Never Ever Read online

  “We’re having a house party tonight for all the kids who are stuck out here,” they told her. “Bring anyone you want.”

  “I don’t want to go hang out with a bunch of people we don’t know,” Joshua said when she mentioned the invite. “Let’s just stay in and watch a movie. Dad brought Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

  “Please,” Wylie begged. “Think of it as practice for all those campaign fund-raisers you’ll have to attend when you run for president. You have to get used to dazzling people you don’t know. Even Micah wants to go, and he hates strangers. Right, Micah?”

  “I don’t hate strangers. I hate people,” Micah responded, barely looking up from his phone.

  “Going to some high school party in the Hamptons isn’t going to help me become a politician. Try again.”

  Wylie debated whether going to the party was worth offering to be the designated driver. Would she even have fun with a bunch of randoms if she had to suffer through it sober? Yes, she told herself. She refused to be one of those people who always needed alcohol to have a good time.

  “Fine. I’ll be the designated driver.”

  Joshua smiled. “What time do we leave?”

  They waited for their parents to retire to their bedroom and swiped the keys to Gregory’s brand-new Mercedes. Wylie had gotten her learner’s permit months before, but she generally preferred Joshua to drive them around. He didn’t even have his permit, but he was a much more capable driver than his sister.

  As they zipped their down jackets, Wylie suddenly got an inexplicable urge to nix the party and stay in watching movies. Maybe it was all the layers she was wearing or the recent snowfall outside, but the idea of driving in that weather didn’t sound very appealing. But then she heard her parents fighting and decided staying home was no longer an option. Plus, the most epic evenings always seemed to happen when going out felt like a chore. The pull to stay in was probably a sign that they were about to have one of those nights they’d spend the next week reminiscing about. Remember when you said this? Remember when we did that? That. Night. Was. So. Crazy.

  The drive to the party went smoothly. Wylie didn’t even get annoyed when she noticed Joshua squeezing the door handle and slamming an imaginary brake with his foot every time he told her to slow down. They made it to the house without incident and only traded places behind the wheel so Joshua could parallel park the car for her. Wylie and Micah shivered in the snow as they helped him maneuver the car into a tiny space between two giant SUVs.

  Wylie linked arms with both brothers as they walked up the path to the house. The front lawn was already littered with red plastic cups, and a few drunken partygoers were filtering out to return to their vacation homes.

  “Can we stick together tonight?” Micah asked. “I don’t want to be abandoned with a bunch of people I don’t know.”

  “Of course,” Wylie reassured him. “I won’t leave your side.”

  It was just one in the string of promises she would unintentionally break throughout the evening. The moment they entered the front door, Wylie was swept away by Matt and Tyler. They looked a lot cuter without their winter layers and snow hats, and she could tell from the minute they dragged her into the kitchen and offered to include her in a round of shots that they were competing for her affection. It was cute and flattering, and maybe, just maybe, she’d let one of them kiss her at some point.

  Joshua and Micah made a beeline for the alcohol. Wylie introduced herself to Matt and Tyler’s friends and kept the small talk going until her brothers were out of the kitchen. As soon as they ventured into the living room, she toasted her new friends with a tequila shot. If she had a shot or two now and stuck to water for the rest of the night, then she’d be fine to drive home. And worst-case scenario, they could always Uber. When Matt and Tyler launched into a drunken debate about their favorite NFL quarterbacks (Tom Brady versus someone she couldn’t remember), any interest Wylie had in a potential hook-up vanished, but at least their argument gave her a chance to mingle.

  Wylie walked into the living room to discover that an impromptu dance party had formed, and Joshua was hamming it up in the center of it. Micah stood on the outskirts of the circle and bopped his head awkwardly to the beat. Wylie hurried over and pulled him into the middle of the dance circle with her. At first Micah stood completely still, but then he seemed to realize it didn’t matter what anyone at the party thought of them, and started jumping up and down like he was in a mosh pit.

  Wylie couldn’t remember at what point she abandoned the dance floor to stand in line to do a keg stand in the kitchen, but her legs were suddenly in the air as everyone yelled, “Chug, chug, chug!” This is fine, she told herself. They would take an Uber home and drive the Honda back in the morning before their parents were awake to pick up her dad’s car. After she couldn’t keep down any more beer, Wylie just barely managed to keep her balance as she lowered her feet to the ground. Even if these people were virtual strangers, she still didn’t want to fall on her ass in front of them.

  The rest of the party was a blur. Someone handed her a Jell-O shot and she swallowed it without using her hands. Anytime a good song burst through the speakers, she squealed excitedly and returned to the dance floor. She and Joshua played on opposing flip cup teams, and she brought her team to victory when she finished her beer before he did.

  “It’s cool,” she told her brother after she high-fived her teammates. “We’ll take an Uber home.”

  “It’s Montauk. It’ll take forever to get anyone here,” Joshua responded, annoyed.

  “Then I’ll request one now. By the time it gets here, we’ll be ready to take off.”

  Wylie took her phone out of her purse and fumbled with the passcode. Before she could manage to punch it in correctly, someone screamed the word everyone dreaded hearing at a party:

  “Cops!”

  It was a widely known fact that the police were brutal when it came to underage drinking on Long Island. Wylie and her brothers had heard enough stories about kids spending the night in the drunk tank to know they needed to get out of Dodge—immediately. Wylie grabbed her coat and didn’t even bother to say good-bye to Matt and Tyler as they ran through the backyard. She and her brothers circled to the front of the house and ran to their car as fast as they could with alcohol in their systems and an inch of snow now on the ground.

  Apparently at some point during the party, Wylie had told three other girls they could share a ride home with them, and somehow in the pandemonium, the girls had followed them to their car. The Daltons couldn’t abandon them, but there was no time to wait for a car service. Micah was the most sober of the bunch, but he had never driven before in his life. The sirens of another cop car approached in the distance and Wylie quickly tried to get behind the wheel, but stumbled and fell as she opened the door.

  “Joshua,” Wylie said, slurring his name as it came out, “can you drive us?”

  Joshua was incredulous. “I just drank a beer in that flip cup game.”

  “Okay, but how many drinks did you have total?”

  “I don’t know. Three?”

  “We’re not that far from home. You can handle it. You’re a way better driver than I am.”

  The siren got closer. Joshua grabbed the keys from Wylie’s hand and got behind the wheel. Micah sat shotgun, while the party stragglers and Wylie climbed into the backseat. It was a tight squeeze, and to complicate matters, the strays they’d picked up admitted they were visiting friends in the area and weren’t entirely sure how to get back to their house. One of the girls searched for the address on her phone, while Joshua drove off, to at least get them away from the cops. With any luck, they’d still be home by midnight to rummage through the leftovers in the fridge and take turns curating their favorite YouTube videos. Finally, after about twenty minutes of aimless driving, one of the stragglers recognized the street they’d turned onto.

&
nbsp; “This it is!” the girl screamed. “Just another mile down this road and we’ll be there.”

  Everyone cheered. Wylie turned up the radio to celebrate. The heat was on high in the car, and she started to feel trapped in the backseat with three other girls. She leaned into the front seat and pushed the button to open the sunroof.

  “Wylie, sit down,” Joshua screamed at her.

  The brisk air seeped into the car as the sunroof opened. Wylie leaned half her body out of the car and raised her arms in the air. Wylie’s brothers grasped at her legs, yelling at her to get back in the car, but she wanted to enjoy the freedom for just a few more seconds. It was then that the headlights of a car in the neighboring lane washed over her.

  The Mercedes hit a patch of ice. Under normal circumstances, without his sister halfway outside of the car, and no beer in his system, Joshua would have been able to remain in control. He was always a cautious driver, but the car veered into the other lane and collided with the oncoming vehicle. The three strangers in the backseat pulled Wylie in right before the collision and saved her life. The girl in the other car wasn’t so lucky.

  Katie Anderson. That was her name. She was sixteen at the time of the accident, just a little older than Wylie. She wasn’t driving to a party or back to her parents’ fancy Hamptons abode. There was no alcohol in her system, and no crazy sibling in the backseat of the car distracting her. Katie spent her school vacations waitressing at a seafood restaurant in Fort Pond Bay. The tips were good and it was a short drive away from a family friend’s home in Montauk. They had a bedroom in the basement, and that was where Katie spent her time between shifts. She had stayed late at the restaurant that night to cover for another waitress who’d wanted to leave early to celebrate her one-year anniversary with her boyfriend. On any normal night at this time, Katie would have been back in the basement, under the covers, falling asleep.

  After their car hit Katie’s, it skidded across the road, then screeched to a stop. Joshua asked them if they were all right and though they were all shaken up, everyone in the car was conscious and had only suffered minor cuts and bruises. Before Wylie could ask Joshua if he was okay, he got out of the car and ran to the other vehicle.

  Wylie and the others stood on the side of the road and watched as he pulled Katie from the front seat and dragged her a safe distance from the car. She wasn’t conscious, but was still breathing. Wylie kept her eyes on Joshua as he pulled out his phone and dialed 911. From there, everything moved in slow motion. It felt like an eternity before the paramedics and police arrived, though in reality only a few minutes had passed.

  “I’ll say I was driving,” Wylie told her brother while they waited.

  “No way,” he said.

  “Please. This is my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he told her, “I was driving. I’ll take full responsibility.”

  And he did. When the cops arrived, Joshua admitted he had been the one driving. There was no mention of Wylie’s reckless behavior in the backseat, or that she was supposed to be the designated driver. They asked for his driver’s license, but Joshua simply shrugged and said he didn’t have one. It was then that they smelled a trace of beer on his breath and administered the breathalyzer, then placed him in handcuffs. Wylie and Micah and the three stray girls sat helplessly on the side of the road as Joshua was driven away in a cop car and Katie was driven away in an ambulance.

  If only they hadn’t gone to the party. If only she’d kept her word and stayed sober. If only she hadn’t told the other girls they’d give them a ride home. The girls walked from the accident back to their friend’s house. Wylie would never see or hear from them again. Another police officer drove her and Micah to their house.

  It didn’t matter what Joshua had said on the side of the road; they all knew what happened would always be her fault.

  PHINN PLACED HIS HAND ON WYLIE’S CHEEK TO WIPE away the tears that were now flowing in a steady stream, but she couldn’t look at him.

  “What happened to the girl? When I first read about the accident, there wasn’t much information on her,” Phinn said.

  Wylie closed her eyes.

  “She’s been in a coma. A year of her life, asleep. The doctors say there’s a chance she’ll wake up, but there’s no telling when that will be. And they’re pretty sure that even if it happens, she’ll never be able to walk again.”

  The tears had evolved into hiccups, and Wylie tried to hold her breath to make them stop.

  “If I had kept my word, he wouldn’t have been behind the wheel. And I was so careless on the ride home—I could have gotten us all killed. That’s why I don’t drink anymore.”

  Phinn pulled her close to him so that her head rested on his chest.

  “It could have happened to anyone, Wylie.”

  “No. It happened to me, because I’m selfish and reckless. I want you to know the worst parts of me. I’d understand if you want us to go home. I have this rare talent for screwing up the lives of everyone around me.”

  “What happened doesn’t change my mind about you. And you know what? If your parents hadn’t been fighting that night, I bet you and your brothers would have stayed home and none of this would have happened.”

  Wylie had never thought about it that way, but as she examined every domino from that night, she realized hearing the argument upstairs was the first one to fall.

  “The way my dad looked at us when he opened the door and saw the cops . . . I’ll never forget it. He was so ashamed of us. But my mom was even worse. She didn’t want to talk about it at all. Ever. ‘Sweep it under the rug’ is her motto in life.”

  “Looks like we both pulled the short straw in the mom and dad department.”

  “I guess that’s something else we have in common. I don’t want to be anything like my parents,” Wylie admitted. “Old and miserable and full of regret.”

  “You won’t end up feeling any of those things,” Phinn assured her.

  As they sat in the field together, Phinn picked a parvaz flower and one more rapidly popped up to replace it. Wylie wordlessly opened her mouth and Phinn placed the flower on her tongue. She took the flower from behind her ear and tossed it in the back of his throat. They didn’t shoot up in the air like they had in Brooklyn. This time, they floated up slowly to the sky, embracing each other the whole time. Wylie suddenly felt dizzy and lightheaded from all the crying.

  “Everything about you is unexpected,” Phinn said. “The way you nearly walked away from me at the bus stop when I gave you a hard time for not eating a parvaz. The way you demand answers to questions most people are afraid to ask. The way you tell the truth when it would be so much easier to lie.”

  “Is that a compliment?” Wylie asked.

  “Yes. Has anyone ever called you a mermaid?” Phinn asked.

  “As in the mythical sea creature? Can’t say I’ve ever gotten that one before.”

  “They don’t use it on the mainland the way we do here. We say it to describe someone who’s smart, intelligent, not entirely of this world.”

  “Well, in that case, right back at you,” Wylie said, her lips parting into a grin. “I mean, you brought me here. Clearly, you’d have to be smart to make such a wise decision.”

  “Some might even call me a genius.”

  “Teach me more words. I don’t want to use any slang from the mainland. I want to talk the way everyone here talks. What do you guys mean when you say ‘tropic’? I hear it all the time.”

  “Cool or awesome. I find you very tropic. Here’s another adjective to describe you. Porcelain.”

  “Porcelain. That one I’ve heard before. Like the china? Does it mean fragile?”

  “It means beautiful,” Phinn replied.

  “Then I think you’re porcelain, too.”

  Phinn laughed, then placed his mouth next to her ear and said, “Wylie Dalton
, you are beyond compare.”

  He pulled her toward him and kissed her as they drifted through the sky. His lips were dry but soft at the same time. It took Wylie a minute to get her bearings, floating there weightless, but once she did, she kissed him back harder. The wind picked up, but Wylie barely noticed. She was too busy falling madly in love.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ancient history

  “san Fran-cisco. Am I pronouncing it right?” Lola asked.

  “Yes, that’s perfect,” Wylie whispered, afraid that if she spoke too loudly, someone passing by would hear them.

  “And it’s in Cali-for-nee-a.”

  “More like Cali-forn-ya,” Wylie corrected.

  Lola made a quick note in her journal, then repeated after Wylie.

  “Cali-forn-ya.”

  “You got it!”

  “I like the way it rolls off the tongue . . . California. It sounds so tropic.”

  Lola had a secret obsession with the mainland. She swore Wylie to secrecy—even Maz didn’t know she harbored a clandestine fascination with how the rest of the world lived. She claimed she had no desire to visit, but she kept Wylie up most nights asking questions about different cities and states, and writing down all the information in her journal by the light of a jar full of fireflies. Wylie noticed she’d retrieved the “Charlotte” friendship bracelet from the trash and was now using it as a bookmark. It seemed odd to keep a souvenir from a girl everyone hated enough to exile, but Wylie decided against asking her about it. She didn’t want to be involved in any more of Lola’s secrets. Especially when, one night when they both couldn’t sleep, she confessed to Wylie that she was bored with the island.

  “I’ve lived here my whole life. Sometimes I feel a little trapped,” Lola whispered. “I would never leave, but I like to imagine what it’s like in other places. You won’t tell anyone, right?”

  “Of course not,” Wylie said.