Page 29 of Dead of Summer
“But I still want to doourplan,” Orla said when her dad left. She had come around to the idea of New York. The idea of David and her being together had taken hold of her fully. “We’ll go to school in the fall and get an apartment. We’ll do all the things you said.”
“You don’t understand.” Alice finally looked at her, frustrated. “I can’t.”
“What are you talking about? Yes, you can. You have to.” Orla began to panic. Without Alice there was nothing. No apartment. No art school. No David.
“No, Orla. You don’t get it. Do you know how much money art school costs?” Alice twisted on the bench to look back toward her mom.She stood off to the side of the gathering drinking a plastic cupful of wine and talking with the dad of one of their school friends. Her thin dress flapped in the breeze. She looked even frailer than normal, Orla noted, her face drawn.
Alice shook her head, dejected. “My dad left, so I’ll need to help my mom. Somehow.”
“Oh my god, when?”
“Memorial Day weekend. He got on the ferry and just didn’t come back. My mom has been so depressed. She barely gets out of bed except to go down to the liquor store.”
“I’m so sorry.” Orla leapt up and hugged her friend, relief spreading through her. All the feelings she’d been having about Alice betraying her were wrong. This was the reason she’d been acting strangely. It wasn’t Orla. And most important, it wasn’t David.
“She’ll be okay, I think. Don’t worry about me, though. Like I said, new plan.”
Alice looked down at her plate. To one side, Orla’s parents conversed with a group of locals next to the grill. Orla couldn’t imagine what Alice must be going through.
“What do you mean?” Orla asked, confused. Alice had turned back into that enigmatic girl from the bonfire, the one she hardly knew.
“There are other ways of making it besides school, you know?” Alice said, giving Orla a little wink.
“Like what? There’s no job you can get around here that will pay us enough for college, not without a degree,” Orla protested.
“Who said it was a job?” Alice said cryptically.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Orla said, getting frustrated.
“Oh, Orla, sometimes you are just so… young.”
Orla had pulled back, stung by Alice yet again.
“When you know the right people and they can put you in touch with whoever you want, you can skip all the other stuff.” Alice said it as though explaining to someone much younger than her.
“But I thought you wanted to go to school.”
“I want to draw. And I want to be successful at it. But honestly? School has always just been a means to an end.” She flipped her hair away from her face, a gesture Orla hadn’t seen before.
“And how are we going to meet people like that on Hadley?” Orla said, unconvinced.
“You haven’t been paying attention, Orla,” Alice had said in that newly adult voice, thin with impatience. Orla looked up to see David crossing the field toward them. “It’s summer. There are influential people everywhere. If you know how to look for them.”
A loud bang vibrates through the house. Orla’s eyes fly open. Her body startles into a sitting position on the sofa. She thrashes, struggling to unwind her legs from the blanket as the pounding starts back up, incessant, coming from the front of the house. She turns her head to the front door. It rattles again as whoever is out there slams their fist to it frantically.
Orla’s body goes rigid. She’s left a lamp on in the corner of the room. It was meant to comfort her but now she feels exposed; the light spilling through the too-sheer curtains would have already given her away. Orla pictures the rigid form of the woman. The thin legs and oversize coat. The damp curls spilling from inside the hood. She’ll be standing on the front steps. Waiting for her.
Orla drops onto the floor sick with fear. There are no neighbors near enough to hear her cries. There will be no one to help her. The knocking starts again, harder now. She crawls on her hands and knees in a mad scramble through the living room looking for something to defend herself with. Orla snatches a fireplace poker from its holder.
She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath. The banging on the front door continues, turning to a rhythmic thud as she moves in a low crouch to the front door.
Her own breath rattles along with it as she stands next to it, feeling the vibrations of a fist pounding on the other side.
Whoever it is, they are not going to stop. They know she is here. She will have to confront them. She rises to her full height and raises the poker above her shoulders, holding it like a baseball bat so that she can get a good enough swing if needed. But her body shakes with fear.
“What do you want?” she cries out in a shaky sob.
“Orla?” The muffled reply is amused, familiar. A man’s voice. “It’s me.”
