“Am not. The water’s just looking nice today.”

“Gogo has to go see he baby boy and take the shit from he lady,” Edwin says with a gleam in his eye.

“You have a kid?” she says. She’s been hanging out with them for days and this is the first she’s heard of any baby. The information tickles her. In her head, she tells Nika, Then Clive had to go take care of his son, as if it doesn’t ruffle her at all.

Clive’s face has gone blank. Maybe he doesn’t care about the kid. Or maybe he does care about him and he’s ashamed to be standing here getting stoned with Edwin and some girl while his child waits for him and he doesn’t want to think about it.

“He’ll make three soon,” he says softly.

“Wait. Are you married?”

Clive shakes his head.

“Relax, Goges.” Edwin claps a hand on his friend’s big shoulder. “If Sara never consents to marry you, more time to lime with me.”

Clive nods, his face empty. She can hardly bear it, and at the same time cannot look away from it, his gentle, pained way of being in the world; he reminds her, in a way, of Claire.

She touches his arm. “She don’t know what she’s missing.”

“She don’t know what she’s missing. You’re turning into a proper island girl, now,” Edwin says.

EVERY NIGHT, after her sister is asleep, she crosses the dark resort grounds and meets them in the parking lot and they drive to Paulette’s Place, where they drink and smoke and she and Edwin dance while Clive stands near them on the dance floor, bouncing his large body not quite to the beat. At times it seems clear to her what Edwin wants—he flirts, manufactures opportunities to touch her. One night, his crotch grazes her hip as they dance and she feels that he is hard. Her skin turns to gooseflesh. His erection scares her. Well, Drew’s scared her, too, at first, didn’t it? Connecticut’s hand on her thigh scared her. But she knows it is not the same.

Suddenly she sees John the gardener’s face—his soft lamb’s-wool hair, his dark skin. Is that all this is, what she’s doing with Edwin? An attempt to absolve her frightened child self? And she still can’t do it. She feels him against her and she tenses.

But nothing comes of it. When the song ends, he buys her another round at the bar, complimenting Paulette on her dress while they wait. He is loose and jovial again, as if their pressed-together dancing didn’t happen. She is starting to see something new about him, a controlled aspect simmering just beneath his charming surface. The moves he makes—letting her feel his hardness, then striking up a conversation with Paulette when she fully expected him to lead her off to some dark corner—seem, beneath the offhandedness with which he executes them, studied, like there is nothing he says or does that he hasn’t thought through. Maybe this will go where she thinks it’s going. Or maybe nothing will happen. When she considers this possibility she is humiliated but also, in some way, relieved.

ON A rainy day, after picking up a puka shell necklace for Claire at the gift shop, Alison finds Edwin taking his break behind the restaurant. “No beach today?” she asks.

“Can’t.” He points out to the black rocks. Waves crash against them, sending spray high into the air and blocking the path to his usual spot.

“We could swim there,” Alison says.

“You crazy? Look at that water.”

“Bet you two joints I can do it. Around the rocks, to the beach, and back.”

“I’m not betting your death sentence, miss,” he says with a laugh.

“Suit yourself.” She walks down to the water. She peels off her tank top and shimmies out of her shorts, revealing the new bikini she got for this trip, blue with white flowers.

“What are you doing?”

She dives in. The waves are swollen, but it isn’t as bad as it looks from shore; besides, she’s a strong swimmer. She strokes through the waves, keeping her head when she sees them rise up above her. When she is out past the rocks she begins to arc around. She swims until her limbs are stiff with exhaustion and every part of her tastes salt. She loves this feeling, the rush of hanging off the edge of your comfort zone but still knowing you have a solid grip on it. When she returns to shore she hands Edwin a shard of green sea glass.

“Proof,” she gasps, breathing hard but trying not to show it.

That afternoon in the parking lot, he gives her the two joints she has won. “I think I’ve been underestimating you,” he says.

“Is that right?”

He nods. “You’re a dangerous girl.”

ON THE last night of vacation, she can’t help herself. She goes looking for Connecticut. She finds him by the pool. He wears khaki slacks and a blue-and-white-checked shirt. He is freshly showered. His blond hair still holds narrow ridges from the tines of a comb.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

She reaches into the pocket of her jean skirt. “Want to?” she says, revealing the joint in her palm. Easiest thing in the world. Connecticut goes over to the bar and grabs one of the Indigo Bay matchbooks from the glass bowl. She leads him to the parking lot. She puts the joint to her lips. He strikes the match. When she exhales, she coughs.

“You okay?” he asks, a hand to her back, a show of rather than actual concern—he is a good guy and wants her to know it. It’s nice, though, his hand there.

She nods and passes the joint to him.

“How’d you manage to get this?”

“Let’s just say I have my ways.”

He leans closer, whispers in her ear, “I like your ways.” He kisses her neck. Her body shivers, but she shakes the pleasure away. When they have finished the joint, she drops the roach on the ground.

“You’re really not going to tell me where you got it?”

“Well…,” she says.

“So secretive, Alison.” He twists a strand of her hair around his finger.

“It’s no big deal, really. Edwin gave it to me.” She says it like it is the least interesting fact in the world.

“Oh,” he says, stiffening. “Well, lucky us. We’ll have to thank him.” He pulls her hair away from the back of her neck and kisses her again.

“I have to go,” she says. She pecks him, quick and delicate, on the lips.

“Come on, why don’t you—”

“Shhh,” she says. She is the star in a script she knows by heart. “Later. I’ll find you.”

She begins to walk away, but he holds on to her hand.

“Where?” he asks.

She smiles coyly. “I promise.”

DOES ALISON seem awful to you? I admit that, as I channel my sister, I sometimes have an urge to shake her. I find her incessant judginess toward our parents and her fellow resort guests self-righteous and bratty, especially the judgments she renders on the blond boy, who is practically her double: bright, privileged, attractive, and tasteful enough to know to be self-deprecating about such things. Equally frustrating is the way she exempts Edwin and Clive from her judgment. How desperate she is for their approval, their special attentions, how badly she needs them to know that she is more than, better than, all the basically decent people from her world.

What I can’t figure out: Was Alison insufferable in a perfectly ordinary teenage way, or was something darker at play? Was her behavior typical or troubling? What destiny lay ahead of her as she toyed with the blond boy and danced at Paulette’s Place and swam out beyond the black rocks in the rain-swelled surf? Who was she?

AS THE eggplant-colored Vauxhall Astra (how she loves that name!) rumbles down Mayfair Road, she sees her last night on Saint X spread above her like a sky dense with stars. She feels the night’s promise in the itch of the upholstery against the backs of her thighs and in “Boombastic” blasting from the radio. She wears a turquoise halter top and a short jean skirt; she is an island girl, flying away from Connecticut at the speed of light. I think I’ll stay in tonight. Honestly, Nika? These campus parties just feel very tame to me lately.

It is hot inside Paulette’s Place. Sweat gleams on skin. “Buy me a drink,” she tells them. She takes a shot of rum, then another, and struts onto the dance floor. She sways her hips and presses up against Edwin, then spins away to uncertain Clive, back and forth. Irresistible. She sees herself from outside herself, from somewhere up in the mantle of stars, like the story of her life is already burned in light and she has only to navigate by it to make herself into herself.

Once Clive is a few drinks in he is not so hesitant. When she dances with him, he holds her hips.

“Check you out, Goges!” Edwin hoots.

Clive grins.

She winks at Edwin and moves in closer to Clive.