45

START OF MY second week on Beechwood, we discover the roof of Cuddledown. It’s easy to climb up there; we just never did it before because it involves going through Aunt Bess’s bedroom window.

The roof is cold as hell in the nighttime, but in the day there’s a great view of the island and the sea beyond it. I can see over the trees that cluster around Cuddledown to New Clairmont and its garden. I can even see into the house, which has floor-to-ceiling windows in many of the ground-floor rooms. You can see a bit of Red Gate, too, and the other direction, across to Windemere, then out to the bay.

That first afternoon we spread out food on an old picnic blanket. We eat Portuguese sweet bread and runny cheeses in small wooden boxes. Berries in green cardboard. Cold bottles of fizzy lemonade.

We resolve to come here every day. All summer. This roof is the best place in the world.

“If I die,” I say as we look at the view, “I mean, when I die, throw my ashes in the water of the tiny beach. Then when you miss me, you can climb up here, look down, and think how awesome I was.”

“Or we could go down and swim in you,” says Johnny. “If we missed you really badly.”

“Ew.”

“You’re the one who wanted to be in the water of the tiny beach.”

“I just meant, I love it here. It’d be a grand place to have my ashes.”

“Yeah,” says Johnny. “It would be.”

Mirren and Gat have been silent, eating chocolate-covered hazelnuts out of a blue ceramic bowl. “This is a bad conversation,” Mirren says.

“It’s okay,” says Johnny.

“I don’t want my ashes here,” says Gat.

“Why not?” I say. “We could all be together in the tiny beach.”

“And the littles will swim in us!” yells Johnny.

“You’re grossing me out,” snaps Mirren.

“It’s not actually that different from all the times I’ve peed in there,” says Johnny.

“Gack.”

“Oh, come on, everyone pees in there.”

“I don’t,” says Mirren.

“Yes, you do,” he says. “If the tiny beach water isn’t made of pee now, after all these years of us peeing in it, a few ashes aren’t going to ruin it.”

“Do you guys ever plan out your funeral?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” Johnny crinkles his nose.

“You know, in Tom Sawyer, when everyone thinks Tom and Huck and what’s-his-name?”

“Joe Harper,” says Gat.

“Yeah, they think Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper are dead. The boys go to their own funeral and hear all the nice memories the townspeople have of them. After I read that, I always thought about my own funeral. Like, what kind of flowers and where I’d want my ashes. And the eulogy, too, saying how I was transcendentally awesome and won the Nobel Prize and the Olympics.”

“What did you win the Olympics for?” asks Gat.

“Maybe handball.”

“Is there handball in the Olympics?”

“Yes.”

“Do you even play handball?”

“Not yet.”

“You better get started.”

“Most people plan their weddings,” says Mirren. “I used to plan my wedding.”

“Guys don’t plan their weddings,” says Johnny.

“If I married Drake I’d have all yellow flowers,” Mirren says. “Yellow flowers everywhere. And a spring yellow dress, like a normal wedding dress only yellow. And he would wear a yellow cummerbund.”

“He would have to love you very, very much to wear a yellow cummerbund,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” says Mirren. “But Drake would do it.”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want at my funeral,” says Johnny. “I don’t want a bunch of New York art-world types who don’t even know me standing around in a stupid-ass reception room.”

“I don’t want religious people talking about a God I don’t believe in,” says Gat.

“Or a bunch of fake girls acting all sad and then putting lip gloss on in the bathroom and fixing their hair,” says Mirren.

“God,” I quip, “you make it sound like funerals aren’t any fun.”

“Seriously, Cady,” says Mirren. “You should plan your wedding, not your funeral. Don’t be morbid.”

“What if I never get married? What if I don’t want to get married?”

“Plan your book party, then. Or your art opening.”

“She’s winning the Olympics and the Nobel Prize,” says Gat. “She can plan parties for those.”

“Okay, fine,” I say. “Let’s plan my Olympic handball party. If it’ll make you happy.”

So we do. Chocolate handballs wrapped in blue fondant. A gold dress for me. Champagne flutes with tiny gold balls inside. We discuss whether people wear weird goggles for handball like they do for racquetball and decide that for purposes of our party, they do. All the guests will wear gold handball goggles for the duration.

“Do you play on a handball team?” asks Gat. “I mean, will there be a whole crew of Amazonian handball goddesses there, celebrating victory with you? Or did you win it by your lonesome?”

“I have no idea.”

“You really have to start educating yourself about this,” says Gat. “Or you’re never going to win the gold. We’ll have to rethink the whole party if you only get the silver.”

LIFE FEELS BEAUTIFUL that day.

The four of us Liars, we have always been.

We always will be.

No matter what happens as we go to college, grow old, build lives for ourselves; no matter if Gat and I are together or not. No matter where we go, we will always be able to line up on the roof of Cuddledown and gaze at the sea.

This island is ours. Here, in some way, we are young forever.

46

DAYS THAT FOLLOW are darker. Rarely do the Liars want to go anywhere. Mirren has a sore throat and body aches. She stays mainly in Cuddledown. She paints pictures to hang in the hallways and makes rows of shells along the edges of the countertops. Dishes pile in the sink and on the coffee table. DVDs and books are in messy stacks all over the great room. The beds lie unmade and the bathrooms have a damp, mildewy smell.

Johnny eats cheese with his fingers and watches British TV comedies. One day he collects a row of old tea bags, soggy ones, and tosses them into a mug filled with orange juice.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Biggest splash gets the most points.”

“But why?”

“My mind works in mysterious ways,” says Johnny. “I find underhand is generally the best technique.”

I help him figure out a point system. Five points for a sprinkle, ten for a puddle, twenty for a decorative pattern on the wall behind the mug.

We go through a whole bottle of fresh-squeezed juice. When he’s done, Johnny leaves the mug and the mangled, leaking tea bags where they lie.

I don’t clean up, either.

Gat has a list of the hundred greatest novels ever written, and he’s pushing his way through whatever he’s been able to find on the island. He marks them with sticky notes and reads passages aloud. Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. I only half pay attention when he reads, because Gat has not kissed me or reached out to me since we agreed to act normal.

I think he avoids being alone with me.

I avoid being alone with him, too, because my whole body sings to be near him, because every movement he makes is charged with electricity. I often think of putting my arms around him or running my fingers along his lips. When I let my thoughts go there—if for a moment Johnny and Mirren are out of sight, if for even a second we are alone—the sharp pain of unrequited love invites the migraine in.

These days she is a gnarled crone, touching the raw flesh of my brain with her cruel fingernails. She pokes my exposed nerves, exploring whether she’ll take up residence in my skull. If she gets in, I’m confined to my bedroom for a day or maybe two.

We eat lunch on the roof most days.

I suppose they do it when I’m ill, too.