ST. SIMONS

They drove down from Macon on Friday morning. Jason was behind the wheel. Beth sat shotgun and fiddled with the stereo. Sara sat in the back seat looking out the window. Ted complained.

Beth took the Shanghai Lounge Divas disc from its case, put it in the CD player, and leaned her head back on the seat while a song called "Plum Blossom" played.

They were crossing the causeway to St. Simons. The music superimposed itself on the landscape, a plum-colored haze of marshland that gave way to Spanish moss-covered trees and cottages with screened porches lining the shaded streets.

Beth was reminded of her grandparents' house in Naples, Florida--the drowsing cicadas, the golf course behind the house, the story Nana used to tell about the children who got eaten by an alligator, Granddad's rocker on the front porch, the morning he woke up and thought he was being sent back to Bougainville to fight the Japanese. Beth heard Nana's voice as she lay dying on the lanai.

Beth had hated Nana; hated her grumping and moaning about having five children and never getting a chance to go to the conservatory and study violin and play in an orchestra and give concerts around the world. Yes, Beth hated Nana; but she loved her just the same.

Beth's thoughts wandered to the pile of unpublished poems and stories locked away in her desk drawer at home. She'd been adding to the pile since she graduated from college two years ago. Beth's mother harped on her to stop letting these papers languish and moulder and urged her to send them to magazines. Beth knew she should but something prevented her. Deep down she thought no one would read them, that she wasn't a good enough writer. She had a habit of comparing herself to Fitzgerald, O'Connor, McCullers; Faulkner, even. She hated being a young writer. What she wanted to do was bypass her early period and go straight for the middle-to-late. The height of her nonexistent career.

She sighed.

She looked over at Jason driving, staring straight ahead, squinting slightly. Of her three best high school friends, Jason Anderson was the only one who represented the Ideal--well bred, smartly dressed, mind honed on a T-square. Jason's father was an architect who had designed some of the finest homes in the Macon area and now on St. Simons and the adjoining Sea Island. Jason was currently in Yale's architecture program and intended to work for his father until he could open a firm of his own, preferably on St. Simons, as he enjoyed the balmy weather.

The four of them arrived at Jason's grandmother's house and went inside. It was much darker than it looked from the outside; the wood floors were finished to a black cherry color, and the patterned wallpaper was either navy or midnight blue. The furnishings were oddly heavy for a summer house; all the windows were covered with thick drapery. Two French doors opened onto the lanai.

They put their duffel bags in the two bedrooms and went to the beach.

It seemed an ideal beach day; the sun shone hotly through the gauze of clouds, the humid air. They stuck their umbrella in the sand and spread out their beach towels underneath, then rushed out to the ocean. It was warm as bathwater. Beth, Sara, and Jason waded out together while Ted swam ahead.

He was almost to the sandbar when Jason turned his head and shouted, "Hey, you got the DTs or something?" Jason, in a moment of brilliance several years ago, had reclaimed the abbreviation "DTs" and decided that it would mean "Deep Thoughts" instead. Whenever somebody wandered off by himself, he obviously "had the DTs."

Ted stood up on the sandbar and gave Jason the finger.

Jason rolled his eyes and turned back to Beth and Sara. Beth admired his profile against the gray-green waves and the distant yachts full of champagne and lobster-colored rich people on their way to the Caribbean.

"Hey, Jason," Sara said. "Remember when you led that summer book salon?"

Beth remembered that day well: it was the first day of their junior year, and Jason, dressed in his khakis and white polo shirt emblazoned with an "H" for Hannaford Academy, sauntered to the front of the classroom at the teacher's request and sat atop one of the desks and proceeded to guide the class through the ash-heaps and millionaires of The Great Gatsby. He'd asked some pretty heavy questions that not many people answered, either because they hadn't read the book or just didn't want to get their class president started on the finer points of Jazz Age culture.

Floating on her back, Beth began reciting what she thought she could remember of Fitzgerald: "My father told me, son, don't turn up your nose at people because you've had advantages they haven't had....I'm p-paralyzed with happiness....Gatsby believed in the orgastic future receding before us a little each year...."

"Quit it," Jason said, splashing her. She splashed back.

"I'm going out to the sandbar to rescue Ted," she said. She could just see the top of his head over the waves.

"Storm's coming," Sara said, pointing west, where thick gray clouds were piling into thunderheads.

There was a streak of lightning. People were already stirring onshore; soon they'd be making their exodus.

"Hey, Ted," Beth shouted. "Your hero's coming to save you!"

"I don't need a hero," he shouted back.

Beth stopped paddling and stood up. The water was so shallow it barely came to her shoulders. She knew he was only joking, but his words stung; he didn't need her. Maybe nobody did.

She realized she'd drifted out away from the others and waded back to shore. Sara was sitting under the umbrella. It had started to rain. The wall of gray clouds was almost directly overhead.

Ted joined them and sat down silently under the umbrella.

"Where's Jason?" Beth asked.

Ted shrugged. "I thought he was with you."

"Jason!" Sara called.

The three of them walked down to the shore. They waited a moment before calling his name again. Beth saw a couple of kids still out in the water, but no Jason. She figured he'd drifted out as she had and surfaced on another part of the beach.

Ten minutes later he still didn't show. They were beginning to worry. The lifeguard blew his whistle, calling everyone out of the water for the last time. It was raining even harder.

Ted calmly took down the umbrella, placed it in its plastic sleeve, and shook out his towel. Sara went to the lifeguard chair to ask if the lifeguard had seen Jason.

"How are you so calm?" Beth asked Ted. "Aren't you worried about Jason? I mean, he's only been our best friend since the first grade."

Ted's face darkened. "Gatsby wasn't a hero, you know."

"What?"

"Gatsby."

"I heard you. What are you talking about?"

"He wanted to be some kind of tragic hero, but he couldn't."

As if on cue, there was a thunderclap. A little kid next to them shrieked and threw a towel over his head.

"If this is your idea of a joke," Beth said, "it's not funny."

Ted grabbed her by the shoulders. It was pouring now. Behind Ted, Beth could see Sara rushing up and down the shore with the lifeguard.

"Listen to me," Ted said. "Under no circumstances could Gatsby have been a hero. It was not an age for heroism. Nobody cared. Nobody wanted to be rescued, understand? They wanted to stay stupid and beautiful and shiny. They were so far out you couldn't see 'em from the shore. Like you. Like Jason. Like everybody. So what's the difference? Sometimes you just need to let it go. Give up. Just give up!"

He released her, and she fell backwards into the sand. She reached up instinctively to her face, not knowing if the wetness on her cheeks was tears or rain or both.

She stood and looked out across the great expanse of ocean, now entirely gray and vacant, broken only by the rain.