Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer Page A

giggles.
    Eagerly Emily grabs a rung and starts up the ladder. The wood is warm and firm on her feet and hands, and the ladder gives slightly under her weight.
    She looks over her shoulder down at Maggie. “You’re sure this is safe?”
    “If you’re scared, don’t do it,” taunts Maggie.
    “I guess Ben does it all the time,” Emily decides. She climbs.
    The ladder ends a few feet above the loft floor, making it easy to drop off onto the old wide boards. Maggie scrambles up behind her and they stand for a moment, looking around.
    It’s a perfect guy’s den, drifting with dust motes, populated by spiders spinning in glittery, elaborate webs. Yet another of Thaddeus’s barely dependable wooden chairs leans in front of a desk fabricated from crates. A globe and a knife and a pair of pliers lie on the desk. On the wall a large map of Nantucket is tacked by its four corners. Makeshift bookshelves hold Call of the Wild , The Great Gatsby , and the Silent Spring , plus stacks of comic books and magazines. A bucket on a pulley is rigged to lift heavy items from the ground floor up.
    Several bales of hay are stacked in a rectangle, sleeping bags spread over it, and a pillow without a case. The girls approach this warily. They both know what this is, because next to the bed is an empty six-pack of Budweiser and a small cardboard box which, when opened, displays an assortment of condoms.
    “Ben’s,” Maggie whispers.
    Emily picks the box up, loving and hating the queasy sensation in her stomach as she peers into it. “Your brother brings girls here,” she whispers.
    “Well, duh. He’s had girls after him for years.” Maggie squats, lifting up the sleeping bag to see if anything’s hidden beneath it.
    Emily quickly pockets one of the foil-wrapped condoms, shiny as a foreign coin, and quickly shuts the box. This doesn’t count as stealing, she thinks. Anyone would understand that this is love, or infatuation, or lust. Sliding it into her pocket, she shivers, thinking of Ben.

CHAPTER SIX
    Two evenings later, Maggie pedals steadily along the dirt path toward Altar Rock. Clear golden light from the slowly descending sun burnishes the deserted moorland. Only birdcalls break the silence. It’s nice on the moors at this hour, everyone else is home eating or heading out to the beach for a party. Maggie won’t go to beach parties; she’s not into the whole drunken scene, and Tyler won’t go because he’d be ostracized there like he is in school. Maggie’s tired after her afternoon of babysitting, but she hasn’t seen Tyler all summer, and he was so insistent on the phone— She walks her bike up the steep, rutted, rock-strewn road to the summit of the hill. From here they can see the ocean and the long sweep of moors.
    “Hey,” Tyler says. His braces sparkle, his glasses gleam. He’s skinny and gawky and clumsy as a giraffe on roller skates.
    “Hey.” Maggie knocks her kickstand down.
    “I brought goodies.” Tyler settles in front of the small bouldercalled Altar Rock and sets out two Cokes and a bag of his mother’s homemade caramel chip cookies. He’s wearing a tee shirt and shorts. His attenuated arms and legs, covered with brown hair, make him look like a giant spider.
    “Great. So, how’s your summer been?” she asks, settling on the grass across from him.
    “Okay. Yours?”
    “Okay. I’m doing lots of babysitting. Piling up some cash. And the kids are great. Did you have fun at your dad’s?” She knows he has to go off island most of the summer to live with his dad. It was part of the divorce decree. She waits for the same old argument: he hates leaving the island in the summer; Maggie says he’s lucky, at least he’s got a dad who wants to see him.
    “Not really,” Tyler says.
    Maggie senses something. She narrows her eyes at him. “What?”
    “I’m leaving the island.”
    Maggie snorts lightly. “We’re all leaving the island. I’m going to Wheaton and you’re going to