Stranger With My Face

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Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Q&A with the Author

My name is Laurie Stratton. I’m seventeen
years old, and I live at the Cliff House on the northern tip of Brighton Island.

My parents moved here with me when I was four. My father is a science fiction writer, and my mother is an artist, so this out-of-the-mainstream existence suits them. They bought
this house from the descendants of the Brighton family, who at one time owned the island, and had it remodeled to fit their
needs. Except for an occasional trip down to the village for groceries and mail, they seldom leave the house and almost never
leave the island.

“Why go back to the rat race on the mainland,” asks Dad, “when we have everything we need right here?”

There was a time when I, too, loved Cliff House. It’s perched on a ledge of rock that hangs out over the ocean, and from the
balcony off my bedroom I can look out into forever. In the summer the skies are such a brilliant blue that they seem to have
been painted on cardboard, and the water varies from light blue to dark blue, to aqua, to emerald green. The island is fun
in the summer. The cottages at the south end fill up with vacationers, and the Yacht Club has sailing races, and the Tennis
Club has tournaments, and students from Harvard and Yale and Princeton come swarming out from the mainland to compete for
jobs as lifeguards. The Brighton Inn has live music on the weekends, so there’s a place for dancing, and the roads are filled
with cyclists, and the beaches with picnickers, and the warm, sweet air with the sound of laughter and the smell of sunscreen.

In the winter the scene changes. The gray moves in, and with it, the cold. We have the place to ourselves then—my family and
I, and the people in the village.

It’s the villagers who gave our home its name. From the village you can look across the inlet and see it hanging out against
the sky like an extension of the cliff on which it stands. The Brightons designed the house so that every room, no matter
how small, has a window overlooking the sea. My mother’s studio is at the top of the house, angled so that it’s flooded with
north light, and my father’s office is downstairs off the kitchen. On the middle level is a huge, heavy-beamed living room
with a stone fireplace at the far end, and the three bedrooms climb the side of the house like stair steps, fitting the curve
of the cliff. The topmost room is mine—then comes my parents’—and the third, which was originally going to be a guest room
for agents and editors who come out from New York—belongs to my younger brother and sister.

“If we had expected them, we would have made better arrangements,” my mom always says with a laugh, because I was supposed
to have been an only child.

So I live at the Cliff House with my parents, and with my brother, Neal, who is eleven, and my sister, Megan, who is eight.

And with someone else.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her, but I know she’s here. In bed at night, above the sound of the surf on the rocks
beneath my window, I hear very faintly the rustle of her passage down the hall. She moves softly, but I can hear, for I’m
used to the sound of her.

She pauses outside my door.

In my dreams I hear her voice. But are they dreams? Or in the months since I saw her last has her voice become so slight that
this is the only way she can reach me?

I blame you,
she whispers.
Only you
.

I’m not afraid of her any more, but her presence here disturbs me. Even the beauty of the ocean is no solace. I stand at the
window and stare out at the sun-dappled waves of the summer sea, and I brace myself as though against an icy wind.

My parents worry about me. They don’t understand what’s happened. Of the three people I could talk to, two are gone, and the
third is very young.

I’ll be leaving soon too. That’s why I’m writing this. When I go I want to leave it all behind me—Cliff House, my memories
and
her.
To do that, though, I have to pour the story from my mind into another vehicle first.

I don’t have my father’s talent for writing. That went to Megan, just as my mother’s artistic talent went to Neal. But since
there is no one here I can talk to, I have no choice but to set my tale down on paper.

I hope I can finish before September. . . .

That was the beginning. September one year ago.

I awoke that particular morning with a question in my mind—
Am I going to make it?

I lay there for a while, considering, almost afraid to test myself. Then, very slowly, I sat up. Nothing happened. I swung
my legs over the side of the bed and hoisted myself gingerly to my feet.

Still, nothing. The room remained stable. My stomach didn’t leap and lurch. My mouth tasted normal.

So Mom had been right after all, and the horrible nausea I suffered the day before had been nothing more than one of those
twenty-four-hour viruses! It was over. I was fine. I would be able to go to the first day of school.

I crossed the room, wobbling a little with that leftover weakness that always follows a round of the stomach flu, and went
out onto the balcony. It was like stepping into a bath of golden light; the sunlight seemed to be pouring in from every direction.
Overhead the sky was a radiant, piercing blue, and the salt breeze still smelled like summer. The water was so calm and clear
I felt as though I could look straight down through it to the sand floor below.

It seemed impossible that fall was officially here!

In every girl’s life, I guess, there must be one special summer that’s a turning point, a time of stretching and reaching
and blossoming out and leaving childhood behind. This had been the summer that had happened to me. The year before, I had
been awkward and gawky, all pointed knees and sharp elbows and bony rib cage, hiding my shyness behind a book while girls
like Natalie Coleson and Darlene Briggs wriggled around in their bikinis and got boys to buy them drinks and rub them with
sunscreen.

This summer it had all been different. The first day I walked out onto the beach, clutching my book and my beach towel, I
heard a whistle.

At first I didn’t believe it was for me.

Then somebody called, “Hey, Laurie!” and I turned to see Darlene’s boyfriend, Blane Savage, grinning at me. Next to him, Gordon
Ahearn, who had been sprawled flat, soaking up sun, lifted his head to see what was going on.

“Hey, come on over here!” Blane called.

Slowly I walked over to stand in front of them. I was bewildered by the summons. I had seen Blane all year long in school, and he’d hardly bothered to speak to me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Just to say ‘hi,’” Blane said. His shoulders were white and freckled, and he looked a lot less handsome in swim trunks than
he did with clothes on.

With Gordon, it was another thing entirely. His lean, well-muscled body seemed to keep a year-round tan. He shoved a lock
of blond hair back from his face and regarded me quizzically.

“Is that a new swimsuit?”

I shook my head. “It’s the same one I had last year.”

“Well,
some
thing looks different,” he said approvingly. “Why don’t you set up camp and stay a while? Want some lotion?”

“No, thanks,” I told him. “I never burn.”

Over by the base of the lifeguard tower, Natalie Coleson was talking and laughing with a bunch of the college kids who had
come over from the mainland on the ferry. Natalie had been Gordon’s prom date. She was really pretty and popular, but I noticed
that she had gained some weight over the winter. She was pretending to be caught up in conversation, but her eyes kept flicking
in my direction.

I glanced down at my own flat stomach (weight has never been one of my problems) and felt a sudden amazing surge of self-confidence.
It was a new feeling for me to like my looks and to realize that other people did too.

Carefully I spread my towel out on the sand next to Gordon’s and lowered myself onto it. The sun felt great on my back and
shoulders.

“Want a Coke?” Gordon asked me.

I never got around to doing any reading. I hardly picked up a book again that summer, with all the swimming and sailing, and
dances and beach parties and moonlit walks by the ocean.

I had my first kiss. Actually, that happened pretty fast. Gordon wasn’t a guy for playing games.

“You’ve got a sweet mouth,” he told me on our first date, “and I’m going to do something about it.”

He had a nice mouth too. And beautiful, sea green eyes, a strong face, and soft hair that kept getting lighter and lighter
under the summer sun until it became the unreal color of corn silk.

Going out with Gordon automatically made me a part of his crowd—Darlene and Blane, Natalie, Tommy Burbank, Rennie and Mary
Beth Ziegler, and the various others who came and went as the “cool” group changed boyfriends and girlfriends. At first the
girls snubbed me out of loyalty to Natalie. Soon, though, she zeroed in on one of the summer vacationers—Carl Something-or-Other—and
that eased the tension. Eventually she and I got to be pretty good friends. Or so I thought.

That was one reason I felt bad about missing the party.

Natalie’s father owned the Brighton Inn, and Nat had talked him into letting her throw an end-of-the-summer party there. Everybody
was excited about it, especially the girls, because it would give us a chance to dress up. There weren’t many such occasions,
since on the island everybody dressed casually for everything. I even got Mom to take me shopping on the mainland for a long
dress and matching high-heeled sandals.

And then I got sick.

The flu hit suddenly, and it knocked me out completely. It was crazy; that morning I was feeling great, and by midafternoon
I was sure I was going to die. I threw up everything I’d had to eat all day, and went in and fell onto the bed and didn’t
move again for hours. At about five I got myself up long enough to stagger to the phone and call to tell Gordon that I wouldn’t
be going to the party. He wasn’t home, and there is absolutely zero cell phone reception on the island because of some local
law about building towers, so I left the message with his mother, who was sweet and sympathetic.

“That’s such a shame, Laurie,” she said. “I know it won’t be nearly as much fun for Gordon if you’re not there.”

I hadn’t thought about Gordon going without me. If things had been reversed, I definitely wouldn’t have gone to a party while
he lay on his deathbed. At the same time, confronting the situation logically, it was silly to expect him to miss the final
get-together of the season.

“Tell him I’m really sorry,” I said, and then had to practically throw the receiver back on the hook as a wave of nausea came
sweeping over me. Mom found me in the bathroom and put me back to bed. I fully expected to stay there until Christmas.

Which was why I was so amazed now, just one day later, at how good I felt. I drew in a final long breath of sunny air and
left the balcony to get dressed.

“Are you sure you feel well enough for school?” Mom asked me worriedly as I came into the kitchen. “The first day can’t be
all that important, and you need to get your strength back.”

“I feel fine,” I told her.

Neal and Megan were seated at the kitchen table, licking the sugar off their cinnamon toast and messing around with their
cereal. I barely recognized them. All summer they had run around barefoot in swimsuits or cutoffs with their hair sticky with
salt and their arms and legs plastered with grains of sand. Now they were neatly dressed in their brand-new school clothes,
and Megan even had her hair curled.

“Laurie doesn’t want to miss the ferry ride,” she announced knowingly. “She’s afraid some other girl will sit with Gordon.”

There isn’t a school on the island, so the resident kids commute to the mainland by ferry. It’s a forty-minute ride each way,
and both the elementary and high schools are within walking distance of the landing. The ferry ride was fun, and as usual
when she made her smug, precocious remarks, Meg was right. I did want to make the ride with Gordon. The year before, I had been one of the loners, sitting with Neal
or Megan, or standing at the rail by myself or with somebody like Jeff Rankin, pretending it didn’t matter that the “in” crowd
was bunched together on the bow, laughing and joking around, oblivious to my existence.

This year it would be different. I had a place now, an identity. I was “Laurie Stratton, Gordon Ahearn’s girlfriend,” and
I would be there on the bow with the others, Gordon’s arm tossed casually around my shoulders as we shared the sea wind and
the blowing flecks of spray.

“I feel completely fine,” I said again to Mom, and to prove it I ate some breakfast—not a lot, but a few bites of toast and
some coffee. And then the kids and I set off for the ferry landing a half mile away.

The moment we were out the door, Neal took off like a bullet and was gone, streaking down Beach Road and disappearing around
a curve. Neal never walks anywhere if he can run. Meg is strong, but a little chunky, and I am thin, but lazy; so we just
sort of jogged along together, enjoying the morning, knowing that even if we were a few minutes late Neal would make them
wait for us.