Beach Blondes

by Katherine Applegate; Michael Grant

  And that’s as far as the excuses went. I was just on my way to…

  Just on my way to see if you’d like to hang out with me or whatever, because basically I’m trying to get J.T. out of my mind permanently and you seem like just the guy who could make me forget that jerk forever.

  “Excellent plan,” Marquez muttered under her breath. “Just tell Diver all that and he’ll run away, screaming for help.”

  As it turned out, she had a difficult time finding Diver in the cluttered maze of boats. She had no trouble attracting the attention of several other guys, since she had dressed in a way designed to get attention. But she breezed by them with an air of confident disdain, and they left her alone.

  She had reached the end of the main pier and was enjoying a little shade cast by a monstrous cabin cruiser when she heard voices. Feminine voices. She shielded her eyes and saw two women, sun-glassed, tanned, liposuctioned, wearing gold-lace sandals and similar black one-piece bathing suits.

  They didn’t notice her. They were looking in the other direction and talking in low voices.

  “Something’s different about him,” one said.

  “Nothing’s different. He’s still adorable.”

  “I’m not saying he isn’t. I’m just saying, something has changed. I think maybe it’s the bathing suit.”

  “Maybe I’ll call him over. We could get him to swab the decks or something.”

  Marquez had a pretty good idea who they were talking about. And when she went out to the end of the pier she could see Diver, standing up in a tiny dinghy, carefully applying paint to a beautiful, antique sailboat.

  She was about to call to him, but then she had a better idea.

  Marquez kicked off her sandals and dived into the water. She was halfway to him by the time she surfaced. She took a deep breath and went under again, swimming hard until she could see the little dinghy bobbing overhead.

  She surfaced in the narrow space between the dinghy and the side of the sailboat. She spit out a mouthful of seawater, smoothed back her hair, and smiled. “Hi.”

  He stopped with his paintbrush in midair. “Oh. Hi.”

  It wasn’t exactly giddy enthusiasm she saw on his face.

  “I know you, right?” he said.

  That nearly wiped the smile off Marquez’s face. “Yes, I’m Marquez. You know, Summer’s friend.” Oh, great. She had to introduce herself as “Summer’s friend.” Obviously, she’d made a huge impression on him.

  “Yeah,” he said. He glanced around, looking a bit like a trapped animal.

  “Give me a hand,” Marquez ordered.

  “A hand?”

  “Help me up,” she said. She stuck a hand up to him.

  With reluctance he didn’t even try to hide, he took her hand and helped heave her into the dinghy. “Careful, I have paint here. This man who owns the boat is in kind of a hurry.”

  Marquez sat in the stern of the dinghy and wondered if she wasn’t totally wasting her time. She knew perfectly well that she was an attractive girl. An attractive girl wearing a small bathing suit ought to have gotten some reaction from Diver—other than the vaguely queasy look he had.

  “You’re painting the boat, huh?” she said.

  “Just this part. See, where it got scraped against a piling.”

  “Maybe I could help,” Marquez said with sudden inspiration. “You know, I paint a lot.”

  “You do?”

  A faint flicker of interest.

  “Yes. Some people think I’m a pretty good artist,” Marquez said.

  “Huh.”

  “Do you have an extra brush?”

  “There.” He pointed.

  He still looked queasy and ill at ease, but he moved over a little to make room for her to take a brush, dip it, and begin to paint, feathering her edge into his.

  “You know, we bought you some clothes. Summer and Diana and me.”

  “Thanks. This guy let me have this suit, though, so I’m set. This guy named Seth. He’s Summer’s boyfriend, right?”

  What an interesting question, Marquez thought. Why exactly was he asking that? Was Diver interested in Summer? Oh, that would really be a major drag. “Yes, I guess so,” Marquez said.

  Well, it is the truth—kind of, she told herself. And if it wasn’t the complete truth right now, it probably would be soon.

  “Huh,” Diver commented, a word that told Marquez nothing.

  “No doubt you wish I was Summer,” Marquez said snippily.

  “Why should I? She doesn’t paint, does she?”

  “Maybe you prefer blondes,” Marquez said.

  “No, I like dark hair, too,” he said.

  Marquez told herself not to push it any further, but she never listened to her own advice. “Blue eyes? Is that it? Thighs? You like skinny thighs?”

  Diver rested his brush on the lip of the paint can. “I like all kinds of girls,” he said seriously. “I just don’t do anything about it because they disturb my wa. I mean, I guess I’d rather just have a peaceful life.”

  “Uh-huh. So, do I disturb your wa?”

  “Yes, very much,” he said.

  “Excellent,” Marquez said, beaming with self-satisfaction. For the next thirty minutes, much to Marquez’s frustration, Diver said not a word. She decided she should not force herself on him, so she remained silent, too. After all, she admired his strangeness, so she shouldn’t be annoyed by it.

  When they’d finished painting he looked at her, quickly looked away, and said, “Thanks. I can give you some of the money the guy is paying me.”

  “No, no,” Marquez said with a laugh. “I didn’t do it for money.”

  “Oh. Why did you do it?”

  Good question, Marquez realized. Her bathing suit now had two speckles of white paint. And she had learned exactly nothing new about Diver.

  “Like I said, I enjoy painting,” she said.

  “Cool.”

  “Um, in fact, I’d really…I mean, it would be cool if you would come over and take a look at my paintings. At my house, I mean.” Marquez held her breath. This would be the point at which he would live out the meaning of his name and dive over the side of the boat, never to return.

  “I guess I could,” he said.

  Marquez was delighted. And surprised. “Let’s go, then,” she said. Show him her paintings. Maybe they could share a little snack. Then, with any luck at all, she could begin to convince him that it wasn’t such a bad thing to have your wa disturbed.

  “This is my tree,” Marquez said with a flourish of her hand. “See. The roots go out across the floor, then the trunk goes all the way up the wall, and the branches and leaves spread out across the ceiling.”

  Diver tilted back his head to take it all in. He nodded solemnly.

  Marquez was a bit nonplussed by his reaction. The tree was her best thing. She pointed out several other features of her walls. “That’s the moon, of course, and the sun.” Yeah, like he wouldn’t recognize the moon or the sun. “The moon and the stars are painted with fluorescent colors, so that way, when you turn off the lights at night, they keep glowing for a while. Want to see?”

  She flipped off the lights, plunging the room into almost total darkness. The sprinkling of stars on the ceiling glowed an eerie white. Then she turned the lights back on.

  Diver seemed to guess that some response was being called for. “Cool,” he said. He turned and focused on the graffiti names that intertwined with the many other small paintings. He pointed to a patch of pure white. “What’s this?”

  Marquez sighed. Perfect. He’d focused on the one thing she really did not want to discuss. “That’s just something I wanted to cover over,” she said.

  “A name?”

  “Yes, a name. Some guy’s name.” J.T., to be exact. She had covered it with three coats of white. And still she had the feeling she could make out the letters beneath.

  “Did he die?”

  “Die? No. Why would he be dead?”

  “You erase
d him.”

  “Look, it’s just some guy I didn’t want to remember anymore.”

  Diver nodded. He remained focused with singular intensity on the painted-out J.T.

  “I think it’s good to remember things,” Diver said softly.

  “Some things yes, some things no,” Marquez said impatiently.

  “I don’t think you can choose that way. I think you either remember stuff or you don’t. It’s not like you can just erase things. I mean, not deliberately, anyway.”

  Marquez had the distinct sense that Diver was telling her something important, but at the same time she was feeling harassed and annoyed. She had Diver right here in her room, and all they could talk about was J.T. Or the lack of J.T.

  “Diver, J.T. is just my ex-boyfriend, okay? Things got strange between us, or at least he got strange, and now that’s over.”

  He nodded. Then he smiled impishly. “I guess I should be careful not to get strange, huh?”

  Now what exactly did that mean? “You want to listen to some music?” Marquez asked. No answer. He had moved on now, reading each name on her wall as if he was trying to memorize them.

  Marquez chose a CD and hit Play. The music was danceable without being too loud. The plan was to see if Diver liked to dance. So far he had failed one of her tests of a worthy human being—he had not exactly been enthusiastic about her painting. But if he could dance, he might make up for that.

  Marquez let the music seep through her, let it touch the control buttons in her mind that started her body swaying in time to the rhythm.

  “I don’t see Summer,” Diver said.

  “I’ll put her up soon,” Marquez said. “I haven’t decided on the letters or the color yet. I’m thinking gold and blue.”

  Diver actually smiled. “Yes, gold and blue. Those are her colors.”

  “And what colors am I?” Marquez asked playfully.

  Diver looked at her thoughtfully, concentrating, as if she had asked him a perfectly serious question. “You’re like sunrise or sunset. Red and yellow and orange, fading into purple. Bright, intense colors. If they lasted too long they’d be overwhelming and make everything else look pale. So they just appear for a short time and then fade away, and you’re wondering if they were even real. And then they reappear, but never for so long that you get tired of them. Just a short glimpse, and that’s all you need.”

  Marquez swallowed hard. Okay, she was willing to forgive his lack of interest in her walls. She stepped closer. He did not run away.

  He did not become any less attractive up close.

  “Um, would you like to dance?” she asked him.

  “I don’t dance very much,” he said.

  That was it. He’d failed both her tests. Too bad she just didn’t care.

  “Can I ask you something, Diver?”

  “If you want.”

  “Is Diver your real name?”

  His crystal-clear eyes seemed to cloud over. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you don’t think so?” Marquez said, smiling.

  “Never, mind. I guess either way, I’m me,” he said simply. “I have to go.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marquez demanded. “You just got here. And don’t start talking about your wa again.”

  He laughed self-deprecatingly. “Okay, I won’t. But I still have to go.”

  Marquez threw up her hands. “What is it with me and guys? Do you know why I brought you here?”

  “To show me your painting?”

  “No, no, no. Because you were supposed to become interested in me. You were going to really like my paintings, and then we would maybe dance, and then, I figured unless I have totally lost it, you’d kiss me and I’d kiss you, and I’d tell you it was something I’d been wanting to do ever since I saw you.”

  “Oh.”

  Suddenly the telephone began to ring.

  Diver stepped closer, and then, without warning, kissed Marquez lightly on the lips.

  He drew back. “Did that make you happy?” he asked.

  Marquez just groaned.

  “I have to go now,” Diver said for the third time.

  The telephone rang again.

  “Well, bye then,” Marquez said.

  He walked away, leaving her feeling as far from happy as she had felt in a long time.

  The phone rang yet again.

  Marquez snatched up the receiver. “YES, YES, YES, YES, what the hell is it and it had better be good!” She listened for a moment. “Sure,” she said in a slightly more subdued voice. “Sure. I’d love to come to work. Why not? I obviously have no life!”

  12

  Shoot-out at the Cramp ’n’ Croak

  “What are you doing here?” Summer demanded.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here? They called me in to hostess,” Marquez said. “What are you two doing here?”

  The Crab ’n’ Conch was half-full with early-dining families, old people just finishing up, and the first few later-dining couples being seated.

  “We are celebrating,” Seth said. He stood behind Summer, took her hands, and spread her arms out in a “ta-daa!” position. “You are looking at a certified scuba diver. As of about an hour ago. Take a bow, Summer.”

  Summer took a little bow, which Seth did along with her. “Seth is buying me dinner, so we would like a window table.”

  “Oh, you’d like a window table, huh? You think you get special treatment?” Marquez asked.

  “You know,” Summer said, batting her eyes, “you look great in that dress. I mean it. Like a model. I wish I had your body and your hair.”

  Marquez laughed. “You’re going to need your scuba gear to breathe in here if the crap gets piled any deeper. Okay, okay, I’ll get you a window table.” She grabbed a couple of menus. “At least someone thinks I look good, even if it is just another girl.”

  “What are you talking about, Marquez?” Summer asked.

  Marquez stopped, handed the menus to Seth, and pointed to an empty table. “Here, take these and go seat yourself. I have to talk to Summer.”

  “Oh, fine,” Seth grumbled. “Just dump the guy.”

  Marquez took Summer’s arm and drew her away to a corner of the coatroom. “Don’t get mad or anything, all right?” Marquez said. “I had Diver over at my house.”

  “Why would I be mad?” Summer said in a phony, shrill voice. “It’s none of my business.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway, it didn’t work out all that great.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Don’t gloat,” Marquez said. “It just turned out…I don’t know. It’s like there’s more going on with him than I thought. Also less. I mean, I think he may have problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he doesn’t know his own name. Either he doesn’t remember, like he has amnesia or something, or else he was just blowing me off.”

  “Puh-leeze, he was just blowing you off. That’s the way he always is. You can never get a straight answer out of Diver. Diver’s…I don’t know. He’s just Diver. But of course you had to cross-examine him.”

  “I asked a couple of simple questions,” Marquez said.

  “And now you don’t like the answers.”

  “I thought I would like the answers,” Marquez said crossly. “I guess.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have asked questions. I thought you liked him because he was so simple and innocent and not at all like J.T. And then you start in on him?”

  “I didn’t ‘start in on him.’ I was trying to get something going, that’s all. Just because you treat him like your platonic guy friend, doesn’t mean I have to,” Marquez grumbled. “Maybe you don’t notice how he looks anymore, but I do.”

  Summer felt troubled. “I’d hate to think he actually has amnesia or something. That means he’s sick, kind of.”

  “Yeah. Besides, what happens if he regains his memory and it turns out he’s really some kind of prep who buys all his clothes out of the J. Crew
catalog? Then what?”

  “Excuse me, this is from J. Crew,” Summer said, pointing to her blouse.

  The manager of the restaurant stuck his head around the corner. “Oh, there you are, Marquez. Maybe I should just tell the customers who are waiting at the hostess stand to come find you hack here.”

  “I’m on my way,” Marquez promised. Then, to Summer in an undertone, “I volunteer to work an extra shift and he’s ragging on me anyway.”

  “You’d better go,” Summer said. “We’ll talk later. Maybe we can figure out if Diver needs some kind of help. Maybe we could help him.” She smiled wryly. “Help him turn into a prep.”

  Marquez rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. Look, if I wanted to be Mother Teresa and help screwed-up guys, I’d help J.T. He was first in line.”

  “You know, this really is a nice view,” Summer said, gazing out through the floor-to-ceiling windows as she smoothed the cloth napkin on her lap. “I work here, but it’s like I never have time to really notice it.”

  Outside was the dock, congested with evening strollers enjoying the early stages of sunset and the slight relief from the heat. It was the usual collection of humanity as it appeared on Crab Claw Key—too-fat people showing too much skin, too-fair tourists with bright red sunburns, too-rich people with too little taste.

  But there were families as well, pushing baby strollers and trailing bright helium balloons; young married couples on their honeymoons, looking glazed and tired and ostentatiously sharing ice cream cones; then, like a time-lapse photograph, the older couples, gray men and bottle-blond women wearing gaudy matching outfits and sharing secret smiles and knowing winks with their partners as they watched their younger selves pass by.

  “I should pay more attention to things,” Summer said thoughtfully. “There’s a lot going on.”

  Seth looked up from his menu and followed the direction of her gaze. “Kind of a good show, isn’t it?” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what Bloomington, Minnesota, is like, but where I’m from, in Eau Claire, you don’t usually see this many different kinds of people.”