“Shit, it’s late,” Keithley said. “We gotta get back.”

They gathered their things, waded through the shallows to the boat, and rode the calm waters back to Salvation Point. On the boat, Clive, too stoned to sit up, lay on the floor and let the wind blow over his open eyes as he stared up at the sky. New York was Edwin’s dream, and though he spoke of it as a place they would go to together, Clive sensed the unlikeliness of this; instead, Edwin’s desire for New York seemed to prefigure a future in which he would be left behind—on the island, and in the past.

For hours after that, until his grandmother woke him the next morning, he could feel Edwin’s fingers on his shoulder as if they were still there, like the ghost of someone who was already gone.

“WE LIMING on Faraway tonight,” Keithley declared as the boat sped away from shore one evening.

“We can’t,” Clive blurted out before he could stop himself.

“Why not?” Keithley asked.

Clive looked down at his hands. “You know why,” he mumbled. In his mind he saw her—the long black hair hiding her face. Hooves for feet.

Keithley clapped his hands in delight. “Goges, man, don’t tell me you still believe that old-folk fuckery.”

“But my great-auntie disappear there!”

“Who don’t have a great-auntie who disappear there?” Des said.

“Don’t stress, Gogo. If she turn you into a goat, we’ll set you up fine in my yard,” Don said.

“Beside, if that sket would choose any of we to lure away with she, it would be me,” Edwin said.

“Is that so?” Damien said.

“A lady all alone like that needs a man who can sort she out proper. Can I help it if all the ladies know I’m the only man for the job?”

As Keithley slowed the boat and guided it to shore, Clive was filled with an unease he felt helpless to counteract. The other boys climbed down the ladder and hopped into the shallows one by one. When it was his turn, Clive couldn’t move.

Then he heard Edwin’s voice in his ear. “It’s okay, man.”

“But my mum—”

He knew he should be past believing, but he couldn’t rid himself of the story. It was what he had of her; it was the pocket watch, Bible, lock of hair she’d left behind for him.

“To hell with she. You don’t need no mum. You have a brother.”

Clive climbed down into the water, with Edwin right behind him. The moon that night was so bright they didn’t even need the flashlights they’d brought. Beneath its light, the sand seemed to glow white—in his memory of it, it almost looked like snow. He hesitated again before he stepped ashore, shaken by the feeling that he was about to break something that could never be put back together. He glanced back at Edwin, who nudged him forward.

“Hurry up, you fools! We going to check out the goat lady’s watering hole or what?” Don called.

“Wait up!” Clive shouted. Together, he and Edwin sprinted up the sand.

It was one of those nights whose every pleasure is multiplied by all the future moments when, you imagine, you and your friends will gather and reminisce about it. They tramped through the jungle in the moonlight, casting behind them a trail of crisps bags and still-smoking roaches. When they came upon a goat, they shouted and chased it into the bush, whooping with delight. At the waterfall, they peeled off their shorts and cannonballed in. They swam and roughhoused and pulled off stunts—leaping from the highest rocks, pratfalling into the water, swimming under the falls’ churn and shouting “Fuck Daphne!” and “Fuck Joy!” and fuck all the other girls who wouldn’t fuck them into the obliterating roar. As the night rose, growing wilder and wilder still, Clive felt himself sending it all away—the stories and the ghosts. His mum.

Later, they returned to the beach. Too drunk to make their way back to the mainland, they lay down on the shore, using their balled-up shirts for pillows and letting the soft sand love their stoned, tingling skin as the sound of small waves rocked them to sleep. That was the night they had everything. The night they brought friendship to the divine edge.

And the girl was already there. As they leapt and roughhoused and plunged into that cool, clean water she was beneath them, at the bottom of the pool, waiting to undo them.

Tuition for Jayson and Stasia at Porter’s International School. A Manchester United jersey for Jayson. Stasia’s pink dress for prom. A satellite dish with eight hundred channels. Life insurance. Jemma’s salon visits. Her annual shopping trip to Saint Kitts. Bikes for Christmas. Our house in Crofton Hills. A loan to Don when he was hard up. A surprise trip to Kingston with Jayson to see Man-U play the Jamaican national team. Miss Verna to clean the house weekly. Jemma’s smooth hands. Stasia’s acne treatment. Jayson’s club football fees. The headstone for little Jamie’s grave, pure granite. The diamond on Jemma’s finger.

I used to feel mad guilty over all of it. We never could have lived this way if I didn’t start giving these tours. Pawning off my friendship with Edwin and Clive as secret insider information. Alison Thomas: Behind the Headlines, I call it. Ninety dollars a person, kids under twelve half price. On the tours, I’m careful to call it an unexplained death, not a murder. As if that makes what I’m doing any better.

I tried to stop once. I told Jemma it was dirty money and I had to put an end to it.

She took my face in her hands and made me look her right in the eyes. “Don’t you ever apologize for providing for this family. You’re a good man. You hear me, Desmond Phillips? You’re a good man leading a good life.”

I want to believe that.

If it weren’t me, I guess it would just be somebody else getting rich driving Yankees past the houses where Edwin and Gogo came up, and the building where Paulette’s used to be, and boating folks out to Faraway. But it’s not somebody else, it’s me. They were my brothers.

VOICES

My name is Alison Brianne Thomas. I am fifteen years old and this afternoon I ceased to be a virgin. I’ve been thinking that I should keep a record of my life so that someday when I’m completely bored with my suburban-lady existence, which I really hope I never have, I can listen to myself and remember what I used to be like and maybe I’ll shake some sense into myself or something. Anyway, I figure today is the perfect day to start.

The first thing you should know is that this afternoon you cut dance rehearsal. You put on a fantastic performance for Mrs. Conyers about your horrible period cramps, which you obviously didn’t have, and you went to Drew’s house. The crazy thing is, after all this time, we didn’t plan it. Today when I woke up I just felt different. I knew today was the day. Honestly? I didn’t really enjoy it. The actual act was sort of uncomfortable. But that’s fine. I’m not one of those idiots who thinks her first time has to be some perfect whatever. It’s knowing I’ve done it that matters.

Anyway, when it was over Drew kissed my neck all over. I love when he does that. It just … gets to me in the best way. He kept whispering over and over, “You’re so beautiful. You’re so beautiful.” Middle-aged Alison, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, I hope you have that. I mean, I’m not a dingbat, I know it probably won’t be with Drew. But I hope you have someone who feels that way about you. The neck kissing. I love that.

IT HAD taken my mother several weeks to make duplicates of the tapes and send them to me. I imagined her hovering over them, fretting about whether to grant my request. When I returned home from work one evening in early November and saw the box addressed to me in my mother’s handwriting in the building’s foyer, it took me a minute to realize what it was. Opening it up on my bed, I saw that there were dozens of tapes, many more than had expected. My mother had even taken the time to photocopy their labels, each one in my sister’s bubbly teenage penmanship: “Frosh,” “Sweet 16,” “Seniorz,” “Summah!” They were arranged in chronological order, beginning with “Fifteen” (the i dotted with a heart). At once, I put this tape into the dusty brown cassette player I’d purchased weeks earlier at a pawnshop on Flatbush Avenue and pressed play.