“Duty calls?”

“Nonstop till three.”

“What’s at three?”

“Break. I usually take it down there, past those rocks at the end of the beach.”

WHEN THE hour comes, her parents are snoozing away. She tells her sister she’s going to the bathroom. At the jagged black rocks that mark the end of Indigo Bay, she scrambles up and over, stumbling, then regaining her footing. She crests the rocks and sees Edwin sitting in the sand. He looks up.

“What are you doing here?” he says sternly. For a moment she worries she misunderstood. Then he tosses back his head and laughs.

“Ha ha,” she says. “You’re hysterical.”

The beach here isn’t groomed like it is around the resort. You can barely see the sand, it’s so covered in stuff: green beer bottles, nests of odorous seaweed studded with cigarette butts. Three tires tied together with yellow rope. An old cardboard campaign poster with a picture of a woman in a blazer, the blazer still bright red, the woman’s face so faded she looks like a ghost. She has to step carefully as she makes her way to him. He’s eating fried fish out of a grease-spotted paper bag and smoking a cigarette.

“You know those will kill you,” she says as she sits down beside him.

“Only if something else doesn’t kill me first.”

She nods at the cigarette with her chin. “May I?”

“I insist, miss.”

She rolls her eyes at this word. Miss. She likes the way he calls her this with a subversive smile, like they’re in on something together. He passes her the cigarette and she takes a slow, assured drag. As she exhales, she looks out at the water and tries to work her face into an expression that suggests she finds something very personally meaningful there. She passes the cigarette back to him.

“If you’re looking for something more, me and Gogo usually lime in the car park for a bit after work. Smoke some herb, you dig?”

“Oh, I dig.”

“Maybe we’ll see you there sometime.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Anyway, I should get back before they send out a search party.” She stands and brushes the sand from her legs.

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

She looks at her calf. She must have cut herself when she stumbled; a few long scratches bubble with red blood. She shrugs again.

“Tough girl.”

“Oh, yeah. So tough.”

“How did you get that?” He is pointing at her scar. She feels filled by a gust of bright wind. It is happening so right, his eyes riveted to the pink glaze on her stomach.

“I don’t like to talk about it.” It’s like the words find her. She turns and walks back the way she came. She doesn’t glance behind her once.

AT THE end of the day she makes her way to the parking lot. She finds Edwin and Clive leaning against a shabby, eggplant-colored car.

“Miss! What a fine surprise to see you here!” Edwin says.

She rolls her eyes. “Right. What a coincidence. What are you two upstanding gentlemen up to, I wonder?”

Clive stiffens.

Edwin slips a joint from his pocket. “Nothing much.” He twirls it in his fingers.

“Mind if I do nothing much with you?”

ALISON’S FATHER summons Edwin to their chairs.

“What can I be getting for you this afternoon?” Edwin asks.

“How’s the penne?” her father asks, which makes Alison want to crawl into a hole and die.

“Excellent, sir.”

They place their lunch orders.

“And to drink, a Red Stripe for me and a rum punch for my wife. Girls?” her father says.

“Sprite,” Claire says, then adds in a whisper, “with a cherry.”

“Your wish is my command, little miss. And you?” he says to Alison. He doesn’t use her name, as if he doesn’t know it.

“I’d love a daiquiri.”

“Virgin,” her father says.

“Of course,” Edwin says, at the same time as Alison says, “I thought that was implied, Dad.”

When Edwin returns with their order, Alison takes a delicate sip of her daiquiri. It’s full of rum. She looks at him. He has his eyes on her, steady. He puts her father’s tip in his back pocket and continues down the beach.

“I NEEDED that,” she says later, when she finds him beyond the black rocks.

“You’re most welcome, miss,” he says.

“Stop calling me that,” she says, and leans her body playfully against his.

It’s a clear day. Faraway Cay appears unsettlingly close.

“So how are you enjoying your holiday?”

“It’s fun I guess,” she says. “My parents are driving me nuts.”

“Family’s always that way. You need a break.”

“Seriously.”

“Come out tonight. With me and Gogo.”

“Out where?”

“We lime at a place in the Basin. We can pick you up in the car park. Eleven P.M. Just make sure it’s all right with your parents, okay, miss?” His eyes twinkle.

“Right. I’ll be sure to secure their permission.”

“You’ll come, then?”

A hermit crab scuttles across the sand. She picks it up and holds the shell close to her lips, then blows gently across the opening, drawing its legs out into the air.

“We’ll see,” she says, with a sly smile she thinks irresistible on her lips. She stands and begins to walk away. When she reaches the rocks, she glances back. He has his eyes on her, watching her go.

ONCE HER sister is asleep, she changes out of her pajamas and into the outfit she decided on that afternoon, her yellow dress with the plunging neckline. She glances one last time at her sleeping sister before closing the door quietly behind her and stepping out into the warm night. The resort late at night is a vacant place—lounge chairs stacked six feet high on the sand, the fertile scent of washed clay rising from the tennis courts, everything dark save the dim illumination of lanterns along the gravel footpaths. The water has changed, too; the ocean is glossy and black as oil, the pool glows ghostly green. Every surface echoes her nervy energy back at her.

She can hear the distant sounds of chatter and merriment at the hotel bar. So satisfied with their margaritas and Marley. She imagines Connecticut sitting at the bar, looking over his shoulder frequently to see if she’s coming. She feels his lips on her neck, dry and nice like warm stones. She sees his blue eyes under the thick fringe of his lashes. She shakes the image away. It is to be expected, this residue of desire, this lazy craving.

What does she want from tonight? She’s not totally sure. She knows only that she wants these men to take her somewhere new, out past the familiar borders of her life. She is only waiting in the parking lot a few minutes when the eggplant-colored car pulls in.

“Look who decided to grace us with she presence,” Edwin says.

“It was a tough decision. There are so many fun things to do at the hotel at night.”

She climbs in the backseat. The car smells strongly of body odor and air freshener. The seats are upholstered, and the fabric is held together with tape where it has ripped open to reveal beige foam. In her head, she’s sitting on her bed in her dorm room, telling Nika, Then I snuck out with them and we went to this great local dive. She loves the feeling that she is doing something she probably shouldn’t with men who scare her a little. Life is about escalation: men instead of boys; a wilder wild night; more and more and more. In her mind, she sends the image of her in the car with these men to Drew. He sees her and is worried, and his worry makes her swoon and long for him. But the feeling passes quickly, and then she pities him. She has left him so far behind that he is nothing but a nice little memory. Besides, what could possibly happen to her on a tiny island where everyone knows everyone?

“What’s this place we’re going to?” she asks.

“Paulette’s,” Edwin says. “Best dance spot on the island.”

“Do you dance, Clive?” she asks playfully.

Edwin palms Clive’s head with his hand and rubs it. “Gogo’s a fantastic dancer. Just you wait to see his moves. Isn’t that so, mate?”

Clive turns to look back at her and makes an expression that is a smile but not really.

Paulette’s is more of a shack, honestly, the exterior strung with orange Christmas lights. Inside, there is a plank floor covered in sawdust, speakers spitting tinny music, the smells of sweat and liquor, an old mutt sniffing the ground for scraps. There are maybe twenty people, some dancing but most just talking. Alison sees a woman she thinks she recognizes as a waitress at the resort restaurant, but she isn’t positive—black people do look similar to her; it’s embarrassing but it isn’t her fault, is it, that she’s been raised in a white place and made white friends and had sex with exclusively white men? Well, three of them, anyway.

Nobody seems surprised to see her here with Edwin and Clive. It occurs to her she is probably not the first girl from the resort they’ve brought here, but did she think she was? She did not. She isn’t an idiot.

“I’ll get drinks,” Edwin says. “You keep the Goges company.”