My Life as a Book

Derek finds out that he can’t go with Matt to Martha’s Vineyard and starts pressing his parents for answers about the drowning. He climbs up to the garage roof with the croquet set and begins swinging when his parents come outside. His mother explains that she doesn’t want him going across the country; he thinks she’s covering up for something else: Susan James. When Derek’s mother hears the name, her expression saddens, and she agrees to tell him everything.

Derek comes down from the roof and—after lecturing him about safety—his mother takes him inside, sits him down, and tells him the story. When Derek was two, his parents took him to Boston to visit his grandma and on the way back rented a house in Martha’s Vineyard for a week. When they went out to dinner and got a babysitter, Susan James, for the evening, they instructed her to stay at the house, but she took Derek to South Beach. Derek entered the water, and Susan went after him but became caught in a riptide and drowned. Derek suddenly feels guilty and regrets reading the article, thinking, “I should’ve known extra reading would be hazardous to my health” (47).