Rites of Spring (Break)

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Hey,” I said, stopping short just inside the room.

  “Hey,” he replied.

  “How you doing?”

  He shrugged. “You okay?”

  “Are you kidding?” I smiled. “I’m totally a celebrity. No one could stop talking about my little adventure yesterday.”

  “Oh.” He looked down at the cue ball. “That’s…cool.”

  I pointed at the table. “Want to play?”

  “Do you think we’ll be too loud?”

  “Good point.” I imagined the crack of the balls shattering the stillness of the Florida morning. “Darts, then?”

  As Darren set up the board, I sifted around for topics of conversation that didn’t start off “So, sucks about your dad, huh?”

  “Didn’t see you at dinner last night,” I finally said.

  “We eat as a family,” he said. “We’ve got our own kitchen and all.”

  “Oh. Cool.”

  “Mom doesn’t wake up till late, though, so I usually get breakfast down here when the kitchen is serving. It’s much nicer. French toast and stuff.” He flicked a dart at the board, and it landed in double twenty. I had a ringer on my hands. “They’re supposed to do pancakes today.”

  “Ooh, pancakes. Sounds great.” I watched him throw two more darts in quick succession, all closer to the center than I’d have predicted, then took my place at the line. My first throw went wide. “You’re much better than me,” I admitted.

  “Nothing to do here,” he said. “I practice a lot.”

  “What are you doing about school?” Oh, crap. I shouldn’t let on that I knew he’d been taken out of his school back in D.C. My second dart bounced off the board and landed in the carpet. I suck.

  He frowned. “I’m not really supposed to talk about personal stuff.”

  If I were his age, would my parents trust me with the kind of truth the Gehrys were facing? And regardless of the adults’ wishes, would I have the right to know? “Sorry, I don’t mean to—”

  “Whatever. I’m homeschooled for now. But it’s pretty much a joke. I’m not doing anything. It’s not like we have a chemistry lab in the house. I do some math problems, read a couple of books.”

  “What are you reading?” My third shot hit the mark underneath the three. Woo-hoo!

  He gestured to the shelves around us. “You’re looking at it. Actually, I’m supposed to be picking something new right now.”

  So I was contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Though I doubted this was the first time he’d played darts rather than reading. “Do you want any recommendations? I’m a Literature major, so I’ve pretty much read it all.” I retrieved my darts and wrote down my pathetic score.

  “Sure.” Darren took his place at the line and I wandered over to the bookshelves. “Not now, though.”

  “Why?”

  He gestured with the dart. “I wouldn’t want to hit you.”

  Right. I backed away and watched Darren hit two more doubles and one in the outer ring of the bull’s-eye. This was going to be a massacre.

  “Are you going on the snorkeling trip today?” I asked him as he retrieved his darts and made marks on the scoreboard.

  “There’s a snorkeling trip?” he asked.

  Well, that answered that. God, this kid had to be going stir-crazy. He wandered over to the bookshelves and I took it as a cue to delay my turn at the board, since if he was worried about hitting me, he had to be terrified, given my wild aim.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  Go with the obvious. “Catcher in the Rye?”

  He snorted. “Everyone says that. I read it, like, three years ago.”

  Oh, a challenge. I smiled. “Did you like it?”

  “It was okay. I’m reading Nietzsche right now.”

  Like good disaffected fourteen-year-old boys everywhere. “Which one?”

  “Genealogy of Morals.”

  “How are you liking that?”

  “Easier going than Kant.”

  I laughed, and, as he’d moved away from the board, risked making a toss with the dart. It landed right outside the outer bull’s-eye ring.

  “Good throw!” Darren said.

  My next shot hit right above the “4” in fourteen. “I had a German Lit prof who said it was easier to learn German, then read Kant, than it was to read him in English.”

  “Well, I’m not going to learn German on this island.”

  Especially if he didn’t make it into the tomb here. “I specialize in fiction anyway. I mostly only read philosophy for background material. My Aristotle is less morals and more poetics.”

  “I hate Aristotle. I find his tone to be remarkably jejune.” He looked at me as if I was supposed to contradict him. To act shocked. Yeah, this was the kid of an Eli student. A Digger, too. I don’t think I’d even seen that word since I took the SATs.

  I threw my last shot (wide) and went to collect my darts. “Let’s see, what should you read?” I wandered over to the shelves. Who stocked these things? The bulk of the titles were your usual paperback thrillers of the Clancy and Grisham variety. Stephen King. Heinlein. Krakauer. Beach reads for boys on vacation. No romance, but I didn’t expect it, what with the usual demographics of the island’s visitors. Farther along were a few hardcovers of the classics. Tristram Shandy, of course. I’d have to show it to Harun. A dusty copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. Gag. War and Peace, my old nemesis. Several Dickenses, Tom Jones, Robinson Crusoe (natch!)—

  I caught sight of a dart whizzing past from the corner of my eye. “Hey!” I cried, turning around.

  He lifted his shoulders. “Oops. Sorry. I forgot.”

  I looked back at the board. He’d hit the bull’s-eye. “Good shot.” I held up a thick paperback. “What about Catch-22?

  He looked down at the darts in his hand. “Do you think—?”

  The door opened. “Amy!” Demetria called. “There you are.” Half my club trooped in, looking famished and beachy. Everyone wore bathing suits and the appropriate cover-ups (except for Clarissa, whose itsy-bitsy pink bikini and white mesh cover-up were hardly G-rated), sunglasses, and hats, and smelled strongly of suntan lotion. Ben even had zinc smeared on his nose.

  I suddenly felt way overdressed in my shorts, sports bra, tank top, and sneakers.

  “Clarissa figured you were hiding so we wouldn’t force you on the boat,” Jenny said. “Do you know when breakfast is?”

  Darren checked his watch. “About fifteen minutes.” He walked over to me and looked at the book in my hands. “I read Heller last year. Try again.”

  This was trickier than I’d thought. Darts forgotten, we traveled down the length of Cavador Key’s collection, which I noticed was pretty much devoid of women writers (with the exception of Ayn Rand, who was present in an almost unhealthy abundance). No Austen, no Alcott, no Ahrendt. And that was just the As. No Brontë, no Behn. Somebody needed to shake up these shelves. Mary Shelley was there, thank goodness, along with a slim volume of Emily Dickinson. But all in all, a pathetic turnout for femalekind.

  Figured.

  Darren vetoed Animal Farm and 1984 (“I mean, it obviously didn’t happen, right? So what’s the point?”), looked skeptical about Kafka (and who could blame him?), made a face at Flaubert (“So, she’s a madam? Like a hooker?”), and seemed only moderately intrigued by Crime and Punishment (which I thought, but didn’t say, was too old for him).

  “You’ll love it in about five years,” I said, placing Dostoyevsky back on the shelf. Nearby was a volume of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, which only made me think of the one Digger who hadn’t yet come by for breakfast.

  It’s fine, Amy. It’s not a date.

  “Okay, last suggestion, and then I’m out.” I pulled down a hefty volume. “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “What’s it about?”

  Had he not seen any of the movies? “It’s about a guy who is betrayed by his friends and winds up in this island prison for ages, until he escapes, finds a buried tre
asure, and gets revenge on everyone.”

  “Hmmm…”

  “Lots of swordfights. Swordfights and opium and lesbians.”

  “I’m in.”

  “Good lad.” I handed him the book and patted him on the shoulder. Yep, the old lesbian ace in the hole. Better than Nietzsche for the teenaged boy. Demetria would not approve.

  Soon after, breakfast was served, but still Poe failed to appear. I tried to concentrate on my pancakes, which should have been easy, given how delicious they were, but my eyes kept sliding to the door of the dining room, waiting for my date to arrive.

  No. Not my date. My, uh, appointment. My eleven o’clock appointment.

  Breakfast ended and the others started to gather their things together for the walk to the yacht.

  “Are you sure, Amy?” Clarissa asked.

  I patted my bag. “Absolutely.” Where was Poe? “I have all kinds of reading to catch up on.” I wasn’t about to tell Clarissa I’d made a non-date with everyone’s second-least-favorite patriarch on the island.

  She peeked into the mesh sack. “Longinus? Hell no. If you spend your Spring Break reading literary criticism, I’m going to have to kill you.”

  “If you make me get on that boat, you won’t have to. I’ll die of fright all by myself. Really, Clarissa. I’m much happier this way.”

  “Okay,” she said warily. “But if I don’t see a tan on you this afternoon, we’re revisiting this topic.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Everyone filtered out the door, including Malcolm, who gave me little more than a friendly wave, and I settled into my rocker with my On the Sublime and wondered what the author would have thought of a Florida island in springtime. The earlier mist had completely burned away by this time, leaving nothing but warm, lemony sunshine, blue skies, soft, salt-scented breezes, and the sound of singing insects. All I needed was a hammock.

  It was so peaceful that I’d almost forgotten I was in waiting mode by the time a shadow fell across the pages.

  “Hey.”

  I looked up and there was Poe, in a dark bathing suit and a smoky blue T-shirt that made his eyes look almost silver. He wore a faded pair of running shoes and smelled of sunscreen.

  “Are you ready?”

  No way.

  11.

  Lessons

  * * *

  Like many young adults my age and occupation, I suffered from the occasional recurring nightmare of walking into class and finding the other students occupied with taking an exam that I had not only not studied for, but that I had no idea was even on the syllabus. Occasionally, it would be for a class I had no recollection of enrolling in. Such dreams always elicited a peculiar feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, one quite distinct from the queasiness inspired by heights, deep water, scary movies, or bad eggs. There was dread, and then there was the specific dread of being unprepared.

  I had that feeling now.

  Poe, on the other hand, looked as if he’d spent the past week working up flash cards and doing timed practice tests with a study group.

  I stood up, narrowly avoiding spilling Longinus onto the porch. Do not say you were worried he was going to stand you up. Being “stood up” sounds very date-like. Or not, as the case may be. But certainly not not-date-like. “I didn’t see you at breakfast,” I said, and hoped he’d get my point.

  “Indeed. Did you like it?”

  “Breakfast? Yeah. Why?”

  And now he smiled, just a little.

  “You made breakfast,” I realized.

  “Just the pancakes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was feeling pretty guilty last year, about the free trip to Florida and all. So I kept offering to do things, as if I could balance the debt through some sort of bizarre work-study program. Salt wouldn’t let me do yardwork, which you know is my specialty, but Cook let me in the kitchen at breakfast. Just breakfast, mind you, because she had some strange idea that I was a tad on the antisocial side and would hide out in the kitchen for as long as she’d let me.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “But since my pancake recipe was better than hers, she made me promise to give her a refresher when I came back.” He shrugged. “No one knows that, by the way. Malcolm just thinks I skip breakfast.”

  “And if word got out, you know we’d all be roping you into tomb brunches.”

  “Not your club, no. I think they’d be afraid I’d slip strychnine in the batter.” His tone was light as he said it, but I had to wonder, why would Poe keep his pancake recipe a secret, unless it was to quietly lord it over the others that the breakfast they’d so enjoyed was made by the guy they weren’t altogether too fond of?

  Still, that didn’t explain why he’d keep it a secret from Malcolm, nor why he’d confess it to me. Maybe he really was embarrassed by his plebeian roots. Or maybe he was just kidding himself that his richer friend wasn’t completely aware of what made Poe tick.

  And yet, I still wasn’t sure what kind of person he was. Wasn’t that the reason I was doing this? To figure it out? The funny feeling in my stomach intensified.

  “So,” he said. “What are you up for this morning?”

  “I was hoping you had a plan, seeing how well you know this place and all of its inhabitants.”

  “Oh, Cook doesn’t live here. She only comes in for high-volume weeks.”

  “And no doubt Cook isn’t her given name, either.”

  “No,” he admitted. “It’s Berta.”

  “I see why she goes by Cook.”

  Darren wandered out of the library onto the porch. “You’re still here?” he asked. He held the copy of Dumas in his hands.

  “Yeah. I’m skipping out on the snorkeling today,” I said. Poe waved at him.

  “Oh?” He looked hopeful.

  “Jamie and I were going to…” Do what? I looked to Poe for help.

  “I’m taking her over to the sanctuary,” Poe said. “We’ll catch you this afternoon, Darren.” He started down the steps and I followed him.

  Okay, so we were going to the sanctuary, whatever that was. We hiked down the path in silence for a few moments. As soon as we were out of earshot of the porch, Poe spoke again.

  “Are you sorry?”

  “For what?”

  “Not inviting him to come along.” He cast me a sidelong glance.

  POSSIBLE ANSWERS

  1) “Yes. He seems awfully lonely.”

  2) “No. Do we look like babysitters?”

  3) “Nah, baby, three’s a crowd.”

  Each was partially true. I placed a hand on my stomach, where the unease had evolved into butterflies. If anything, the fluttering scared me even more. Not having made a decision was one thing. Making it brought a whole new snarl of nerves.

  “Do you think Mr. Gehry appreciates you befriending his son?” Poe asked, saving me an answer.

  “I didn’t really think about it,” I admitted.

  “I believe that.” But it was said without rancor. “I bet he’s thought about it.”

  “Darren?”

  “His father.”

  “Well, that would explain a lot. Maybe if he’d spent less time thinking about a bunch of college students and more about the laws of the nation he worked for, he wouldn’t be in so much trouble.”

  “That’s probably very true,” Poe said. “But do you believe he should think about it more than about the well-being of his family?” He met my eyes, and once again, I reflected on how hard it was to read this boy.

  Was he talking about hiring illegal help at home or letting Darren talk to the likes of me? I shrugged and refocused on the path. “My opinions of Kurt Gehry don’t have anything to do with how I treat his son.”

  “That’s a nice illusion.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean that it’s pretty tough to disassociate a person from what they stand for.”

  “Darren Gehry is a teenager. He doesn’t stand for anything.”

  “I d
isagree.”

  “Yeah? What is he to you?”

  “The guy who almost got you killed yesterday.”

  I stopped short, but Poe kept going, and I practically had to run to catch up to him.

  “Poe.”

  “Two dollars.” And he kept walking.

  “Jamie.”

  “You still owe.”

  “You don’t blame Darren, do you? It was an accident.”

  He slowed down but kept his face turned toward the ground. “People are still responsible for accidents. Someone is always at fault.”

  “Yes, but I’m not angry at him, so why are you?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You just said that you can’t disassociate him from the fact that he made me fall off the boat yesterday, which, I might add, is just as much Clarissa’s fault.” If she hadn’t been so squeamish…

  “That doesn’t make me angry at them.” And with that curious statement, we reached the end of the path. Beyond us was only woods. “Watch out for snakes.”

  Snakes? Some sanctuary. I started picking my way in after him. “So who are you angry at?”

  “If you keep talking, you won’t see anything.” He put a finger to his lips. “Just look.”

  So I looked. By this time, the sun had done its duty, bathing the island in warmth and bright light. The patches of sky I could see between the treetops were a deep, opaque blue. Presently, the trees thinned and we broke out onto a narrow, unkempt beach, marred with bleached driftwood and piles of dried seaweed.

  “What are we looking for?” I whispered.

  He pointed, and out of the trees shot a flash of brown and white. I watched it soar over the water, circle around a bit, then drop like a stone into the waves. A minute later, it rose, clutching something floppy in long, hooked claws.

  “Watch where it goes.”

  The nest was pretty easy to spot, as it was perched at the top of one of the tallest pines in the stand, dripping with needles like a beard in need of a trim. The bird circled the tree, letting out a long shriek, then landed. Its back and wings were dark brown, its underside pure white, and even from the ground, I could see its enormous golden eyes and the sharp curve of its large talons. It looked around, as if aware that it had observers, then occupied itself with the fish.