The Ocean Between Us

All their lives she and Brian had struggled with this. On their fifth birthday, they had thrown themselves into a jealous row that didn’t end until Emma sank her teeth deep enough in Brian’s arm to draw blood. After that year, they’d always had separate parties, one supervised by their mother, one by their father unless he was at sea. In that case, someone else would step in, usually another Navy mother.

Their rivalry was typical of twins, according to the experts. Emma knew this because her mother had read everything ever written about twins. Parenting Twins. Educating Twins. Raising Twins as Individuals. There was a whole body of literature out there, it seemed, to enable twins to feel normal.

It was dumb to pretend there was nothing unique about twinship, she thought, putting on lip gloss while studying her mouth in the visor mirror. Being a twin wasn’t normal, but it didn’t have to be a problem if you didn’t feel like making it into one. Now that they were practically through high school, it wasn’t such a big deal. But that still didn’t mean she felt like showing up at a party with her brother.

The action was in full swing already. A group of kids sat around a big bonfire, and music roared from someone’s car stereo. Bottle rockets left over from the Fourth of July whined and popped. A few grocery sacks and ice chests hinted that the foray for beer had met with success. The last of the daylight lingered on the water, flickering with the motion of the waves.

The sight of her friends gathered around a beach fire lifted her spirits. The glowing logs gave off a peculiar aroma, and the lively yellow flames illuminated about a dozen kids, mostly seniors. They were a mixture of Navy kids and locals who knew their way around.

Driftwood logs, smoothed and bleached by storms, lay like giant pickup sticks along the rack line of the beach and provided seating around the fire. Brian had already eased into the group and was sitting between two varsity cheerleaders. Girls were nuts for her brother’s goofy charm, his looks and the offhand kindness that was second nature to him.

As she stepped into the circle of light Cory Crowther stood up to greet her. She liked that. He was also sports-hero handsome, with big shoulders, a great smile and probably an ego to match, but he seemed to genuinely like her. Although he’d been away most of the summer, everyone knew him—captain of the football team, son of a Carrier Air Group commander.

“Hey, Emma,” he said in a good-natured drawl, perhaps elongated by a hint of beer. He patted the spot beside him. “Come sit with us. You know Darlene Cooper, right?”

“Hey, Darlene.” Emma smiled at the girl beside Cory.

“Hey.” Darlene was a heavyset girl in a tie-dyed T-shirt, with multiple piercings and multicolored hair. She was extremely cool, Emma thought.

Darlene pushed a cooler toward her. “Beer?”

“Thanks.” Emma took a can of Rainier, even though she didn’t care that much for it. She’d take a few sips and carry the can around for a while, just so they wouldn’t think she was a dork.

“So are you nervous about starting school in a new place?” Cory asked.

Emma shook her head. “If I let moving freak me out, I’d have shot myself by third grade.”

“I’m glad you didn’t shoot yourself.” His leg moved—maybe accidentally, maybe not—so that it was aligned with hers, warm and solid. She liked the feel of it and didn’t move away. Maybe Cory was a bit full of himself but he was a key player around here. He was important in the small, contained, sometimes brutal world of high school, and she could do worse than win him over as an ally.

“Where are you from?” Darlene asked.

“Most recently from Corpus, on the Texas Gulf coast. How about you?”

Darlene took a big slug of beer. “All over, like you. Whenever my dad gets orders, off we go. It’s just the two of us.”

“Your mom’s not with you?”

“Nope. She took off when I was a baby and I haven’t seen her since.”

Emma sensed the hurt beneath Darlene’s nonchalant attitude. “So what do you do when your dad goes to sea?”

“Depends. Sometimes I stay with friends or family. One time I had to go to a foster home because there wasn’t nobody.” She shook back her candy-colored hair and took another sip of beer. “This year’s going to be cool, though. Now that I’m eighteen, I get the apartment all to myself while he’s on deployment. Our complex has hot tubs and a pool in the courtyard.”

“That is so bitchin’,” said Shea Hansen, who sat across the fire. “I can’t wait to be out on my own.”

Shea had tanned legs and wore loose nylon athletic shorts, like a runner. Her father was the minister of Trinity Lutheran Church in Oak Harbor, and Shea taught vacation Bible school there. Emma knew the whole community would be shocked by the sight of Shea sitting around and drinking beer. Adults tended to see what they wanted to see. And in hometown girls like Shea, they saw the good girl who could do no wrong.

Emma pointed out the varsity bars, divisional championship and state finals pins on the boiled-wool front of Cory’s letter jacket. “You’ve been at the same high school all four years,” she said. “How’s that work?”

He stretched his feet toward the fire. “We were transferred here five years ago, and my mom decided this was where she wanted to stay.”

“So what happened when your dad got orders?”

“My mom and I stayed put. The old man spent his next two assignments as the oldest guy in the BOQ. He’s back now, learning to be a family man again. He never was much good at it.”

Emma braced her hand on the beach log and turned to look out at the inky water, speckled with reflected stars. She couldn’t imagine her father in the bachelor officers’ quarters. He’d shrivel up and die there. Everyone’s family was different. She was glad her parents believed in staying together, whether the assignment was to Fallon, Nevada, or the wilds of Alaska.

“No way was my mother moving after she found her dream house over on Penn Cove,” Cory explained.

“This place seems to have that effect on people,” she said, thinking of how her mother had looked when they’d gone to see that funky house on the bluff.

“Must be nice, staying in one place for five whole years.” Darlene opened another beer.

“No, you’ve got it nice,” Cory said. “Your own apartment. As soon as they start their cruise, it’ll be party central over there.”

Darlene tossed a stick into the heart of the fire. She watched the flames wrap around it. “You bet.”

Emma couldn’t help feeling sorry for Darlene, who lived alone with her dad and had raised herself without a mother. She drank too much and didn’t quite manage to hide the loneliness in her eyes.

“So do you miss Texas a lot?” Shea asked Emma. “Did you leave a boyfriend behind?”

“No, and yes.” Emma grinned. “Texas weather is too hot for me. And yeah, there was a guy.” She’d dated Garrett for six months, and he’d been the best boyfriend in the world. He was polite, kind and extremely cool. His father was a country club golf pro and his family had never lived anywhere but Corpus. When she left Texas, they had both cried. He promised to write, call and e-mail every day. She promised nothing of the sort. After so many partings, she knew better. But her crazy heart didn’t. It always broke, no matter how hard she tried to protect it.

“You don’t have a boyfriend now,” Cory pointed out.

“That’s right.”

He lined up his leg with hers again. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

A shriek that sounded like an Indian war whoop split the air. The thud of bare feet on the wooden planks of the dock, followed by a splash, heralded the evening’s festivities. Jumping off the dock into the icy Sound was a time-honored local sport of murky origin and questionable purpose. At low tide, the pilings were just tall enough to be deliciously scary, and the water still deep enough to be safe.

The first one in, a skinny kid named Theo, bobbed in the dark water, the moonlight glancing off his sleek head. “Come on in,” he yelled. “Don’t let me freeze out here alone.”

“I’m in,” said Darlene, peeling off her shirt and shorts to the swimsuit she wore underneath. More splashes erupted. Screams and shouts rang through the clear night air, and the noise held a special quality of abandon, Emma thought. Monday morning was in the back of everyone’s mind. That, and maybe the thought that had been nagging at Emma lately—in just a short time, they’d all be out in the world, on their own. The prospect was exhilarating, intimidating, inevitable.

With a laugh, Shea jumped up and went to join the others. She moved like a ship in a storm, and Emma imagined she could hear the sound of beer sloshing in the girl’s stomach.

“She can swim, right?” she asked Cory.

“Hell, in that condition, she can probably fly.”

“How much beer did she drink?”

He grinned. “The question is, how much of this did she have?” He held up a tiny Ziploc bag containing six pills marked with a small but recognizable stemmed cherry. He slid one onto the palm of his hand. “Your turn, new girl.”

Emma hated being in this position. It was not a good idea to say no to the big man on campus. However, it was an even worse idea to mess with Ecstasy. “I’ll stick with beer,” she said, and tipped up her can of Rainier just to make her point.

“You chicken?” he asked.

Emma looked around and realized that she and Cory were alone by the fire. Everyone had abandoned them for the dock, and the deep night beyond the circle of fire lent the moment a certain intimacy.

“No,” she said with a laugh, and tossed her head. “You shouldn’t, either. Aren’t you applying for an appointment to the Naval Academy?”

“Hell, yes. It’s a tradition among the Crowther men.”

“Yeah? Last I heard, the Academy frowned on that stuff.”

He put away the bag. “I’ll clean up before my physical.”

“No, I mean, if you’re going in the military—” She broke off and waved her hand. “I’m all for personal liberty, but I’d rest easier knowing people in the military were clean and sober.”

“Dream on, new girl. Some of the best drugs on the market come through the military.”

She dropped the subject. She knew there was a drug problem in the Navy. Plenty of men and women in her father’s command struggled with it; some of them were barely older than her. Her father ordered sailors into drug treatment or AA, probably more frequently than she knew.

“So what about you, huh?” Cory asked. “You applying for college?”

A familiar but unsettling sense of indecision prickled over her like a skin rash. There was something wrong with her. She was sure of it. Other kids had at least some idea of what they wanted to do after high school. But when Emma considered her future, she saw no clear picture of any sort of life that made sense.

She slid a glance at Cory, considering him. He was probably one of the best-looking guys she’d ever met. But you didn’t confess the secrets of your heart to a football god. He didn’t even notice that she’d failed to answer his question.

“Why are you looking at me like that, new girl?”

“Why do you keep calling me new girl?”

“Would you rather be called old girl?”

“I’d rather be called Emma.”

“Emma. That’s a nice name.”

He had a way of looking at her as though she really mattered. She couldn’t tell if that charm was genuine or if it was his way of flirting. The intimate sense of aloneness seemed magnified by the fire. She could hardly see beyond the pool of light, though she could still hear her friends laughing and splashing.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend, Cory?” she asked him.

“How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?”

“You’re sitting here with me on the last night of summer. If you had a girlfriend, you’d be with her.”

He turned to face her, and the breeze stirred his shining dark hair. His hand came up and lightly slid across her back. “Maybe I am,” he said, his eyes clearing, his all-American smile practically glowing in the dark. “Maybe I am.”

She laughed softly, though she felt a thrill of attraction. “You are so full of it.”

But she let him kiss her, anyway. She wanted him to. And he was good at it. He seemed to know just how to slant his mouth and circle his strong arms around her to heighten her awareness of his body. She liked a boy who understood the intricate choreography of a kiss instead of fumbling around and shoving himself at her the way some guys did. She’d missed this all summer long, missed the feel of a boy’s arms around her, his lips on hers.

He pushed his tongue into her mouth. The intimacy both shocked and thrilled Emma. A part of her—the part from the Grace Bennett School of Proper Behavior—compelled her to pull away. It was trashy to make out with a boy you hardly knew.

Reluctantly she put her hands on his rock-hard upper arms and moved away. But that only made him hold her tighter, and another part of her—the wicked Emma part—indulged in the fierce sweetness of the kiss, letting sheer sensation block out common sense. She didn’t care who saw her or what they thought. It was the end of summer and she was about to be the new girl for the last time. And life was good.

Until Brian interrupted. Yelling like a maniac, he raced into the circle of light cast by the fire. “Go on in,” he yelled, spraying them with drops of icy water. “The water’s fine.”

Emma and Cory broke apart like a pair of negative charges. She straightened her shirt and glowered at her brother. Wearing only his shorts, he stood shivering beside the fire. His skin was covered in goose bumps, his hair plastered against his head and his eyelashes spiky from salt water. Darlene and another girl Emma recognized trotted along at his heels. The other girl’s name was Lindy, but Emma and Katie had another name for her: the Stalker. She was crazy about Brian and had been after him all summer.

“Don’t mind me,” he said. “Just getting warmed up for the next round.”

“So were we,” said Cory, laughing but baring his teeth in annoyance.

“Do me a favor, Crowther,” Brian said. “Next time you decide to grope my sister, don’t do it in front of me. It skeezes me out.” He gave an exaggerated shudder.

“Try minding your own business,” Cory snapped, using a stick to stir up a shower of sparks in the fire.

“Hey, I know why you go out for football every year,” Brian said.

“Because I’m the best there is.”

“Because you’re too fat and slow to make the track team,” Brian said. As he spoke, he coiled into a runner’s crouch.

With a growl, Cory lunged at Brian. His big angry hands grasped at empty air. Like a cartoon Road Runner, Brian took off. Even barefoot, he managed to stay ahead of Cory. He led him on a chase all over the park, dodging behind trash cans and picnic shelters, veering and feinting in and out of the shadows.

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