Nantucket Sisters Read Free Page B

McIntyres.”
    Emily stares at her mother, surprised. “Why not? Maggie’s fun.”
    Her mother runs her soft hands down Emily’s shoulders. “Because, honey, I know you can’t understand yet, but they’re just not our kind of people.”
    Emily frowns. “Why not?”
    Cara pulls Emily closer to her, keeping an arm around Emily’s shoulders. She always holds Emily when she tells her something important. “Baby, it’s hard to explain. But you see, Daddy didn’t buy a house on Nantucket and join the yacht club for you to play with poor people.” Her diamond rings flash as she continues to stroke Emily’s hand.
    Emily considers this. She wants to please her mother. “I met TiffanyHoward,” she reminds Cara. “Her parents invited you for cocktails.”
    “Yes, sweetie, and we’re so proud of you for that. We want to meet more people like Tiffany and her family, you see?”
    Emily doesn’t understand but she nods as if she does. These few quiet moments within the aura of her mother’s glow are precious.
    Maggie has always been aware that her friendship with Emily is lopsided. Emily always comes to Maggie’s house. She never invites Maggie to her enormous posh house on the ’Sconset bluff. Emily explained she can’t have friends over because her father works at home on his investments, but during the winter Maggie has walked around the outside of the house, peeking through the closed curtains over the windows, and she knows the house is so big and has so many rooms that Emily’s father couldn’t hear them if they played drums in Emily’s bedroom.
    Emily also confessed that her mother’s a snob. “It’s all about who belongs to what club and who went where to school,” Emily said once when she was mad at her mother. “Honestly, she doesn’t even know what this island is like !”
    Today the two girls biked to the moors to have lunch by a hidden pond they can reach only by squeezing through the bushes along a deer trail. Water lilies blossom across the surface of the pond. Egrets and herons daintily step among the grasses sprouting on the island in the middle of the pond.
    “She’s such a phony,” Emily says. “She’s so pretentious.” She shoots a quick glance to be sure Maggie knows that word. They’ve made a pact to learn all the words they can, to use precise words, and when they read a book, they meet afterward to discuss the new words they’ve learned.
    “She’s very beautiful,” Maggie reminds Emily. She’s only metCara Porter a few times, when Emily’s mother picked Emily up to take her somewhere, and Mrs. Porter has always been cold and aloof, like Emily said, a snob. But she is beautiful, and her clothes are fancy, not homemade, like those of Maggie’s mom.
    Maggie’s mom is such a disorganized mess, Maggie’s too embarrassed to even complain about her.
    Maggie changes the subject. “See that boulder over there? Tyler calls it Neptune’s Nephew. It oversees all the fish and other creatures in this pond.”
    “Oh, Ty-ler ,” Emily whines, and kicks a pebble into the water.
    “You’re jealous of Tyler,” Maggie singsongs, elbowing her friend gently. Maggie may not have money, but she does have this island they both love, and she does have a friend who thinks about the island the way Maggie does.
    “Am not,” Emily snaps. “He’s funny looking.”
    “He’s already read all of The Once and Future King .”
    “Well.” Emily sags. There’s no topping that. T. H. White’s fantastical tale has proven too complicated for Emily, while parts of it—the swans—enchant her and Maggie both.
    Maggie experiences a tingle of satisfaction as Emily pouts. When Maggie’s not babysitting or helping her mother with housework, and when Emily is at her yacht club, Maggie bikes to the moors. Tyler can often be found in his secret den near the hidden pond behind Altar Rock. Poor Tyler, who now has buck teeth! Part of every summer, he goes to visit his father, who lives in California.