by Eden Beck
Rory jumps down from the Jeep and lifts me down too, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to hide my disappointed expression as he rushes to grab some tarps from underneath the seats to throw over the top of the car.
Meanwhile, I grab most of the books and make a beeline for the school awning just to get out of the rain. The raindrops are cold, and my shivering is starting to reach teeth-chattering levels by the time he jogs over to my side.
“I knew it was a stupid idea to take the top off today,” he grumbles, stepping out from under the rain and taking a moment to push the wet strands of hair out of his face.
“How are you not cold?” I ask. He’s only been wearing a T-shirt this entire time and hasn’t seemed the least bit uncomfortable. I’m having a hard time not staring at how the rain has made the wet clothes cling to his body.
“I run pretty hot,” is his unhelpful answer.
I have no idea what he means by that but I’m sure every girl at school would agree on the hotness factor. We wait out the worst of the rain before heading back to the car to stow the stolen books somewhere where the wet blankets won’t ruin them.
It’s still misting out a bit, but nothing like it was before.
“Guess we’re done for today,” he says as he slides into the driver seat and starts reaching over for the handle on the passenger’s side. “I’ll give you a ride home.”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve walked in the rain.”
“Don’t be silly. Besides, I’m going that way anyway.”
I turned down a ride once before, and for the first time I wonder what would have happened if I didn’t. Would this whole sorry game of cat and mouse have ended already, or would it have been over before it began?
“Fine. But you have to take me straight to the cabin. No shenanigans.”
He cracks a wide smile. “Who do you think I am, Marlowe?”
We don’t say much on the ride. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s much to say after that moment in the back of his car. I don’t really know what to think about Rory.
One minute he’s hot, too hot, and the next he’s icy cold. It’s only a matter of time before he shuts down on me again. I know it.
When we pull up to the cabin, the rain has seriously started coming down again. If it weren’t for the tarps thrown over the books, they’d all be completely ruined by now. As it is, the thick coverage of pines overhead does little to stem the rain that’s now drenched me to the core in the front seat.
I prep to dodge out of the car and up to the house as quick as I can, but out of the corner of my eye I see Rory reach for his handle too. He leaves the jeep running as he walks me to the door.
I’m not sure why he feels the need to do it, but it reminds me of how Marlowe stood outside that one night until he saw me go in himself. I think for the first time, I don’t hear the wolves in the distance. I know it’s probably just the rain, but I feel a slight weight lift off of me. The forest and all its depths seem just a little less dark.
My mom, of course, sees us walking up through the window and immediately opens the door to greet us.
“I wondered what kept you,” she says as she wraps one hand over my shoulders, ignoring the fact that my drenched hair is now soaking her too, “but now it makes sense. Who’s this?”
“This is Rory,” I say as I motion my hand toward him, my face reddening.
She squints at Rory a moment. “Do … do I know you?”
“No,” I answer quickly, before he can say anything. “But you probably recognize him because of his dad.”
She looks at me blankly for a moment, until I add, “Romulus.”
Her face lights up right away, and for some reason, I find this extremely annoying.
“Oh yes, of course. Romulus did mention he had three sons. I should have recognized you right away, you look just like him. Please, won’t you come in?”
I get ready to make up an excuse that he has to rush off somewhere to spare him from my mother’s inevitable small talk, but he’s already taking a backwards step off the porch.
“I really have to be going,” he says, nodding his head in my mother’s direction before glancing back at me. “See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, sure.”
I watch from the door for a second as he hops back into the car, but it isn’t until he’s started pulling away that I realize my mistake. Or, more accurately, my mother does.
“Tomorrow? What’s going on tomorrow?”
I keep my eyes on the back of Rory’s head as he turns the Jeep down the drive. “Oh nothing, just school.”
“On the weekend?”
“The …” I trail off and it dawns on me. Rory wasn’t talking about school. He’s talking about the river.
“Wait!”
I take off down the porch and onto the drive, waving my arms over my head to try to get Rory’s attention.
“Wait! I don’t know if I’m coming!”
My voice sounds small in the trees and the rain. It’s not enough to get Rory’s attention.
He doesn’t look back.
My mom is watching me, eyebrow cocked, from inside the doorway when I turn back.
“What was that about?”
It’s my turn to shake my head. “You don’t want to know.”
But really, I don’t want her to know. I’d almost forgotten Marlowe and Kaleb’s invitation. I just assumed they hadn’t told Rory.
This is exactly what I never meant to happen. No ties. No connections. And certainly, no days spent down by the river with three gorgeous, complicated boys who seem determined to make all this so much harder than it needs to be.
17
Sabrina
Despite what I said to Rory as he left, I wake determined not to join him or his brothers down at the river.
That would just be reckless.
I busy myself around the cabin, keeping my mind occupied so I’m not tempted to reconsider. Fortunately for me, there’s plenty of work to keep me busy.
The old house must have sat empty for a long time before we arrived because there can’t be less than three autumns worth of fallen leaves sloughed up against the walls outside. I find an old shovel leaned up in the closet of the outhouse and start using it to dig out the still-moist and rotting leaves away from the base of the house.
It’s intoxicating in a way. Every dig into the leaves releases a burst of moist air, the scent of decay and soft soil filling my nostrils. I work section by section, each time getting more vigorous with my approach. Soon my hands are rubbed red and threatening to blister, but I don’t stop.
“Everything alright?” My mom says at some point mid-morning, her head poking out the window above the sink for the third or fourth time already. I imagine I must look a fright.
I pause, leaning one arm against the shovel while I attempt to push the damp, sweaty hair away from my forehead with a rare spot on my upper arm that isn’t spattered with dirt.
She narrows her eyes at me. “You know you don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” I say, finally giving up on getting that one stubborn strand of hair off my forehead. I pick the shovel back up and drive it into the next pile of leaves. “I want to. It keeps me sane.”
She nods from her perch in the window, but the look on her face is less understanding and more pitying.
It just makes me work harder.
I would probably clear the entire lot by the end of the day if it isn’t for the incessant ringing that starts up inside the cabin around noon. At first, when my mother reappears in the window to tell me that someone named “Jess” is on the phone for me, I’m a little disappointed.
I’d expected to hear from … someone else.
Even so, I wave her away and return to diving elbow-deep in damp leaves.
But that isn’t the end of it. My determination to stay away from the river would be a lot easier if Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb were the only locals determined to get me down th
ere today.
I’ve just dug myself elbows deep into a particularly deep patch of leaves when my mother makes another appearance in the window. I know from one glance at her face that this time when the phone rang, something was different.
“Sabrina,” she says, her voice a little hesitant.
I straighten up. “What is it?”
She shakes her head a little, glancing back inside the window towards where the landline is plugged into the wall. I knew it was a bad idea to give Jess my number.
Not that I’d actually given it to her. She’d apparently found it taped to the bottom of the old handset and copied it down the night I let her, Aimee, and Tom crash at the cabin after our escapades up to the top of the hill.
“What’s going on?” I ask again, when she still doesn’t answer.
“It’s you friend Jess again,” she says. “She … she sounds off.”
I feel a lump rise in my throat. “Off?”
“Just … can you just come talk to her for a second?”
She pops back into the window and pulls it shut. The peeling paint on the windowpane makes a crunching sound as more little flakes chip off, flickering down to the cleared earth in tiny white fingernail-sized pieces.
Jess sounds off.
I better at least hear what this is all about.
I hurriedly toss the shovel up against the wall and hop up the steps to the front door. My mom flinches as I track in dirt on my shoes, and despite shooting her an apologetic look, I wipe more off on the edge of the couch before grabbing the headset and putting it to my ear.
As soon as I hear her voice, I feel my stomach sink. A great, overwhelming feeling of dread settles over me.
“You have to get down here, Sabrina!”
“Hold up, Jess,” I say, trying to make myself heard above her hysterically high voice. “Slow down a second and tell me what’s going on.”
Behind her, somewhere, I think I hear muddled shouts.
“Oh my god, Sabrina. Sabrina?”
My heart rises in the back of my throat. “What is it?”
“You … you …”
Her voice cuts out on the other end. My own, already battling a rising panic, laces with frustration.
“Jess. Tell me what’s going on.”
I can hear her voice, but it sounds distant, muted. There are other voices too, but they don’t sound familiar. Somewhere far off I hear a rumbling sound—but I can’t tell if it’s the threat of thunder, or the growl of a much closer threat.
After a moment of silence, her breaths draw closer to the phone on the other end.
“Jess—”
“Just get down here, Sabrina. And hurry!” With that, she hangs up the phone before I have a chance to say anything else.
I stand unmoving for a moment, just staring down at the receiver in my hand. What was that?
“Everything alright?”
I keep staring down at the receiver, but slowly start shaking my head. “I … I don’t know.”
When I look up into my mom’s face, at the look of concern there, I know what I have to do. I don’t know what’s going on down at the river with Jess, but it’s not in my nature to ignore her. Not when I heard the urgency in her voice.
I know what it’s like to finally get up my courage up to talk … just for no one to listen.
I spring into action.
I dash across the room and rummage through the front of my backpack, looking everywhere for my keys. My throat lets out an annoyed rumble when I don’t find them, and after straightening up and taking a quick glance around the tiny one-room cabin, I set upon attacking the couch cushions to see if they’ve slipped in between.
My mom stands frozen across the room, watching me.
“Where are you going? Sabrina? Surely you’re not leaving the house like that.”
“What do you …” I trail off, making another throaty sound as I take myself in. “Shit.”
There’s no time for modesty.
I strip off my shirt in the middle of the room and only half-climb up the ladder into the loft to grab a hoodie from where I left it crumpled up at the top. There’s no time for a shower, so I just squeeze around my mom and rinse my hands in the sink, throwing in a quick splash of water on my face so I don’t look like I spent the morning eating as much dirt as I was shoveling.
At least now I’m only half mud stained. I grab my keys and head for the door, stopping only to reassure my mom that everything is going to be fine.
But is it?
There’s only one way to find out.
The town of North Port is so small, it doesn’t take me long to find the little nook off the side of the road that’s turned into a local swimming hole. Most of the river runs fast through winding bends, but there’s a flat area near downtown where huge rocks jut out into the water, forming pools calm enough to swim.
Even if it wasn’t an unusually warm day for September, I’d still be drenched in sweat by the time I get there.
As soon as I see Jess, I spot Aimee and Tom sitting beside her. I wave my arms over my head, waiting for one last car to whiz past before jogging across the road towards the rocky outcropping where all three of them are perched. None of them have seen me yet. They’re all too busy staring at something on the other side of the river.
Whatever it is, it must be important because no one notices even as I call out to them from the base of the rock. It’s a steep climb up to the top.
They aren’t going to make this easy.
My heart pounding, I get down on all fours and half-crawl, half-climb, up towards them. This time, I wait until I’m nearly at the top before calling out again.
“Jess! Jess, what is it?”
My voice catches in the wind, dragged off into the rush of the rapids further down. Up here, there’s nothing but the sound of the river. No wonder they couldn’t hear me before.
By the time I reach the peak of the rock where it flattens off, I’m completely out of breath.
“Oh my god!”
Jess finally spots me, leaping up to her feet and rushing over on terrifyingly unsteady feet to offer me a hand up to the top. I take her hand and let myself fall forward onto my hands and knees for a moment.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come,” she says, taking a step back and glancing once more across the river.
I sit back, pressing my hands to the tops of my dirt-stained thighs.
“What’s going on. What’s everyone looking at?”
Neither Tom nor Aimee has looked at me, so I follow their gaze to what I couldn’t see before because it was blocked out by the rocks along the shore.
That’s when I see it.
The spectacle that prompted Jess to call and work me up into a flustered rush to get here—it’s not what I expected.
Three boys splash shirtless in the water by the bank on the other side of the river. Even from this far away, I recognize them immediately.
Rory. Marlowe. Kaleb.
“Please, please don’t tell me this was the emergency you had me rush down here for.”
Sure, the sight of the three hottest boys in school splashing around in the water with sunlight glistening off their wet, muscular chests isn’t the worst surprise to happen upon. But it’s also not worthy of the terrible, overwhelmingly foreboding feeling that’s been growing all morning.
Aimee finally is able to tear her eyes away for long enough to give me a little wave. Her face is flushed with color while beside her, Tom’s is turned down in a scowl.
“What a sight, huh?” she says, trying to beckon me over to sit beside her.
I stay where I’m planted.
Tom huffs and rolls his eyes, not even attempting to hide his jealousy.
I, meanwhile, can’t decide whether to be overwhelmingly embarrassed, or overwhelmingly angry.
After all that, they still somehow managed to get you down to the river.
Seeing the look on my face, Jess throws an arm around my shoulder and pull
s me in for a hug. “Don’t be such a buzzkill, Sabrina. It’s just a little harmless fun.” She glances once more across the river and lets out a long, overly dramatic sigh. “Besides, I knew we weren’t going to get you down to the river any other way.”
“I can’t believe that you called and freaked me out over this,” I say, half-teasingly but the other half serious. “I thought it was an emergency.”
“It is an emergency,” Tom grumbles. “Or will be, soon. These girls are going to get an aneurism from staring too hard.”
“What a perfect way to die,” Aimee says, matching Jess’ sigh from earlier.
I snort out a laugh. “You are all the worst, you know that?”
I don’t wait for another invitation, I just scoot closer to sit beside them at the edge of the rock. I try not to stare at the boys across the water. It feels wrong, somehow … but they’re also pretty impossible to miss. Even out of the corner of my eyes, they’re a sight to behold.
The river is high today. Too high for swimming, but that doesn’t seem to bother them. Even for an usually warm day, I still feel the occasional tingle of freezing water spray up onto my face when a wayward current hits the edge of the rock just right.
“How can they stand that?” I ask aloud, almost speaking to myself, when Kaleb dives into the water and disappears for a minute. When he resurfaces, his face shows no sign of the stinging cold.
I suddenly remember Rory standing under the school awning in only a T-shirt while I was freezing my ass off, layers and all. Apparently, his brothers share his resistance to the cold.
“It’s not that cold,” Tom says, beside me.
“Well, I don’t see you in there,” Aimee retorts.
Tom scans the surface of the water with a watchful eye. “I just don’t feel like swimming.”
I glance between him, Jess, and Aimee again. “So … this is it?”
“Oh, right.” Aimee reaches behind her and grabs a hard seltzer from a cooler beside her. She tosses it to me. “We have crackers too. Call it dinner and a show.”
