Shorecliff by Ursula Deyoung

place because she’s so terrible.”
    At first I thought that she was simply annoyed by Tom’s indifference to victory. I had to agree that it was irritating to see Tom, our best player, consistently lagging behind mediocre talents like Philip and Fisher because Lorelei would send his ball shooting toward the fence or rolling off weakly toward the woods. But I was shocked that Yvette had called Lorelei terrible to her face.
    Tom obviously thought the same. “I’m teaching her how to play,” he said. “She’ll get better.” He put his arm protectively around Lorelei’s shoulder, and Yvette’s eyes widened.
    “Fine, then!” she cried. “I’m not playing anymore. What’s the point of playing when nobody’s going to try to win?” She flung up one hand and hurled her mallet away from her, not looking to see where it would land. The mallet arced through the air, and Fisher, who was standing in a daydream, didn’t see it coming. It slammed into his shoulder, and he gave a yell and fell to the ground. If it had hit his head, I think he might have been killed or at least badly hurt.
    Yvette was not always cold. When she saw that she had inadvertently assaulted her brother, she dashed toward him. The aunts, who had a preternatural sense for detecting injury among the children, poured from the house like a flock of starlings, cawing and flapping. We crowded around Fisher, whose blue eyes were covered with a film of tears. I thought it was a sign of bravery that none of the tears spilled onto his cheeks. He was all right, though his shoulder was purple for weeks afterward. It must have hurt like hell, but after that first surprised cry he didn’t say anything except “It’s not that bad. It wasn’t her fault.”
    Tom got the game going again. “Don’t pay attention to her,” he said to Lorelei. “She gets too wound up in the game for her own good.”
    I took Fisher’s place while he was escorted into the house for treatment by the aunts, and in no time I was in last place. I never did pick up the finer points of croquet; the interactions between the players were always so much more interesting than the game itself. Tom, for instance, was gentler with Lorelei that morning than I had ever seen him be with anyone. It was a side of himself that he never brought out for his cousins.
    At least for me, Tom continued to be an object of adoration throughout the summer. Lorelei didn’t have enough courage to accompany us on family outings, and so our days at the seashore, our walks along the cliff, our game-filled evenings—all these were times when Tom escorted his cousins into whatever adventure he could think up for us. I liked best the times when I came across him in moments of quiet. He loved books, in spite of his questionable college record, and often he and Philip would spend rainy afternoons in their room, both reading on their beds. Tom read history and Philip philosophy, but they occasionally borrowed each other’s volumes—I can’t imagine how they managed to bring so many. I would peep in and watch their eyes moving across the pages. Philip read languidly, turning the page with an aristocratic hand while one leg dangled off the edge of the bed. Tom read with a scowl on his face, concentrating so hard that he would often sit scrunched up in a ball, his body curling around the book as if to absorb its information through osmosis.
    Other times I would hear music coming from their room, and that meant Tom was dancing. Philip had thrilled us all by bringing an old wind-up Victrola to Shorecliff, along with an extensive collection of jazz records—King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. He himself never danced, but Francesca, after all her Manhattan escapades, was an expert at the Charleston and the Shimmy, and she would dance with Tom, who capered along enthusiastically and managed to look handsome even while mixing up all the steps. Once they attempted the Lindy Hop, a dance requiring a flight through