Osprey Island by Thisbe Nissen Page A

floor and pulled the dusty blanket over her head. The light shone through—false, hopeful yellow—and she shut her eyes against it.
    Lance was gone when she woke again, later, to a couple of waiters shooting the shit on the staff barracks’ back stoop.
    “You go to Morey’s last night?” one boy said.
    “Dude, I didn’t get this hangover in my room.”
    “Yeah, so who was out?”
    “I don’t know—you know, everybody, the usual.”
    “How ’bout that girl?”
    “Which girl?”
    “The Irish one—Brigid.”
    “Yeah,
that
Irish girl, yeah, she was there. With Lance fucking pissing himself over her.”
    “She was with
Lance
?”
    “He wished!”
    “He was hitting on her?”
    “It was pretty sick.” The boy paused. “Pathetic, you know? I totally feel for his wife, you know? I mean, that’s fucked up.”
    “She’s been here before?” asked the boy who’d stayed in.
    “Who, Lorna?”
    “No, no. Brigid.”
    “Nah. Her sister was here last summer. Fiona.”
    “She as hot as Brigid?”
    “Nah. I mean, she was good-looking enough, but not the same way, you know?”
    “Yeah . . .”
    The boys were silent a moment, lost in their own private reveries on the hotness of Brigid.
    “What do you think of her?” the new boy said finally.
    “Who, Brigid?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Dude, she’s hot.”
    “Like I’m blind!”
    “I don’t know. She’s totally hot. But kind of prickly too, you know? Like she’s super smart or something. Kind of sneaky, sort of.”
    “Yeah,” said the new boy, “you get the feeling, kind of, when you talk to her, like she’s listening kind of too carefully or something. Like she’s memorizing things or something.”
    The other boy let out a long negative sigh, shaking his head and considering his reply as it slowly escaped. “Naaah,” he said, “I don’t think she’s
that
smart . . .”
    They were quiet.
    “Dude, you got another smoke?”
    “Upstairs.” A moment later the door slammed.
    Lorna lay in her house under the old dirty yellow blanket. It wasn’t anything she didn’t know, really, and nothing she hadn’t heard before. Nothing worse than she’d done herself. And still, it hurt. Because there was nothing in the world—even joy—that didn’t hurt.
    ON THE LODGE PORCH THAT NIGHT, Peg and Jeremy sat off to themselves, away from the rest of the staff on the edge of the deck, their feet dangling. Squee and Mia were playing Ping-Pong at the table underneath the deck, and their squawks and cries of victory and defeat rushed up through the planking. Gavin was playing Spit with a waiter named Joe who didn’t talk much and seemed even less happy with where he was than Gavin. Brigid sat around a table with three guy waiters who were playing I Never and seemed thrilled to have a girl, especially Brigid, join their ranks.
    “I never had sex with someone I worked with,” said one of the waiters, who looked fifteen and had probably never had sex with anyone at all. The group paused, collectively considering their own checkered pasts. Brigid was the only one to drink. Never mind that she hadn’t actually shagged the boy, only messed about with him once at a party somewhere. But
these
boys didn’t need to know that. Brigid liked how impressed they looked, all agog at a girl who’d freely tell them whom she’d fucked and how. She liked that she could look down on them now: so immature to be impressed the way they were.
    The next boy took his turn and upped the ante. “I never had sex with my boss.” He had on a pink Lacoste shirt and looked to be feeling mischievous.
    Again, Brigid drank alone. The boy whom she hadn’t actually shagged hadn’t actually been the boss, only a coworker, but Brigid felt a sense of obligation to give these boys something to fuel their little dreams.
    The third boy said, “I never watched someone else having sex.”
    Brigid turned to him, coy. “Does that include the person you were having the sex with then? Like:
I never kept my