the middle of Oyster, yards and yards away from shore, avoiding kayakers, paddleboarders, sailboats, and swimmers. The four of us shouted “Hi!” and “Hello!” to everyone, even if we didn’t know them. There was a scattering of houses surrounding the pond, ranging from cute cottages to grand mansions. My favorite one always threw a huge Fourth of July party, and during our last summer together, I’d convinced Claire to crash it with me. “They won’t notice,” I told her. “There are so many people already there!”
Now I stared at the sprawling cedar-shingled house, at its stretch of private beach, and remembered Claire having her first kiss that night. During a silly game of spin the bottle by the bonfire, with a handsome blue-eyed boy.
“All right,” Luli said once life vests had been buckled; no one made a move for the tube yet. “First thing’s first: Who do you have?”
With no hesitation, we revealed our targets. Everyone had chosen to play Assassin except Eli. “I can’t, guys,” he said as we groaned. “You know this game spikes my anxiety. Even the ‘Will you play?’ question made me nauseous!”
I kept my mouth shut about eliminating Aunt Rachel earlier and trusted her to stay quiet, too. For some reason, I didn’t want people to know how hard I was playing this year. Well, anyone but Wit.
“So now I have Great-Uncle Richard,” Pravika said a couple minutes later, after we’d “shuffled the deck.” One of our alliance’s standard strategies was to leak our targets, or our alleged targets. Naturally, this had been Claire’s idea. Great-Uncle Richard was really Jake’s target, but we’d make sure word would spread that Pravika had him in her sights. “That’s genius, Claire,” Luli had said when my sister first presented the plan a few years ago. “Genius.”
And I’d agreed, because when you didn’t know who had you in Assassin, you were ultraparanoid and suspicious of everyone. But if you found out so-and-so was gunning for you, you automatically trusted other people again.
“Good luck with yours, though, Meredith,” Jake said now. “Daniel Robinson?” He shook his head. “Whoever that is?”
“Oh yeah, tell me about it.” I fake-laughed, my stomach stirring. “Total John Doe!”
Thanks to Wit, Daniel was no mystery to me, but I’d never been the best liar. My laugh was too high-pitched, and I felt Luli’s eyes on me. Before she asked any questions, I volunteered to brave the tube first. Pravika joined me, and she and I lay on our stomachs with our arms, life vests, and legs pressed up against each other, waiting for Eli to zoom off across the pond. We gripped the handles as tightly as we could, since Eli was famous on The Farm for really whipping you around.
Pravika sighed and nudged my hip with hers. Our bikini bottoms were double-knotted but would still come off once we hit the water. They always did. “Why do we do this?” she asked.
I smiled. “Because we’re bonkers.”
She laughed, and right on cue, the rumbling Whaler lurched forward, our tube splashing and swirling. Eli’s idea of a “warm-up.”
But barely a warm-up. He soon revved the engine and gunned it full speed. The wind picked up, hungry to blow us backward, and we were skimming the boat’s wake like a stone skipping across the water, bouncing up and down.
“Oh my god!” Pravika shouted after Eli’s first abrupt turn, sending us spinning in the opposite direction. She screamed her head off no matter how many times she tubed, and somehow it never got old. “Meredith!”
