Summerland: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

were friends; they were in Rotary together. They passed the basket in church together. Demeter had known the Chief since she was little. She didn’t want to talk to the Chief.
    She thought they would move her to another room, a square white room with a simple wooden table, like an interrogation room on TV. She thought they would transport her in a cruiser to the beautiful, brand-new, bajillion-dollar police facility on Fairgrounds Road. Demeter’s father had, thanks to his political clout, made it possible for that police station to get funded and built. Would the Chief take that into account when he was questioning her?
    Oh God, the Jim Beam.
    Oh God, the walk with Penny into the dunes at Steps Beach. What had Demeter
done?
It was true that Demeter had hated Penny a little, but she had loved her, too. A lot of love and a little hate, and maybe the hate was inexcusable, but Demeter dared the world to find a girl more worthy of hateful envy than Penelope Alistair—for her singing alone, her beauty alone, her relationship with Jake Randolph alone. They had all been friends since Montessori: Demeter, Penelope, Hobby, and Jake, sitting in a circle singing songs about magic pennies and grandfather clocks. They had painted in the art room, they had learned the names of the continents, they had sliced their own cucumbers at snack time. Penny and Demeter had sat together at lunch each day and talked about the things that four-year-olds talked about. Who remembered what those things were? They had played chase on the playground. Keep-away with the boys.
    Penny was D.O.A.
    The Chief walked into the ward. Demeter almost didn’t recognize him; he was in street clothes. A pair of jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt that said NANTUCKET WHALERS across the front in navy letters. He pulled a chair to the side of the bed where Demeter was sitting.
    “Demeter,” he said.
    She nodded.
    He put his face in his hands, and when he looked up, Demeter could see that he was close to tears.
    He said, “Penelope Alistair is dead.”
    Demeter pursed her lips and nodded. She wanted to tell the Chief that she knew this already and explain that her brain wasn’t allowing her an emotional response. Because she was probably certainly in shock.
    “Hobson Alistair is in a coma. And he has sixteen broken bones. He’s been flown to Boston.”
    Demeter gagged and spit in the bowl. Her body was in rejection mode. She made some ungodly retching noises. The Chief cast his eyes down.
    “I have you, and I have the Randolph kid. It was Jake Randolph’s Jeep, but he wasn’t driving?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Penelope was driving?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Had she been drinking? You can tell me the truth. We’re going to do a tox report.”
    “No,” Demeter said. “Penny wasn’t drinking. She doesn’t…” Demeter blinked. “She doesn’t drink at all, ever. Didn’t, I mean.”
    “But the rest of you were drinking,” the Chief said. Somehow he made Demeter’s fake Louis Vuitton bag materialize, and he pulled out the nearly empty fifth of Jim Beam. “This. Where did you get this?”
    Oh God. Lodged in Demeter’s mind was a boulder she couldn’tbudge. The truth was that she had stolen the bottle from the Kingsley house, on a night when she had been babysitting for Barrett, Lyle, and Charlie Kingsley. Demeter had been the Kingsleys’ babysitter for five years. The Kingsley parents went out a lot, and they paid Demeter well, and Mrs. Kingsley was always amazed and relieved to find that she was available. (“Because I have no life,” Demeter wanted to confess.) Mrs. Kingsley kept her pantry stocked with potato chips and Doritos and Triscuits and white cheddar popcorn and cheese-filled pretzels and Italian rosemary crackers; Mr. Kingsley called it the 7-Eleven. The fridge was always packed with dips and smoked sausages and hunks of cheese and leftover containers of potato salad or fettuccine Alfredo. The bottom drawer was filled with Cokes and ginger ale,