The kids had unconventional names: Skip, Collins, Evie, and Rye. They were golden and loose, comfortable in their skin, as familiar with each other as siblings because their parents had gone to Harvard and Yale together. They’d all grown up in wealthy suburbs of Connecticut and New York, and spent every summer on the Cape. They slept at each other’s houses as though their families were interchangeable. It seemed to Poppy that the parents wanted lots of kids around so the kids could keep each other company, leaving the adults free to have their own fun.

Their sheds were stuffed with surfboards and wet suits. Before, a surfboard seemed out of reach to Poppy. Now, her new friends told her she could borrow one anytime. She’d had a feeling there was a right way and a wrong way to vacation here, and she’d finally tapped into the right way.

Evenings, they went from house to house. Poppy wished Ann could be there with her, because they’d always experienced the Cape together. But Ann was always at the Shaws’, and the more time she spent with them, the more distracted and stuck-up she became. Poppy had visited Ann a few times when she first started, and thought she’d die if she had to spend ten minutes in that house. She felt sorry for those loser kids, too. They seemed miserable, like trained poodles. When Poppy thought of Ann sealed up in the Shaws’ house, she imagined a figure trapped in an air-conditioned snow globe.

The surfer kids were competitive fun seekers. Drinking was no big deal. Their refrigerators were stocked with beer and their cabinets filled with gin, bourbon, and whiskey. Back home, Poppy occasionally had some shots of Jim Beam, Rumple Minze, and Jägermeister. On the Cape, her new friends could mix her a Manhattan or a Rusty Nail. They were experts at picking seeds out of pot and rolling fat joints the size of cigars. If the parents were gone (and the parents were almost always gone), Kit and Poppy and a loose, interchangeable gathering of siblings and friends would sit outside on the wood decks, drink, take hits, and watch the sun set behind the pitch pines, comparing notes about that day’s surf. Everything was surf: whether it sucked or it was awesome. They predicted where and when they could catch the best swells, where and when the storms were coming, how big the tide would be based on the fullness of the moon, whether the wind would be offshore and perfect (the way it almost never was), or whether the waves would crumble. A storm could move the breaks, because there were no piers or moorings to hold the sand in place on this side of the Cape. Unpredictability was what made surfing so intoxicating.

No piers, no moorings, good pot, unpredictability. Poppy felt herself coming loose with every wave, every toke, every shot, every pill.

NINE

Michael