It was the kind of summer you don't write home about. Vix didn't exactly lie, but like Caitlin, she began to practice selective truth telling. What her family didn't know wouldn't hurt them.Â
The house was dark and messy, a place where nobody cared how much sand was on the floor or in your bed. Caitlin called it Psycho House. Vix could see why. Their room had unpainted wooden walls, twin beds with squeaky springs, faded red bedspreads, and pillows that smelled worse than the damp sponge used to clean off the lunch tables at school. The shelves were crammed full of headless Barbies, Legos, board games with missing pieces, tennis rackets with broken strings, starfish, hermit crab shells, jars of dead insects, pyramids of rocks.Â
The bathroom was down the hall. They shared it with Sharkey. When Vix sat in the claw-footed tub she could look out over Tashmoo Pond, which was a mile long. It opened into the Sound, allowing boats to come and go.
In the pond things floated, brown things that looked like turds. Caitlin swore they weren't but Vix wasn't so sure. Caitlin swam every day in her purple tank suit. Vix's suit was blue and white with red stars. She hated it. Her mother said there was no point buying a new one if she didn't plan on getting it wet. And she didn't. She'd be like Sharkey. He never went anywhere near the water. He never even wore a bathing suit.Â
Another thing about him and Caitlin, they hardly ever changed their clothes. But the really disgusting thing was Caitlin didn't change her underpants. Sometimes she didn't even wear underpants. She hadn't taken a bath or shower since they'd arrived. Her hair needed shampooing. She and Sharkey were both starting to smell of unwashed feet and something else, something Vix couldn't identify. But it wasn't good. If Lamb noticed, he didn't say anything. He was so laid back he was practically horizontal.
'He was a hippie for a while,' Caitlin told Vix. 'He lived up island with all the other hippies. Some of them are famous now. Some of them are rich.'
Vix was dying to ask the obvious but she didn't. Nobody was going to accuse her of being a person who didn't get it.
