Hope couldn’t believe it. Calgary was popular and good looking; he was a three-sport athlete and president of the Japanese club, which might have been really dorky except that Calgary was so cool, he made the Japanese club cool, and lots of people joined, most of whom couldn’t speak a word of Japanese. Calgary could speak Japanese fluently; his parents, in a burst of foresight, had hired a Japanese au pair when he was small, and when her visa expired, they paid one of the sushi chefs at Lola to be his tutor. Calgary wanted to go to the University of Pennsylvania, major in Japanese and business, and proceed to become more successful than any man they knew.

The Saturday night of Stroll, Hope let Calgary feel her breasts and put his mouth on them. He called them exquisite, and Hope ran her hands through Calgary’s hair, because this was something she had seen actresses do in the movies. Calgary had nice brown curls that smelled like pinecones. Touching his hair while he kissed her breasts made her fall in love a little, which she suspected was a bad development.

The weekend after Christmas Stroll, Calgary’s parents went off island to a Marriage Encounter weekend in Fall River, and Calgary invited Hope over to hang out. This was a setup, she thought, for them to both lose their virginity, and she deliberated for several hours before accepting. She wasn’t sure she wanted to lose her virginity to Calgary McMann-because, although he was good looking and spoke fluent Japanese and sank 88 percent of his free throws, and although she’d felt something when she touched his hair and he explored her breasts with his mouth, it wasn’t the big, all-consuming fireball of TRUE LOVE she’d been expecting. But, she realized, she might not meet that person for another twenty years, and did she really want to be a virgin when she was thirty-six? Wasn’t it a rite of passage to get it out of the way? Calgary wasn’t a bad choice.

Hope agreed to go.

They went up to Calgary’s bedroom. He had lit candles and had music playing-John Mayer. Hope wondered if Calgary had consulted Brick about these details. Allegra loved John Mayer and had intimated that she and Brick had sex while listening to “Your Body is a Wonderland” all the time. Hope decided that the candles and music were nice, the empty house was nice, and Calgary had made his bed and plumped the pillows.

All systems go, then-kissing, Hope’s shirt off, Calgary’s shirt off, Hope’s bra unhooked, Calgary’s mouth on her breasts, Hope’s hands in his hair. Eventually Calgary began fiddling with the button of her jeans. She helped him unbutton and unzip, then sucked in her breath to create room for him to slip his hands down inside her underwear (lacy thong, borrowed from Allegra, for the occasion).

This was where, somehow, things went wrong. Hope didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe it. Calgary was rough. He poked where he should have rubbed, he stabbed where he should have gently explored. Hope cried out, wriggled in pain, tried to pull her jeans off even farther so he could see what he was doing. He said, “Oh yeah, you like that, you like that, baby,” in some desperate and nearly violent tone she didn’t recognize. She did not like it, not at all, but she was afraid to say so. She was aware that most teenage boys found the female anatomy perplexing, but Calgary was treating her delicate parts like something he needed to tame.

“Stop,” Hope finally said, when his fingernail scraped inside of her. “Be gentle.”

“Gentle?” Calgary said, as if this were the last word that might apply to the sex act. He pulled his finger out and delivered it straight to his mouth, where he sucked it clean. “You taste…,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Hope lay on his bed with her jeans and the lace thong binding her midthigh. “You don’t know what?”

He said something in Japanese; it sounded like he was ordering sushi.

Hope stared at the ceiling. “You don’t know what, Calgary?”

“I think you should leave,” Calgary said.


Embarrassment, humiliation, shame, anger, a sense of gullible stupidity all collided. Hope’s feelings for Calgary had immediately changed from the blandly positive to the blackest negative.

He’d driven Hope home in silence. She tried to turn the radio on, but he snapped it off. As she got out of the car in her driveway, she said, “Is it over, then?”

“Oh yes,” Calgary said. “I’m asking someone else to the Christmas formal.”

“Wow,” Hope said. “Okay.”

“You can think I’m a jerk,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“I don’t think that,” Hope said. She absolutely did think that, but the bigger question was: what had gone wrong back at Calgary’s house? She hadn’t liked the way he was touching her, and maybe he didn’t like what he was touching-or tasting. The mortification was enough to make her want to vaporize.

“Whatever, Hope,” he said. “See you around.”

She was being dismissed. Okay, fine. It happened between teenagers, she supposed, all the time, every day.


Now here she was, retracing her steps of that awful night, to pick up her sister. And why? Allegra was capable of finding a ride home, but she had asked and then begged Hope, and, as perverse as it was, Hope enjoyed being called upon to save the day. Hope herself had very lame social credentials; her only entrée to the cool people was through her sister.

She pulled up in front of the McMann house and honked. There was no way she was going inside.

She waited in the dark car, playing Cage the Elephant at ten thousand decibels. She wanted to seem like she’d arrived here from a different party, a party with college kids, where the music was better and the conversation was elevated.

Nobody appeared.

Hope texted Allegra. I’m out front. Hurry.

Still nothing. Hope laid on the horn.

Finally, the front door opened, and out came-Brick. Hope swallowed. He stumbled down the front steps and over to her car. He opened the passenger door and climbed in.

Hope said, “Where’s Allegra?”

“She’s not coming.”

“She’s not?”

“No,” he said. His head fell forward on his neck like a wilting flower. “I was the one who texted you. I stole her phone.”

“You… okay. Wow,” Hope said.

“Ian Coburn showed up here, and Allegra was so excited to see him that she left her phone on the coffee table. And I texted you.”

That explained use of the word please. Hope focused on backing out of the driveway with caution. Reverse wasn’t her strong suit.

Ian Coburn, she thought. Then she spied the red Camaro parked down the street.

Hope didn’t know what to say. She took one last look at the gray shingles and white trim of Calgary’s house, which was almost as nice as the house Hope and Allegra lived in. Dr. Andy made a lot of money as a dentist. “So, Ian showed up. Who else was there?”

“Calgary, obviously, Bluto was there, Hannah, Hollis, Kylie Eckers…”

“Ew,” Hope said. “How is Allegra getting home?”

Brick shrugged. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

“Maybe you should stay?” Hope suggested.

“I hate Ian Coburn. If Allegra wants to be friends with him, fine. Maybe she thinks he’s cool because he’s older or because he goes to BC or because he buys her beer. Whatever, fine, I’m not going to stop her. I can’t. But I’m not staying. I can’t stand Bluto or Hollis. Hannah is okay because she plays hockey, so at least she has an interest other than Us magazine, movie stars, and what they’re wearing. Kylie Eckers is… geez, I can’t even speak my true feelings about Kylie.”

“No,” Hope said. “Me either.”

“You’re smart to stay away from that scene.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly Hope being smart. She wasn’t welcome with Allegra’s crowd. They tolerated Hope to be polite, and they were nice to her corresponding to when Allegra was nice to her. There were times when Allegra seemed to think it was cool to have a nerdy twin sister, someone who was everything she was not. Allegra had once told Hope that together, they were like one huge, awesome, complete person, and Hope had replied that she, Hope, was a complete person on her own. Hope had her own group of friends, the very smart kids in her honors math class-Evan, Henry, Anya. They rarely ventured out socially, but they were good people to eat lunch with.

“I’ll take you home, then?” Hope said.

“Do you mind? I’m sorry, Hope. My parents promised to buy me a car, but… my mom got that new apartment for writing, so now there isn’t enough money.”

“That sucks,” Hope said. “I’m sorry.” She drove toward the Llewellyns’ house, which was on the other side of the world as far as Nantucket was concerned.

Brick said, “When you texted back saying you’ve been covering for Allegra, what did that mean?”

Hope wasn’t sure what to say. She was a terrible liar. “With my parents.”

“Your parents?” he said. “Does it have anything to do with Ian Coburn? Anything at all?”

“No,” Hope said.

“Have you ever heard Allegra talk about Ian? Does she mention him at home?”

Hope shrugged. “I guess.”

“You guess?”

“A little,” Hope said. “They’re friends, like you said. She’s allowed to have friends, Brick.” Hope wasn’t sure why she was defending Allegra. Allegra had no moral compass. She had lost it in the woods during their first Girl Scout camping trip, when she had decided to sneak out with Hollis Brancato and smoke cigarettes over a pile of dead leaves. At eleven years old, she had nearly set the Hidden Forest on fire.

“Tell me the truth!” Brick shouted. “Is she seeing Ian Coburn?”

Hope was so alarmed by the question-even though she had been anticipating it for weeks-that she temporarily forgot she was operating a motor vehicle and she swerved into the oncoming lane. There was no one coming from either direction, but Hope’s heart jumped into her throat and stayed there. If she crashed the car, her parents would kill her.

“Tell me, Hope!” Brick said. “Is she screwing him?”

“I have no idea!” Hope said. “Ask her!”

Brick made a strange choking noise, and Hope, fearing he was going to puke, pulled over onto the shoulder. Brick slumped against the passenger door. He was drunk. There had been nothing for him to do, she supposed, other than to try to drink away the fact that Allegra didn’t love him anymore.

“Brick,” Hope said.

But she was interrupted by blue and red lights in her rearview mirror and one short burst of police siren, which was enough to cause Hope to cry out.

“Straighten up!” she barked at Brick. “And don’t say anything!”


She turned the car off and pulled out her license and the Jeep’s registration. She put down her window as a flashlight came poking into the interior of the car. Hope looked up. It was either the best- or the worst-case scenario. The police officer was Curren Brancato, older brother of Hollis. Curren Brancato, Hope knew, had just joined the Nantucket police force. He was only six years older than Hope and Brick.

“What have we here?” Curren said. “Allegra?”

“No,” Hope said. “I’m Hope. Allegra’s sister.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “The good twin.” He accepted her license and registration. “I see you at church with your mom.”

Hope exhaled. “Yes.”

“Have you been drinking, Hope?” Curren asked.

“Me?” Hope said. “No. I don’t drink.”

“Do you have a good explanation for why you crossed the centerline and then nearly drove off the road?”

Hope vaguely remembered Curren Brancato when he was in high school. He had been a football star-his nickname was Blue Thunder-but in the final games of his senior year, he had been declared ineligible because he was failing Spanish. Hope had only been in sixth grade-back then, Hope and Allegra had shared all of their friends, including Hollis-but Hope remembered the outrage caused by Curren’s academic ineligibility. The Whalers had had a shot at the Massachusetts Super Bowl, but not without Curren Brancato. Although the Boosters made a fuss, Curren wasn’t allowed to play. Hope had taken the episode as a big fat cautionary tale on squandered talent.

Curren had pulled a phoenix, however, and risen from the ashes. He attended a military college in Vermont, then the Boston Police Academy. Then he returned to Nantucket, where he was hailed as a homegrown hero.

“I know I crossed the centerline,” Hope said. “I’m sorry.”

“But why?” Curren said. “And then you nearly drove into the trees.”

“Um…?” Hope said.

Curren Brancato-Officer Brancato-poked his head into the Jeep and studied Brick. “Is he drunk?”

“Affirmative,” Brick said.