Down the Shore Read Online Free PDF Page A

on Kelsey’s arm and leaned out of her chair to say something
sotto voce
, entering into some confidence with Kelsey, who seemed used to talking to adults like this. She waved to us without taking her eyes off the woman’s face, and the woman, realizing that Kelsey had company, kissed her on the cheek and excused herself. Kelsey beckoned to us. She seemed much older than she had in Kildare’s.
    â€œBetter late than never,” she said, as we drew near.
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    It seemed to get dark all at once. Clare and I were leaning on the railing of a second-story balcony that faced the ocean. Behind us, in a guest bedroom not unlike the one where we had spent the night before, some girls were shooting Polaroid portraits of each other, littering the rug they sat on with their faces. Earlier, someone had handed me a Dixie cup of punch, which I took down like a shot before I heard that it was made with mushrooms.
    â€œDon’t freak out,” a girl said when she registered my shock. She was wearing a bandana as a shirt. “Just go with it. It’s already in you.”
    Forty minutes later I felt like someone had loosened my joints and rubbed something warm into my skin. I experienced no stark hallucinations, just colorful tracers as people came and went under the halogen lights out on the balcony, as if everyone was losing a little of themselves with every move. The ocean looked like it went on forever, but the ocean always looked that way to me. Clare had suggested that we come up here to get some air. I was lost in my head, trying to decide whether the effects of the punch were waxing or waning. I didn’t do a lot of drugs at that point in my life. Down the block, someone was setting off fireworks, shaky little balls of light that looked like dandelions gone to seed once they exploded and began to fade.
    â€œMy dad was under investigation for insider trading,” Clare said, out of nowhere. “And what they found while they were looking into that was worse. That’s why he left. I don’t think they’re coming back.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, with questions mushrooming in my mind. I thought: What took so long?
    â€œSo, I want—” he said, as a girl came up behind us and threw an arm around his neck.
    â€œI’m so fucked up,” she said with a theatrical slur. “Scrape me off the floor. Take me home with you.”
    I didn’t recognize her, but she must have been at Kildare’s with us the night before. I wondered who had put her up to it as she ran back into the house. Clare smoothed his shirtfront, annoyed at the interruption.
    â€œI want to go with you,” he said. “To school. To Scotland.”
    I knew what he meant because it felt like we had been through this before. There were layers to the déjà vu—I remembered Clare asking me this, and I remembered it happening again and making a mental note of the repetition, as though this conversation had taken place three times. My mind turned to the pictures of St. Andrews on the school’s Web site: majestic buildings perched on cliffs above the water, smiling students walking through the quad with books under their arms, an afternoon pub scene where everyone was leaning in and laughing. I tried to picture the two of us across the ocean, but I couldn’t shake those images, so I added us to them. In my mind we were sitting in the pub just behind the people in focus; we were obscured by pillars on the quad; we were standing on a rock overlooking the water, invisible to the camera’s eye. There was something comforting about the altered pictures in my head. They contained a familiar face, I realized. I wasn’t there alone.
    â€œIs that OK with you?” Clare asked. “If I come?”
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    The party had been lightly catered all day, but by the time we made our way downstairs, the first