During the shrimp cocktail, he asked, “Do you think this club has any black members?”

Felipe, who was Hispanic, said, “Shit, no, man! Don’t you see all these granddaddies looking at me like I’m the busboy?”

Theo nudged Gillian with one of the black plastic shoes that came with his rented tux. “What do you think?”

Gillian was a pale blonde whose skin looked translucent next to the electric blue satin of her dress. Two red circles surfaced on her cheeks. “I have no idea, Theo. I’m sure everyone is welcome.”

“I’m not sure,” Theo said. “I mean, look around. Everyone is white.”

“Everyone on Nantucket is white,” Gillian whispered. “Please don’t make an issue of it. I’ll be embarrassed.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to embarrass you,” Theo said. He wondered how he had ever found Gillian attractive enough to have sex with. She was so pale you could see her veins. Theo pointed the tail of a shrimp at her. “And FYI, baby doll, not everyone on Nantucket is white.”

Theo danced with Gillian three times at the prom; then he drove her out to the post-party at Jetties Beach. She changed her clothes in the passenger seat of the Jeep, and that would have been the time to make his move-when she was out of her dress but not yet into her shorts and T-shirt-but Theo waited politely outside the Jeep, standing guard, wishing he smoked cigarettes, wishing that he was not at his prom at all, but with Antoinette instead. He took Gillian home without kissing her or feeling her up or anything. Gillian seemed disappointed by that and on Monday she told her girlfriends that he was a jerk, but Theo didn’t care. All he cared about were his afternoons with Antoinette.

In June, after school ended, Theo started his job at Island Airlines, and he fell into the habit of stopping by Antoinette’s on his way home. The only conceivable danger was his mother showing up unannounced. But at that time of day, she was busy with other things: chauffeuring one of the kids, making dinner. She did ask him once, “You’re not still hanging out at the Islander, are you, Theo? After work? You know I don’t like it.”

“Not the Islander,” Theo said. He had a foolproof answer all prepared. “I’ve been exploring the island. Looking at the architecture. I want to study architecture when I go to college, and I thought I might as well get a head start.” He pulled a book out of his backpack titled 300 Years of Nantucket Architecture’, he’d checked it out of the Atheneum with his sister Cassidy’s library card. “So I’ve been driving around, studying.”

His mother thought he was a wonder. She told his father about the book over dinner.

His father perked up when he heard the word architecture, but otherwise seemed distracted. He was busy, especially after he got Ting in June, and Theo understood his father would never notice if he disappeared for an hour each day.

In this way, it was surprisingly easy.

What wasn’t as easy was being in a relationship with an actual woman. With Antoinette.

At first, it was just sex. Seeing her, Theo would get a stubborn erection and Antoinette would make love to him until he cried out, or just plain cried, so grateful was he for the incredible pleasure, a pleasure bordering on pain. Sex made him feel alive, and feeling alive brought on a new fear of death. When he drove, he always fastened his seat belt.

By the time school ended, the sex wasn’t enough. Theo wanted to know Antoinette, he wanted her to talk to him, he wanted her to listen to him. Theo worked his job at the airport-loading luggage onto planes, taking luggage off planes, telling passengers to follow the green walkway-and he became distraught at how little he knew about Antoinette. He looked around her house each night and picked up an object and studied it, hoping for clues. He memorized a few of the titles on her bookshelves and bought them from Mitchell’s Book Corner: Go Down, Moses, by Faulkner, Continental Drift by Russell Banks. He read these books, wondering what they meant to Antoinette, what she gained from them. He didn’t tell her he was reading them.

He started asking her questions at the end of their hour together, simple things.

“What did you do today?”

“What did I Jo?”

“Yeah, you know.” He propped himself on one elbow on her bed. “What do you do in a normal day? You never talk about it. You must have a routine.”

“Oh, Theo,” she said. And she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he said. “I want to know what you do. Is that so odd? To want to know what my-” He almost said “girlfriend,” but when the word was on his tongue he realized how wrong it would sound. “-my lover does all day?”

“How does it feel,” she asked, “to be an eighteen-year-old with a lover?”

“It feels great,” he said. “But you’re avoiding my question.”

“What question is that?”

“See?” he said. He punched one of her feather pillows like it was someone’s face. He felt himself losing patience. “What the hell do you do all day?”

She got out of bed and put on a plain black cotton sundress with skinny straps.

“I do what everybody else in this world does, Theo. I try to survive.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Okay, look, I eat, I dance, I read, I satiate my sexual desires.”

“Do you want to know what I do?” Theo asked. “Do you want to know how my day at work went?”

Antoinette batted her eyelashes. “How was your day at work, honey?”

“Never mind,” he said.

“Exactly,” she said.

There were funny little things about her. Like, for example, she had no photographs of herself. No pictures of her family. When Theo brought the snapshot of her holding him as a baby, she gazed at it for a long time. “That’s me,” she said finally, as if there had been any doubt.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “How come you don’t have other pictures?”

“Pictures of what?”

“Of yourself.”

She looked truly puzzled. “Why would I have pictures of myself? I already know what I look like.”

“What about your parents, then?” Theo asked. His voice was thick and nervous. It wasn’t fair-she had known him since the day he was born. “Are they still alive?”

“I have no idea,” she said.

“What does that mean?” Theo asked.

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” she said.

He asked a lot of questions but received no answers. Maybe there were no answers, Theo thought. It was as if Antoinette were a mirage, a phantom who had no past and whose likeness couldn’t be captured on film. He tasted her skin, he sniffed under her arms, he tangled his fingers in her coarse, curly hair to reassure himself that she was real.

He was brave enough to bring up Antoinette with his mother only once. Just after school ended, he was helping in the garden and he said, “I saw Antoinette on my way to work today. Riding her bike.”

“Oh, really?” his mother said. She was kneeling in the dirt, staking her tomato plants; it was Theo’s job to hold the plants against the stake while his mother tore strips from one of his father’s old white T-shirts and tied the plants up. “I should call her, I guess.”

Theo stared at the earth, as rich and brown as chocolate cake. “What’s Antoinette’s story, anyway?”

His mother looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Theo said. The sun was hot against the back of his neck. “She’s just so… weird. How did she end up here? Was she born here?”

“No,” his mother said. “She came from New York City the same summer I moved here. We lived together. You know that.”

“What did she do in New York?” Theo asked.

“Ballet,” his mother said. She moved on to the next plant and Theo followed. “That’s really all I can tell you.”

“How come?” Theo said. “Is her life, like, classified information?”

His mother ripped his father’s shirt down the middle in a way that seemed almost violent. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

One evening in mid-June, Theo told Antoinette that he loved her. They had finished making love, and Antoinette was bleeding a little. She had her period.

“Ugh,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

“I don’t mind,” Theo said. “I love you.”

Antoinette disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door. Theo could hear her opening a drawer, rummaging around. He sank his head back into one of Antoinette’s feather pillows. He’d never told a woman that he loved her before. He never said the words, not even to his mother and father. I love you. It was an overused phrase, but that was how he felt, that was who he’d become-someone who loved another person. He felt vulnerable, exposed, scared. He put on his clothes.

“I love you, Antoinette,” he said to the closed door. “Are you listening?”

Oddly enough, it was his father who caught him. One night, the week after the Fourth of July, Theo sat in his Jeep at the end of Antoinette’s driveway. He saw a red Chevy coming from the north, but there were a lot of red Chevys on Nantucket-and besides, his dad was working in Monomoy, which was to the west. But then the driver flashed his lights. Theo threw the Jeep into reverse and backed up ten feet, bent his head, and closed his eyes, praying that the truck would pass. Instead, when he looked up, the red truck was stopped right in front of the driveway, and there was his father, window down, staring at him.

“What are you doing here, Theo?” his father said. “Did your mother send you to get something?”

What could he say? He clawed around for some likely reason for being in Antoinette’s driveway.

“I was out exploring,” he said, “and I made a wrong turn.”

His father stared at him. Theo willed another car to come along and end the issue, but none did. Then his father waved a hand.

“Follow me,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Theo pulled out behind his father, reviewing the lie in his head. He’d made a wrong turn while exploring. He’d forgotten it was Antoinette’s house until he pulled up, and then, because it looked like she wasn’t home, he’d turned around. Nothing wrong with that.

They drove to Monomoy, to the Ting house, such as it was, barely framed out. Still, the views across the water were incredible. Theo climbed out of the Jeep; he was sweating.

“No wonder you’re never home,” Theo said to his father. “It’s beautiful here.” “It’s beautiful at home,” his dad said. “This is nothing but work.”

“Yeah, well. Huge house.”

“Biggest house on the island.”

“Yeah,” Theo said.

They walked inside-the walls weren’t completely up yet-and headed toward the front of the house where giant windows overlooked the harbor. The wooden floors were littered with tools, nails, an electric sander. The sun was still up above the steeple of the Congregational Church. Seagulls cried. Theo’s hands were shaking.

“So tell me again,” his father said. “What were you doing at Antoinette’s?”

“I made a wrong turn,” Theo said. How long had it been since he’d lied to his father? He couldn’t look his father’s way, but with a view like this, there was no need. Theo focused on the sailboats, which looked like bits of confetti scattered across the water. “I was hunting for a certain dirt road, and I drove up Antoinette’s driveway accidentally.”

“The roads back that way are confusing,” his father said. “I got lost a few times myself when I was building that house.”

It had been two weeks since Theo had told Antoinette he loved her, and she’d said nothing in return. Okay, then, she didn’t love him back. Did he really expect her to?

Theo looked at his father. His mother always said his father was a lucky man. “I’ve been seeing Antoinette,” Theo said. He kicked a nail across the floor. “We’re sleeping together.”

His father’s eyes closed and opened again. Brown eyes flecked with gold, like Theo’s own eyes and the eyes of his brother and sisters. “No,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

“You have to believe me,” Theo said. “It’s true.”

“What the hell are you telling me?” Theo recognized the expression on his father’s face-he was holding back his anger, keeping himself in check. When Theo’s father was a teenager, he’d flown out of control all the time-started fistfights, punched holes in walls, broke legs off dining room chairs. But not anymore. “Theo,” his father said, in a voice so low Theo could barely hear it. “What’s going on?”

Theo spewed forth the story, an edited version, from the baseball game forward, up to the part where Theo now knew himself to be in love-only instead of the kind of love that made things bright and clear, this kind of love obscured things, confused them. This was the kind of love that was like walking through the dark woods alone, terrifying, unknown.

“I haven’t told anybody else about this,” Theo said. His voice broke. “I want her to love me back, Dad.”