Never Ever (11 page)

“I know I haven't said this yet, but I'm really glad you're here.”

“It took you long enough,” Wylie joked.

“But I'm going to let you fight this battle on your own. I'll be in our bungalow if you need me.” Lola gave Wylie a peck on the cheek and skipped off toward their room. Before she could lose her nerve, Wylie knocked on Phinn's door.

“It's open,” he called. “Come in.”

Phinn hummed to himself while he hammered a shelf into the wall. He wore a pair of linen pants, but didn't have a shirt on. Wylie tried not to look at his bare chest and the scars scattered across his skin.

“Hey, Wylie,” Phinn said, cocking his head.

Now that she was in his room and he was half naked, Wylie had no idea how to communicate like a normal person.

“I just had my swearing-in ceremony,” she managed to say.

“That's great. Congratulations.”

“I don't like the birth-control ritual,” she blurted.

Phinn was expressionless. “Do you have religious issues with it?”

“No,” Wylie said, nearly laughing. The Daltons didn't even go to church on Christmas. “I don't like being told what to do. The girls should have a choice whether they want to be on the Pill and if they do, you should trust us to take it ourselves.”

Phinn shrugged. “We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one.”

“That's it?” Wylie asked. “That's all you have to say?”

Phinn pulled a T-shirt on over his head. “Let's go for a walk. I want to show you something.”

“I'm not done discussing this,” Wylie said.

“Good. Neither am I.”

They made their way through a trail behind the bungalows.

“Did Maz give you more information on Hopper?” Phinn asked.

Wylie nodded. “He told us to be on the lookout for him.”

“Don't let it scare you. I just like to be cautious. The kid was mentally ill. We couldn't give him the proper help. Hopefully he's getting the treatment he needs back home.”

As they continued down the trail, a popping sound in the distance grew louder. Wylie had heard it a few times around the island and didn't know where it was coming from. It sounded just like microwave popcorn.

“What's that sound?”

“You'll see,” Phinn answered. “Now I want you to close your eyes.”

Wylie didn't like where this was going.

“Are they closed?” he asked.

“Yes, they're closed. You know, this is a whole lot of buildup. It better be worth it.”

“Oh, it will.”

The popping sound moved at a steady rhythm as Phinn slowed to a stop.

“Okay, open them.”

Wylie opened her eyes and let out a small gasp. They were standing in a field of
parvaz
flowers that seemed to go on for miles. The flowers were growing at a rapid pace, each new one making a
pop-pop
sound as it sprouted. In the background, the ocean glistened as the waves gently moved back and forth. Behind them stood a massive weeping willow. Phinn plucked a flower and another one instantly grew in its place.

“When you care for the island the way we do, its resources stay abundant,” Phinn explained.

He offered the flower to Wylie, but instead of placing it
in her mouth, she slipped it behind her ear. The sun was setting and the sky was a neon pink.

“It's so peaceful here when the sun goes down,” Phinn told her. “It's not just watching the stars come out or the light of the fireflies coming into view. It's that it gets quiet enough to hear all the natural sounds the island makes. The rhythm of the waterfall, the hum of branches moving in the wind, the
pop-pop
of the
parvaz
flowers—it's like an orchestra. Can you hear it?”

Wylie nodded.

“And you know what you can't hear?”

“What?”

“The sound of crying babies.” Phinn looked at her straight-faced, then laughed. Wylie couldn't help but laugh along.

“Bad joke,” he said. “For the record, I don't hate babies. But the whole point of living here is having all of the fun and none of the responsibility of adulthood. Raising a child is the ultimate act of being a grown-up. It's like the antithesis of what makes Minor Island paradise.”

“I don't have a problem with that. I just have a problem with putting the burden on the girls. And I'm not the only one who feels that way.”

“Who else has an issue with it?”

Wylie didn't want to sell anyone out, but maybe there'd be strength in numbers. Plus, Lola was a member of the inner circle. Phinn trusted her.

“Lola,” she answered reluctantly.

“She should have explained to you that the burden is for everyone to carry. We require other forms of protection.
Especially with new recruits who could bring diseases to the island.”

“I don't have any diseases,” Wylie was quick to say.

“I know. My point is, we have to be careful. We have to take every precaution. And that includes monitoring all the girls and making sure they're on the Pill. Can I tell you a story?”

Wylie nodded.

“I was a kid the first time I saw the
parvaz
field. My mom and I stumbled across it together on a walk through the island, just a couple weeks after we got here. I was about five. Old enough to remember a few things about our old life on the mainland. We stood by this willow tree, blown away by the whole thing. I don't have too many memories of her, but I remember she had this unquenchable sense of adventure. Anyway, she let me run around the field by myself. I was so little, I got lost in the flowers. It's like a maze out here. I could hear her yelling my name and I would yell back, ‘Mommy,' but she couldn't find me in the dark. And then after a while, she stopped yelling. Finally, I made it back to the willow tree, but she wasn't there anymore. I was by myself, in the dark, for hours. My mom and dad didn't come back to find me until the sun came up the next morning. I'd never been more afraid in my life.

“They failed me that night. They left me. And then they left me for good when they died. No one on this island is capable of being a parent, and I won't let another little kid go through what I did.”

Wylie nodded. She thought back to being at her dad's
office and seeing him with a woman who wasn't her mom. She remembered feeling like he'd failed their entire family as she made her way down the office hallway and back to the elevator.

“I'm really sorry they put you through that,” Wylie said.

“Wylie,” Phinn said. “I'd like to renege on our deal. I don't want to be friends. I really like you.” Wylie could feel her skin tingling just from being near him.

Phinn carefully lifted her chin up and moved his face toward hers.
Let him kiss you
, Wylie thought to herself.
Don't say another word. Let him do it
. But just as their lips were about to meet, Wylie pulled away.

“I don't want to kiss you under false pretenses,” she blurted. “There's some things you need to know about me.”

Phinn nodded, slightly unnerved. “I'm listening.”

He sat down and leaned against the trunk of the weeping willow. He patted the ground and Wylie sat as close to him as possible. She took a deep breath.

“It happened a year ago. . . .”

truth and consequences

every
time Wylie relived the night of the accident in her head, it felt like she was back there again. It didn't matter that Phinn held her hand for moral support or that she had a view of the ocean and a field of
parvaz
flowers; she still felt like she'd time traveled to that harsh winter night in the Hamptons. More than a year had passed, but it was a memory she would never escape. And so, as she recounted the details to Phinn, she was transported to an entirely different island.

CHRISTMAS IN MONTAUK ALWAYS FELT WRONG TO Wylie, but her parents insisted every year that they get out of Manhattan to spend a week in their Long Island beach house. Most families left town for fancy ski resorts or
warmer climates and saved visits to the Hamptons for the summer.
That's exactly why we're going there now,
Wylie's dad would tell them.
To enjoy the peace and quiet.

The beach house was a time-share split among several families from their Upper East Side neighborhood. None of the objects inside held any special significance to the Daltons. It didn't matter that Wylie and her brothers wanted to wake up on Christmas morning in their own bedrooms and open presents in their own living room. Maura wouldn't hear of it. Wylie had noticed her parents were a little gentler with each other when they weren't cooped up in the brownstone. The ceilings were higher, and the house got more light. Wylie always hoped the holiday would bring them closer together.

That particular Christmas, Joshua was the most adamant about wanting to stay in the city over the holidays. He told his parents that in a couple of years, Wylie would leave for college, which made it all the more important to spend the holidays together in the home they'd grown up in, but that was just an excuse. Wylie knew the real reason Joshua wanted to stay in Manhattan was because he couldn't stand to be away from Abigail for more than a few days. For Wylie, the only bonus to going to Montauk was that she could spend some quality time with her brother without his girlfriend clinging to him. She liked Abigail a lot, but whenever the three of them hung out, she felt like a third wheel. Kids at school even referred to them as “Jabigail” behind their backs.

Wylie knew for a fact that if Abigail were around, there would have been no persuading her brother to go to some
random party in the Hamptons. It was pure luck that she'd been invited to the party in the first place. The morning after Christmas, Wylie decided to brave the cold to go for a walk. The beach was frigid and uninviting, and she considered turning around when she noticed two guys about her age roasting marshmallows over a small bonfire. Their names were Matt and Tyler and they were cousins. Tyler's family had a vacation home just a few miles away. Both sets of parents had gone to Europe for the holidays, and the boys had talked them into letting them stay in the beach house on their own.

“We're having a house party tonight for all the kids who are stuck out here,” they told her. “Bring anyone you want.”

“I don't want to go hang out with a bunch of people we don't know,” Joshua said when she mentioned the invite. “Let's just stay in and watch a movie. Dad brought
Raiders of the Lost Ark
.”

“Please,” Wylie begged. “Think of it as practice for all those campaign fund-raisers you'll have to attend when you run for president. You have to get used to dazzling people you don't know. Even Micah wants to go, and he hates strangers. Right, Micah?”

“I don't hate strangers. I hate people,” Micah responded, barely looking up from his phone.

“Going to some high school party in the Hamptons isn't going to help me become a politician. Try again.”

Wylie debated whether going to the party was worth offering to be the designated driver. Would she even have fun with a bunch of randoms if she had to suffer through it sober? Yes, she told herself. She refused to be one of those
people who always needed alcohol to have a good time.

“Fine. I'll be the designated driver.”

Joshua smiled. “What time do we leave?”

They waited for their parents to retire to their bedroom and swiped the keys to Gregory's brand-new Mercedes. Wylie had gotten her learner's permit months before, but she generally preferred Joshua to drive them around. He didn't even have his permit, but he was a much more capable driver than his sister.

As they zipped their down jackets, Wylie suddenly got an inexplicable urge to nix the party and stay in watching movies. Maybe it was all the layers she was wearing or the recent snowfall outside, but the idea of driving in that weather didn't sound very appealing. But then she heard her parents fighting and decided staying home was no longer an option. Plus, the most epic evenings always seemed to happen when going out felt like a chore. The pull to stay in was probably a sign that they were about to have one of those nights they'd spend the next week reminiscing about.
Remember when you said this? Remember when we did that? That. Night. Was. So. Crazy
.

The drive to the party went smoothly. Wylie didn't even get annoyed when she noticed Joshua squeezing the door handle and slamming an imaginary brake with his foot every time he told her to slow down. They made it to the house without incident and only traded places behind the wheel so Joshua could parallel park the car for her. Wylie and Micah shivered in the snow as they helped him maneuver the car into a tiny space between two giant SUVs.

Wylie linked arms with both brothers as they walked up
the path to the house. The front lawn was already littered with red plastic cups, and a few drunken partygoers were filtering out to return to their vacation homes.

“Can we stick together tonight?” Micah asked. “I don't want to be abandoned with a bunch of people I don't know.”

“Of course,” Wylie reassured him. “I won't leave your side.”

It was just one in the string of promises she would unintentionally break throughout the evening. The moment they entered the front door, Wylie was swept away by Matt and Tyler. They looked a lot cuter without their winter layers and snow hats, and she could tell from the minute they dragged her into the kitchen and offered to include her in a round of shots that they were competing for her affection. It was cute and flattering, and maybe, just maybe, she'd let one of them kiss her at some point.

Joshua and Micah made a beeline for the alcohol. Wylie introduced herself to Matt and Tyler's friends and kept the small talk going until her brothers were out of the kitchen. As soon as they ventured into the living room, she toasted her new friends with a tequila shot. If she had a shot or two now and stuck to water for the rest of the night, then she'd be fine to drive home. And worst-case scenario, they could always Uber. When Matt and Tyler launched into a drunken debate about their favorite NFL quarterbacks (Tom Brady versus someone she couldn't remember), any interest Wylie had in a potential hook-up vanished, but at least their argument gave her a chance to mingle.

Wylie walked into the living room to discover that an impromptu dance party had formed, and Joshua was
hamming it up in the center of it. Micah stood on the outskirts of the circle and bopped his head awkwardly to the beat. Wylie hurried over and pulled him into the middle of the dance circle with her. At first Micah stood completely still, but then he seemed to realize it didn't matter what anyone at the party thought of them, and started jumping up and down like he was in a mosh pit.

Wylie couldn't remember at what point she abandoned the dance floor to stand in line to do a keg stand in the kitchen, but her legs were suddenly in the air as everyone yelled, “Chug, chug, chug!”
This is fine
, she told herself. They would take an Uber home and drive the Honda back in the morning before their parents were awake to pick up her dad's car. After she couldn't keep down any more beer, Wylie just barely managed to keep her balance as she lowered her feet to the ground. Even if these people were virtual strangers, she still didn't want to fall on her ass in front of them.

The rest of the party was a blur. Someone handed her a Jell-O shot and she swallowed it without using her hands. Anytime a good song burst through the speakers, she squealed excitedly and returned to the dance floor. She and Joshua played on opposing flip cup teams, and she brought her team to victory when she finished her beer before he did.

“It's cool,” she told her brother after she high-fived her teammates. “We'll take an Uber home.”

“It's Montauk. It'll take forever to get anyone here,” Joshua responded, annoyed.

“Then I'll request one now. By the time it gets here, we'll be ready to take off.”

Wylie took her phone out of her purse and fumbled with the passcode. Before she could manage to punch it in correctly, someone screamed the word everyone dreaded hearing at a party:

“
Cops!
”

It was a widely known fact that the police were brutal when it came to underage drinking on Long Island. Wylie and her brothers had heard enough stories about kids spending the night in the drunk tank to know they needed to get out of Dodge—immediately. Wylie grabbed her coat and didn't even bother to say good-bye to Matt and Tyler as they ran through the backyard. She and her brothers circled to the front of the house and ran to their car as fast as they could with alcohol in their systems and an inch of snow now on the ground.

Apparently at some point during the party, Wylie had told three other girls they could share a ride home with them, and somehow in the pandemonium, the girls had followed them to their car. The Daltons couldn't abandon them, but there was no time to wait for a car service. Micah was the most sober of the bunch, but he had never driven before in his life. The sirens of another cop car approached in the distance and Wylie quickly tried to get behind the wheel, but stumbled and fell as she opened the door.

“Joshua,” Wylie said, slurring his name as it came out, “can you drive us?”

Joshua was incredulous. “I just drank a beer in that flip cup game.”

“Okay, but how many drinks did you have total?”

“I don't know. Three?”

“We're not that far from home. You can handle it. You're a way better driver than I am.”

The siren got closer. Joshua grabbed the keys from Wylie's hand and got behind the wheel. Micah sat shotgun, while the party stragglers and Wylie climbed into the backseat. It was a tight squeeze, and to complicate matters, the strays they'd picked up admitted they were visiting friends in the area and weren't entirely sure how to get back to their house. One of the girls searched for the address on her phone, while Joshua drove off, to at least get them away from the cops. With any luck, they'd still be home by midnight to rummage through the leftovers in the fridge and take turns curating their favorite YouTube videos. Finally, after about twenty minutes of aimless driving, one of the stragglers recognized the street they'd turned onto.

“This it is!” the girl screamed. “Just another mile down this road and we'll be there.”

Everyone cheered. Wylie turned up the radio to celebrate. The heat was on high in the car, and she started to feel trapped in the backseat with three other girls. She leaned into the front seat and pushed the button to open the sunroof.

“Wylie, sit down,” Joshua screamed at her.

The brisk air seeped into the car as the sunroof opened. Wylie leaned half her body out of the car and raised her arms in the air. Wylie's brothers grasped at her legs, yelling at her to get back in the car, but she wanted to enjoy the freedom for just a few more seconds. It was then that the headlights of a car in the neighboring lane washed over her.

The Mercedes hit a patch of ice. Under normal
circumstances, without his sister halfway outside of the car, and no beer in his system, Joshua would have been able to remain in control. He was always a cautious driver, but the car veered into the other lane and collided with the oncoming vehicle. The three strangers in the backseat pulled Wylie in right before the collision and saved her life. The girl in the other car wasn't so lucky.