Jessie pauses and reads through the letter. She wonders if she has talked too much about Pick. Will Tiger be able to tell that she has a crush on Pick? She never understood the term crush before, but now it makes sense because every cell in Jessie’s body feels like it’s being squeezed; her heart is like an orange pressed into the knuckle of the juicer until all of the emotion oozes out.

I start my tennis lessons tomorrow morning. I would say I’m dreading it but I know you are facing a lot worse things than three hours on hot clay smacking balls over a net. I miss you, Tiger. Please stay safe.

Love, Messie

Magic Carpet Ride

Kirby is the last girl to arrive at the house on Narragansett Avenue for the summer, Evan O’Rourke informs her. Evan is Alice O’Rourke’s bachelor nephew, a balding forty-year-old with a paunch who’s wearing white shirtsleeves, brown pants, and brown oxford loafers despite the June heat.

Kirby is still smarting from her interaction with Dr. Frazier. She has been replaying the conversation again and again, trying to interpret Dr. Frazier’s facial expression and tone of voice. Do your parents know about this?

Dr. Frazier had asked Kirby the exact same question the first time they met.

Evan tells Kirby that he lives in the basement apartment of the house and manages things for his aunt Alice, who is almost completely deaf and has cataracts.

Kirby decides it might not be a bad idea to give Evan a glimpse of her charming side. “Well, your aunt certainly is lucky to have you.”

Evan turns scarlet. He follows Kirby up two flights of stairs—which allows him to glimpse more than just Kirby’s charm—and she can see that this job probably affords Evan all the excitement he can handle. By the time they reach the attic room, he’s flushed.

“You’re in luck,” he says. “The girl who was living here didn’t like being on a floor by herself, so she moved down to the room that was supposed to be yours, which is the size of a telephone booth. So now you get this room, which has a double bed. And your own sink.”

“It’s grand,” Kirby announces. The attic room is, as one might expect, spacious and dusty. The sides of the room slant with the roof, but there is still sufficient space for a double bed, a dresser, a wardrobe, a standing fan whose steel blades create a welcome breeze, and the promised sink with a tiny round mirror nailed above it. There’s also one window that looks like it opens onto a lower portion of the roof. Magnificent.

“I love it,” Kirby says. Evan sets down her big suitcase and Kirby puts down her duffel and places her prize possession—a portable Silvertone record player—on the bed. “My father has paid the rent, correct?”

“Correct,” Evan says. “You also get breakfast every day except for Sunday. The shower and toilet are on the second floor, shared by three other girls.”

“Women,” Kirby says.

“Are you a feminist, then?” Evan asks. Suddenly, he looks intrigued. Maybe he’s wondering if Kirby is into free love, if she ever goes without a bra, if she has shed the sexual inhibitions that shackled girls who grew up in the 1950s.

Of course Kirby is a feminist! She has been somewhat promiscuous in the past (before Officer Scottie Turbo, she had two other lovers), though after what happened this spring, she has vowed to wait for love before jumping in the sack with someone again. She will never, ever sleep with Evan O’Rourke. But she can have some fun with him, maybe.

“Do you smoke grass, Evan?” she asks.

He looks startled and Kirby wonders if she misread him. Maybe he’ll ask Kirby to leave the house before she unpacks a single miniskirt. She will have to ask Rajani for a place to stay after all. Or she will be forced to spend the summer on Nantucket with Exalta, Kate, and Jessie. Unthinkable. When, when, when will she learn to keep her mouth shut?

Suddenly, Evan breaks out into a lopsided grin. “On occasion,” he says. “Though technically, smoking in the house is forbidden. Also forbidden are alcohol consumption and guests of the opposite sex.”

“All of that forbidden?” Kirby asks. No wonder David wrote the check so readily; he must have confirmed this place was a convent. “Really, Evan?” She reaches out to touch Evan’s hand, which is as pale as pudding. He jumps and Kirby pulls back; the last thing she wants is to give poor Evan an erection.

“Well, technically,” Evan says.

“What about music?” Kirby asks. “Is music allowed?”

“As long as it’s not too loud,” Evan says.

Kirby purses her lips. She’ll break Evan in slowly. She unzips her duffel. “I brought only six records,” she says. It took Kirby hours to choose the six, which were all that would fit in her bag; in the end, she decided it was most important to have an album for different moods: jubilance, anger (personal and political), hope (personal and political), heartbreak, mellow introspection, and rainy day/Sunday. Optimistic, she pulls out The Second. “How do you feel about Steppenwolf?”

A few minutes later, Kirby and Evan O’Rourke are on the roof, lying back and propping themselves up on their elbows, stoned out of their minds; John Kay wails in the background. The roof has a tremendous view of Circuit Avenue, Ocean Park, Vineyard Sound. Evan is far more tolerable to Kirby in her present condition.

“I’ve got a job cleaning rooms at the Shiretown Inn,” Kirby says.

“That’s in Edgartown,” Evan says. “Do you have a car?”

“No car,” Kirby says.

“A bike?”

“No bike,” Kirby says. “And no money to buy a bike, even secondhand.”

“So how will you go back and forth to Edgartown?” Evan asks.

“I thought maybe I’d walk?” Kirby says.

Evan breaks out in a fit of giggles. If Kirby closed her eyes, she would swear he was a ten-year-old girl.

“It’s too far to walk,” Evan says. “Three miles, at least.”

“Three miles isn’t that far,” Kirby says, though her heart sinks. She’s used to Nantucket, where there is only one town. On Martha’s Vineyard, there are six towns, some of them quite distant from here. She vaguely knew this, but she hadn’t given any thought to the reality of her commute. “What will I do?”

“You’ll have to hitchhike,” Evan says. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t have any trouble.”