Beach Blondes

by Katherine Applegate; Michael Grant

  Diana was at a loss for words. She seemed to be concentrating, trying to digest some unusual idea. Then, with a small, impatient shake of her head, she said, “Nice of you to say that.” She stood up suddenly. “Well, I have to go take a shower.”

  Summer watched her go and felt frustrated. It was as if what she’d said just hadn’t reached Diana. Like Diana had raised some wall of armor that kept out any expression of gratitude or friendship.

  “Diana,” Summer called.

  Diana stopped and turned back, annoyance and impatience clear on her face. “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  Summer poured coffee into two mugs and walked down to her stilt house with the manila envelope under her arm.

  The stilt house sat out over the water of the bay, connected to land by a wooden catwalk. It was a modest little bungalow, even a bit shabby. When Summer had first learned that Diana had planned to stick her out here, rather than in the luxurious main house, she had been upset. But now it was home. Funny how quickly it had come to seem familiar.

  A pelican sat on the railing, wearing an expression that seemed simultaneously dorky and scolding.

  “Hi, Frank,” Summer said to the pelican. “How’s fishing?”

  She knew the pelican’s name because Diver had told her. How Diver knew that its name was Frank was a mystery. But then, everything about Diver was a mystery. Last night, as she had finally climbed out of the water, she had been talking to him and only then realized he was no longer there.

  Probably he had gone back up to the deck of the stilt house. Probably. Or maybe he was just a figment of her imagination. She smiled at the thought. But no, Marquez had seen him once. So if Diver was a hallucination, he was one that others could see, too.

  Summer hesitated at the door to her house. She could hear Seth still hammering away and pausing to sing, then hammering again. A lot was unsettled between her and Seth. An awful lot.

  He had asked her to go out with him. He had asked her after he had kissed her in the airport minutes after they first met. But then it had turned out he had a girlfriend named Lianne. He’d said they had broken up, but then Summer had walked in on Lianne lying in Seth’s bed.

  After that, well, after that she no longer had any doubts about setting Seth Warner aside. It had seemed so obvious at the time. Seth was a two-timing jerk, while Adam…

  Right, Summer. You have wonderful intuition about guys. You’re the genius of love.

  She remembered the manila envelope under her arm. Seth would be glad to get it. No doubt he’d immediately burn what was in it. Which would be a shame, because it really was a very artistic photograph. Diana had taken it the summer before, by accident of timing snapping the shutter at the moment when Seth was rudely pantsed by Adam and Ross and dived for cover off the end of a pier. Diana said she’d been trying to catch the sunset. She’d called the picture “The Sun and the Moon.”

  Summer put the mugs down on the rail. Yes, it was the photograph. And the negative. Yes, it was quite artistic. Nicely composed, all the elements balanced perfectly.

  She put the picture back.

  “That was wrong of me,” she told Frank. “I’m ashamed.”

  Frank spread his wings and glided away, obviously shocked by her behavior.

  Summer retrieved her mugs and went inside. An impressive amount of work had been done already. The kitchen floor gleamed, covered in shiny new linoleum. It was a real improvement over the dirty, stained, torn, ragged tile that had been there. The hammering continued in the bathroom. There was a smell of sawdust and glue.

  Summer peeked around the corner. Seth was on his hands and knees, wearing jeans with no shirt. He had a very nice back. Muscular in a lanky sort of way, with a narrow waist and no fat. She contemplated the view for a moment.

  Maybe the tarot lady had it right. Maybe Seth was the perfect guy all along.

  Or else Diver was. Only…no, he wasn’t, somehow.

  Or maybe the right guy was someone else entirely.

  She had to keep all her options open. No falling in love until she was absolutely, dead sure.

  Seth had replaced a lot of the old rotting floor with fresh boards, all neatly nailed in place. He positioned a nail and raised his hammer back over his shoulder.

  “Hi.”

  The hammer came down. “Aaaah, jeeeeeeez! Oh, man!” Seth jumped up, clutching his left thumb with his right hand and doing the dance of pain. “Mmmm-maaaan, oh, man, man that hurt.”

  “Are you all right?” Summer asked, alarmed.

  “Mmmph. Hhmmm. Oh, yeah, I’m swell. It’s not the first time I’ve smashed my finger with a hammer. Which is not to say that I enjoy it.” He inspected his thumb critically.

  “Is it broken?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He wiggled it several times, wincing at the pain. He looked at her crossly. “Is that coffee for me?”

  “Yes.” Summer held out the cup. “Sorry if I surprised you.”

  He took the cup and tasted a sip. He shrugged. “No big deal. Just if you ever see me using a sledgehammer or an ax or anything, let alone a chain saw…” He worked his thumb back and forth.

  Summer giggled. “You must have been down here working since the sun came up.”

  “It’s better to start early,” Seth said. “It’s not as hot then. At least I should have the place ready to be lived in by tonight.” He looked down, staring into his coffee cup. “I’m uh, really sorry about, you know, being a jerk.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “The way I tore this place up,” he said. “I mean, I know it’s my job and all, I know I had to do some of it, but I could have been more careful. I could have made sure you could still use the place. Then, you know—”

  Summer sighed. “Look, Seth, what happened wasn’t your fault. Besides, nothing did happen, so no biggie, right?”

  “That’s not the point. I can’t just be a jerk because I feel like it.” His face was stony. “I was mad at you.”

  Summer smiled ironically. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out, Seth.”

  “I know what happened with Lianne,” he said. “I mean, I know what you think happened.”

  Now Summer began to feel uncomfortable. It was way too early to be talking to Seth as if maybe they were going to have some kind of relationship. She had just broken up with Adam—if you could call it breaking up. Summer wasn’t sure. She’d never really had a serious boyfriend before. Was what had happened the night before an official breakup?

  Maybe not official, but a breakup, definitely.

  Seth seemed to sense that he had carried things too far, too fast. “Look, I’m sorry. I keep having to say that. I just meant that I know you’re feeling bad, and I wanted to tell you that I still really care about you.”

  Summer made a frustrated noise. She couldn’t deal with this, not yet. “Seth, I really don’t think—”

  He held up his hands. “Okay, I understand. You want time.”

  “That’s right,” Summer said, gratefully seizing on the opportunity, “I want time.”

  He pointed with his hammer at the floor. “I’ll get the rest of the tile laid in here before noon. That way the adhesive can dry by this evening. I’ll grout it tomorrow.”

  “Grout?” Summer grinned.

  “Sure, grout. What? What’s funny about grout?”

  “I don’t know, just the word. Grout. Grout. I’ve never known anyone who used the word grout in casual conversation before.”

  Seth smiled his reticent smile. “I’ll try to watch my use of that word.”

  “No, I like it. It’s so…you know, so real. It’s a guy word, like transmission or yo or, I don’t know, like dude.”

  “So if I go around saying ‘Yo, dude, let’s grout that transmission,’ you’ll know I’m a guy?” He made a face. “Of course, I’d have to be a stupid guy, to grout a transmission.”

  Summer laughed. “I guess I’d know you were a guy even if you didn’t say that.”
/>   “I was beginning to wonder,” he said.

  “What?”

  “If you knew I was a guy.”

  Summer shrugged, feeling embarrassed again. “I may have noticed. I mean, of course, duh.” She pointed at his bare chest. “You’re really flat chested. That was my first clue.”

  Now he was embarrassed, too.

  “So, um, have you had breakfast or anything?” Summer said, heading briskly toward the kitchen.

  “I had cereal when I got up, but that was hours ago,” he said.

  “I have some eggs and some bread, so I was going to maybe fry the eggs and make toast,” Summer said. “Do you want some?”

  Sure,” Seth said gratefully. “You know how to cook?”

  “Not really, but I’m trying to learn,” Summer said. “I have to go to work in an hour, so I need to eat something first. Oh, by the way,” she said with careful nonchalance, “Diana asked me to give you this envelope. I have no idea what it is.”

  Seth looked in the envelope and smiled. “She didn’t have to do that,” he said. “I’m extremely relieved that she did, but she didn’t have to.”

  “I guess it was kind of embarrassing having that picture around,” Summer agreed.

  “Hah. You said you had no idea what was in the envelope,” Seth said, smirking a little.

  “I guessed,” Summer said.

  “You looked.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seth, I’m trying to cook. Could you not start arguments with me when I’m trying to cook?” Summer said severely.

  Seth leaned against the wall while Summer began cooking. He winced a couple of times, at the way she cracked the eggs and the way she didn’t butter the toast all the way to the edges, and again at the way she tried to turn the eggs over too early and broke the yolks, but he stayed where he was.

  “I broke only three out of the four eggs,” Summer said wryly. “I’m improving.”

  They sat at the simple round table. Summer gave Seth the unbroken egg.

  “Thanks. I was starving,” he said, attacking the food.

  “Well, all that hard work,” Summer said. “Hammering, grouting, and so on.”

  “Yeah. Plus it was a long night.”

  “Yes, it was,” Summer agreed. He had a smear of butter on his lower lip. It was hard not to stare at it.

  “Thanks,” Seth said. “You seem like you’re okay. You know, about last night.”

  Summer shrugged. “I was pretty upset.”

  “I wish I could have, I don’t know, helped somehow.”

  “It wasn’t your problem,” Summer said.

  “But maybe I could have helped you, you know?” Seth looked embarrassed now, as if he’d said too much.

  Summer picked up the paper towel she was using as a napkin and reached over to wipe the butter from his lip.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  He got up from the table, piled her dish together with his, and carried them to the kitchen. She followed him, intending to give the plates a quick rinse.

  They collided. The collision lasted longer than it should have.

  He put his arms around her. She pushed him, her palms flat against his lean, bare chest.

  “I want to kiss you,” Seth said.

  “Well, you can’t,” Summer said. “This is just like in the airport. You think you can just go around kissing people when they don’t even want you to?”

  “I thought you wanted me to,” he said. He was still very close. “Are you sure you don’t?”

  Summer hesitated. Seth took her in his arms again, and this time she didn’t resist. He kissed her.

  After several very pleasurable seconds, she pushed him away. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I shouldn’t have let you do that.”

  “You shouldn’t have? Why?”

  “Why? Why? How about because last night I was kissing Adam? I’m not some slut! That’s why. Jeez, Seth, you of all people should know. You’re the one who’s always telling me how people come down here to the Keys and start acting strange and losing control of themselves and doing things they would never do in the real world.”

  “I said all that?” He looked disgruntled. “When am I going to learn to shut up?”

  Summer twisted away from him and put some distance between them. What was it about Seth that he could get her to want to kiss him when she didn’t really want to? “I have to get ready for work.”

  “Ready for work? La dee da?” He came close and took her hands in his. “Look, Summer, you can pretend you don’t care,” he said. “I don’t know why you want to pretend you don’t care, but that’s okay. I do care. I’m in love with you. I keep thinking maybe I’ve lost you, first over Lianne, then over Adam. But you know what? I won’t ever give up.”

  At that moment Summer wanted very much for him to kiss her again. And that realization made her queasy. How could she want Seth to kiss her? Hadn’t she learned her lesson about leaping into relationships? She’d wanted Adam to kiss her, too, and look how that had turned out.

  “You barely even know me,” she said. “How can you say you’re in love with me?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I can say it because it’s the way I feel.”

  “Seth, what if it turns out that I don’t feel the same way about you?”

  He looked somber. “I don’t know. That would be bad.”

  “Exactly. See? I don’t want that,” Summer said. “I mean, can’t we just take everything slower until we’re really, really sure?”

  “Slower.” He thought that over. “Yes, I guess I can do slower.”

  “That would be good,” Summer said. She was glad he understood. She was not going to jump instantly from Adam to him. That would be wrong, even on Crab Claw Key.

  He looked thoughtful, then brightened at some idea.

  “So, how about tomorrow afternoon?”

  “We could think about starting then,” Summer said, actually a little disappointed that he was accepting it all so well. “We’ll take everything slow, see if we get along, see if we have anything in common and all of that.”

  “After tomorrow we will have something in common,” he said, grinning wolfishly. “Masks, rubber clothes, and great big feet.”

  6

  Diana Figures It Out, and So Does Lianne

  Thanks, Summer had said. Thanks. The word seemed not to mean anything to Diana. Why had Summer said it? It wasn’t as if Diana had done much. On the contrary, she’d frozen up and babbled like an idiot, unable, without Marquez’s goading, even to explain why she was there at the Merrick mansion in the middle of the night.

  You didn’t thank people for making asses of themselves. You didn’t thank people for being weak and contemptible. That made no sense at all.

  She climbed the stairs to her room. From far off she could hear the sound of hammering. Seth, out working on the stilt house.

  Thanks. Like Diana had done something.

  She stopped halfway up the stairs, descended, and went instead to her mother’s vast bedroom suite. Mallory would be coming home soon. Any day now. Diana had to do what she’d been thinking of doing before then. Perhaps this afternoon, after she got back from volunteering at the institute.

  She went into her mother’s bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. The bottle was there, as it had been on the countless occasions she’d looked. She twisted off the cap, feeling a strange satisfaction in the familiar feel of it. She spilled the pills out onto her palm and counted them carefully.

  Yes, they were all still there. More than enough to do the job.

  They would find her at the bottom of the circular stairs. She didn’t know why she’d chosen that spot. Perhaps it was supposed to be symbolic—Diana, dead at the bottom of the twin staircases, unable to decide whether she should go left or right. It struck her as funny in an awful way.

  It would be a small item in the local paper—daughter of famous romance novelist die
s from a drug overdose. Dead from an overdose. It would be so common it wouldn’t even make the big newspapers.

  Although the Merrick family would certainly be relieved.

  Relieved. Yes, that was the word. Relieved. Because…because they were afraid. Of her.

  It was a new thought. A new thought, insinuated into the horribly familiar ritual thoughts of depression and self-loathing.

  Was it true?

  She replaced the pills in the bottle and put the bottle back precisely in its place on the shelf. She went upstairs to her own room.

  She showered and was drying off when the thought poked up again into her brain.

  The Merricks were afraid.

  “So what?” she asked herself wearily. “So what?”

  She shook her head impatiently and returned to more familiar thoughts. She wondered when her mother would come home. She wondered whether Adam had laughed at the way she’d stood there, trembling and incoherent. Probably. Why wouldn’t he? It was funny, after all, the way she’d stood there unable to do or say anything. Funny.

  And yet…Again the thought teased her. The Merricks were afraid of her.

  “It’s not like it matters,” Diana said to her steamy reflection in the mirror. She began to dry her hair with a blow-dryer, fluffing it with her fingers. It wasn’t as if she could actually do anything to change what had happened. She was who she was, and that was the important fact.

  And yet…they feared her. Adam feared her. Ross. The senator, even…

  But what could she do? What was she going to do? Get some kind of revenge on them?

  She started to laugh.

  Then she froze. She directed the blow-dryer at the mirror, burning a hole through the steam.

  Revenge? Was that the point?