Stranger With My Face Read online

  People I hadn’t seen since the previous spring greeted me in the halls, and I smiled, said friendly things, and gave appropriate answers to routine questions.

  “No, we didn’t go anywhere special for vacation. Did you?”

  “I swam a lot and played some tennis and just generally hung out. What did you do?”

  “Oh—thanks. But it would be weird if I didn’t get a tan, living on the island.”

  And all the while, beneath the surface, I was seething. How could Gordon have had the nerve to accuse me with such certainty of something I knew I didn’t do? “I saw you,” he had insisted, not just once but several times, without a hint of doubt in his voice. And Natalie had confirmed it. “We both saw you”—when I hadn’t been there to be seen! My denial had counted for nothing. They hadn’t believed me. Natalie had actually come right out and said, “We know you’re lying.”

  And what exactly had Gordon and Natalie been doing out on the beach together, anyway? That question occurred to me midmorning when I was standing in the library. Natalie was supposed to have been with Carl, her date for the evening, not strolling around in the moonlight with my boyfriend! Here Gordon was, acting so furious about something that hadn’t happened, when I was the one who had a right to be upset and angry.

  I collected my books and took them to my locker. My next-door locker neighbor was a tall, freckled girl named Helen Tuttle who had just transferred from a high school in the Southwest. It turned out we had the same split period for English, so we ended up eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Darlene and Mary Beth Ziegler came in soon after we did, but they never glanced in my direction. They went to a table at the far end of the room, and before long Blane and Tommy Burbank and some of the other island kids joined them there.

  I had a ham sandwich and a Coke for lunch, and they went down perfectly. I almost wished they hadn’t. If I had been sick right there in the lunchroom, Blane or somebody surely would have told Gordon, and it would have given credibility to my story of having been sick the night before.

  Helen must have noticed my mind wasn’t on our conversation, because she followed the direction of my gaze and asked, “Who are you looking at?”

  “Oh, just some kids who live out near where I do,” I told her. “They’re sort of a clique.”

  “I guess you find those everywhere,” Helen said lightly. I was tempted to tell her I had been part of that clique only the day before, but I decided against it. I was too confused by the situation to explain it properly to somebody I had only just met.

  When school let out, I stayed back a little and let the others start for the pier without me. I’d been snubbed harshly enough that morning that I didn’t want to repeat it. In the process of trying to widen the gap between us, I dawdled too long and finally had to run the last fifty yards or so in order to make the boat. I clambered on board just as they were casting off and, as luck would have it, grabbed a nearby arm—which happened to belong to Gordon—for balance.

  “Excuse me,” I said coldly, removing my hand as quickly as possible.

  “You’re excused,” he said, and then added in a low voice, “Look, Laurie, I’ve had time to calm down. Be honest with me, and I’m willing to listen to your side of the story. What were you doing out—”

  “What a coincidence!” I snapped back, interrupting him in midsentence. “That’s exactly the question I had for you. What were you and Nat doing wandering around on the beach together when she was supposed to be hosting a party?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I shoved my way past him and climbed the ladder to the narrow upper deck, which was where my brother, Neal, always liked to ride. When I reached it, I remembered that the elementary school operated on an abbreviated first-day schedule and the younger kids had undoubtedly gone back on the noon ferry. Having made the trip up, however, I wasn’t going to turn around and go back down again, as if I were disappointed that Gordon had not chased after me, so I made my way along the catwalk to the small seat that overlooked the bow.

  Jeff Rankin was already planted there, reading a book.

  He acknowledged my arrival in his usual ungracious manner. “How come you’re not downstairs with the party? Did you have a fight with the boyfriend?”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” I said, sitting down beside him. Jeff ’s abrasiveness didn’t bother me. I figured he was entitled to it; I knew that if I were in his place, I’d hate everybody in the world.

  Mr. Rankin had moved to Brighton Island four years before to open a craft shop, and Jeff, who normally lived with his divorced mother somewhere in northern New York State, had started spending summers with his dad. He was fourteen that first year, with the sort of dark, flashy good looks that should have belonged to someone much older. The second summer he came, he had a motorcycle, and there was always some squealing girl sitting on it behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist and her chin on his shoulder. Sometimes her hair was dark and sometimes blond and sometimes red, but it was always long and shiny, flying out behind them like the tail of a comet as they went roaring down the road.

  I turned fourteen myself that year—a skinny, flat-chested fourteen—and I dreamed at night about what it would be like to be one of those girls.

  The island guys were all jealous of Jeff that summer, even though they wouldn’t admit it. There was a lot of talk about how wild he was, and rumor had it that several fathers among the vacationers complained to Mr. Rankin about his son’s activities with their daughters. The girls themselves never complained, of course, and since most of them were older than he was, I thought they could take care of themselves. As it happened, it was a good thing Jeff did have that summer, because halfway through the next one a can of lighter fluid exploded and burned off half his face.

  They took him to the mainland by helicopter. The others who were at the cookout when the accident happened—Rennie Ziegler was one of them—described the details to everyone who would listen.

  “The medics were shaking their heads when they put him on the stretcher,” Rennie said. “He kept making these gurgling noises like he was trying to scream and couldn’t. There’s no way he could live after that—I swear it.”

  Jeff did live. They even managed to save his eyes, thanks to the fact that he had been wearing sunglasses. He came back to the island at Christmas, but nobody saw him; Mr. Rankin explained that he wasn’t strong enough yet for visitors. Soon after that he went back to the hospital for another operation.

  The next summer he returned to the island, this time to stay. The left side of his face was fine. If you saw him at a certain angle, you’d have thought he was the best-looking guy you’d ever seen. But if you saw him from the right, you had to stop and swallow hard. That side of his face was welted and purple with the mouth pulled up at the corner like a Halloween mask. Everyone tried to be nice to him and act like there was nothing wrong with the way he looked, but he made it clear that he didn’t appreciate their efforts. He stayed in the house most of the time; his dad said he was supposed to stay out of the sun. When September came, we thought he’d go back to New York, but he started school with the rest of us. He had lost a year, which put him in my grade. None of us knew why he had decided to live on the island instead of with his mom, and nobody wanted to ask him.

  As Rennie put it, “You can’t talk to somebody who snarls at anything you say to him. His personality’s gotten just as messed up as his face.”

  Now, as I settled myself on the bench beside him, I didn’t really care what his personality was like. I was too absorbed in my own anger.

  “To say I’ve ‘had a fight’ with Gordon is a major understatement,” I said. “I don’t care if I never see him again. You know that party Nat Coleson threw last night?” Immediately, I could have cut my tongue out. You don’t discuss parties with people who weren’t invited.

  “Nope,” Jeff said, not making things any easier.

  “Well—she had one,” I continued lamely. “At the Inn. I di
dn’t go.”

  “Then you must have been sick,” Jeff commented.

  “As a matter of fact, I was. Which is what this whole thing is about.” The words came pouring out of me. I knew there was no reason for Jeff to be interested, but he was there next to me, a captive audience, and I had to talk to somebody or I’d burst. “Gordon won’t believe me,” I told him. “He swears he saw me out on the beach. He accused me of pretending to be sick so I could sneak off with somebody else.”

  “Gordon Ahearn thinks that?” There was a note of sarcasm in Jeff ’s voice. “That’s crazy. Everybody knows he’s got you on a string.”

  “He does not!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, he does. You’re as faithful as a puppy dog. He snaps his fingers, and you jump. That’s how it’s always been with Ahearn’s girlfriends.”

  “You don’t know one thing about my relationship with Gordon,” I said irritably. “I do what I want to. Nobody runs my life for me.”

  “Then you were there making out with some other guy?”

  “No, I wasn’t!” I exploded. “I just told you, I was home sick in bed. Gordon didn’t see me on the beach.”

  “Then why does he say he did?” Jeff asked reasonably.

  “I don’t know.” I paused, and then threw out the final piece of information. “It’s not just Gordon. Natalie was there too. They both say they saw me.”

  “So there are three possibilities.”

  “Like what?”

  “Number one—you were there and won’t admit it. Number two—you weren’t there, and Gordon and Nat are in cahoots.”

  “And number three?”

  “They saw somebody who looks exactly like you.”

  Hearing it presented that way, there wasn’t much I could do except nod. Those were, indeed, the only three alternatives.

  “But why would they make up a story like that?” I asked in confusion.

  “That’s a good question. You tell me.”

  “There isn’t any reason.”

  “So where does that leave you?”

  “With—number three. That there was someone who looks like me on the beach last night. But Gordon says there was bright moonlight. It’s hard to believe he and Nat would both be fooled, especially when they weren’t expecting me to be there.”

  “You do look kind of unusual,” Jeff said.

  “Well, thanks a lot!”

  He didn’t apologize—not that I had expected him to. He turned and looked at me appraisingly. It was always a shock to have Jeff look at you straight on like that, because the two sides of face were so different. I’d been sitting on his good side, so when he turned toward me I had to adjust for a second.

  He studied me for a moment, then shook his head.

  “No, there aren’t many people around here who look like you,” he said.

  He reopened the book, which had fallen shut on his lap, and it was apparent that he meant for our conversation to be over.

  The whole way to the island I brooded over his comment. Rude as it was, it was true. On my best days I liked to think of myself as exotic-looking. Gordon kidded sometimes that I could be part Native American with my dark coloring, high cheekbones and almond eyes. “Bedroom eyes,” he called them, meaning they were sexy. My father referred to them as “alien” because they were the same shape as the eyes he gave to the maidens from other worlds in his novels. When I looked at my parents—both of them so fair—and at Neal and Meg with their light blue eyes and freckled noses, I wondered sometimes how I had managed to be born into such a family.

  So did it mean there was another girl who looked “unusual” also? That she was living on Brighton Island and I’d never run into her? That seemed impossible. In the summer, of course, there was an influx of tourists, but few stayed on into September, especially those with children. Rennie worked the ferry with his father during the summer months, and he made it his business to inspect the girls. If there had been one who could have been my identical twin, he would have mentioned it, if only to tease me.

  Which brought me back to Jeff ’s proposition number two—that Gordon and Natalie had invented the girl-on-the-beach story. But why would they do such a thing? What purpose would it serve? If Gordon wanted to break up with me, there were easier ways to go about it, and Natalie wouldn’t have to be involved at all.

  “It has to be that they lied,” I said to Jeff as we descended the ladder to the main deck. “But it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Don’t lose any sleep over it,” he muttered. “Ahearn’s not worth it.”

  Any other time I would have resented the statement. Now I wanted to believe it was true.

  We disembarked at the landing and walked side by side along the pier to the road.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, and Jeff mumbled something indiscernible, apparently sorry he had devoted so much of his valuable time to me.

  He headed off southward toward the village and I went in the opposite direction toward the point. The first short segment of the road was cut off from the water by dunes and sea oats, and the air was still and hot as though the remnants of summer were trapped there waiting for release. When I reached the curve, however, the salt breeze struck me full in the face, and with it came the smells of seaweed and the surf as it swirled around the rocks. Up ahead, perched precariously on its ledge, Cliff House was silhouetted against the glare of the afternoon sun. The slanted rays glanced off the windows of my mother’s studio with such brilliance the whole upper story seemed formed of dancing rainbows. I wondered how she could work, caught in the turbulence of that many-shafted light. Beneath this sparkling crown, the rest of the house looked like a one-dimensional, construction-paper cutout glued to the sky.

  Suddenly I had the feeling that I was being followed. I glanced quickly behind me. The road was empty. I began to walk a little faster, aware that I was just being silly. I hadn’t heard or seen anything to make me believe there was anyone anywhere around. There was nothing on the northern tip of the island except Cliff House, and no one ever came that way unless it was for the purpose of visiting our family.

  “You’re paranoid,” I told myself out loud in disgust. “This business with Gordon and Natalie has gotten to you.”

  Still, I quickened my footsteps the way you do when someone is walking too close behind you, and I was almost running by the time I reached the path that led to the house.

  I entered through the kitchen, which was just as it had been when I had left that morning, except that my mother had put the milk back in the refrigerator and my father had evidently fixed himself some eggs and bacon later in the day. Dad is a night person and Mom a day one, so their schedules don’t coincide. Mom goes straight to her studio when we leave the house in the morning, and Dad sleeps late and makes up for it by staying up and working half the night.

  Now I could hear the sound of him typing on the computer behind the closed door of his office, and I knew better than to disturb him.

  Instead, I climbed the stairs to the living room. Neal was there, sprawled on his stomach on the rug in the square patch of light from the west window, sketching.

  “Hi,” I said. “What’re you working on?”

  “I’m designing a castle.” He was frowning, and his light brows were drawn together in concentration. When Neal draws, he is totally absorbed. In a moment, though, he lifted his head and looked up at me in surprise. “Did you just come in from outside?”

  “Where else?” I said.

  “How did you get there? I thought you were upstairs.”

  “How could I be upstairs when I’m just getting home from school?” I asked reasonably. “They don’t give half-days to the high school students, you know.”

  “But Dad said you were upstairs. He said you didn’t go to school today.”

  “Neal, come on,” I said, “you know perfectly well I went to school. I boarded the ferry when you did. We left the house together.”

  “That’s what I told Dad, but he said you
must have started feeling sick and come back.”

  “Where could he have gotten that idea?” I asked in bewilderment.

  “He said he saw you.”

  “Hold on—” I began.

  “No, really, Laurie, he did. He said he talked to you, and you didn’t answer. You kept on going up the stairs to your room.”

  “To my room?” Here was something I could investigate. “There had better not be somebody in my room!” Leaving Neal staring after me, I hurried out of the living room and headed for the stairs.

  The door to my room was closed, just as I had left it. I turned the knob, shoved it open, and rushed inside.

  The room was awash with the golden light pouring in from the sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony. I glanced around quickly. Everything seemed just as it should be. I pushed the door softly closed behind me, and then it struck me.

  Someone had been here only moments before.

  How I knew this, I couldn’t have said. It was simply that her presence lingered like the echo of a voice or a perfume too subtle to be immediately recognized. She had stood, motionless, just as I did now, inspecting the room. My eyes tracked the route hers must have taken, moving from one of my possessions to another. The silly Sesame Street throw rug, left over from my early childhood. The environmental posters on the walls—the one of the redwood forest in California—the one of the fuzzy baby seal staring morosely out to sea. The yellow and green throw pillows. The clutter on my dresser. The jewelry box Gordon had given me the month before for my birthday—his picture stuck in the border of the mirror—my hair dryer and brush, a tube of mascara, a bottle of nail polish.

  My eyes moved farther, to the desk with my laptop on it, to the shelves along the far wall, lined with books. She had crossed the room to stand in front of that shelf and read the titles. How did I know this? She had moved from there to the bed and seated herself on it and reached out her hand to run it over the surface of the pillow. The spread was smooth and taut. There was no indentation to show that someone had rested there.