The Cousins Read online

  “No. Not when he wants to get rid of us that badly.” For a second our eyes meet in solidarity—despite the lure of the money, I don’t want to leave either—and then something in her face shifts. “It’s funny that Brittany mentioned Dunes. Aubrey and I were just thinking that the three of us should go out. Have a cousins’ night.”

  Her eyes get wide and guileless, and I roll mine. “Bullshit.” Milly doesn’t seem surprised by the response, but she does look like she’s waiting for more, so I add, “In case it wasn’t clear, that’s a no.”

  “Come on,” Milly says, in a persuasive tone that probably works for her ninety-nine percent of the time. “Aubrey needs a night out. Something’s going on with Uncle Adam, but she won’t tell me what. Maybe you can get her to open up.”

  I snort. Now she’s flat-out lying, because there’s no way Aubrey would tell me anything she’s not willing to tell Milly. “Drop the act. We both know you don’t really want to hang out with me. So what do you want?”

  Milly’s face hardens. “Show up tonight and find out.”

  We stare at one another for a beat. “Maybe I will,” I finally say.

  * * *

  —

  Dunes is packed when I get there. The restaurant is dim, paneled with the same kind of wood as my parents’ hasn’t-been-touched-since-the-seventies basement, which gives it a closed-in feel despite the large space. There’s a dining area with a few dozen full tables, a bar strung with twinkling white lights, and a small stage off to one side where a girl with a guitar and a guy with a keyboard are starting to set up. The back of the room is filled with pool tables, dartboards, and a bunch of high-top tables.

  I spot a lot of familiar faces as I approach; it looks like Towhees have taken over two pool tables and all the surrounding seats. Brittany waves wildly from a corner where she’s clustered with a group of girls, and my roommate, Efram, steps away from a pool game to drop his jaw in mock surprise. Efram is one of those relentlessly friendly guys who invites me everywhere he goes, even though I never accept.

  “Is there a fire in the dorms?” he asks. He puts one hand over his heart and the other on my shoulder. “Are you okay? And more important, did you save my laptop?”

  Milly materializes beside him with an arch smile. “Jonah is being social tonight,” she says. I don’t like the triumphant gleam in her eyes. At all. I’m half tempted to turn and leave when someone grabs hold of my arm. It’s Aubrey, smiling widely and holding a pool cue.

  “Perfect timing,” she says. “You and Milly can play me and Efram.”

  I narrow my eyes. Is she in on whatever Milly’s up to? But I stand by my original impression of Aubrey: the girl can’t lie to save her life. She might actually be happy to see me. Which is weird, but then again, I haven’t seen Aubrey hang out with anyone except Milly and Efram, who’s also a lifeguard, since she’s been here. She fits in only a little better than I do.

  “Great,” I say blandly, grabbing a cue from the rack on the wall. “I’ll break.”

  Efram, who’s been gathering balls from the pockets, tosses the last of them into the rack. “We should probably warn you that Aubrey and I are undefeated, and that includes a game against a couple of townie dudes who are now drowning their humiliation at the bar,” he says, pulling the triangle away with a flourish. “But let’s see what you can do, hermit.”

  I run my eyes over the table, then focus on the cue ball as I position myself to take aim. For a few seconds, I barely move except for a couple of micro adjustments to get my stick angled exactly how I want it. Then I draw back and strike fast. The balls explode against each other with such a loud crack that Aubrey gasps beside me. Striped balls start dropping into the pockets one after the other, while the solid balls spin harmlessly against the sides of the table. When the balls stop moving, only two stripes remain along with all but one of the solids.

  I glance up to meet Milly’s shocked expression and try not to look smug. I probably fail. “We’re stripes,” I say.

  Efram raises and lowers his arms in a we’re not worthy gesture. “Why didn’t you tell me your cousin was a shark, Aubrey?” he asks.

  “I had no idea,” Aubrey says, blinking like she’s seeing me for the first time.

  Which is disconcerting. Maybe I should’ve stuck with my first instinct and left, but the thing is, as soon as I saw the pool table, my hands itched to hold a cue again. I grew up around a billiards hall and used to hang out there every afternoon. One of the regulars taught me how to play, and after he died—dropped dead from a heart attack in his early fifties, which my father used to call “the blue-collar guy’s retirement plan”—I kept playing by myself. When I was twelve years old, I started challenging adults to play for money. They thought it was cute until I beat them.

  Milly jostles against me in a surprisingly friendly way. “Well, well, well,” she says. “Looks like we’ve discovered your secret talent.”

  She cheers me on for the rest of the short game—I clear the table before Aubrey and Efram get a turn—and then she leans her pool cue against the wall. “I need the restroom,” she says over her shoulder to Aubrey and Efram. “But we challenge you suckers to a rematch. You can break this time, to give you a fighting chance.”

  “Only if Jonah ties one hand behind his back,” Efram mutters as he starts gathering balls.

  “Where did you learn to play like that?” Aubrey asks.

  “Just around,” I say, my eyes straying to one of the Towhee tables behind us. It’s full of guys Efram calls the Prep Squad—they’re all tall and blond and wear stuff like whale belts unironically. Their unofficial leader is Reid Chilton, whose senator mother might be running for president in the next election. I don’t see much of the guy except when he bangs on our door to borrow toothpaste, but I already know I don’t like him.

  Reid pauses midconversation to watch Aubrey lunge awkwardly across the table for the triangle, and says something that makes the Prep Squadder next to him laugh. My hand curls more tightly around my pool cue. The more I see of Reid and his friends, the more I wonder whether there was some kind of method to Mildred’s madness. Maybe she saw her kids turning into assholes and took extreme steps to stop them.

  “You.” The voice at my elbow is ice cold, and when I turn, so is the look in Milly’s eyes. “Come with me. Now.” She snatches the pool cue out of my hands and leans it next to hers against the wall. “Game delay,” she says to Aubrey. “I need to talk to Jonah.”

  “About what?” Aubrey asks, but Milly has already fastened her fingers around my wrist like a handcuff as she drags me toward the back exit. All of her earlier friendliness is gone. I’m not surprised, exactly, but I’m still thrown off by how fast she flipped the switch.

  “What’s your problem?” I ask, my irritation mounting as I pull away from her grasp. “Stop yanking me. I’m already coming with you.”

  “Oh, you should thank me that this is all I’m doing,” Milly says in a low, threatening voice as she leans one shoulder into the door. It opens, and we spill outside into the cool night air. I take a deep breath to clear my head, but almost gag when I’m hit with the sour stench of garbage. We’re right next to a dumpster. Milly stops, hands on her hips as she turns to face me.

  “Can we move away from the trash—” I start, but that’s all I get out before Milly reaches both arms out and shoves me as hard as she can.

  I stumble backward, unprepared for both the action and the force behind it. That girl packs a lot of strength into a small frame. “What the hell?” I growl. My hands are up in a gesture of surrender, but my temper spikes.

  Milly pulls something small and square out of her pocket and waves it in my face. “What the hell indeed?” she says.

  A light over the door behind us throws enough of a glow to illuminate what she’s holding. My stomach twists as I stare at the familiar card, and all the anger drains ou
t of me in an instant. I reach behind me for the wallet in my back pocket. Or rather, the wallet that should’ve been in my back pocket, but isn’t.

  So that’s why she was acting so friendly while we played pool. She took it. Snaked it right out of my pocket while I was showing off. I could punch myself in the face for being so stupidly focused on the game I was playing that I missed the one she was playing.

  “Give me back my stuff.” I try to sound authoritative and unbothered at the same time, but sweat is already gathering at my hairline.

  Shit. Shit, shit. This is bad.

  Milly waves my driver’s license again, looking up at me from under those mile-long lashes. “Gladly. Just as soon as you tell me who the hell you are, Jonah North, and why you’re pretending to be my cousin.”

  I don’t know whether it’s to his credit or not that he doesn’t try to deny it.

  “Why did I even bring that damn license,” Other Jonah mutters. He looks furious, but I think it’s mostly at himself.

  “Yeah, well, this was only confirmation,” I say. I pull Jonah’s thin black wallet from my jeans pocket and stuff the license inside. It’s served its purpose now—and I already took a picture with my phone—so I hand the wallet to him. “Your polishing off an entire plate of shrimp linguine when you have a shellfish allergy is what tipped me off.”

  As soon as Jonah started eating his dinner at The Sevens, I waited for his face to swell up like it did when he ate a shrimp wrapped in bacon nine years ago at our house. I was shocked that he didn’t even turn a little red. When I went to get my drink, on the opposite side of the bar, I Googled can you grow out of a shellfish allergy and learned that while it’s not impossible, it’s highly unlikely, and there’s usually still at least some reaction. Enough that most people would avoid inhaling an entire plate of them in under five minutes.

  Maybe I could’ve accepted my alleged cousin as one of the lucky few, if it weren’t for the fact that this boy has never fit as Jonah Story. From the first time I saw him on the ferry, he didn’t make sense. For one thing, he’s a lot better-looking than I remember, even allowing for the space of nine years. For another, although he made a solid early effort at copying my cousin’s obnoxious mannerisms, he hasn’t been able to keep it up. This Jonah is annoying in his own way—he has a bad attitude and a chip on his shoulder about something, clearly—but he doesn’t have the same analytical, academic tone as Jonah Story.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jonah’s tense expression turns to outraged disbelief. “A shellfish allergy? Thanks, JT. That would’ve been useful information to have.”

  “Who’s JT?” I ask, although I think I know.

  Jonah’s jaw ticks, and he regards me in silence for a few seconds like he’s weighing how much to say. “Your cousin,” he finally admits. “We go to school together, and people call him JT so they don’t get us confused. His middle name is Theodore. But I guess you already know that.”

  I don’t—or if I ever did, I’ve forgotten—but Jonah North doesn’t need to know that. I can’t help a satisfied smirk at the idea of my cousin being the secondary Jonah somewhere. I’ll bet that bugs the crap out of him. “So he knew you were doing this?”

  Jonah hesitates again, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand as conflicting emotions skitter across his face. “He asked me to do this,” he says.

  “He asked you to pose as him?” My voice edges upward in disbelief.

  “Shhh,” Jonah says, even though we’re the only ones out here. He looks at the dumpster beside us, his mouth twisting. “Look, I can’t think straight with this stench. I’m moving. You can come with or not.”

  “Oh, I’m right behind you,” I say, secretly relieved as Jonah heads for the back of the parking lot. When we reach the edge of a grassy path, I grab his arm. “This is far enough. Spill the rest. Why did Jonah—or JT, or whatever—ask you to pose as him?”

  Away from the lights of the restaurant, Jonah’s face is nothing but shadows. “I’ll tell you everything, but I have one condition.” He raises his voice to cut off the protest I’m about to launch. “You don’t tell anybody who I really am. Well, you can tell Aubrey. But that’s it.”

  “I’m sorry, what?” Jonah doesn’t answer, and I fold my arms tightly across my chest. It feels like the temperature dropped by at least fifteen degrees since we arrived at Dunes, and the sleeveless top that was fine inside the crowded restaurant isn’t doing me any favors out here. Jonah, on the other hand, looks perfectly comfortable in a flannel shirt over his usual faded T-shirt. “You don’t get to make the rules when you’re the one committing fraud.”

  Jonah shrugs. “Okay, then. Have a good night.”

  He turns away, and I lunge for his arm. “You can’t just leave!”

  “I can if we don’t have a deal.”

  “That’s—” I sputter for another few seconds until it occurs to me that lying to a liar isn’t the worst sin I could commit. “Okay, fine. I won’t tell.”

  Jonah turns so he’s fully facing me once again. “I don’t really believe you,” he says, almost to himself. “But I can always drag you down with me if I get caught, so there’s that.”

  “No wonder you and JT are friends,” I snap. “You have a lot in common.”

  “I never said we were friends,” Jonah says coldly. “This is a business arrangement.” I force myself to keep quiet, and after a few seconds he blows out a sigh. “Here’s the thing. JT wanted to go to science camp. Which you knew, right?” I nod. “His father said no once they got the invitation from your grandmother. JT was pissed, because he got a scholarship and everything, which is tough to do, and Anders still told him he had to come here. I got into the same camp, but I didn’t get a scholarship. So I couldn’t go.”

  A note of bitterness creeps into Jonah’s voice as he adds, “The whole thing was JT’s idea. He heard me talking at school about not being able to go to camp and cornered me in the cafeteria one day, saying we could help each other out.” His jaw ticks. “For a second, I thought he was gonna offer me his scholarship. Which was stupid. JT’s not that kind of guy, and anyway, it probably wasn’t transferable like that. But he said he’d pay me to go to Gull Cove Island in his place and not tell anyone. He’d go to science camp, and I’d get this sweet summer job with an extra bonus from him.”

  “Extra bonus?” I raise a brow. “How much? What’s the going rate for impersonation these days?”

  “Enough,” Jonah says shortly.

  The wind picks up, and I shiver as I clutch my arms more tightly. Jonah starts taking off his flannel shirt, but I stop him with an upraised hand. “Don’t bother, Lancelot. I’m good. Did you guys even think this through? I mean, to be perfectly blunt, we’re all here to get into Mildred’s good graces. What did Jonah—or JT, or whatever—think was going to happen when she realized he sent a fake?”

  Jonah shrugs his shirt back on. “He didn’t believe your grandmother actually planned to do anything for you or your families. He thought it was just some weird game she’d decided to play that would mess with his future for no good reason. Which, given how things are going so far, seems about right.”

  Ugh. I hate that JT Story didn’t harbor any pointless hopes like me and Aubrey. The fact that we were gullible and he’s spending his summer exactly how he wanted sharpens my tone. “And how did you expect to pull this off for two months? I figured it out in less than a week and I wasn’t even trying.”

  Jonah rakes a hand through his hair. “God, I don’t know right now. It seemed logical at the time. JT and I are the same age, from the same town, and we have the same first name. We have the same coloring. The resort never asked for photo ID, just a birth certificate. JT has, like, zero social media presence, so it’s not like anybody would expect him to be posting about his summer. He hadn’t seen you or Aubrey in years, and his grandmother ever. And he gave me lots of background on your famil
y—that whole you know what you did letter, plus stuff about your and Aubrey’s parents, and the different ways everyone tried to get back in touch with Mildred over the years. I thought I had all the information I needed.” He shakes his head in disgust. “Shellfish allergy. God damn him.”

  “So was that you messaging me and Aubrey, back when we first got the letters?” I ask. “Or was that JT?”

  “It was JT. When you guys started the group chat—that was all real—he thought he’d have to go to the island with you. Then, once I agreed to take his place, he just played along like nothing had changed. He gave me printouts of all the chats so I’d know what you talked about.”

  “What’s your deal, then? Who are you?”

  “You saw the license. I’m Jonah North. I live in Providence and go to high school with your cousin. I needed the cash, so I posed as him when he asked me to. That’s it.”

  “What do you care if I tell, then?” I ask. “You got your money.”

  “It’s an installment plan,” Jonah says. “I only got the first third. Plus, Gull Cove Resort pays way better than what I’d make working at my parents’ place.”

  “Is it more than you would’ve made on the Agent Undeclared set?”

  Jonah’s tone gets wistful. “No. But I couldn’t say yes to that. I’m supposed to send pictures of the resort every week so JT can convince his father that he’s working here.”

  “Where do your parents think you are?”

  “Here. At a cushy summer job I lucked into. They just don’t know what name I’m using.”

  “You said you used to work for them? What kind of place do they have?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Jonah takes a step back, and I can see him clearly in the moonlight. I’m not sure why that particular question was his breaking point, but he looks entirely done—tense and exhausted, every angle of his face pronounced. “Listen, I’m going back to the dorms. I know I can’t make you keep your word about this, but I hope you do.” Then he turns and starts walking away. I contemplate following him, because I have plenty more questions, and he owes me some answers. But in the end I retrace my steps toward Dunes, heading inside to the only person currently on the island who’s related to me.